playing the game

A Few Shot Savers

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Here are some easy ways to save a shot here and there which do not require you be any better than you are now. Each one can save you one stroke per round. They are taken from the upcoming edition of Bob’s Living Golf Book.

Play from the right set of tees.

Off the tee, use the longest club with which you can reliably hit the fairway. If that’s your driver, go for it. If it’s not our driver, don’t just assume it is your 3-wood.

Every shot at the hole (iron, pitch, chip, putt) must pass the hole. If the iron into the green requires a longer club than you can reliably hit straight, lay up. It is easier to chip on from the unobstructed fairway than from problematic ground on the sides of the green.

From 10-20 yards off the green, getting the ball on the green in one shot is a higher priority than getting the ball close to the pin.

For any putt of under roughly 20 feet (you have to determine the exact distance) look at the hole when you putt.

For putts beyond 20 feet, use the Triangulated Approach Putting technique.

Realize that some holes are too hard for you. Play them for an easy bogey instead of a hard par.

When you’re in trouble, think first about hitting the ball back into the fairway and playing on from there.

Put more importance on having fun with your companions and enjoying the day than you do shooting a low score.

Carry these playing tips with you, use them, and see how many strokes they save you. There are nine of them. What if each one did save you one stroke per round?

tournaments

2019 PGA Championship Preview

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Winner: Brooks Koepka by two shots over Dustin Johnson.

A major championship comes back to Bethpage Black in Long Island, New York. On May 16-19, the 101st PGA Championship will be contested on, what can I say, a ferocious golf course.

Official website.

I spent two days in 2010 walking around Oakmont. If you hit the ball straight and putt, you’ll do alright. I’ve seen the Pine Valley flyover on Youtube. Same thing. But Bethpage Black, that course scares me. Watch this.

The U.S. Open was played here in 2002, won by Tiger Woods by three strokes over Phil Mickelson. Woods was the only competitor to finish under par. In 2009, Lucas Glover on the Open by two over Mickelson, Ricky Barnes, and David Duval, in the most dramatic final round at the Open I have ever seen. Only those four and Ross Fisher finished under par.

The PGA likes birdies, though, and the rough will definitely not be U.S. Open style. I’m guessing the winning score will be -10.

Read this fascinating article about why The PGA at Bethpage will be different from a U.S. Open at Bethpage.


(Click to enlarge)

Moving the PGA to May was a stroke of, well, not genius, but of common sense. It was once a highly respected major championship, and can return to that status by being in the middle of the majors crunch instead of on the tail end. Playing it at the finest courses will help, too.

Patrick Reed has commented that this course challenges every club in the bag. I believe him. The winner will be determined by who makes the fewest big mistakes.

One thing everybody is hoping for is that Phil doesn’t wear these pants again. (Who dresses him???)

today's round

Today’s Round

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I played nine today at an executive course in town. It has five par 4s, four of them over 300 yards, and four par 3s. I learned something on almost every hole.

On the first, I hooked my approach and had to pitch on. The green sloped away from me, so I opened the clubface to get more loft on the shot and have it stop quicker, but when you do that you have to hit the ball harder, which is counter-intuitive, and which I failed to do. The ball fell short of the green, so I chipped on and sank the putt for a bogey.

On the second, I hooked my iron into the green again, and chipped from thick rough. I got under the ball and just got it on the green. Two putts for a bogey.

Third, looong approach putt. I thought more about distance than line, and let a gentle break carry a ball hit with the right pace away from the hole. Three putts for a bogey.

Fourth, I air-mailed the green with my approach. The ball rested on a bare spot in the grass with no way to sweep the club through the ball. Also, the ball was below the green and the green sloped away. Playing the shot shown in this video, I chipped to five feet and sank the putt.

Fifth, a drive put me 64 yards from the pin. At my range, there is a post 66 yards from the mats, which I always hit to when I warm up. Oh, boy. Pitch to 12 feet, the downhill birdie putt stopped three inches short.

Sixth, air-mailed the green again, and had to chip across a slope to the pin. I left the ball four feet below the hole, which is golden. Uphill putts going straight in are really easy. Sank it for the par.

Seventh, a drive into the rough and a 9-iron into the green. I forgot to put the ball back in my stance, which you always do when hitting out of the rough. It gives you as steeper swing that puts less grass between the club and the ball. The approach landed in front of an elevated green with the pin in front. Normally this might be a little flip onto the green, but the grass was mown very short so I putted the ball on with a 24-degree hybrid to six feet. Sank the putt for par.

Eighth, iron on, two putts.

Ninth, dogleg right. I decided to fade the ball around the corner, but got set up wrong. You have to open the clubface and aim it at where you want the ball to start off, but I aimed it where I wanted the ball to end up. The ball went into trees and I had to chip out. The ball landed in rough, but this time I played it the right way. 9-iron onto the green to six feet and a downhill slider for par. I got too tentative and the ball didn’t hold its line. Bogey.

Go back and read the post on Your One Right Hand. That was working supremely well off the tee. Also, read this post on hinging your wrists. I’ll be posting a video soon on this subject.

golf stories

Birdie at the Road Hole

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Almost nine years ago, I wrote a small post about my small hole-in one.

In that post, I mentioned the birdie I had made on the Road Hole at St Andrews and said I would talk about that sometime later.

I guess nine years is sometime later, so here goes.

In 1968, I was between my sophomore and junior years in college. Spending a summer abroad was becoming the thing to do. My college roommate suggested the winter before that we do that. I made the pitch to my parents, and they said yes.

Now getting to Europe back then was a Big Deal, especially if you lived on the West Coast. You had to get to New York, then catch a flight over, and it wasn’t cheap. But we made it cheap.

I took a cheap flight to New York, and from there, flew on Icelandic Airlines to Luxembourg, with a stop in Iceland. The airplane was a four-engine prop that didn’t go very fast and made lots of noise.

From Luxembourg I took a train the next day to Paris, where I met up with my roommate, and we were off and running. After a few days in Paris, we headed to Jolly Old.

We stayed in London, did the town, in the middle of the Swinging Sixties, Soho, and the like. After a few days we hitchhiked to Edinburgh (which has four syllables, not three), which is really close to the town of St Andrews (Note that St has no period after it. This is correct.)

After a few days of seeing this town, we hitchhiked to St Andrews so I could play the famous course. Or tried to hitchhike. We had no luck getting a ride all the way, and had to catch a bus to complete the trip.

So there I was, at the home of golf, with an indulgent roommate.

Things were different in 1968. There was no lottery for tee times. In the middle of June, I walked up to the starter’s shack, paid my green fees, rented a half set of clubs, bought some balls and tees, and went off.

The starter said, “The first tee is over there, and when the group on it tees off, you’re next.”

It was that simple.

I have to say I didn’t know much about the course except that it was famous. It had never been on TV for a British Open because TV didn’t cover the British Open back then. All I knew was that it was famous and I had read about it when I was growing up making golf part of my life.

I hit a decent drive on the first tee, well placed for a shot into the green. I thought the best shot from where I was would be to take out a 7-iron and hit a shot short of the green that would run on. You know, still getting warmed up.

I hit the shot I wanted to, but when the ball got close to the green it disappeared. I didn’t think much of that, probably it ran down a hill into a hollow spot.

The closer I got to the green, though, the more of a bad feeling I had about the choice I had made. There was this dark line going across the fairway that kept getting wider and wider.

I got close enough to see that it was a ditch, and when I got up to it, I was introduced to the Swilcan Burn, with my ball in it. Fortunately the ditch was not that deep and I was able to get my ball back out.

I have vague memories of the holes after that. The greens were light years faster than anything I had ever played on. The double greens were (are) huge, and I hit the ball into the gorse a few times and didn’t try to play out of it.

At one point, I think it was on the sixth tee, all I could see in front of me was weeds. I had no idea where to hit the ball. Some guy coming inward saw that I was completely confused, came over to the tee, and said, “See the church steeple way over there? Aim for that and you’ll be alright.” The steeple was about a mile away, across the River Eden.

Coming in, I was getting the hang of things and having lots of fun, though you would think otherwise by looking at my scores. I might be having selective memory, but I do not remember once being in a bunker the whole time.

At last we came to the Road Hole. I knew about that. Hit your drive over the railroad sheds, hit on and get par. I was really geared up for this one shot, over the sheds.

Only the sheds weren’t there anymore. They had been torn down the year before when a hotel was built on that spot. The romance was gone, but the shot was still there, though. The hotel had built a screen that forced you to hit the same shot if you wanted to take the short line to the green.

Now I hadn’t been hitting my driver well all day, so I took out the 3-wood to make my play. I didn’t care what happened, I hadn’t made this pilgrimage to chicken out of the most famous shot in golf.

I have no idea how it happened, but I hit a brilliant shot, not even close to what I had been doing earlier, and the ball sailed over the screen with room to spare, straight as a string. I had hit the shot I had been waiting to face, nailed it, and the rest would be an afterthought, or so I felt.

I found the ball in the fairway, looking right at the green. I took out a 3-iron and took aim at a piece of the green sticking out into the fairway. There was this bunker a bit to the left that looked like you wouldn’t want to hit into. Little did I know I was looking at the Road Hole bunker, the most feared bunker in golf. In the picture of me standing on the 17th green, look how close it is to the pin.

But as you know, the Lord takes care of fools and small children. Trying a shot that makes professionals perspire just thinking about it, my second good swing in a row put the ball on the green with room to spare.

Getting to the green, my ball was about 20 feet away, and there wasn’t much to the putt. Getting it close for a par looked easy, so that’s the shot I hit. Except I didn’t get my par. The ball went in and I had birdied the most famous and arguably the hardest par 4 in the world.

Wowie! Just, wowie! I made some noise, not knowing the eighteenth tee was really close by and there were guys teeing off. Apologies from me and kudos from them.

I finished the round and couldn’t have been happier. What started off as a lifetime memory ended up as a lifetime achievement. I am one under par for life on the 17th. Not many golfers can say that. I think this is better than a hole-in-one.

Years later, in 1990, I was watching the British Open, on TV, being played at St Andrews. Nick Faldo was on the way to winning his second title. As he played the 17th on Saturday, I thought to myself, “He would give his eyeteeth to have my score on this hole right now.”

As would they all in the Opens I have watched come through my birdie hole.

equipment

What’s In My Bag—April 2019

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I love to play around with my set of clubs. Every time I make a change I think I have really got it this time.

Here’s the set I’m playing with now:

Driver (11.5 degrees)
Fairway wood (16.5 degrees)
Fairway wood (20.5 degrees)
24-degree hybrid
27-degree hybrid
6-iron
7-iron
8-iron
9-iron
PW
GW
SW
LW
Putter

The clubs from the 16.5 fairway wood to the lob wedge have fairly consistent gaps in loft.

I’ve really got it this time.

playing the game, today's round

Today’s Round – Learning From Mistakes

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Actually yesterday’s. I spent the day thinking about it. I played nine holes, and was two over par for six of them, and seven over, two doubles and a triple, for the other three. That will make you think.

Now there is no “if only” in sports. I shot what I shot. But looking over those three high scores, the pattern was that I lost four strokes because of bad decisions. The problem is that I have forgotten how to play golf.

Playing golf is not about hitting good shots. I can do that. Golf is about hitting as few of them as possible, and that’s a different skill.

So let me go over my errors with you so you can see if that will help you start thinking about how to shoot a lower score with the same skills.

The 5th hole is 505 yards long. A drive and a hybrid put me right in front of a wide-open green, between an eight and nine-iron. I chose the eight because I always want to have enough club in my hand. So far, so good. But I forgot what you do when you choose the longer club: grip down and swing fully. Gripping down takes about five yards off the shot. Instead I tried swinging a little easier, which makes bad things happen, and sure enough, I chunked it.

The ball was close enough to the green that par was still in play if I could chip on and sink the putt. But I forgot the Maxim of the Short Game: just get the ball on the green so you can start putting. I got too cute with the chip by going for the pin instead of the green and chunked it. One chip and two putts later, I’m in the hole with a DB.

The very next hole, a long par 4 into the wind, was a bogey hole that day. A drive and a seven-iron later I’m close to the green. Simple pitch, two putts, maybe one, and I’m happy. But I forgot to check the distance to the pin. Because of the wind I chose a stronger club to pitch with, but the pin was too close even for that, and I flew the green with my pitch. It took me three shots to get down chipping to a green sloping away from me. DB.

Three holes later, the ninth, I hit my drive into the right rough. I had been pushing my driver all day, but getting away with it. The ground rises dramatically to the green, and given my lie I didn’t want to try for the green, come up short, and end up with the ball on a severe upslope. So I played short, leaving the ball on a moderate upslope, which was all I could do.

This time I checked the distance to the pin, but didn’t evaluate the situation correctly. When you pitch off an uphill lie, the slope adds loft to the club. You have to club down to hit the ball the same distance. But I started my calculation with the club I should have ended up with, and once again had too much club in my hand. The pitch flew the green into a bad place and it took me four to get down from there. TB.

Three bad decisions cost me four strokes. I ended up with a 45 that could have been a 41 without playing any better, but just by thinking more clearly.

That’s how this game goes. This is clear evidence of what I call the Floyd Rule, which I take from Raymond Floyd’s book, The Elements of Scoring, and that is, “If I were given your physical game, and we had a match, I would beat you 99 times out 100 times because I know how to play the game better than you do.”

Let me give you one more example from that day’s round, by one of my playing partners. On the eighth hole, we both put our tee shots in the right rough (I ended up with a par). His ball was right behind a small tree trunk with about four inches to spare. He had the easiest shot in the world to chip 90 degrees back into the fairway so he could hit on.

What did he do? He gripped down and tried to hit the ball in the direction of the green, or as nearly as he could. With a swing featuring a four-inch follow-through, he bladed the ball about 15 feet and deeper into the rough. Oh, well…

So my question to you is, do you think about your mistakes? Write them down? Learn from them, so next time you know what to do? Not just think, “Why did I do that,” but know now what you should have done, and next time apply the correction?

I truly believe that if you concentrated only on playing the game better you could reduce your average score by over five percent. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but do the math.

Hint: most mistakes come from getting greedy. We won’t concede one lost stroke and end up taken two or three more instead.

chipping, Gold Post

My Chipping Stroke

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In the summer of 2012, following two back surgeries earlier that year, all I could do was chip and putt. So I decided to start over with that and learn how to do them both the right way, not the way I had fallen into on my own.

I had a chipping lesson that June. I said to the pro, “Pretend I’ve never hit a chip shot before and tell me how to do it from the ground up.” That’s exactly what he did.

Whenever I have a golf lesson, I take notes afterward. I wrote down the points he made on chipping, practiced them a lot, because, remember that’s all I could do at the time, and I became a very good chipper.

I looked through the blog and found out that I had never posted the points he taught me. They don’t really substitute for a lesson, but here they are anyway. I hope you can make something of them. There are six.

1. Setup: The ball is in the center of your stance, weight is slightly left, the clubshaft leans slightly left. Light grip pressure, grip down to the metal for control.

2. The wrists break back slightly when the club goes back. Do not overdo this.

3. Swinging forward, the shaft and the outside of the right thigh feel like they are moving forward together.

4. The right knee continues breaking through the shot. The right heel comes off the ground little bit.

5. The hips turn. There is no slide. The left hip moves straight back, not around.

6. The wrists are straight again at impact and do not break further (the right hand does not pass the left). The clubface ends up facing the sky.

As I have said earlier, think of sliding the sole of the club underneath the ball, not so much on hitting down on the ball. There is a bit of that, but do not emphasize it.

If you perfect this stroke, and calibrate a number of chipping clubs, getting up and down from greenside will become your expectation.

See also: My Chipping Formula

pitching

The Pitching Swing

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A little while ago, I was watching Johnny Miller’s tape, Secrets of Success. One of the segments is on how to hit short irons.

Miller says to break your wrists early on the backswing, earlier than with longer clubs.

I thought I would try this backswing with pitching clubs. You break the wrists almost as soon as the club starts back, and let the break release naturally as the club comes into the ball.

I get clean contact, nice ball flight, and a dead straight shot. Over and over.

This stroke is much better than trying to adapt a full swing backstroke to pitching.

This video shows the difference at 0:30.

Try it.

books

Understanding the Golf Swing by Manuel de la Torre

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Manuel de la Torre, born in Spain and located professionally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a teacher of the Ernest Jones method, with a worldwide reputation. His book, Understanding the Golf Swing, reduces that method to its simplicity.

The fundamental concept of this approach is that it is the movement of the club that is important, not the movement of the body. Once the movement of the club is understood, the body will respond in a way that allows that movement to occur.

We don’t learn technique to make the club move in a certain way. We learn how the club should move in order for us to learn how to move our body. The method is simple, because there is less to learn, and hence think about, and hence get confused about.

The method also has the benefit of taking our mind outside ourself, which is the external focus that Gabrielle Wulf has shown to be much more effective than thinking about what the body is supposed to do (internal focus). Jones wasn’t, and de la Torre likely wasn’t aware of Wulf’s work, but it confirms of their conception of the golf swing.

Because the Jones method does not emphasize technique, this book reads differently than almost every other instruction book you have read. It takes a few readings to discern the depth of the message and understand exactly how to do what de la Torre is suggesting.

For example, he says that the club is to be taken back with the hands, but swung forward by the arms. By arms he means the anatomical arm, the upper limb from the shoulder to the elbow. The forearm, from the elbow to the wrist, is not involved.

There are chapters on correcting swing faults, short game, putting, playing from special lies, and a chapter on power, which starts off this way:

“If golfers could play the game of golf without concern for this word power, everyone could improve his or her game at least 50%. For so many individuals power is the destroyer of the swing and thus their golf game.”

Other quotes I like are,

“You should always take the grip while looking at your hands to see how you’re placing them on the club.” (Slight variations in the grip from shot to shot are the major cause of inconsistent ball-striking)

“Everyone has a tendency to try to help the club as it reaches the golf ball—The swing will never accept this help.” (See the quote on power, above.)

“When observing a good player, study not what the player does with his or her body, but the player does with the golf club, and the latter is what the observer should attempt to duplicate.”

“If you miss a shot it simply means that you did not do what you were supposed to do. It does not mean that you did something wrong. So get back what you should do.”

(On putting) “Roll the ball on the line you select, as far as the hole.” (Focus on your task, not its outcome.)

In addition to this book, there is a series of YouTube videos in which de la Torre teaches a clinic to a group of young golfers. They are all fairly long (30-45 minutes) but I strongly encourage you to watch them nonetheless. Start with this one: Intro to Concept

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