You need to practice to get good at golf, but it must be the right kind of practice. Hitting lots of golf balls is the wrong kind. Practicing movements is the right kind. This video shows you one way to accomplish that.
Nicklaus Vs. Snead at Pebble Beach
In the early 1960s, Shell Oil produced a series called The Wonderful World of Golf. Every week the match was in a different country, featuring an American touring pro playing a pro from the host country.
One of the matches in the year’s lineup would be on an America course. In 1963, the American match was between Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead at Pebble Beach.
Years later, all the WWoG matches were released on DVD–except this one. Because of a contractural barrier, this episode was prevented from being released.
Pebble Beach was a different course back them. It was somewhat ragged, especially the edges of the bunkers, not the pristine $500 per round course it is now. You’ll notice that right away when you watch the video.
Notice also that they left the pin in when they putted. The rules allowed that back then.
Notice also the forecaddies marking the way when the players hit their blind second shots on #6. That would not be allowed now.
Notice the dimples on Nicklaus’s ball at 36:55.
And then there’s the dog at 31:11.
Keep your eyes open and you’ll see a lot of other quirky things from the time.
But watch the ball flight when they hit long irons, which they hit a lot of. High, straight, just as easy as pie. I would like to see the pros hit those shots with those clubs today.
Oh, yes, one more thing. Those were the early days of color television. Very few programs were in color and this was one of them. A neighbor who lived down the hill from us let me do odd jobs around his property and in payment I got to come to his house on Sunday afternoon and watch WWoG in color.
The money, if he had paid me, would have have been so long gone and I would have no idea now what I did with it. But the memories of watching these shows is still with me.
The Handle Leads the Clubhead–Application
I write a lot about how to get the handle to lead the clubhead, but here at last is a video on how to install that critical move into your swing.
It takes about three months of continual effort.
And it’s worth it.
The Number One Approach Putting Drill
This is what I call The Number One Approach Putting Drill. Spend fifteen minutes with this drill a couple of times a week and you will become a deadly approach putter.
How to Build a Golf Game
You spend so much of your precious leisure time playing golf, there’s no reason why you should not become as good as you can.
The way not to do it is every time you go to the range to practice hitting balls for a bit, chipping for a bit, putting for a bit, then going home.
That’s taking on the whole game at once, which easily leads to frustration.
Do this instead. Choose one part of the game and concentrate on it. Take chipping, for instance. That’s the easiest shot to get good at.
Get a lesson on how to chip, practice what you learned, and concentrate on it until you are good at chipping.
Then knock off the rest of golf, it can be pitching, putting, driving, irons, sand, one part at a time. Get good at each part before you move on to another one.
The confidence you build up by getting by being good at one thing will carry over to the next thing and eventually to your entire game.
Mickey Wright 1935-2020
Mickey Wright, IMO the greatest female golfer of all time, died today of heart attack in Florida. She dominated women’s golf in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Coming out of San Diego, she was one of the game’s greatest champions, winning 82 tournaments including 13 majors in a career cut short by injuries.
Ben Hogan said she had the finest swing he ever saw. See it below.
She wrote an instruction book called Play Golf the Wright Way, a book I refer to often.
See notices:
GolfWorld
Your Next Golf Lesson
This is your next golf lesson.
Schedule a lesson and tell the pro you want to learn these three things:
1. What do I do if I can miss left, but I can’t miss right?
2. What do I do if I can miss right, but I can’t miss left?
3. What do I do if I absolutely have to hit the ball straight?
The answers will all involve things you need to do with your swing. I had this lesson about nine years ago, and it is one of the most useful lessons I ever had.
how to get good
Golf is a vast game. There are more different kinds of shots to be hit than anyone can master, much less a recreational golfer for whom golf is a part-time hobby.
Yet, when we practice, we hit a bucket or two of balls, spend a little time chipping around the practice green (if you can find one that allows chipping!) and spend a few minutes putting.
And wonder why we don’t get better at it.
To explain why, I would like to refer you to this interview with Bill Evans, a legendary jazz pianist, talking about this very problem in regard to learning his craft.
That’s it, isn’t it? We try to take on all of golf all at once and as Evans said, that only leaves us confused and with nothing to build on.
If you’re reading this post, odds are you aren’t a beginner. You have been playing golf for a while and have your own ideas of how to hit the various shots that are necessary.
But if sometimes they work and other times (most times?) they don’t, there’s work to be done that won’t get done by going to the range one more time and doing what I described above, one more time.
Or however many more times.
You have to pick one thing and work on it until know what you are doing and are really good at it, before you move on to something else.
Let’s start with greenside chipping. This is the easiest shot in golf to get good at.
Get a lesson. If you taught yourself to chip, you really don’t know how to chip. I had been playing golf for over fifty years before I had my first chipping lesson. Nothing the pro taught me was what I had been doing, and what he taught me worked.
Next, prepare to spend fifty hours practicing what you learned. If you have a full-time job, it might take you three or more months to get to the range for that much practice.
And when you get to the range, practice chipping only. Don’t worry, your swing won’t go away. It’s just that if you hit a bucket of balls first you will use up some your concentration on that and that’s not why you came to the range.
Keep going, not until you reach being good, but have settled into being good. You know what you are doing and you know you can chip close from anywhere. Then you can move on to something else.
Choose from pitching, bunker play, putting, short irons, medium irons, fairway woods or hybrids, driver (save the driver for last–it’s a distraction, and you don’t need a driver to play golf, anyway.)
Take these skills one at a time. Spend the time it takes to learn how to do each one the right way so you’re good at it. As Evans said, make your practice real and true.
I promise you be playing a different game than before.
After you have these basics down, then you can move on to working the ball with your swing, learning a variety of short shots, and so forth, and all of it will work because you are building them on a solid foundation.
Cypress Point Flyover
The one golf course I would love to play on most is Cypress Point on the Monterey Peninsula.
Golf Digest made a flyover video of the course. None of us will ever get near the grounds, so this is your chance to see one of the finest and most beautiful golf courses in the world.
Click here to watch the YouTube video.
Jim Nantz narrates. (That’s a warning for some of you.) He goes on for a while at the start of the video. The flyover begins at 1:22.
Many clubs one distance drill
Being able to play golf at a top level is all about knowing how to control the club. Last week I gave you a drill designed to teach you how to control the clubface, in order to be in command of trajectory and curvature.
This week the drill is about controlling distance.
One of the things my pro taught me to do, or rather, suggested I learn (teach myself) how to do is to be able to hit a ball a given distance with three different clubs.
For example, hit the ball 125 yards with a 9-iron, 8-iron, and 7-iron. Can you do that?
There are uses on the course for each of these shots, but what this was was another way of being able to control my swing.
So I learned how to do that.
Perch Boomer, a legendary teacher and author of On Learning Golf, the first book ever written about the feel of the golf swing, talked at one point about a drill he accomplished once after considerable effort.
I’m going to quote at length from that part of the book because it makes the point of what becoming a golfer really means. Or as Johnny Miller would say, a player. [Boomer’s emphasis follows.]
“We can play—or we should be able to play—the three-quarter shot with the full swing or a full shot the three-quarter swing. I realize that this conception may be difficult to grasp, but it lies at the root of the superiority of the really great golfer.
“I say a really great golfer because there are many well-known and successful players who can play nothing but full shots; a controlled shot is right outside their golfing range. Yet the great golfer plays every shot controlled, that is he plays every shot with what he feels to be the correct degree of power not at full pressure. This control is the secret of his greatness.
“The test of a golfer’s control is in his ability to play a shot of 70 yards with every iron club in his bag. Think that out; it will give you an idea of what control of power really means. Every shot will be played firmly, but the power applied will obviously have to be varied greatly with the different clubs.
“I do not claim but I was ever a great player but I did teach myself to perform this tour de force, for a tour de force it is. It took me most of my golfing life to learn how to do it. ‘And why,’ you may ask, ‘should you expect us ordinary golfers to be able to do a thing which it took you, an expert, your lifetime to learn?’ Well, I did not say I expected you to be able to do it . . . what I do say is that understanding how it is done and endeavoring to do it yourself will give you a real conception of controlled power in the golf swing.
“In my opinion we cannot lay too much stress upon this matter of getting the right conceptions. It is surprising what you can get people to do once they clearly understand what it is that has to be done. To reverse this, I contend that many of us are playing bad golf not because we are incapable of playing good golf but simply because we are thinking of golf in the wrong way.”
So there you have it. 70 yards with every iron club. Not with part swings, but with full swings of varying power. Boomer played in the long iron days, so you will have to throw in your hybrid irons.
This is the hardest drill in golf. Being able to do it isn’t everything, but making the effort to is.
I’ll end with a story about Ben Hogan, who one day at Shady Oaks was accompanied by an annoying out-of-town golfer who had worked his way into the gangsome.
The guy was a pretty good golfer, and on the 6th hole, they both hit their tee shot about the same distance. Hogan was away and hit into the green, 10 feet left of the pin with a 7-iron. The Guy said, “What club did you hit?” Wrong question.
Hogan asked his caddy for a ball, took a club out of his bag, and hit it just right of the hole. He asked his caddy for another ball, took a different club out of his bag, and hit just left of the hole.
“I hit an 8, a 7, and a 6.”
Point made, and there weren’t any questions for the rest of the day.