Did their expectations do them in?

We saw the world’s number one player, struggle to his worst finish as a professional, while the number two player in the world was coping with a new kind of pressure, the chance to take the number spot away from Tiger Woods.

So why weren’t Tiger and Phil able to muster anything better than +7 and +8 respectively?  Was the course unfair?  Hunter Mahan shot a 64 on Sunday to win by two shots.  Goosen, Furyk, Harrington and Oosthuizen had good rounds in the mid 60s.  So I would say that the course was not unfairly setup.

I think two things happened.  It appeared that Mickelson became very technical. His swing wasn’t as fluid and powerful as he usually is.  And his putting was shaky at best.

I think Tiger phoned it in.  He had given up hope, he had lost his fight, and he just wanted to get out of there.

What’s interesting about the Tiger story for me is that he had felt that his game was where it needed to be.  He thought that he had found some keys to playing well again.  He also had a lot of confidence from the venue itself.  He had won 7 out of the last 10 times he played without finishing worse than 4th.  Given all those factors he came into the event expecting to contend, if not outright dominate.

Could Tiger’s expectations been his downfall?  Where they realistic based on the amount and the way he’s played this year?  Did he put pressure on himself in a way that he’s never really done?

Lesson learned

As a golfer who is working his game down to scratch (though I still have a way to go), I got a lot out of watching this event.  Surprisingly the lesson I came away with was to be kinder and more patient with myself.  If the world’s #1 and #2 players, can have days like those, why am I expecting so much of myself?  Why don’t I just play the game, shot by shot, and see where that takes me?

Recently I had worked really hard to prepare for my local city championship.  It was my first time qualifying for the event at the Championship division, meaning there was no handicap.  I prepared for several weeks, and felt my game was ready for the event.  I ended up playing some of my worst golf in recent memory in those two days and missed the cut by a wide margin, and although I can’t draw a direct comparison to what happened with Tiger and Phil, I believe I can learn from what I saw this week at the WGC.

It is frustrating to show up at the course without the game you know you are capable of.  It is even more frustrating when it is a tournament situation and you realize you just don’t have it that day.  How can you turn it around?  How can you post a good score, when you don’t have it, and how do you change what you are thinking so that you can change the experience?

Days like that happen to everyone.  If you come in with high expectations you automatically put more pressure on yourself.  But you can’t come into it with low expectations either.  I think one of the hardest things to do is to set aside your expectations and just play the game.

There’s a lesson in every shot

As I kept thinking about what the way Tiger and Phil played, for some reason I thought about that Rolling Stones song “You can’t always get what you want”.  I think that every round of golf, every shot has a lesson, “But if you try sometimes/you just might just find/you get what you need”.  I’m using that tournament experience as something I can learn from.  And just remember, it happens to everyone.  Be kind to yourself, stay patient, and good things are bound to happen when you get out of your own way.

After hitting a few wayward drives (two that went OB on me) I decided to also leave the driver in the bag the rest of the round.  I just wasn’t feeling comfortable with it and it just wasn’t working well with the swing changes.  Besides Richter Park is not so long that I would miss the driver.  So I spent most of the round teeing off my 18 degree Cobra Baffler pro hybrid and decided that I would play the par 5s as 3 shot holes.

I was hitting the hybrid probably 20 yards behind where I would normally hit my driver and so much straighter.  On one hole I went hybrid – lob wedge and ended up about 8 feet from the pin slightly above the hole.  The only hole where driver would really have made a difference for me was 18.  I thinned the hybrid and ended up with 205 to the back of the green, to a green perched roughly 15 yards above me.  I would have proffered a shorter second shot but that’s golf.

I was pretty amazed at how well the swing changes worked.  My irons were crisp and very straight.  I ended up with an 81 that could have been even better had I left the driver in the car from the beginning.  I had 2 drives that went OB on me, and without those penalties the score could have been much lower.  However, my irons were crisp, as were my wedges.  I had really solid distance control all day and I’m excited for what these swing changes will bring.

During the round I also decided to implement the strategy from this article about asking the right questions.  The other thing that has improved my scoring is Game Sense.  Even when I don’t hit pure shots, I’m leaving myself good opportunities to save my score.  Deciding on the correct strategy based on what I brought to the course that day has now become second nature and it really makes the game so much more fun.  I recognize what the course architects are trying to do to trick golfers and I can very easily select the right strategy.  Sun Tzu said, and I’m paraphrasingm that every battle is won or lost before it has even begun.  Although golf is not a battle it is a competition between you and the golf course.  Use the right strategies and make the best decisions and you give yourself good opportunities to play well.

The caddies were great.  Not only were they super nice and friendly, they knew the course so well that you couldn’t help but play better.  They kept you in the game, recommended the right strategies and clubs.

I don’t get to play with a caddy anymore.  So I’ve had to learn to become my own caddy.  I’ve had to learn the right strategies.  I’ve had to learn to deal with the disappointment of making a bad swing.  The caddies were great with that.  They could always make you laugh.

I think that if everybody could play with a good caddy, that the scores of the average golfer would really drop.  Playing with a caddy really takes pressure off.  Your mind can be much more quiet, thinking about the shot, rather than trying to calculate everything.  But since most people don’t get to play with caddies then they need some help.

I think it’s great that GPS devices have come along.  They can certainly help with strategy, that is if you know the strategies then you can get the most out of your gps.  If you don’t know the strategies and you only know distances, then you won’t be able to play your best golf.

Caddies will give you the right club if there’s trouble in back.  They’ll give you the right club if there’s trouble to carry.  But range finders won’t do that.  They’ll only give you distances.  It’s up to you to use the right strategies.  I’ve been writing a lot about strategy lately because I really believe that golfers can cut their scores by simply playing better strategic golf.  The problem is that most golfes never take short game lessons, they never take playing lessons where they can learn the strategies, and so it’s almost like their playing with one hand tied behind their back.

The golf course architects use all kinds of tricks to get players to make bad decisions.  And these bad decisions, lead to double bogey or worse.  Simply knowing these tricks can help players beat the course architects.  If everyone could play with a caddy, these problems could be avoided.  However, most players are on their own, solo golfers battling the golf course, the conditions, the architects, their opponents if in a match, and themselves.  That’s why we created Game Sense: Tee to Green.  It gives you the knowledge to be your own caddy, and play your best golf.

Of course, that’s not even close to reality.  Perfect golf is impossible even for the players at the very top of their game who are the best in the world.

But you don’t need to play perfect to score well.  When I look back on my best scoring rounds, I wasn’t playing perfectly.  I was leaving myself with good opportunities to score and was able to cash in on enough of them to end up with a good score.

Aside from perfection in golf being unattainable, the main problem with trying to get it is that it puts pressure on every part of your game.  That is the quickest way to score badly.

What you want to do is find ways to take pressure off your game.  Play to your strengths.  If you’re a good wedge player, don’t go for the par 5s in two, leave yourself a good wedge that you know you can get close instead of an awkward 40 yard pitch shot over trouble.  If you’re a good putter, you don’t need to be close to the hole on every approach shot, just get on the green and two putt, and you’ll occasionally one putt for birdie.  In fact just trying to get on the green, might leave you closer to the pin then trying to get it in tight.

As I said, good scoring doesn’t require perfect ball striking.  Good scoring requires you to make smart decisions that will take the pressure off and leave the best chance for success.  To increase your golf IQ and make smarter decisions on the course, check out Game Sense.  Play smarter golf and lower your scores.  Bill S. lowered his scores using game sense on his first round with it.

GPS rangefinders are wonderful things.  They give you the distances you need to make smart decisions.  They give you the distances to hazards, to carry over the hazards.  They give you distances to fairway targets, and of course the front, center and back of the green.

This information is vital if you want to make good decisions on the course.  What they don’t give you is the strategy based on the conditions of the day, how you’re striking the ball, and the pin placements.  They also don’t take any pressure into account if you’re playing a Nassau, a match against a buddy, or a tournament.

Some of you are lucky enough to play with caddies and if you to have a good caddy, he or she, can save you many strokes.  But for those who don’t have our own caddies or get to play routinely with caddies we need some help making those decisions.  If I’m playing a par 5, and I have 245 yards to the pin, 230 to the front, and 260 to the back I will know the distances I need to reach the green, but the rangefinder can’t tell me if it’s a smart decision.

Whether it is a smart decision depends on a number of variables.  What’s the wind doing?  If I’m playing into a 15 mph wind can I get there?  How am I hitting it that day.  Am I striping my fairway woods or hybrids?  Am I fading or drawing the ball?  Are there hazards near the green?  Where is the pin, and is it near any hazards?  How’s my wedge game that day?  If it’s really on, it may be worthwhile to lay up to my favorite full wedge.

All of these factors need to be considered because my main objective is to leave myself in the best position for the next shot and to take a high number out of the equation.

What the GPS rangefinder does, is that it gives you the numbers you need to make decisions about where your target should be.  Great course management combined with the data from the rangefinder will provide you with the best chance to shoot low scores.  Simply using the rangefinder without the course management won’t necessarily help you make good decisions.  And good decisions lead to low scores.  When you can consistently make good decisions you can play well anywhere and on any course.

There is no doubt that Phil Mickelson has an overload of talent.  He has shown that over years pulling off incredible shots.  But he has taken risks that have cost him tournaments, most notably the US Open at Winged Foot.

The problem isn’t that Phil tries those shots and sometimes pulls them off.  The problem is that he influences golfers and they begin to think they can do the same.  We’d all love to be able to strike the ball like Phil but even most golfers in the field at Augusta on Sunday would have laid up.  With Phil’s talent he would have scored a birdie 80% of the time laying up, and he in fact scored a birdie.

Was it a heroic shot?  Absolutely.  Was it smart?  Probably not.  The par 5 13th had been giving up lots of birdies.  Phil’s mistake is that he brought bogey into play.  Luckily for him it didn’t turn out that way, but pine straw is not easy to hit out off.  He could easily have ended up in the creek, pitching onto the green for an un-guaranteed par.  The conservative route wouldn’t have brought bogey into play unless something disastrous had happened.

If we take a look at the risk vs the reward, it wasn’t a smart play.

Now to the average golfer.  The average already has a hard enough time making smart decisions on the course.  Most golfers I play with are constantly making decisions that bring double bogey or worse routinely into play.  They could not only score much better, but take many headaches out of their rounds if they knew how to make better decisions, but they don’t know.  When faced with a choice like Phil’s, many golfers would try the hero shot because if they can just pull it off, they’ll get a nice ego boost.  More than likely though, they’ll end up with a big number and wonder why the can’t break 100, 90 or 80.  This is where Game Sense comes in.  It teaches you how to make the best decisions on the course.   Get that understanding and you can expertly avoid trouble and give yourself stress free pars.

Do you rush to the first tee?

What are your rounds of golf like?  Do you rush to the tee without much of warmup, maybe passing by the practice putting green to take a couple of putts?

Do you then wonder if the number of balls you have in your golf bag are going to last the whole round or whether you’ll need to reload at the turn?

Do you know that you can expect a numer of double bogeys and worse along with a few three putts and feel he inevitable coming?

Stress Free Golf

I want to offer you an alternative.  I want you to imagine  stress free round.  What would it look like for you?

For me, a stress free round means no scores worse than bogey.  It means at least a par putt on every hole with a few putts for birdie thrown into the mix.  It means that my misses end up somewhere near the green where I have an easy chip or pitch onto the green for my par putt.  And it means no three putts.

Does this sound like a sweet dream to you? I want to tell you that it is possible.

What it takes

I had a round like this a few days ago.  What did it take?  It took making good decisions.

A good decision on the golf course is one where if you pull your intended shot off you are in a good position to score, and if you don’t pull the shot off you are still in a good position to score because the area where you missed your shot has not brought a high number into play.

Sounds easy but most golfers don’t know how to do this and it is not their fault.  The golf industry glamorizes distance instead of good decision making. And it’s understandable. Distance sells equipment.  Good decision making does not.

The other reason most golfers don’t know about it is their teachers don’t suggest it.  Golfers generally take lessons to fix their swing not to learn how to score and there is a big difference.

That stress free round showed me how fun and easy golf can really be.  My goal is to play stress free golf.  I encourage you to try it, you can learn the strategies here.

While watching the Masters this weekend there was a really interesting segment about Bobby Jones. Although he had a 14 year career as an amateur, it was only in the last seven years that he won his majors.

It turns out that he had a bit of an anger issue.  And when he lost his temper, his game went right out the door with it.  It took him years to get over that and to decide that all he needed to do was beat “Old Man Par’, instead of everyone else and that’s when he started to win majors.

I think we’ve all felt something similar.  When a bad hole gets to us and rather than staying calm and just playing the round, we get off any plan that we had, and we start to take big risks and end up in worse trouble.  I wrote about John Daily doing this a while back.

We can’t expect perfection on the golf.  Even watching the best players in the world they don’t play perfect.  How can a 5, 10, 15, or 20 handicap expect to play perfectly when the best players in the world can’t.  What we need to do is play smart.  You may not always be striking it as well as you like, and you may not always be chipping it close, or putting lights out, but you can minimize the impact of mistakes and still shoot good scores even if you don’t have your A game.  It’s amazing what happens when you learn to play this way.  It takes pressure of your long game, and your body tends to react by playing well again.

This is what Game Sense is all about.  It’s not about perfect, it’s about playing smart.  It’s about scoring well with the ability you have, and it’s about getting the most of out it.  And you don’t have to have a perfect swing to shoot low scores.  I wish more golfers would understand this.  It makes the game much more enjoyable, and ironically, it helps you play better.

I’ve been putting into practice the things I’ve learned from Eben, during the development of “Game Sense: Tee to Green“, and it is really helping me.

When I interviewed Eben about course management, he ended up sharing so much information.  He really has a wealth of knowledge.  He helped Nick Faldo, after Faldo had lost the feel on his putting.  He’s helped other tour players and even long drive champions Sean “the beast” Fister and Art Sellinger.

The things he shared with me during the recording of the “Game Sense” program, have had a major impact on my game.  Here’s what’s happened with me:

• I feel much more at ease on the course knowing the tricks the architects use to confuse golfers, and knowing how not to fall for them
• Knowing the proper places to hit the ball, and to miss it to, also make things much easier, and really takes the pressure of your long game.  This information gives you a much larger margin for error.
• I feel like a shot maker and a real player, rather than someone who is hitting and hoping.

Today I went out to play a round using all the techniques I’ve learned in this program.  It was one of the most fun rounds I’ve had recently.  I had a putt for par on every hole, and several birdie putts.  And the round just felt easy.  I missed a few short putts, but I always felt like I had opportunities to make pars.

This confidence of knowing the strategy that I wanted to use, took enough pressure off that I think it really helped my ball striking.  I had one of the best ball striking rounds I had recently, partly because I knew that if I didn’t it perfectly, I would be in a good position to save par, and that’s just what I proceeded to do.  I also had no scores higher than bogey.  That is fun.  When you know that you’re not going to make a double or worse, it just makes the game feel so much easier and fun.

I feel like now I know things that most players don’t.  And it definitely makes me more confident.  If you want to play with this kind of confidence, you should get “Game Sense:Tee to Green“.

On this weeks episode of “Being John Daly” we saw Daly’s meltdown in the last round of the tournament in Mayakoba, Mexico.  By his own admission, he was going for too much.  He made some bad decisions and he compounded the errors by trying to hit it farther, or draw it more, or going after too many pins.  He was forcing it and he paid the price.

He knew that he didn’t need to hit driver, that it was a perfect 3 wood golf course for him.  But when things started to go south, the driver came out to play.

Instead of taking his medicine and getting back to the strategies that got him there, he took unnecessary risks, and he felt he had to do that because the tournament was getting away from him.  But that is precisely the time that he needed to play within himself.

I’m certainly guilty of doing this.  I know that sometimes when a round isn’t going well I’ll try to make up for lost shots with some hero shots and end up getting in more trouble.

Golf is a game of patience, and part of being patient is being in control of your emotions.  I think Daly let his emotions get out of hand on Sunday because he really wanted to be in the top 10 to get that exemption into the Waste Management Open with a top ten finish at Mayakoba.  When he saw that slipping away, he fought harder, but in fighting harder he brought more mistakes into play.  If he had hit 3 wood and off the tees instead of driver, he might have kept himself in the tournament.  But it’s hard to come back from 5 bogeys, multiple double bogeys and a triple.  Daly paid the price for trying to get too much out of each shot.  And it’s a lesson well worth learning from.

See also “Bad Decisions are Worse than Bad Swings“.

Only 5% of golfers can shoot lower than 80.

With all of the advances in technology and the the improvements in the quality of the golf courses as well as the availability of access to golf professional and teachers you would expect this number to have improved over the last 20 years but it really has not.  So what is going on?  Why are golfers not getting better?  And how can you use this information to become a golfer who does improve?

I think the number one reason golfers don’t score is they make bad decisions that costs them more shots than they should take.

Bad decisions are very costly.  They compound mistakes and they add many unneeded strokes.

So what makes a decision bad:

1) You are unlikely to pull the shot off.

2) If you don’t pull the shot off it brings a high number into play.

3) There are higher percentage plays that you can make but instead you take the low percentage play.

4) You don’t factor in all the information needed to make a sound decision.

5) You over estimate your abilities.

6) You don’t practice this shot so you really don’t know how to play it.

Not all of these are involved in every bad decision, but if you look at your bad decisions you will see that many of them are.

Now I want to differentiate a bad decision from a bad shot.  Since we are all human, and therefore imperfect, we will make bad swings.   That’s just the way it goes.  You may have made the right decision, but put a bad swing on it.  That happens.  Most scoring problems however, really happen when bad decisions and bad swings come together.

The difference between golfers who score well and golfers who don’t, is that golfers who don’t score well, consistently throw away shots.  Golfers who score well, make decisions that makes it difficult to throw away shots.

I’ve been taught to play defensive aggressive .  Play to a defensive part of the course (in other words away from trouble and away from your weaknesses) but put an aggressive swing on the ball.  In other words you play the high percentage shot that will leave you with a bogey at worst and takes double bogey or worse out of the equation.  It sounds like you’re hoping for bogey but that’s not what this does at all.  Playing this way actually enables you to make many more pars and even birdies while limiting the effect of mistakes.  Try it and let me know how your scores change. See also: Use your natural autopilot to play your best golf.

Do you ever show up to golf course only minutes before your tee time, dash to give yourself a quick stretch, take 2 swings, and then hit your first tee shot deep into the woods, OB or in the rough?  Does this happen all the time?

How can we give ourselves the best opportunity to play well?  How can you expect to play well without giving yourself an adequate warm up?

I want to offer a different way to warm up for your round of golf.  It’s going to be designed to help you quickly get into the groove so that you can play your best.

First, let’s talk about what the purpose of the warm up is.

Certainly part of the warm-up should be designed to get your body moving.  Golf after all is an athletic activity.  It requires coordination, flexibility and strength (to varying degrees).  Any tightness in your muscles will affect how you play.

The other part of the warm up is to prepare you for the round you are about to play.  You want to see what your swing is doing that day, and you want to give your self the best opportunities to play well without having to think about mechanics on the golf course.  Any sports psychologist or mental game coach will tell you that thinking about mechanics while you’re doing the activity will lead to decreased performance.  So how do we give ourselves the best opportunity to play well.

I’m going to share a routine that works well for me.  But I want you to understand what I’m trying to accomplish with it.  I want to eliminate 2 variables from the warm up so that we can get off to a great start.  I also want to make sure that we engage the imagination and feel parts of our brain.  This will help us on the golf course.

Eliminate the variables

The first variable I want to eliminate in the warm-up is club length.

Why would I want to do that?

The average golfer does not practice nearly enough to have a consistent swing.  This is a big reason their handicaps have not improved in the last 20 years.  If you are constantly changing the length of the club, than you are going to need to constantly adjust.  When you don’t practice enough, it becomes difficult to make those adjustments quickly.  By warming up with the same club, a 6 or 7 iron only for the first part of it, you have a consistent ball position, a consistent bottom of the arc, and a consistent length of the club.  By not having to adjust to changing those variables you can more easily get a true sense for what your swing is doing that day.  You can also groove consistency.

The next variable I want to eliminate is loft.

Again by warming up with the same club you can groove consistency.  You can get some rhythm.  And you can prepare to play great golf.

Engaging Feel and Imagination

So I’ve taken away two variables.  But what I do want to do is really get your feel and imagination warmed up and ready for play on the golf course.  When you watch the best players in the world, you will find that each shot is unique.  They are normally not playing the same stock shot every shot.  Each shot has a unique trajectory, curve and target.

I’m not going to expect the average golfer to practice unique trajectory, curve and target but I do want to engage feel and imagination.  So here is what to do.

With your 6 or 7 iron you are going to hit to different distances, straight out in front of you.

Take a few balls and hit between 3 and 5 to each distance below.

15 yds

30 yds

50 yds

80 yds

100 yds

120 yds

150 yds

By starting with short chips and moving to longer shots you began to engage feel and imagination.  You need to try and feel the length of the shot. Your imagination becomes engaged in the process.  Starting with shorter shots also builds your consistency.  As you strike short shots accurately your confidence goes up.  If after moving to the next distance you see shorts start to go off line, take a few balls and hit some short ones again, get that feeling solid and return to hitting the longer shots but with that solid feel in mind.

After doing this first part of the warm up, you should be ready to hit some longer clubs including driver.  Maintain the feeling you had when you were hitting crisp shots with your 6 or 7 iron and you should see improved ball striking on the course. For more on practicing see managing your expectations on the golf course or using your natural auto pilot to play your best golf.

Have you ever been so excited to go to the golf course because your practice sessions have been going great?  You tee it up, and wham, OB. Uh oh, this could be a long day.

Expectations can lead to frustration on the course.  Managing them properly is the best way to play your best golf.

Golf is played one shot at a time.  Anything that takes you out of that is asking for trouble.  Coming to the course with expectations that you are going to play great because you were striping it at the range can lead to disappointment.  If you don’t manage your emotions properly, that disappointment can quickly escalate and throw your entire round off.

The hardest thing in golf is to maintain the one shot at time philosophy.  It’s so simple in concept, and yet so difficult in practice.  Why is that?

I think the heart of it is that we are emotional beings.  We aren’t robots who can turn off the emotion.  But we don’t need to be robots to be successful either.  We can use our emotions to help us.  After all playing from feel is essentially playing from emotion.  When you play from you feel, you are feeling the shot, and going with what feels good, right, etc.  It’s a positive emotion that you have chosen the right shot.  So it’s actually based on emotion, but it’s not reactive.  This is using emotion proactively to play well.

The opposite side of the spectrum is reacting to bad shots, reacting to pressure poorly, reacting to your range session.  Reacting emotionally takes away from being in the moment, seeing the shot, and feeling it.

The more technical we are, the more reactive we can be.  Bad shots, tend to drive us to analyze, what went wrong, what happened, I was hitting it so well before, where did my swing go.  These thoughts happen, and the response, well my stance, my grip, did come over the top, did I tuck in my elbow right, did I get the right wrist hinge, did I turn my back fully….etc.

I think a better response is to say “Did I see my target clearly before taking the shot?”, “Did I feel the shot before I hit it?”, “Did I factor wind, slope, lie and temperature into my calculations?”.

So how does this relate to managing expecations?  Simply, your expectations, good or bad, take you out of the moment if not managed.  Whether you were striping it on the practice tee or not, you need to treat each shot as a single event.  Step outside the boundaries of the expectation and say, what do I want to create here?  Visualize, feel, and swing.

I’ve heard stories of tour players playing a brand new course, sight unseen, who ended up with a great round.  When they talk about it, they say things like “Well, I didn’t really have any expectations.  I haven’t played the course before, and I didn’t know where the trouble was.  So I just went at it, one shot at a time.”

SkyGolf will be releasing their new flagship GPS the SkyCadie SGX to the public on March 15th.  It will have some new features that can truly help make better decisions on the golf course and improve confidence.  These developments should help golfers to improve their games.  See the press release here.

One of the basic ways that GPS units help golfers is by providing them with accurate distance information.  However, golfers need more than distance information in order to make good decisions, especially when approaching the green.  The SGX’s new or improved green features should give golfers the information they need to approach greens with more confidence.

IntelliGreen Pro provides distances to green contours, false fronts, and any other point on the green.  Although it is not available on all SkyCaddie courses (including the course I play), for those courses that it is available it should be very helpful.

I’m most excited about seeing the “Smart Club” technology in person.  If the SGX can deliver on its promise to track club data (club used, distance hit) etc, that could really help the average golfer.  It would provide and easy way for people to really know how far they hit each club.

Currently, tracking that information by hand is certainly doable, but tedious.  I imagine that few people actually do it, and when they do, they may fall into the trap of only writing down their best shots.  The SGX could provide players with more accurate data as it could capture every shot.  One could potentially track it over time and see trends, etc.  This could take some of the “ego” out of the game so that players can make decisions based on realistic data.

Overall the SGX unit looks promising.  It appears SkyGolf is serious about helping golfers to actually improve their golf games.  They also seem to be responding to their competition by pre-loading the unit with 30,000 courses.  All of this competition between GPS manufacturers should end up enhancing this game we love.

Amateur players should watch how the pros approach shots from the rough especially close to the green.  Because these new grooves don’t have the same kind of bite, tour players have adapted by playing the shots differently.

How this helps amateurs

Amateur golfer typically do not have the swing speed or technique to generate the kind of spin the pros do.  The example the pros have set the past few years typically does not translate well to amateurs.  Although those shots (high spinning, stop on a dime shots) are beautiful to look at, most amateurs just aren’t going to pull them off very often.  But now we have an opportunity to watch shot making return to the game.

The new grooves are forcing the professionals to hit higher softer shots and rely less on spin.  What I saw at the Sony Open in Hawaii was a lot of shots landing short of the green and rolling on the green.  You also saw pros punished a bit more when they short sided themselves.  So what you are also seeing is that the pros are being encouraged to have their misses leave plenty of green to work with.  This is something amateur players should really pay attention to.

How the pros are adjusting:

1. Hitting higher softer shots to stop the ball.
2. Playing for fliers and the lower spin out of the rough by bouncing balls onto the green.
3. Making sure their misses leave plenty of green to work with

Do these things and you should see your scores drop as you eliminate big numbers.