putting

Putting? I Don’t Care

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When I go to the range, I practice chipping a lot. I am really good at chipping, if I may say so.

I get four golf balls, chip them to a hole, and putt them out. Chipping is the up part. You have to practice the down part, too.

Sometimes I’ll not use a putter to putt out with, though. I’ll just walk up there with my wedge and putt out with it. And you know, they all go in! I even make six-footers by just walking up and knocking the ball in with the leading edge of a wedge.

You know why? Because I don’t care if the ball goes in. I’m just cleaning up. There is no pressure on the “putt” because I don’t put on any.

Maybe that’s the way we should hit short putts on the course. Just walk up, take a quick read, and hit the putt (but with your putter, of course).

But we don’t do it because if we did miss one, we would say. “See? I didn’t take care and look what happened,” forgetting that if you had taken care you might have missed it anyway, not because of your read, or your stroke, but because of your mental approach.

So if you aren’t satisfied with your short putting, try caring bit less. Maybe a lot less. I’ll think you will miss fewer, and make more.

Worth a try.

By the way, short putts never break as much as you think they will if you hit them hard enough. You know, don’t give away the hole?

golf swing, putting

What I Learned at the Range – 3/24/22

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Good day at the range. I used to be very good with a driver, but a few years away from the game was enough for me to forget how to swing it. Or any golf club, for that matter.

I had developed an arms-oriented swing, but it was too much arms. I had forgotten about the lower body, so I added in the hips and knees. Still no good.

You can get away with stuff with irons, but not with the driver. Somehow today, I realized that I had forgotten about my torso on the forward swing. It’s part of the sequence and I had left it out.

The hips turn, the torso turns, the arms swing, in that order. Instant success! Nice, straight fairway-finders. They fly a bit low, though, so I’ll get a lesson to help me with that.

Then there’s putting. When I watch the close-ups on TV of the touring players taking the putter back, it goes back as if it is on a rail. Perfectly straight back. Mine wobbles a bit, and I for the life of me couldn’t figure out how not to have that happen.

And today, for some reason, I gripped down on the handle so I was holding it in the middle, not near to the top. Instant success!

I was now holding the putter at its balance point and it started back with no wobble.

When I go to the range, I leave myself open to figuring out new things. I do that by never taking anything for granted. There is another way to do anything, and if you try it, that might be a better way.

To finish my day at the range, I always hit a few approach putts using my TAP method. It’s scary how well that works.

improvement

A Golfing Gold Mine

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There is a guy named Terry Kohler who writes a (roughly) weekly column for GolfWRX. He calls himself The Wedge Guy, but there is more to him than that.

His articles always have finely-tuned insights to all aspects of the game that you won’t read anywhere else.

He is well-placed in the industry and knows what he is talking about.

I got to snooping around and found a web page that has an apparent archive of his GolfWRX writings. There are so many I haven’t gone on to see if it is a complete collection, and I wouldn’t know if it was, anyway.

But start browsing through them. Between his writings and mine, what else would you need?

brilliant ideas, putting

The right way to align your ball on the green

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Most professional golfers that I see on television have drawn a line on the ball which they use to align the ball on the green. The golf balls I use already have an arrow printed on it for this purpose. I haven’t checked, but I would suppose lots of other modern balls do, too.

The act of aligning the ball can be a problem, though. The usual procedure is to squat down, try to eye-ball the starting line of the putt, and align the mark on the ball to it.

I see everybody looking at something at or near the hole, which can be a long way off. That, to my mind, seriously calls into question the accuracy of the alignment.

There must be a better way.

It’s a problem and only I can fix it.

You might have heard of spot putting. You pick a spot a few inches in front of the ball on the starting line and roll your putt over that spot. The idea is if you make that three-inch putt, you’ll make the eight-foot putt.

So-o-o, why not take it easy for yourself and set your ball down so it points to that spot three inches in front of the ball instead of something any number of feet away? Three inches is close enough that you can get it exactly right.

(I Photoshopped the yellow dot to make the visual clearer.)

If you trust the spot you have found, you have to trust aligning your ball this way.

Not only do you get a better alignment, you can do this in a matter of seconds. People in your group won’t have to watch you go tweak…tweak…tweak…, for bleeding ever.

You’re welcome!

improvement

How to Shoot Lower Scores This Year

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Do these things to perform better, play better, and shoot lower scores this year.

Long game: As in life, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Instead of chasing the perfect shot, work on eliminating the bad ones so all that are left are good ones.

Short game: Learn how to get the ball on the green with one shot. Down in four from under 100 yards is a big no-no. From greenside, learn how to chip close enough to get down in two 50% of the time.

Putting: Get real good at approach putting to eliminate three-putt greens.

Playing: Play only shots you can hit with confidence. If you get a bad break, play out of it safely in one shot rather than trying something heroic that leads to taking up two (or more) extra shots. Learn to how to handle differences in lie, wind, and uneven lies. Learn how to read a hole to know how it is supposed to be played—play with a plan.

commentary

USGA to Roll Back Distance

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I get several golf newsletters in my e-mail every morning. Today there is an article in the Golf Digest newsletter about the USGA making plans to roll back distance of “elite male players” by altering the characteristics of the ball.

Read it here.

Also, the Saudi League is going to start up anyway, though I don’t know where they will get any players of interest. They are certainly throwing LOTS of money at the project.

Read it here.

The tournament schedule is here.

aim, brilliant ideas

Bryson’s Compass

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I think I know why Bryson DeChambeau carries a compass. There is a long par 4 on the course I played yesterday that hides the fairway because of terrain. You think you are aiming down the middle and your straight-ahead drive ends up in the right rough, which keeps happening to me. I can’t bring myself to aim left enough.

I thought, if I had an azimuth from the tee box to the unseen center of the fairway, that would solve my problem. Then I could take a compass to the course and find a spot in the distance on that bearing to aim at.

How to do it? Go to this web site.

The site borrows Google Maps. Put the name of your golf course in the Search box and when it comes up, zoom in and click on Satellite.

Click on Start a Course and click on the tee box in question. Drag the mouse to the center of the fairway. A red line will appear, and a table to the left of the satellite image will show you the azimuth in degrees. In this case I got 221 degrees.

(Click images to enlarge)

So far, so good, but that is a true bearing. If you’re going to use a compass, you must correct for your local magnetic declination to get the magnetic bearing that you will read on your compass. Click on the map below and find your nearest city.

Pay attention now, because here comes the the tricky part.

If the declination is EAST, subtract it from the bearing you got on first the web page to get the magnetic bearing of the line to the center of the fairway.

If the declination is WEST, add it to the bearing you got on the first web page to get the magnetic bearing of the line to the center of the fairway.

The declination of the location in my example is 15 degrees east, so subtracting that from 221 gives me a bearing of 206 degrees to aim the tee shot.

So I’ll stand on the tee, take out the compass, align the dial to North, and see where 206 degrees points to.

Brilliant, no?

This all sounds like a lot of work, but you only have to do it once for that tee box. Plus, it’s kind of fun to explain to the people in your foursome just what the heck you’re doing.

By the way, if you go to this work, you for sure better find the fairway with your tee shot instead of the right rough. Again.

playing the game

Notes From a Round – 3/8/22

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Once your golfing skills get under control, that is, you have a reasonable expectation that the shot will come off like you wanted it to, what keeps your score higher than it should be is poor decision-making.

Yesterday I played nine holes and lost five strokes that I shouldn’t have. Two were from shots I absolutely skanked, which happens. But three were from not thinking things through.

Par 4, 413 yards, right-angled dogleg right. My tee shot ended up in the corner with no real shot toward the green. So I took out my 6-iron and set up to hit a fade around the corner at least get me back in the fairway and somewhat closer to the green. Except the fade didn’t come off. The ball went dead straight and sailed out of bounds.

I dropped a ball at the same spot, hit a 8-iron, and from there a 6-iron got the ball on the green for two putts and a 7 that would have been a 5 if I had used my head.

Here’s the rule, then. If, from the fairway, it will take more than one stroke to get the ball on the green, what is the easiest combination of shots that will do the job?

Two holes later, my tee shot on a par 3 ended up about two feet short of the green, on a very tight lie. The pin was about 40 feet away.

I like to chip from off the green. I hardly ever use my putter. So instead of using my putter, I went to my habit and tried to chip with a sand wedge. As I was standing over the ball, I couldn’t quite feel good about what I was about to do. Sure enough, I didn’t get the contact to spin the ball enough, and it rolled about twelve feet past the hole.

Two putts later I had a 4 when an easy 3 had almost been handed to me.

Here’s the rule. If you don’t feel confident about the shot you’re about to hit, stop and try one you feel good about.

So there you have it. Golf is a game you play. Shot-making skills are tools you develop at the range. The course is where you learn which ones to use to shoot low scores.

putting

How I Practice Putting At Home

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When I practice putting at home, I usually practice just my stroke. I don’t try to hit the ball at a target. I save that for the practice green at the range.

I’ll putt to a backstop about six feet away, trying to emulate this stroke, because there is so much that is good about it. See it at 0:30.

I concentrate on two things:

1. A gentle swing of the club back and through, keeping the clubhead low going back and going through, swinging the entire club, not just the clubhead. A putt, too, is a swing, not a hit.

2. Contacting the ball on the sweet spot, which I tell by sound. I want to make the right sound every time.

golf swing

A Coordinated Golf Swing

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The most important part of the golf swing is the forward swing, of course, because that is when the ball is struck.

One thing we don’t read much about is that the forward swing must be coordinated. By that I mean that the body turn and the arm swing work in harmony to line up at impact.

If when you swing you feel that the arms get ahead of the body, or that they are late to the game, something is wrong.

The forward swing should feel like a unified motion. The feeling is that the body and arms propel each other through the ball in a complimentary way.

You also want to feel no jerks or bumps in your hands. If you do, that is a sign they are probably doing something they shouldn’t.

Try making slow motion practice swings, without a ball. When you get it right, you’ll know what I mean.

Little Differences That Make a Big Difference in How Well You Play