playing the game

Play Different Golf Courses

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Do you play one golf course all the time? Try going to different courses. You’ll get more fun out of golf, and you’ll become a better player.

Here’s what happens when you play the same course over and over. You get into something of a rut. You don’t have to think too much, because you know just what strokes to play on a particular hole to get your 4. The only challenge is to see if you can do it.

Even though you play a good course, it does not require all the shots you need to be a complete golfer. You never get the chance to learn something new.

And when you do go to a new course, you probably have to hit shots and use clubs you have little experience with, and you often hit the wrong shot because you haven’t learned how to read a hole.

A subtle danger is that you might be under-handicapped by playing only one course. Since you know it so well, you play it so well. A few years ago, a local amateur shot a 62 on his home course. I looked up his scores in the GHIN website and found that all twenty of his handicap scores were on the that same course. I wonder how well his handicap of 3 would travel.

I play on five different courses, each one of which demands different shotmaking from the fairway and around the greens. Playing well on one makes me a better player on the others, to boot.

I throw in a new course every so often, to keep my course-reading muscles flexed, and thus I feel I can go anywhere and play a creditable round of golf right off.

The golfer who has learned to adapt his or her skills to any course and still play his average game is getting the most out of this great sport. I would hope that’s the kind of golfer you want to be.

golf swing

Swing the Golf Club With Your Hands

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Let me tell you the easiest way to hit the ball straight and hard. Swing the club with your hands. Not your body, not your arms. Your hands.

This was once the way people played golf. Now you’re supposed to swing with your large muscles in order to have a consistent swing. But think for a moment.

When you pound a nail into a board, what do you swing the hammer with? Your hand! When you swing a tennis racket, you swing it with…your hand!

Get this: a few days ago I asked to the manager of our local minor league team how he teaches his players to hit the ball. He said, you’re hitting with your hands, just like driving a nail with a hammer.

It’s the same with a golf club.

Humans have evolved hands that are wired to do complicated and precise activities. Use them! That’s what they’re for! Getting the clubhead back to the ball headed toward the target and with the clubface square to the path, all at many MPH, is a task requiring the utmost precision.

Tasks of utmost precision are what your hands are designed to accomplish.

This is how to do it. Take the club away from the ball with both hands. That means your mind is on the movement of your hands, and no other part of your body. When you swing down into the ball, your mind is on your hands delivering the club precisely to the ball. More to the point, the left hand guides and the right hand delivers, both at the same time.

Really, that’s all you have to do. Swing with your hands and your body will follow.

A few caveats. This does not mean rear back and slug the ball. Far from it. You still use the golf swing you have now, but with your mind on what is really doing the work. You still need to have good pre-swing fundamentals (grip, stance, posture, alignment, ball position, aim). You still need good rhythm and tempo.

Also, you don’t hit at the ball. You swing through the ball, with your hands leading the clubhead into the ball. And you swing with both hands, not just your right.

They say your hands should be passive. Nice thought, but they never are. That’s because they want something to do. And if you aren’t paying attention, they’ll do something wrong. Best to give them something to do that is the right thing.

Let them take over the swing. That’s what human hands are meant to do. Since I started doing this, I hit one straight shot after another. I’ve taken four strokes off a round (no kidding!), all because I’m swinging the club with the part of my body that was designed for this job.

Why not give it a try yourself?

tournaments

2014 U.S. Open Preview

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Winner: Martin Kaymer by eight strokes over Eric Compton and Rickie Fowler

The greatest tournament in golf is upon us this week. One hundred fifty-six qualifiers will tee it up at Pinehurst No. 2 in Pinehurst, North Carolina. As usual, the U.S. Open is all about the course. This year, the course is very different from any one in recent memory, if ever. Why? There will be no rough. None of the famous U.S. Open rough, or rough of any kind, will be anywhere in sight.

cosl08-pinehurst

Golf course architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw restored the course in 2010 to the original Donald Ross design. They took out what rough there was and put back the original sandy waste areas bordering generous fairways. Wire grass that grows here and there will add to the difficulties presented by unpredictable lies.

Note to Dustin Johnson: read the rules sheet!

In addition, each hole is lined with trees that serve to isolate it from the rest of the course. The feeling is that where you are in all there is, isolated from the the rest of golf, maybe even the rest of the world. However. Errant tee shots running through the waste areas will end surrounded by trees, which will cause serious problems getting out with much more than a sideways chip.

The strength of the course is its greens, which have landing areas that could fit in a thimble. Shots mishit slightly will roll off the green to collection areas difficult to chip from. Subtle breaks in the greens mean getting down in two putts won’t be a walk in the park. These are Pinehurst’s real defenses.

Now click the picture above, of the 8th hole, to enlarge it. Imagine how much easier a shot from rough would be than from the sand and scrub leading up to the green on the right side. Imagine what’s going to happen to your ball if your approach misses the green even a little bit on the left. Even missing the green to the right will cause the ball to roll away. The entire course is like this.

One change that was made for this tournament is switching par on the fourth and fifth holes. The fourth, a short par five, is a long par 4 for the Open. The fifth, a long par four, the green of which is not receptive to a long second shot, has been lengthened to a 576-yard par 5. These two holes are the only ones that can be called hilly, with a blind drive into the fairway on the fifth. The rest of the course is reasonably flat.

The only water on the course is a pond on the 16th hole that is so close to the tee that it presents no difficulty.

There are no great holes at Pinehurst, just an unending string of very good ones that add up to a great golf course.

Who will win? Phil Mickelson! The winner will need to be able to get up and down A LOT, and whose short game is better? If Phil can play to reasonable form from the tee and fairway, that might be all he needs to win the one he has just missed so often, and complete a career major slam.

The USGA always has fun with the groupings in the first two rounds. Here are a few of the notable ones:

Mickelson, Rose, Fitzpatrick – the traditional pairing of the reigning British Open, U.S. Open, and U.S. Amateur champions

Watson, Scott, Scharwtzel – recent Masters champions

McIlroy, Simpson, McDowell – recent U.S. Open champions

Els, Clarke, Oosthuizen – recent British Open champions

Dufner, Bradley, Kaymer – recent PGA champions

Goosen, Ogilvy, Glover – former Open champions who haven’t won much since

Stenson, Kuchar, Westwood – the best players never to have won a major

De Jonge, Stadler, Lowry – really fat guys

Donald, Casey, English – the first two are English, while the third isn’t, but . . .

Spieth, Matsuyama, Fowler – really good young guys

Holmes, Woodland, De Laet – this year’s Bombs Away group

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Four Steps Toward Hitting the Golf Ball Straight

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The key to playing good recreational golf is to hit the ball straight. Distance is fine, but hole in, hole out, straight is the goal. Hit into the fairway, and onto the green, and you can shoot lots of good scores.

Hitting straight is not easy. It takes dedicated practice to become a straight hitter. I want to give you four points to work on that will take you a long way in that direction. If you put these points into your swing, I guarantee good things will happen.

playing the game

The Most Important Golf Shots

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The most important golf shots for a recreational golfer are, in order:

1. Iron to the green from under 150 yards
2. Greenside chips
3. Tee shot
4. 3- to 4-foot putts
5. Pitching from 60-90 yards

If you’re good at these shots, you’ll score pretty well.

Comments:
1. Being able to hit the green reliably from inside this distance is the origin of good scoring. More than any other, this shot determines what your score will be. You will shoot much lower scores if the shot after this one is a putt rather than a chip.

2. You should be able to get up and down at least half the time when your ball is only one or two yards off the green. This skill is probably number two in importance as a back-up to your irons, since no one hits the green every time, even from close in.

3. Driver eventually, but use your fairway wood if the driver is too hard to control. You must get the ball in the fairway to have a chance to get a good score. If not, you’re playing damage control for the duration of the hole.

4. Approach putts are important, too, because leaving them short is the primary cause of three-putt greens. But these little putts are a chance to close out the hole. Missing two or three of these per rounds hurts your score needlessly.

5. This is a mini-version of the iron into the green, but with something added: you must be able to pitch accurately to a known distance. On the green is good, but you can do better than that. If you’re 78 yards from the pin, for example, you should know how to get the ball within five yards of it.

When I go to the range, I take my driver, 6-iron, sand wedge, and putter. Sometimes I’ll substitute and 8-iron and a gap wedge. But with just four clubs, I can practice all these five shots.

swing changes

Why Golf Swing Changes Stop Working

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Has this happened to you? You made a swing change, it worked great for a few rounds, and then it stopped. Not only did it stop, all of a sudden you had a new problem you never had before and now you don’t know WHAT to do. I’ll tell you what went wrong.

Whenever you make a swing change, the thing you’re doing differently feels, well, different. It feels new. You work on the new technique to get it right, and since you can’t SEE what you’re doing, you rely on the FEEL of the new move to recreate it. So far, so good.

But after you get the new move down pretty well, it starts to feel natural and not like it did when it was new. Here’s where the trouble comes. You keep trying to make it feel the same way it did when you first tried it. The only way you can do that is to do the same thing, but too much of it. You go too far. You over-correct. By chasing the feeling, which is now obsolete, you create a swing problem you never had.

So here’s what to do. Get a full-length mirror. When you learn your new move, learn it by looking at it in the mirror. That way you can see what you’re trying to do. It will have a new feeling, but DISREGARD the feeling. Trust only what you see.

Work on that new move daily, just for a few minutes, in front of the mirror, until you find that you do the new move right the first time you try it. I would not be surprised if at the time it takes for that to happen, the feeling you had when the move was new will be gone.

There will, unfortunately, be a period when you are adrift between the old way and the new way. Best not to play golf during that period, unless you don’t care what your score is. This is all the more reason to work on this new move every day, to hasten its assimilation.

That’s the key, though. Even though golf is a feel game, learn to rely on what feels right, not what feels new.

playing the game

Two Basic Golf Shots

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Distance in golf is cool. Distance is fun. But at the recreational level, where we get to play from whichever set of tees we want to, accuracy is King. To show you why, consider the ability to hit just two particular shots, over and over.

They are the tee shot into the fairway, and the 5-iron from the fairway. If you can hit these shots straight, you can hit the green in regulation on five out of six par-4 holes on your golf course. That also means you can hit the green on every par five in regulation. That means you can hit the green on at least two of four par 3s.

Guess what you would score if you did that?

The tee shot into the fairway needs to be hit with the longest club that you can put into the fairway three times out of four. Even the professionals don’t do better than that. But if you can do that too, you’re playing the hole on offense instead of playing catch-up.

The second shot, the 5-iron from the fairway, is more demanding. That will take a bit of practice. Start with your 9-iron and gradually work up.

All this is predicated on playing from the set of tees that are appropriate for the length you have. Multiply your average drive, in yards, by 25. That’s the length of course you should be playing.

I know, hitting the ball straight is probably the biggest problem a recreational golfer has to solve. Easier said than done. One way to do it is to dial back and stop trying to hit the ball a long way. Play well within yourself. It doesn’t matter how far you hit your 5-iron, for example. It does matter that you hit it straight.

If there are other problems in your swing that cause the ball to veer left or right, get them fixed with lessons and practice.

Golf does not ask that much of you. The game is not really that difficult. Build it around making clean, accurate contact with the ball, rather than powerful contact. Make a mantra of, “Easy swing, straight is good.” With that attitude, and these two basic shots, you can play very good golf.

short game

One Wedge, Two Distances

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I see recreational golfers use up strokes unnecessarily in several ways, but the big one is from 50-100 yards. Few I play with can put the ball on the green consistently from that range. What I’m going to talk about today is really simple. Anyone can do it. It’s solving this problem by acquiring pre-defined wedge shots that go to known distances.

Take out your pitching wedge, and practice making two swings of defined length. The first swing is taking the club back to where your hands are level with your hips. The second swing is taking the club back to where your left arm is parallel to the ground.

Check yourself in a mirror as you’re learning what these swings feel like. Often, where it feels your hands and arms are, and where they really are, are different.

Now you have two swings. At the range, hit pitches with the shorter swing to flags that are close in, such as the 75-yard flag and 100-yard flag. You might not land the ball exactly on those spots, but you should be able to estimate the distance the ball is carrying. Repeat with the longer swing. When you’re finished, you will know how to hit the ball to each of two specific distances.

I hope you have more than one wedge. Your pitching wedge comes with the set of irons, and you should have a sand wedge, in the 54-56 degree range. If so, repeat the exercise with this wedge. Now you have four distances. And if you have a third or a fourth wedge, calibrate those, too.

Now you have four to eight distances, using two swings that are easy to repeat. There will be distance gaps, but you can fill those in easily when you play. The best way to do that is to use a club/swing combination that is short of the distance you face, and hit the ball a little bit harder. Easing off instead can turn into quitting on the shot.

It might also be the case that two club/swing combinations give you distances that are very close to each other. That’s all right. The combination with the more-lofted club will stop quicker, and the shot with the less-lofted club will run out a bit after landing. It’s good to have both choices at your disposal.

mental game

Your Average Golf Shot

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No matter how much we practice, build our game, learn about it, know what we are capable of doing, and when to do what, there is no escaping the moment of truth — the time when you have to take the club away and hit the shot. Golf, no matter what your level of skill, is played in this moment. To make golf easy, you need to make this moment as easy on yourself as possible.

How do you do that? How do you make the beginning of a shot a movement full of confidence rather than infected with doubt? Quite simply, you play well within yourself, well within your capabilities. You play shots you know you can hit, which do not require your best, but only your average skills.

Reflect for a moment. I’m sure you’ve been through this before, many times. At the driving range, you hit one shot after another that is as fine as you can hit You begin to push ahead to expand your limitations, and often succeed. After all, that’s what the range is for — not only to maintain the skills you do have, but to take them to a new level.

But when it comes time to play, things change. You’re not out there to find out what you possibly could do, but what to apply what you know, really know, that you can do. That’s a very different way of hitting a golf ball. You get conservtive. You don’t go all out, you don’t play on the edge. Your game closes in to what you feel absolutely sure you can do.

That’s why, for example, while we’re learning an improvement on some technique, but have not yet mastered it, we abandon the improvement and go back to what we know, even though we are aware it is what we are trying to move away from. We go back to what we have confidence in being able to do it well, even if it is not what we actually want to do.

There is an average quality of shot that you hit, not your very best, not your worst, either, but one you know you can toss off whenever you want to. That is the shot you should play golf with. Asking more of yourself than that seldom pays off. Trying to hit shots that rate nine or ten is often what leads to hitting shots that rank one or two.

As you take the club away, don’t expect great things of yourself. Hit your average shot, one that gets you in the middle six. That will prevent the pressure to perform from becoming too great. It will lead to a more satisfying and relaxing round, and I might also say, a lower score.

commentary

Is Augusta National Obsolete?

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Augusta National is a Depression-era course built when 250 yards was a respectable professional distance off the tee. Steel shafts were just being introduced and golf ball technology was still rudimentary. For decades, Augusta was a test that matched the capabilities of the day’s best golfers.

augusta

Cracks started appearing when Jack Nicklaus arrived. He played 420-yard holes with a driver and a pitching wedge, not a driver and a 6-iron.

When Tiger Woods came along thirty years later, the course had to be “Tiger-proofed,” because his length overpowered the cozy design. Now, everyone hits the ball as far as he did fifteen years ago.

The latest insult was Bubba Watson, whose length two weeks ago mocked August’s most difficult holes. In ten years, there will be fistfuls of players who hit the ball just as long. What then?

The Augusta membership is proud of its course, unique in the world and one of the world’s most challenging. Yet, the membership is trapped by it, too. The Masters has always been played there; it was meant to be played there. The Masters and August National are one and the same. There is no other place where the Masters can be held.

The USGA is rotating its championship to newer courses able to keep up with today’s golfers, Merion East notwithstanding. That course was tricked up beyond belief in order to stand up.

The R&A is doing its best to keep its legendary courses in the Open rotation, but cracks are showing up in that strategy, too. The Old Course at St. Andrews is nearing the same fate as Augusta — too short, and running out of room to add length for the sake for length, not for the sake of strategy.

The table has been turned on these ancient courses. Instead of challenging golfers, they are now being challenged by the golfers. Professional golfers will soon be dominating them no matter what is done.

It could easily be the case that in fifteen years Augusta National will have no more slack to give. Its only defenses would be the pin locations on its forbidding greens. The tournament could be won the by the golfer who has the fewest three-putt greens over the four days of competition. A sad fate.

At this point in the essay, I am supposed to present my proposal for a way out of this jam. How to salvage a seemingly lost situation. In this case, that might not be possible. The hard fact is that Augusta National was designed to play at about 6,800 – 7,000 yards. It has been stretched beyond that about as far as it will go. When its current 7,400 yards is no longer enough, the course might have to be retired.

That happens to everyone and everything. We have our heyday, we have our glory. The time comes when we are overtaken, and we must take a seat on the sideline. The question is, will the Augusta membership be able to retire their course with dignity when the time comes, which it surely will?

[ Note: A few weeks after this essay was published I got vilified on a golf forum by people who thought I was advocating shooting stray dogs and knocking down old ladies crossing the street. How DARE I say something less than reverential about a golf course that is more holy than the Vatican? Wow. ]

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