chipping

Three Wedge Shots That Will Save You Strokes

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In golf, a swing is a swing, but once you get a wedge in your hands, that’s where artistry comes in. When you know what you’re doing with that wedge, you will get the ball closer to the the hole than your partners thought you could, and you will never be out of the match. Here are three shots that I think you will use at least once per round, and they turn three shots into two, just like the pros say to do.

1. Say your ball is on an upslope of some kind. You have to hit over the crest of the slope with spin on the ball so it will bite when it lands and not roll all the way across the green.

Right now, you probably hit this shot with the club sweeping along the ground, which in this case is in an upward direction. That is not what to do. The slope adds loft to your club. Your 54-degree wedge is effectively a 75-degree wedge, and the ball goes almost straight up in the air. You’re lucky if it even reaches the green.

Instead, pick the wedge you want to use without regard to the degree of the slope, but to the distance the ball has to travel horizontally to get to the hole. Now, instead of sweeping the club upward along the slope, bring the club underneath the ball and gently thud it straight into the slope. There will be only a small follow-through. The ball will pop up and forward, and run softly to the hole.

This is the shot that Fred Couples hit on the 12th hole on Sunday at Augusta when he won the Masters in 1992.

2. If the ball lies instead on a downslope, the fear is that you won’t get the leading edge of the club underneath the ball, and blade it across the green. That’s an honest fear, and the next shot is to make sure that never happens.

Take a wedge that is more lofted than you would normally use for the distance the ball has to travel. Put the ball back in your stance, so far back that it is outside your trailing foot. Keep your hands centered in front of you. You hit the ball by raising the clubhead up and chopping gently down on the back of the ball, driving the wedge into the ground. The ball will pop forward with lots of spin.

Practice this shot to learn how far it flies and how much it runs. Your friends have never seen this shot before, and they will be amazed at what comes out of your funny setup.

3. The third shot is for when you’re seriously short-sided and you can’t run the ball along the ground–it has to get in the air, stop in a hurry, and you have about twenty feet to work with. This is a mini-flop, which I saw Paul Azinger explain many years ago.

Use a sand wedge, setting up with the ball in the center of your stance and the club straight up and down, that is, not leaning toward the hole. Take the club back low and bring it through the ball low. What you are trying to do is slide the club underneath the ball without disturbing it.

You can’t do that, of course, but you will get a very soft hit that makes the ball run up the face of the club and leave with lots of spin and little forward momentum. It will hit and stop. Swing slowly. Think of sliding the club along the ground at impact, not hitting something with it. A cushion of grass underneath the ball is desirable.

A big part of being a short game master is never having a problem you can’t solve. Here are three common problems, solved. Now go get those up and downs amaze your friends.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

supporting your golf

How Solid is Your Handicap?

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[September 2018: My advice in the second half of this post about playing a variety of courses stands. The first part, about getting a USGA handicap, does not. To heck with a handicap. Just go play and have fun. Your golf belongs to you, not the USGA.]

I hope you have a handicap, an official USGA handicap. If golf for you is just knocking the ball around every so often, then, maybe it isn’t that important. But if you are a steady player, you should have one. It brings you into the company of golfers by allowing you to enter competitions. It will show you how much you are improving, you can tell how well you play on courses of varying difficulty, and if you travel abroad, many courses won’t let you on unless you can show them a USGA handicap card.

To have an accurate handicap, you should turn in every score, the good ones, and the bad ones. And you keep an honest score, counting the penalty strokes and playing by the rules. If you do, you can say your handicap truly reflects the condition of your game. But does it?

There is one other consideration — does your handicap travel? This is the important part. It’s one thing to be a 12 at your home course, which you have learned inside and out. It’s another to be a 12 no matter where you play.

A few years ago, a golfer shot a 62 at one of our local courses. He had a 2 handicap and had a day where everything went right. I looked him up on the GHIN Handicap Lookup page, which you can do if you have a name and a state, and found that all of his rounds were played on the same course.

Now you can’t argue with a 2. That’s pretty good golf no matter where you earn it. But I wonder how that 2 would stand up if he took his game to some of the other courses in the area that are, quite frankly, harder than the one he’s playing on? I wondered if he shot higher rounds on some of those courses and just didn’t turn them in. Who knows?

How well your handicap travels is the factor that makes your handicap legitimate. This isn’t about honesty. It’s about how good are you, really?

If you play a rotation of courses, you now that certain courses demand shots that are different from other courses. One course I play is a first-shot course. Get your ball in the fairway, and you’re home free. Of course, that isn’t easy to do, and a price for missing is paid. Another course has high rough around the greens that demands chips I never hit anywhere else, and so on.

I would suggest, as a general rule, that you the twenty scores in your handicap mix should at any time be made on at least four different courses, and the ten scores that determine your handicap should come from at least three.

That would give you the assurance that when you go to a new course, you won’t get a big surprise by finding out there are big holes in your game. This will also give you the joy of rounding out your game, and knowing that wherever you go, there isn’t a challenge you can’t handle.

If you don’t have a handicap, join a club to get one. The USGA’s definition of a club is quite permissive. It doesn’t necessarily mean an expensive membership in a private or semiprivate club. Your local muni should have a mens’ club or women’s club you can join for maybe $40 per year, and you’re all set.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

people

Seve Ballesteros (1957-2011)

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After a long bout with the effects of a cancerous brain tumor, Seve Ballesteros died in Spain today at the age of 54.

He won five major championships, two Masters and three British Opens, is the career European Tour wins leader with 50, and won six times on the PGA Tour. He was also a force in Ryder Cup competitions, bringing the European to team to parity and then superiority over the American team in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

European players today give him credit for elevating the status of the European Tour in the same way Arnold Palmer did for the PGA tour in the early 1960s.

Ballesteros was best know for being a fierce competitor, and for having an imagination and scrambling skills that left him never out of a hole no matter where he was playing from. Stories of recoveries from impossible positions are legion.

He had dashing good looks and was the definition of golfing charisma. In my experience, no golfer since Palmer has been as magnetic while in the hunt as Ballesteros, and that includes TW. If he was leading or challenging the lead, you had to watch.

While someone is alive, we can still say that we live in their era, even though their productive years have passed. The Ballesteros era is now over. He was one of a handful of players in history who truly changed course of professional golf. Those of us who saw him leave his mark are richer for it.

NY Times obituary

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

practice

Executive course as golf’s proving ground

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I think the main reason I continue to play golf is that it is, for me, a giant puzzle to solve. There has to be a way to build a swing that hits the ball straight every time. All I have to do is experiment with this or that, and I’ve got it. I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy any more, but I do believe in this.

My current fix involves strengthening my grip a bit, and a new (for me) way of getting my weight to my left side while staying behind the ball.* Now I’ve hit lots of practice balls in my back yard and these two, I like to call them “adjustments,” are working well. But I don’t want to go out and play until I’m sure they’re going to work.

Enter the executive course. There’s one near my house that is just over 1,000 yards long. I hit these clubs off the tee: wedge, wedge, 5-iron, 9-iron, 6-iron, wedge, 2-hybrid, wedge, driver. That’s five full swings, enough to see if what I’m trying out really works.

Now while this course is not a driving range, I try to play when it isn’t busy so I can hit a few balls off each tee if I need to. There’s something about hitting a ball to a live green that you just can’t duplicate at a driving range. Especially when on two of the holes the out-of-bounds fence is only five yards off the left side of a small green.

So if I can hit the ball well here, I know I can take it to the big course. Actually, hitting the ball well isn’t as important as finding out that the adjustments won’t lead to disaster. I’ve had a few of those outings on the executive course, and I’m glad I went there first.

I’m going out this morning to give these two new things a try. Every time I do this, I go out thinking, “This time, I’ve got it!” And sometimes I do. I’ll let you know. In the meantime,

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

*Swing in super-slow motion. In the early stages of your downswing, shift your weight to the left while you keep your head right where it is. It’s hard to figure out how to do this when you swing at a normal speed, but when the swing is slowed down enough, you can easily see how to do it.

brilliant ideas

How To Fix the World Golf Rankings

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Since there isn’t much of interest happening in the golf world right now, much discussion in the media is turning to which undeserving player most/least (they can’t decide which tack to take) deserves to be #1 in the World Golf Rankings. (Actually, the fuss is over why TW is #7 or so, when in the last year he has been playing like #25, but no one wants to come out and say that).

And while we’re at it, why don’t we criticize the formula itself, which we’ve never paid attention to until now? The formula puts Lee Westwood at #1, but he hasn’t won a major championship. So what? He plays consistently well more than anyone else in the world. You can make a case that player is deserving of being #1. Not a great case, but a case.

The Rankings formula is too complicated. Again, so what? It’s a complicated matter to compare over a thousand golfers playing on six different tours, most of whom have never had head-to-head competition with more than a few hundred. That’s a complicated feat to pull off.

But the real problem is that a two-year period is too long to carry over performance. Now we’re on to something — the Tiger thing actually. They way he played in 2009 is nowhere near how he’s playing today, or did in 2010. That’s the formula’s biggest flaw, and the one easiest to fix.

Golf’s ubiquitous ranking system is the handicap. The USGA has one, the R&A has one, I think. While the handicaps are rating systems, they can easily be turned into ranking systems.

Base the Rankings on performance in the same vein as my handicap and your handicap is based — on the 10 best of the last 20 tournaments (instead of rounds), with a thirteen-month limit. Not enough tournaments, you’re off the Rankings list.

What everybody wants to know is, who is the best golfer in the world right now? What someone did two years ago, even though those results are down-weighted currently, is no indication of current performance. The USGA recognizes this, which is why they keep dropping off rounds as I add new ones on. They want to keep my rating (handicap) current. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for the pros.

Now I can’t tell you what the Rankings would be using this plan. That requires more data than I have at my command, and more time than I would want to devote to the analysis if I had it. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

This different way of ranking players would have immediate validity because it would be understood by the layman, and it is aligned with how he or she is rated. While there are many ways to rank things, the method that has the greatest acceptance among the consumers of the rankings is always preferred.

You might point to the major flaw in the USGA handicapping system, which is that their formula rewards a hot-and-cold player more than it does a consistent player. This would not be a flaw for the pros, though. Who do you think should be ranked higher — a guy who gets a lot of top tens, or the player who might not be as steady, but who wins a few tournaments every year? The winner, of course. That’s the point of competition anyway, isn’t it?

We’re going through a period right now where there is no dominant golfer, and the Rankings rely too much on ancient history. We can’t scratch the first itch, but we can the second. The powers that be read this blog religiously, and I know they will see the sense of what I suggest. Until they do,

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

equipment

Wedges vs. Long Irons

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The composition of your bag plays a heavy role in the score you shoot. You know your game and the shots you hit to get the ball around the course. The clubs you put in your bag are the ones you hit those shots with. Clubs that are meant for shots you don’t hit, get left out.

When I started playing (c. 1960), this was the standard set:

Woods: 1,3,4
Irons: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Wedges: P, S
Putter

Look in anyone’s bag and that’s what you’d find. Woods were sold as a set, and the set was 1,2,3,4. Smart players would swap out their 2-wood for a sand wedge. That was about the only decision you had to make.

Times have changed. Higher-numbered fairway woods are no longer just for the ladies. Raymond Floyd won the Masters in 1976 by trading his 2-iron for a 5-wood so he could float the ball onto the green on the par 5s. Everybody noticed. Tom Kite started playing with three wedges instead of two and became the tour’s leading money winner. Everybody noticed that, too. And then came hybrid irons.

So let’s refine the club selection rule. To score, you have to get the ball up to the green as quickly as you can. From there you have to get the ball into the hole as quickly as you can. The clubs you put in your bag are the ones that let you perform both tasks the best and the easiest.

From the tees I play (6,400 yards or less) I can reach all the par 4s in two, but none of the par 5s. There’s no need for me to load up on the long end. Once I get up to the green, I want to get down in two strokes more often than not. That might just mean two putts, but more often it means a chip and a putt. I want to find a way to make those chips and putts as easy to get as I can, because I set up more pars from greenside than from 160 yards.

So, I apply the Iron Rule to the short game: vary your distances by using one swing and differently-lofted clubs. This is how we play from the fairway. Around the green we can use one swing and differently-lofted wedges to get the ball close from varying distances. You get more predictable results from one swing with different clubs than from different swings with one club.

This, now, is my playing set:

Woods: Driver
Hybrids: 2,3,4,5
Irons: 6,7,8,9
Wedges: P,G,S,L (4-degree gaps)
Putter

Now I can still hit a 5-iron, but it’s an effort, and the 4-iron, too, but it’s a real effort. So out they went and in came the hybrids. No fairway wood. Haven’t missed it in three years.

Yes, there is a sense of loss when you know you’ll never see that solidly hit 5-iron arcing through the sky toward the flag again. But when you hit the same shot more easily and more often with a hybrid iron, you get over it in a hurry.

Four wedges? You would not believe how close I can get the ball to the hole by having the right club in my hand, and I don’t spend days at the range practicing.

I’m not finished, though. I’m looking at a 64-degree wedge, because sometimes I have to ease up with my lob wedge. That would mean taking out a hybrid. All I would do is look at the length of the longest par-3 holes on the course I would be playing that day and leave out the 2 or 3 that I wouldn’t need.

Never forget that golf is about getting the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t make that as easy as possible, too.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

potpourri

Assorted Thoughts

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I played in our men’s club tournament this weekend, and played pretty well — shot my handicap, which, considering that is in the top 5 of my last 20 scores, is a good day on the course. The two things that worked were driving and putting. I put the ball in the fairway, and didn’t miss any putts.

Do those two things well, my friend, and you will score.
—
People say you only learn from your mistakes. Nonsense. The only thing I ever learned from a mistake is not to do that again. Didn’t learn a thing about what to do.

So when I make a mistake on the golf course, I come home and start the search for a better way. When I do something right on the course, I come home and practice it over and over so I won’t forget.
—
I am now thinking that all golf instruction boils down to a few simple guidelines. Here they are, courtesy of The Recreational Golfer:

1. Full swing, ball on the tee: think square face, center hit. That’s one thing, not two.
2. Full swing, ball on the ground: think ball first, ground second. Again, that’s one thing, not two.
3. Short game: (a) start with your weight on the left side and do not let one ounce of it shift right, (b) never let your right hand pass the left.
4. Putting: hit the ball on the sweet spot.
5. Course management: hit a shot, within your capabilities, to the spot from where you have the easiest setup for getting the ball into the hole in the fewest amount of strokes.

If you follow those rules you will revolutionize your shot-making and scoring.
—
Rant.
Ridiculous penalty: stroke and distance for a ball out of bounds or lost. Should be distance only.
Ridiculous rule: players must sign for their score for it to be official. A player’s score should be officially recorded on the spot by a scorer assigned to the group, and that would be that.
End of rant.
—
The more hybrid irons you have in your bag, the easier golf is. Leave your ego at home.
—
My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

commentary

Is There More to Professional Golf Than the Majors?/Mason Rudolph

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Is it just my imagination, or has the steam run out of professional golf? By that, I mean has the Tour stopped being a tour and become instead a series of exhibitions held between major tournaments?

Long ago, when the tournament players came to your town, everybody was there. They had to be. Prize money was pretty low, so you had to play to make a living. Remember those golf shows, like All-Star Golf, Challenge Golf, and Big Three Golf? The prize money for winning one of those shows was $3,000 and the loser got $1,000. When you consider that winning a tournament in those days (early 1960s) was worth from $3-5,000, those shows were a big deal. All the big names played in them. All the big names came to your town, too.

The tour meant something because each tour stop meant something to the players. Now, I ‘m not so sure. Jack Nicklaus won all those majors, and that was his personal quest, but since he was in a class by himself, no one thought how many majors you won should define anyone except him. How could it?  Who else could try to win that many? So the week-in, week-out tour was still a Big Deal.

Then Tiger Woods came along and took up the challenge. The press responded in spades. Features stories were about Tiger winning the last major, or whether he might win the next major. The “Best Player Without a Major” became a serious topic of discussion, rather than just an idea some bored golf writer had one day.

Now, it seems we just mark time until the next major. Play from January to March is all about who is going to qualify for the Masters. Then it’s the lead-in to the U.S. Open. Yes, The Players is in that gap, but it’s just a glorified tour stop. Then the British in July, and the season is over, because even though there’s the PGA in August, it doesn’t get much respect.

Tour Championship? FedEx Cup? Are they still playing? I thought it was football season!

The tour used to excite me. Now, my golf season revolves around the U.S. Open and The British Open.

What about the women? The LPGA is professional golf, too. I don’t want to leave them out of this discussion, but was there ever any steam in that tour?
—
Let us note the passing of Mason Rudolph April 18. He was, for me, one of the quintessential tour players in the 50s and 60s. Never a major winner (there’s that again), he nonetheless played in 430 PGA events and made the cut 409 times (95%), winning five times. His secret to consistent play? He always played for the fat part of the green. Earning sure money was more important to him than winning tournaments. Nothing wrong with that strategy. He was 76.
—

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

books

Groove Your Golf Swing My Way by Lee Trevino

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A few weeks ago I was trying an experiment that I would let you know about a little bit later, if it worked out. This just in. It didn’t work out, but I want to tell you about it anyway.

I got into a spell where I couldn’t hit my driver very well. My irons were OK, but that driver just didn’t want to behave.

I was browsing around a few golf forums I keep up on, and saw a thread about the Lee Trevino golf swing. What I read was quite intriguing. It’s extracted here  if you want to check it out for yourself.

I’ll try anything once (in golf), so I tried this swing, and then bought Trevino’s book, Groove Your Golf Swing My Way to get a fuller explanation.

His swing is unique, and breaks down like this.

1. Set up 30 to 40 degrees open.
2. Take a strong grip.
3. Bring the club back along the target line, not the stance line.
4. At the top of your backswing, you are lined up to the target line.
5. Start your downswing by sliding your left hip toward the target. Do not turn yet.
6. Drop the club into a slot that heads straight along the flight line.
7. Hold off the release until well after impact. Now you can turn.

Intriguing. I practiced it for a few weeks, and started hitting the ball straight, straighter, and very straight. Wow. I played nine holes with it and hit the ball straight as could be almost every time. My hook disappeared.

I thought that it might be worth switching to this swing entirely, but there was one thing about it that changed my mind. It’s pretty hard on your back.

I never ended a practice session without feeling my lower back had had a workout. That’s not a good sign. Not to mention, hasn’t Trevino had about three back operations? That’s not a good sign, either.

I did get my driver going again, because of the two little adjustments I described to you the Two Swing Things post. But I had fun with this little detour. If there is a time when I just have to hit the ball straight, I have this swing in reserve to get the job done.

Lesson: don’t be afraid to try something new. Maybe you’ll discard it just about as fast as you pick it up, but the search for a better way is a lot of the fun of golf, and you can always get something of value out of the effort.

practice

Driving and Putting

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A few years ago, The Golf Channel spent the winter broadcasting the old TV golf shows. You have to have a few rounds under your belt to remember Challenge Golf, Big Three Golf, All-Star Golf, and the Wonderful World of Golf (the original show). I recorded quite a few of them.

When I was growing up, I watched these shows all the time. All the biggest stars were on them, and why not? Prize money was $3,000 to the winner and $1,000 to the loser. This was in an era when a tournament win was worth about $5,000. All-Star Golf was a pretty nice day’s work, win or lose.

One of the shows had Byron Nelson on it. He had long before stopped competing, but he still played a mean game of golf and had to be taken seriously when he teed it up.

He made a comment during the match. He said, “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”

That stuck.

Because he’s right.

Get the ball in the fairway, and you’re on offense. Get the ball in the hole, and you score. It’s that simple.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working only on putting and driving. Not that the other shots aren’t important, but if you can’t hit these two, the other shots shots don’t matter.

As far as driving goes, I’ve just been working with the two adjustments I talked about in my earlier post, Two Swing Things. With putting, I put a little looseness in my wrists, so the stroke isn’t so rigid and mechanical. Also, since a putt is a delicate stroke, and when we do delicate things we use our thumb and forefinger, I spend a few moments looking the putt and getting the feeling of how to hit the ball into the hole, into the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. Works great.

It’s April. Golf season has begun in earnest. If you want to play better this season, start looking for some little things. If they’re the right ones, they make a big difference. And while you’re at it,

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

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