From time to time, you read about, or someone you know might say, that a golf course is a waste of the space it lies on.
The picture below is of the RedTail Golf Course in Beaverton, Oregon (back nine), which is next to Washington Square, a large shopping mall.
Which one do you think is the best use of the land it lies on?
A few weeks ago, I put up a post that was secretly about the benefits of playing conservatively. This post is openly about doing the opposite.
I’m not contradicting myself. I’m just giving you something else to think about.
You’re on the course, looking over a tricky shot, and thinking, “I know I can hit that shot, but if I miss, there’s water/bunkers/OB/etc. I’d better play it safe to keep from shooting the Big Number.”
So you do, and take a Gentleman’s Bogey to the next tee, no happier, and still wondering if you should have tried that riskier shot.
Yes, you should have. You’ll never know how good you are if you never take a challenge, or if you don’t learn how to take a challenge. And most of all, you’ll never have all the fun golf can provide.
Not every shot is challenging. I’m talking about five or so shots per round. If you have the shot in your bag, accept the challenge. Play a full-sized game. Don’t go small every time.
Say you’re 80 yards from the pin, but it’s tucked behind a bunker. If you have confidence in your pitching game, don’t chicken out toward the center of the green. Play right for the pin.
That’s how you’re going to get your up and down. Regard the bunker as out of play. Forget about it. Play for down in two instead of guaranteeing down in three.
Narrow driving hole? Out comes your fairway wood or some kind of hybrid iron.
But if you have a little fade with your driver you can hit whenever you want to (and that’s not a hard shot to learn) go with the Big Dog.
Yes, sometimes you won’t pull off the challenging shot and you’ll end up with a double bogey. So? There are seventeen other holes.
Or you don’t want to play this way because bad rounds will raise your handicap. Well, the low scores you’ll shoot offset the occasional bad ones, and why do you even have a handicap anyway, when all you’re out there for is to have fun?
It comes down to this. Don’t play stupid shots. But if you know you can do it, then do it. Stretch yourself. Step out of your rut.
You become a better player by hitting shots better players hit.
And you’ll have more fun.
Regular readers know that one of the drums I beat is to have your hands leading the clubhead going into the ball. Let me give you two drills to help you learn how to do that.
1. Take your sand wedge and hit chips with only your left hand on the club. If you play left-handed, then it would be only your right hand on the club.
If your habit is to bend your left wrist backward through impact, you’ll learn very quickly that you can’t hit a good shot when you chip like that with the left hand alone.
You’ll have to keep your left wrist straight as you bring the club thorough the ball, and the easiest way to do that is for the left hand to lead the clubhead.
There’s no need to take a very big backswing. Maybe take your hand back to hip height at most. Make it a slow swing. It’s a chip. No need to belt the ball.
Your only concern is to get your left hand to the ball before the clubhead gets there.
After a few months of practice that have led you to mastery of this drill, you’re ready for drill number two.
2. Hit 75-yard pitches, over and over. Hit a bucket of nothing but that shot each time you go to the range. As before, work on the feeling of your left hand getting to the ball before the clubhead does.
You’re holding on with both hands now, but your mind is still on your what your left hand is doing.
And don’t abandon drill number 1, either. Use it to warm up for drill number 2.
Once you get really good at this drill, you are only inches away from making full swings in which your hands get to the ball before the clubhead does.
Along the way, there’s the bonus of learning how to hit those longer pitch shots really well. Most recreational golfers I play with hit this shot poorly.
You will also learn a few things about striking the ball on the center of the clubface, which never hurt anybody.
Practice these two drills patiently until you have mastered them. I would give you a year of continual practice before these drills, working together, make the hands-first strike a normal part of your swing, instead of something you have to think about.
When that transition has been made, look out!
I want to ask you to try three different ways of playing golf. They come from a book titled, Golf Is a Very Simple Game, by Jonathan Fine.
The book is a summary of the teachings of the golf teacher Francisco Lopez. I recommend this book to you, and its companion volume, What’s This Got to Do With Golf?
You are going to make three plans for playing a round of golf on a course you know well.
There is likely to be a map of the course on the scorecard. Make three blown-up copies of this map to twice its size on the scorecard.
You can make marks on the maps to show where you would want to play the ball, and which clubs you would use.
1. On one map, make a plan to get onto every green in regulation.
2. On the second map, make a plan to stay in the fairway at all times, and out of rough, bunkers, trees, water, and what have you.
3. On the third map, make a plan to get on the green in one shot over regulation on every hole. No GIRs allowed!
After you have done that, play one round with each plan, following it strictly.
As Fine says, “See what happens.”
Last year fifty-two posts were put up in this space, dedicated to helping you play better golf. Well, may be less than that, because of the major championship previews and a few editorials. But there was a lot.
Today I want to remind you of the posts that did the best at getting to the heart of the game, and the core of your learning to become a better golfer. They’re not the Ten Best, or the Twelve Best, just the Best.Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download
January 5
Ernie Els, You’re Not – swing the club at your tempo, not even Ernie’s.
February 22
To Sink Putts, Practice Sinking Putts – the more putts you put in the hole, the easier you’ll think it is to do.
March 29
Swing Through to the Finish – the swing is not over when you’ve hit the ball.
May 3
Good Golf Takes Dedication – this means lots of practice.
July 5
How Far Do You Hit Your Irons? – here’s a way to find out.
September 13
Break-Even Putting – lag putting begins from a closer distance than you might think.
October 11
Stop Chunking Chip Shots – it’s easy, once you know the secret.
November 15
The Short Game in One Rule – a rule that will save you shots you didn’t realize you were losing.
There’s enough material in there for a winter’s worth of work. Any one of them will cut a stroke or two off you score.
What if you try all of them?
Your buddies will say, “You look like the guy we played with last year, but you sure don’t play like him!”
The USGA “saved” golf several years ago by banning anchored putting strokes. Personally, I don’t care if you anchor your putter. You can anchor your driver, if you want to.
But now the USGA is saying, beginning in 2016 you cannot post rounds for your handicap if you played alone. No witnesses, not post.
This decision is making people quite upset.
Golf Canada said they will not adhere to the new policy.
Golf publications are up in arms about this. Ryan Herrington, in the November 30, 2015 GolfWorld, said the decision “makes this solitary journey feel a little more like a good walk spoiled.”
Actually, it does the opposite. It liberates us from golf having to be a competition every time we go out, always having to play our very best because every shot has implications.
Handicaps were designed to level out competitions. But just because you might compete at sometime in the future doesn’t mean that every stroke you play has to be hit with that uncertain future in mind.
This new policy gets us one step closer to a recreational game in which we go out to the course, bat the ball around, and have fun in a beautiful, relaxing environment, and nothing more.
And you can do that now if you play alone. (Of course, you don’t have to post any of your rounds if you dump your handicap, but that’s another blog post.)
The point is, many golfers enjoy playing alone, and then there are times you just want to run out, grab a quick nine, enjoy yourself, and then get back to your life.
When you’re out there and you want to hit a do-over, go ahead! If you want to bend the rules or (horrors!) ignore one, go ahead, because you won’t be posting your score.
So go enjoy yourself. You won’t have to worry about the USGA’s handicap gods spoiling your good walk anymore.
Whether they know it or not, the USGA just made recreational golf a better game. I doubt that’s what they intended, though, so let’s just keep this our little secret.
To get better at swinging the golf club, you have to swing it a lot, the right way. The 120 Swings drill, more than any other, meets that need. It comes from my first book, Better Recreational Golf.
You’re going to swing the club 120 times, in five sets of twenty swings, each set different from the last. It might take you three minutes to complete each set. The complete exercise takes about twenty minutes.
Start out with twenty normal golf swings. You’ll be hitting a ball only every tenth swing.
For swings 21-40, swing with your left arm only. Swings 41-60 are your normal swings again.
Swings 61-80 are right arm-only swings. Swings 81-100 are two-handed, but with your feet together, heels touching.
The final set, swings 101-120, is back to your normal swing.
(If 120 swings are too many, then do six sets of ten.)
The one-armed swings teach you what that arm does in the swing. It will also help you strengthen your left arm when you do that set.
The point of the feet-together swings is to teach you how to move your upper and lower body together. You will not be able to make as great turn with your feet together, so don’t force it.
Step away and set up before every swing. Take your time. This prevents you from getting into a groove that will not last beyond the conclusion of the drill.
It is very important that in any set you swing the same way every time. Do not go trying different things with each swing. Swing the same way every time. This is especially important when you hit a ball with that tenth swing. If you change your swing, you’ll feel it, and that tells you are ball bound—a bad habit that needs to be broken.
Use the same club for the entire drill. A 6-iron is an ideal club. I would recommend not using a driver.
An advanced application of this drill is for the club to impact the ground in the same way with every swing. This means you are in control of the depth of your swing, a vital but seldom-mentioned requirement for consistent ball-striking.
Do this exercise twice a week. It will make your swing repeatable without your having to think about more than any drill I know of.
[August 2019. I don’t follow this advice anymore. Neither should you. To avoid flipping, see The Hands Lead the Clubhead- IV.]
Ben Hogan, in his book, Five Lessons, talked about supinating the left hand at impact. This is seen when the left wrist is bowed out, and not arched inward.
A supinated left wrist keeps the club accelerating, keeps the clubface traveling directly at the ball, and ensures a clean hit. All the good things that can happen at impact are encouraged.
The trouble is, this is fairly difficult for amateurs to learn how to do. What is simpler is to concentrate on a feeling that gets the job done without you being concerned with pronating or supinating.
It’s all in how you take your grip.
The base of your left thumb fits into a pocket formed by the pads at the bottom of the right hand when that hand folds over the left. The trick is to press your hands together at this spot, very lightly, but by enough to keep them from separating during the swing.
This is done by taking your grip and then and turning your hands about just a bit toward each other. If you do, you will feel increased pressure of the base of the left thumb against the pocket of your right hand.
Don’t push your hands together too hard. There should be no tension radiating into your forearms. Sitting firmly next to each other might be a better image for what your hands are doing than pressing together.
When you don’t have solid contact here, your hands can separate and start acting independently. This has the immediate effect of turning the club, which moves the clubhead out of square.
It also encourages you to hit with your right hand, which leads directly to flipping the club through impact, a well-known cardinal sin of the golf swing.
Now you can still flip, but you have to do it with both hands at the same time, and that’s pretty tough to do. If, however, your hands are leading the clubhead through impact, like I tell you gals and guys over and over and over, you can’t flip. You just can’t do it.
So try this out. At first you will likely push your hands together too much, and you will feel all locked up when you swing. Ease off until you find the pressure at which your hands stay firmly together, yet you are still able to swing the club freely.
There is an ancient exercise that teaches this same point. Get a long blade of grass and put it between your left thumb and the right hand pocket. You should be able to swing the club without the grass falling out.
Be aware that this post is not about grip pressure. That refers to how firmly your fingers hold the handle when you wrap them around it, and that’s another post.
When the ball is 6-10 feet off the green and on a good lie, the chip is pretty easy. If the ball is at that distance but in rough, it’s still an easy shot, but you have to know what you’re doing.
The first thing is to find out how much grass is beneath the ball. Stick your forefinger into the grass near the ball, being careful not to disturb it.
By touching the tip of your finger on the ground, you should be able estimate how far the bottom of the ball is off the ground; that is, by how much the ball is suspended in the grass. There are three possibilities.
1. The ball is resting on top of the grass. This happens if the grass is thick or has strong blades. For this shot, use your 8-iron and hit the ball with your putting stroke. This makes sure you lift the ball off the grass and get it running when it hits the green.
2. The ball is suspended in the middle of the grass. Here, use a sand wedge of 55 or 56 degrees. Hit the shot with your standard chipping stroke. Make sure you follow through. The thickness of the grass will grab the club, so your follow-through will be short, but don’t let the grass win a complete victory. The finger test tells you how deeply into the grass you must swing the club.
3. The ball is all the way down on the ground. Take out your 60-degree wedge. Play the ball back a bit in your stance. The object here is use a steep, wristy swing and thump the ground underneath the ball with the sole of the club. Forget about hitting the ball. Just thump the ground in that spot and the ball will pop out. There’s a lot of wrist action in this stroke, not much arm action. The grass will limit the follow-through.
Practice these shots before you try them on the course.
The November 2015 Golf Digest has a cover article by Tony Finau with the same title as this post. The article reveals his opinion that the fastest way to get better is to get good with your driver and your putter.
Good advice. Even Byron Nelson once said, “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”
The driver part won’t do you any good, though if you can’t hit the green with your 7-iron. If you can’t hit the green with your 7-iron, you won’t hit many fairways with your driver. Might as well leave it home.
Change your swing so you can hit the green with your seven-iron, say, eight out of ten times. Then you can haul out a driver.
As for putting, the ones to practice are the 30-footers and the 3-footers.
Learn to get the ball close to the hole from a distance. Not doing that is the major cause of three-putt greens.
Then learn to get the ball in the hole from close in. Missing the short putts is the other cause.
Those two things sound obvious, but surprisingly they’re not.
The way to get better at golf is to be real good on the basics. The 7-iron and putting are the basics. Go get ’em.
