A Few Odds an Ends

I was looking through a notebook I keep that contains notes from golf lessons I have taken. The last playing lesson I took emphasized the tee shot. My note says, "Tee shot is paramount to making par. Work on these." So work on your driver, but work on hitting it straight, not far. If you can hit your irons straight, but not your driver, get a lesson. You'll never figure it out yourself.

There are several other notes that pertain only to me, but another general note is, "Make your targets very precise from the tee and the fairway." Think not only of which direction you want the shot to go, but on what spot do you want the ball to land. And it's a spot, not an area.

You know the bottom of your swing needs to be ahead of the ball. How do you do that? I practice this indoors with a fairway wood. I set up and take note of the place where the leading edge of the sole is. Then I make a slow-motion swing and try to lightly tap the rug with the sole of the club ahead of that place when I swing through. Hint: if you're not getting your weight to the left in the forward swing, and early in the forward swing, you won't be able to get the club out there.

I've been playing around with a short stroke for short putts this past week. It started out as the old pop stroke, but I quickly found out that the rapid stroke and percussive hit the word "pop" suggests is the wrong way to go about it. I'm finding success with a rhythmic stroke that nudges the ball to the hole. That might be a better starting point for you if you want try this out. I should also mention my upper arms rest against my sides for security. The advantage of a short stroke (about six inches for a 10-foot putt) is that the clubface stays square throughout. I'm only using this stroke for short putts I think I can sink. For longer putts, I go back to my sweeping pendulum stroke and the TAP method.

I read a tip in a current golf magazine that I thought might help. So I went out and tried it. The results were terrible. What I realized very quickly is that I was already doing what the tip suggested. In trying to follow the tip I did more of it and that was too much. Beware of tips you read in golf magazines.

Your Golf Has to Travel

A few days ago I got a wake-up call. I was doing business at an end of town I don’t spend a lot of time in, but which has a driving range nearby. So I took along a putter and a ball to get a little practice in before I went back home.

I get all of my putting practice on the green at the range where I normally go to. If you saw me putt on this green, you would say that I'm a very good putter. I make putts from all over the place, and I go around the putting clock and never three-putt.

Well.

On this new green, I couldn’t do a thing right. I was three-putting from twenty-five feet about half the time, it was hit-and-miss with four-footers, and my distance control was just nowhere.

I realized that I putted so well on my usual green not because of things that I thought made me a good putter. They didn’t have anything to do with it.

I had merely unconsciously memorized the green. That’s it. So when I went to this new green, I didn’t have the skills to handle the differences in green speed and contour.

I play the same courses, and I putt very well on them, because I have memorized their greens. It all adds up to having become lazy.

An under-appreciated aspect of the way Tour pros play the game is that their golf travels. They play different courses every week, that require different shots, that provide different responses to the shot, and you know what? They don’t care! The adapt after a practice round or two and it’s off to the birdie-fest.

You improve and become a Golfer by having skills that hold up under any condition. Looks like I have some work to do. How about you?

A Few Little Things

No essay today -- just a few thoughts for you, in no particular order.

1. At the range, hit one ball at a time. Put your bucket in a place where you have to walk to it to get another ball. This will force you to set up all over again for each shot. This is how you practice your setup: grip, stance, posture, aim, ball position. Most of your bad shots are the result of a bad setup, not a bad swing.

2. Make your first read of a putt standing 50 feet from the hole. Only from that distance can you see the overall tilt of the green. Do you want to know why you missed that straight-in 3-footer? Because you couldn’t see from just a few feet behind the ball that the entire green was tilted to the left.

3. Have you figured out which club you want to hit from the fairway? Factored in lie, wind, green firmness? Good. Now take one more club and grip down an inch. Otherwise, you’re relying on a perfect strike.

4. Hit a few stock 9-irons. Your swing with a driver should take just as long, from start to finish, as those.

5. Unless you’re hitting a specialty shot, use the same ball position for all shots off the ground. Thus the ball will always be in the same place relative to the bottom of your swing.

6. You can’t generate clubhead speed by turning your hips at 100 mph. The calmer your center stays, the more speed will be built up at the outside -- the clubhead.

7. Never hit over water unless you have no choice. Bad things happen when you challenge a water hazard needlessly.

8. Make it your rule from close in to get the ball on the green in one shot. Even if you leave the ball 30 feet from the hole, you’ve done your job.

9. The conventional advice when playing a par 3 from an elevated tee is to take less club. Actually, you should take more club and punch the ball off the tee. This is a more secure swing, and keeps the ball down to get the ball on the green quicker.

10. At the range, practice as long as your mind is sharp. If you feel your mind is losing focus, that’s enough for the day. Give the rest of your bucket to another golfer and go home. You don’t learn anything when your mind is tired.

How to Break 100, 90, or 80

Breaking a milestone scores is a major event in a golfer’s life. It signals improvement and gives assurance that going lower still is a possibility.

There are books written on how to break each of these three scores, filled with technique. If you’re a few strokes away, you already have the technique. Think instead about how you plan your round. It makes a difference.

Breaking 100

If you got a double bogey on every hole you would shoot 108. So you can get a double bogey on just nine holes, a bogey on the rest, and there’s 99.

What is killing your score now is not a lack of pars and bogeys. It is the triples and quads. At your level your job is not to take fewer strokes on a hole, but to avoid taking extra ones.

Do that by shoring up your play at each end of the hole.

First, leave your driver at home. Leave your 3-wood at home, too. Tee off with a hybrid iron, one that gets the ball out there 175-180 yards but in the fairway.

Second, from 50 yards and in, just get your ball on the green in the same area as the pin. Do not get cute and try for the pin.

You’re not that good yet. Just get the ball on the green and take your two putts.

Nine bogeys + nine doubles = 99

Breaking 90

Now you have to start making pars. I would still leave the driver at home. Use the longest club with which you can reliably get the ball in the fairway from off the tee, to be on offense from the start.

You also have to get better around the green. Eliminate down-in-four from 50 yards in. You should be getting down in two from just off the green half as often as not.

Get your pars by parring one of the par 3s, one of the par 4s and two of the par fives.

You might say, if I get four pars that gives me an 86. Yes, but you’re still going to have some doubles and maybe a triple.

Your game is in the middle where you’re capable of making pars, but still capable of making big scores, too.

Four pars + eleven bogeys + three doubles = 89


Breaking 80


Now you have to play well all around. Seven over sounds pretty tough, but that’s more wiggle room than you think it is.

Your goal should be to have a putt for par on every hole. Sometimes that putt will 45 feet long, not two feet, but the ball is still on the green and your putt is for a par.

At your level, par is a reasonable expectation on all but a few holes on your course. For those few holes, go for bogey, but give yourself a chance for par. Don’t go all out for par and end up with a double.

Get your pars on two par 3s, five par 4s, and all the par 5s.

Eleven pars + seven bogeys = 79.

In reality, you have to throw in another par somewhere, because going 18 holes without a double bogey is really hard for an 80-shooter to do. Birdies are still happy accidents at this level.

A Basic Golf Skills Inventory

These are a few things you must be able to do to call yourself a golfer. How many of them do you KNOW how to do?

Hit an intentional fade

Hit an intentional draw

Hit with the ball below your feet

Hit with the ball above your feet

Hit from an uphill lie

Hit from a downhill lie

Hit the ball higher than normal

Hit the ball lower than normal

Hit the ball 125 yards with your 9-iron, 8-iron, and 7-iron

Hit out of fairway bunker

Hit out of a greenside bunker to a specific distance

Pitch to any distance between 50 and 100 yards

Play a chip that checks quickly, and another than runs, with the same club

There’s more, but this is a good enough start. You can add others on your owns you discover them.

How do you learn to do these things? Well, you don’t learn by trying to figure it out yourself. I have posts on most of them, but the best way is to get a lesson.

Have a pro show you how, and take notes. Then practice.

You want to get to the point where the course cannot give you a problem you don't already have a solution for.

Play Golf Like There's No Tomorrow

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.

Three Plans For Playing Golf

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.”

The Gap in Your Golf Game

Unless you are a very good player, there is a gap in your golf game that you likely cannot close. That gap is between your 4-iron/24° hybrid/7-wood and your driver. Within that space, recreational golfers generally do not have a good chance to hit greens and make pars.

The solution is to judge the conditions carefully if you have a long shot into the green. When there’s no real trouble around it, then go for it IF you can get there with a club you get into the air easily.

(Having said that, if it’s a club you don’t get into the air easily, maybe it shouldn’t be in your bag at all.)

If you miss the green, you’ll at least be hole high with a chip onto the green for a par putt and a sure bogey. Nothing wrong with that.

What if there’s trouble in the form of bunkers, water, tall grass? Now it might make sense to play short to a long chipping position. In that case, hit the shot with the longest club you have confidence in.

That way, you’ll eat up a lot of yards, be in front of the green with a good lie and a chance, again, to chip on for a par or a sure bogey.

If you have a gap like the one I’m talking about, and I do, it’s best to think of the longer clubs as advancement clubs -- clubs that get your ball down the fairway without the risk of losing strokes.

Or, you can go one step farther and not even put them in your bag. That way, they will never get you in trouble.

I like a light bag, so I carry only 10 clubs. The set starts off with driver, 24° hybrid, 6-iron and on down stepwise to a 56° wedge and my putter. No 5-iron? I hit it well, but not often enough to carry it.

I hit my driver 220 yards. With a 175-yard second, I can reach the green on all but the longest par 4s. Long par 3s are hard to hit anyway, so playing short and safe works out better than playing long and into trouble. Par 5s are three-shotters, and 395 after two shots leaves a short iron into the green.

I’m not asking you to play wimpy golf. Not at all. I‘m suggesting that you be realistic about how to play from long distances so you don’t lose strokes needlessly.

The pros play golf one way. We play it another. When you’re ready to hit into the green from 200 yards without courting disaster, you’ll know.

One Swing Tip, One Mental Tip

Between clubs?

Rule: When between clubs, take the longer club and grip down. Then make your normal swing.

Don’t try to hit the ball harder, because you don’t have to, and for sure don’t ease up, because that’s like hitting the shorter club.

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One of the things that made me be a better golfer is that I don't care where the ball goes after I hit it. If it goes here, or goes there, I just get to my ball and play the next shot, whatever it is. Fear of where the ball might go makes you do silly things with your swing. I don't let silly things happen to my swing.

Consider this point well.

A Golf Rangefinder Tip

If you use a laser rangefinder on the golf course, you get an accurate distance to the pin. It would be nice to know where the pin is in relation to the center of the green, though. A location indicator attached to the pin, or on the 150-yard marker, if they're used, is only an approximation.

As you're approaching your ball, and before it's your turn to hit, find a sprinkler head with a yardage affixed and stand right above it. Shoot the pin and compare the difference between the yardage to the pin and the yardage shown on the sprinkler head.

If the sprinkler head yardage is higher, the pin is nearer to the front of the green. If the sprinkler head yardage is less, the pin is nearer to the back of the green.

Most of the time we are short with our approaches (but that's another post). If you know because of what you just found out that the pin is toward the front of the green, you might what to take a longer club to make sure your ball gets to the green.

If the pin is behind the center of the green, you can take less club and hit an easier shot, knowing that you still have enough club to get the ball onto the green. Remember, most greens are at leasts 30 yards deep, which gives you plenty of room for error.

Be Your Own Caddy

In Better Recreational Golf, I have a small essay on the chapter titled Playing the Game, called Be Your Own Caddy. The point I made was that you need to have a good reason for every shot you hit.

It has to be a shot you know you can hit, that you have confidence in, and one that leaves the ball in a good spot for the next one.

Yet, more often than not, all we think about is how to get the ball from point A to point B, without giving much thought to our selection of exactly where point B should be.

If we had a caddy with us, those two questions would be the topic of some conversation. The caddy would not be satisfied until you had good answers to both of them.

To play your best golf, you have to step into the role of your caddy and discuss things with your other self, the player self, until you both are in agreement.

Now this might not work for everyone, but I believe that if before you take a club out of the bag, you explain to yourself why you want to use this club, and what shot you’re going to hit with it, and to where, you might start thinking a little clearer about the choices you make.

You would consider the lie, the wind, the landing area, and the distance. Then you hit the shot you can hit, rather than the shot you want to hit, or would be good if it works out.

Take your salary, convert it to an hourly rate, and compute how much is costs you, at that rate, to play a round of golf. Add on a quarter of your green fees to that hourly rate, too.

Now ask yourself if you would pay a caddy that much money for the same advice you usually give to yourself. For most of us, I think we would demand a little more.

Hitting shots is only part of golf. Hitting the right shot to the right place is how you use your hard-earned skills to shoot a low score. You do that by being your own caddy.

Trust Your Golf Swing

Trust your swing. You hear that phrase a lot from professional golfers. It means to rely on what you have practiced and play with what you’ve practiced instead of monitoring technical points as you play. That last part is still practice. Practice is over. It’s time to play.

I’ve heard Olympic athletes say that, too. They practice their skill over and over so when it’s time to compete they just do what they practiced. They don’t think about it any more. They just do it.

Recreational golfers, I think, would find this difficult to do. Very few of us (including me) practice enough that our positive habits become so ingrained and that we can rely on them without further reference.

In our game, when we address the ball, we’re often still not sure if this thing is going to work. So we decide to help it along.

There, my friend, is the worst mistake we can make on the golf course. That extra little thing, which is no more than a last-second guess, almost always makes things worse.

You might find instead that your best shots came when, by some lucky accident, your internal voice turned off for a moment and you just swung the club. What you had practiced is what came out and you got a great shot out of it.

When got to the ball for the shot after that one, you started to wonder what you did last time that made that shot so great so you began sorting through technical points, when all that really happened is you just SHUT UP for a change and played golf.

In order to trust your swing, though, you have to have something to trust. Start small.

A few weeks ago in the Transforming Your Short Game post, I asked you to hit every short shot forward, and let the club get the ball in the air. That’s pretty easy to learn.

When you go to the course, concentrate on doing that. Play all your other shots as you normally do, but bear down on those short ones and learn how to use your mind in a way that you play with what you practiced.

At first you will have to do it consciously, but after a while hitting short shots forward will become second nature. You will have learned how to trust.

Then pick another shot and work on it the same way. When you learn how to trust that stroke, move on to another one, and so on, working up gradually to your fullest swing.

I think you will see the payoff quickly.

How to Play Single-Digit Golf

Yes, you heard me. How to play single-digit golf, and it’s not that hard to do, or I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m not saying scratch golf, that’s another matter entirely. But coming in at nine strokes over the course rating? That’s a lot of room for error.

Let’s see. Shotmaking skills.

First of all, you need to be able to hit the ball straight, consistently. Not every shot, but seven out of ten need to go where you want them to, and the other three must be playable.

Second, you need to be good at approach putting. Three-putt greens are most often caused by leaving the first putt too far from the hole. That said, it’s OK to be very good from four feet in as well.

With your short game plus putting, you need to have a chance to get up and down from most places around the green.

Now the playing skills.

Know the yardages of your irons, and know how to hit them different distances. Say you hit your 7-iron 148 yards, and the pin is 144 yards away. You should know how to shave four yards off the shot.

While we’re at it, play to pin-high or beyond from the fairway, Always have enough club in your hand, because you don’t always make perfect contact. Your iron from the fairway is the key to making a good score possible, so play these shots conservatively.

Know what your best shots are, and hit them as often as you can. Make the course bend to your skills. Know what your weak shots are and avoid them while you’re working on them.

Always keep bogey in play. Your scorecard can handle bogeys, but doubles add up too fast.

Play from the right set of tees. If you’re hitting long irons or hybrids into half of the par 4s, those tees are too long for you.

Finally, forget your score and just play golf. Don’t ask too much out of any shot, and thereby keep the ball in play. Enjoy yourself, play one easy, controlled shot after another, and you’ll pull it off.

Here’s the formula for shooting a 79, which on most courses is single-digit golf: par all of the par 5s (20), half the par 3s (14), and half the par 4s (45). You might just stumble across a birdie or two. None of that sounds too hard, does it?

Why You Shoot High Golf Scores

(and what to do about it)

When I watch players who don’t break 100 (notice I didn’t say "can’t"), I see two reasons. One is that they hardly ever hit the ball straight. Two is that they don’t have a good idea of how to play the ball around the green.

I see two reasons why players struggle to break 90. One is that they don’t hit the ball straight often enough, and two is that they don’t have a good idea of how to play the ball around the green.

Let’s solve the hit straight thing first. I have lots of posts on this subject, under the label, golf swing. Look them up. They get specific. I’m going to stay general today.

The number one reason why you don’t hit the ball straight, if this is a problem for you, guys, is that you try to hit it too hard. That’s not the only reason, but it is the main one, especially if you’re under 40. Do two things for me. First, slow down your swing. Slower than that. You don’t have to belt the ball for it to go straight (and far). Centered, on-line contact is the key, and you get that by slowing down to control the clubhead.

Women, many of you need to do the opposite. You need to hit the ball harder. You don’t swing hard enough, and you lack control of the clubhead because of that. You can swing too slowly. Step it up a bit. Make an athletic swing.

Now the green thing. All I can say is this takes practice. I go to the range and see the tees lined with golfers and there’s just me on the practice green. I’m not kidding. Maybe someone will come along, throw down a few balls, hit some putts for five minutes, leave, and think they practiced.

As for chipping, I see all sorts of chipping strokes around the practice green, and none of them work. People spend their time trying to make an impossible stroke start working. I want so much to go up to them and say, “This is the easiest shot in the game if you know how to do it, but what you’re doing now isn’t it. Go into the clubhouse, sign up for a lesson and have the pro show you. You won’t regret it.” I won’t say that to them, but I’ll say it to you.

A putting lesson might be a good idea, too, come to think of it.

And then practice, like I said. I spend about 90 minutes when I go to the range, and an hour of that I spend around the green. Why? I’ll never have a great swing. Takes too much time to develop. But I have a good enough swing, coupled with a dynamite green game (chipping and putting) that lets me shoot some very respectable scores.

No reason you can’t either.

Play Different Golf Courses

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.

The Most Important Golf Shots

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 those four clubs, I can practice all these five shots.

Two Basic Golf Shots

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.

Par-5 Holes Are Your Friends

When you need a free par, the par-5 holes are just what you’re looking for. Think of them as extra-long par 4s on which you’re playing for bogey, and you’ll be just fine.

The typical length for a par-5 hole is 485 yards from the white tees, and 415 yards from red tees. This really isn’t very far if you have three shots to cover that distance. The key to getting those pars is keeping the ball in the fairway.

From the white tees, leave your driver in the bag. Hit 200 yards or so off the tee with a hybrid iron or fairway wood. Your second shot with the same club will leave you within 100 yards of the green. From there, it’s a pitch-and-putt par-3 hole. Couldn’t be simpler.

The same strategy will work for shorter hitters playing from the red tees: fairway wood off the tee, fairway wood off the fairway, pitch to the green, putt, putt, par.

Just because the hole is long is no excuse for hitting a driver off the tee, unless you hit your driver very well. You get four chances every round to get an easy par. Don’t blow the opportunity.

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How far do you hit your irons? - 3

There are several posts in this blog about ways to determine this question. You really need to know this, so that you can start zeroing in on the pin. Hole-high beats short or long any day.

Go to the course by yourself. Tee off, and when you get to your ball, decide which club you would use. Take out that club, and one more, such as if you decided a 7-iron would do, take out your 6, too. Hit a shot with both balls and see which one does better for you. The longer club might not be the better one, but now you know, at least from this distance.

Write down those results, and do the same on holes that follow. Pay special attention to par 3s. You might find you hit the ball a different distance when it's on a tee than when it's on the ground.

If you find yourself hitting the same clubs all the time for some reason, just place the ball where you need to hit a different pair.

Take advantage of elevated and depressed greens, too. Most golfers know they have to make an adjustment, but how much is something they never figure out.

If you do this enough times, from distances where you can compare all possible neighboring club pairs, you will get a good idea of what club to use and when. It's really comforting to know you have enough club in your hands when ever you take one out of the bag.

Earlier posts on this subject are found at:

How far do you hit your irons?

Golfers: How to know how far your clubs carry


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What I learned on the course - 4

1. Hit the shot as if you didn't care. I mean just take your swing, without any idea of where the ball is supposed to go, or what trouble might be lurking if you make a mistake. Make a carefree stroke at the ball is about the best I can describe it. The calmness that approach creates allows your body to flow into the swing without tension causing deflections from its proper course. This applies to putting, too.

2. Hit short shots with an easy, flowing swing. Putting tension in the swing, jabbing at the ball, trying to hit it sharply, all these things are what cause mishits. So does not paying attention to item 1, above.

3. When chipping onto the green, focus on the landing spot. Pick the club that will release from there to the pin, but your target is the landing spot, not the pin.

4. There is nowhere that the idea of having your hands lead the clubhead into the ball will pay off more than with your driver. It seems you are taking all the power away when you do this, but what you are taking away is the powerful feeling of the right hand hitting, which is actually a power drain, and which pushes the clubface out of alignment.

5. Do you use the alignment mark on your ball when you putt? If you line it up with your starting line (and don't take all day to do that), you will sink more makable putts than you have been, and miss far fewer of those shorties.


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