The game is split into two halves, your front nine and your back nine.  On your front 9, each putt is like you’ve hit the in regulation.  Every putt made is a birdie, every putt missed leaves a par putt (you must putt in, 3 putting does count as a bogey).

On your back nine, these are your greens missed in regulation.  Every putt is for par.  Miss and your next putt is for bogey.

So, on the front nine, you want to get as quickly and as far under par as you can.  Be sure to mix in 3 shorter putts (4-6 ft), 3 medium putts (6 – 12ft) and 3 longer putts (more than 12 feet) in each nine.

You’ll find after you finish the front nine and start the back, the pressure really starts to mount as you try to remain under par.  Give it a shot, and tell me what you think.  I’ve found it to be an awesome way to practice.

We’ve all heard the phrases “Practice makes perfect” and “Perfect practice makes perfect”.  We all know that tour players have practiced all their lives to get the level they are at.  The thing is that they are not always practicing the same things in the same way.  They have built up enough skill level, that as they dial one thing in, they can work and address another part of the game.

What am I getting at?

As amateur golfers we don’t have the luxury to practice to practice like a tour player.  In fact, for most of us, we rarely get to practice.  I’ve tried to combat this by investing in some things that bring the practice home, and while that does address much of the problem, there is another part of practicing that has to be thought through as well.

That is, practicing the right things in the right way.

If you’ve had a lesson with a golf pro, they probably got you to do so some things that felt a little strange.  And if you’re like most golfers, you probably forgot about that feeling very shortly after and didn’t really practice it.  The end result is a wasted lesson, and no step forward in your progress.

I think part of the reason we forget to practice those things is because they feel so strange.  And when that happens, we are less likely to use it.  Combine that with very few practice sessions and it is virtually inevitable that you will forget what you learned.

How I’ve been practicing differently

I’ve been focusing on the things I have learned, and how strange they feel.  The thing I’ve realized is that I don’t necessarily need to be doing full swing. Initially what I start out doing is conditioning my body to get used to how that feels.  That position, swing thought etc, that feels strange, is often a big key to getting to the next level.  However, it’s hard to practice because it feels so strange.

Every day, I focus on something like that, that feels a bit strange.  It could be the forward press in putting, it could be the feeling of holding on to your angles and your lag, it could be a feeling that you don’t sway when you turn, or not laying off the club too much etc.

These things feel weird because they are not a part of your swing.  You need to get used to them, you need to get comfortable with them.

Making amazing progress

It’s amazing the things that happen once you start to integrate these things into your swing.  Not only do they become a part of your swing, but as you really integrate them, they take on their own strength.  They become a part of your swing that you can count on, that you can trust.  And when that happens, your swing changes and your results change.

So when your instructor gives you a piece that feels a bit strange, hold on to it, work with it, make it a part of you and you will be rewarded with a more solid game.

I call the first game:

Pin Seeker

The objective is to get the ball as close to the hole without going more than gimme range past.  Here are the rules.

For every shot that lands on the green, but stays on and short of the pin you get 1 point.  Every shot that gets within 3 feet you get 3 points.  Every shot that hits the pin or goes into the hole, you get 5 points.  However, for every shot that is past the pin and more than 3 feet away, you lose 2 points.

Play this game, it will really sharpen up your pitching, chipping.

Another great game to play is:

Leap Frog

Pick a pin on the green to hit to.  The first shot must land short of the pin, but on the green.  The objective is to see how many balls you can get between the first ball and the pin with each ball having gone past the previous shot.  Start with a PW and move to your more lofted wedges.  It’s trickier than it sounds and it’s a good way to learn distance control.  If you really want to challenge yourself, play this game out of the bunker.

This should give you some really good practice, add some pressure, and begin to recreate situations on the golf course.  You’ll see your skills sharpen, your distance control sharpen and your feel improve.  Give these games a shot and let me know what you think.

Practicing bunker shots can improve your rhythm and tempo

Bunker play.  What comes to mind for you?  Does it fill you with fear?  Do you think, “how many shots will it take to get out”?

This is one of the areas that amateur golfers practice the least.  And it’s one area where the average golfer can really save a ton of strokes.  So practicing bunker shots can save you shots and has a number of extra benefits.

1. Bunker shots become much easier.
2. Lose the fear of being in a green-side bunker.
3. Help with rhythm and tempo.
4. Smooth out your swing.

The first two benefits are pretty obvious.  Practice from the bunker and not only will it get easier, but yes, you will lose the fear of being in a bunker.

The last two benefits are not obvious.  How could practicing bunker shots help with rhythm and tempo, and smooth out your swing?

The other day I decided to practice for one full hour hitting shots from the greenside bunker in the short game practice area at my local course.  It was an area I had neglected recently as I, for some reason, almost never end up in a greenside bunker.  I don’t know why that is, but it’s true.  Regardless, I wanted to become more comfortable with bunker shots.

As I practiced I realized something.  I have a fairly quick transition in my swing, when it gets too quick, I start losing accuracy and my ball striking degrades.  In the bunker,  too quick of transition led to bunker shots that were too fat or too thin where I caught too much ball.  I also felt on my good bunker shots, that the transition was just right, and I felt the forgiveness of the bunker really help smooth things out.

What most amateur golfers don’t realize is that a bunker shot has the most margin for error of basically any shot in golf.  You can hit the sand from 1 to 6 inches behind the ball and still have a reasonable result.  I noticed that when my transition was smooth, I hit beautiful shots out of the bunker that went high, landed soft, and spun to a quick stop.  Over the course of that hour, my bunker shots got better and better where I could land 6 to 8 out of 10 within a couple of feet of my intended target.  But the most powerful effect was the smoothness that I felt in the shots.  My swings out of the bunker felt so right.  The timing was good, the rhythm was great, and they just flowed.

After 1 hour of hitting bunker shots, I proceeded to practice chips, pitches and lob shots.  The tempo from the bunker stayed with me, and I hit some really great short game shots.

I think the main reason that bunker shots encourage such great rhythm is that you’re not actually trying to hit the ball.  You have an area of sand behind the ball that you want your sand wedge to enter, and like I said, you’re not actually trying to hit the ball.  So you are practicing 3/4 to half swings that are real shots but where you’re not hitting the golf ball, you’re hitting the sand, and this changes the focus.

I have found this to be a really great part of the game to practice because in the process of becoming a better bunker player, you’ll improve your rhythm and timing, which will help your overall game.

What I mean is that everyone’s “career” with golf, whether playing professionally or playing on the weekend with buddies goes though periods of highs and lows.  Whether it’s missing 5 or 10 cuts in row, or shooting 10 strokes above normal for your last 5 or 10 rounds, we all go through tough times trying to get that little white ball into the cup.  We all get into occasional slumps.

I’ve been on a bit of a slump myself.  After shooting some of my best rounds of the year several weeks ago, I have fallen into a deep fog, where it seems like I had lost all control of my golf ball.  We’ll at least until today, although the seeds of the discovery were sown a while back, but I’ll get to that shortly.

The slump seems to have come out of nowhere.  My last round before the slump was a 77.  I’m not yet a scratch golfer so 77 on a tough par 72 course from the back tees is just fine with me.  However when the slump started it began a downward slide in scores.  Before I knew it I had several 88s, a 90, and the dagger in my heart was 97 in the member member tournament yesterday.

Although I wasn’t sure how I would fix it, I firmly believe that I will.  I also know that I’m not the only golfer to have gone through slumps either.  Jack Nicklaus, Steve Stricker, David Duval, Davis Love III, Ian Baker-Finch and many more have gone through their share of slumps.  Steve Stricker came back from “no man’s land” to world #3.

How they fixed their individual slumps is another story, but knowing that even the worlds best players go through times like these, gives me hope that I can get my game together, and take it to even higher levels.

I also believe that whatever happens can be a blessing in disguise.  In my case, the slump made really dig deep and address some swing flaws.  I knew that I didn’t want this inconsistency any more and I became determined to find a way to fix it.

Last night, hours after coming home from the the worst score of the season at that tournament, I had a thought that turned into a deep examination of a flaw, what caused it, and how to make it go away.  I remember something that my coach Eben Dennis said to me in a discussion we had about Jamie Sadlowski.  The more I thought about that conversation, the more I realized he was right, although I still wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

It was a moment where I challenged a deeply held subconscious belief about the golf swing.  And as I worked with that thought, things began to click.

My major flaw had come into being a long time ago as I had decided that I was going to learn how to create big time lag.  Sure enough I learned how to create lag, but the way I did it, made it extremely timing dependent when it came to releasing it through the ball.  As Eben put it, I was “dragging the club head” through the finish.  This drag made it really difficult to square the club face at impact.  I also realized that this dragging result, was not the cause of my mis hits.  It was actually an effect of a different flaw.

I realized that if I wanted to play well and consistently, I need to address the root cause and not just band aid the effects.  I set out to discover the cause, and I believe that I have found it, at least as it pertains to my swing.

Something else interesting happened along the way.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve analyzed Rickie Fowler’s swing.  Well, I now believe that my previous analysis of his swing, was incorrect.  I was simply looking from the outside in, at what he was doing.  Well, the reason I bring this up, is that without trying to copy him, my swing seems to now have some of the same characteristics of his swing.  What’s more is that now I have a better sense of where his consistency comes from.

When I look at video of both swings together, side by side there are some pretty clear similarities, but there are also some major differences.  Now let me repeat this, I did not set out to copy or imitate Rickie Fowler’s swing.  It’s unconventional, and I think most golf teachers would steer clear of that, but there are some elements about it that work very, very well.

The main element about Rickie’s swing that I understand now, is that from start to finish, it never gets to a point where he has to “save it with his hands”.  He doesn’t really get stuck to where he needs to flip it or where’s going to block it (the way Tiger Woods often does).  In fact his whole swing is designed to bring the club head back to square at impact in an extremely efficient way.

I bring up the Rickie Fowler reference because as I watched video of my swing, it reminded me of Rickie’s but in my own way.  And like I said, I’m not trying to copy him.  I was just trying to find the most efficient way for me to bring the club head back to square at impact, and it’s probably just a coincidence that there’s any resemblance to his swing.

So how did this swing perform?

At home, I use the driving range on my dancin’ dogg simulator basically to look at two statistics: club face angle, and swing path.  From the day that I got the simulator, I always had a difficult time getting my face angle to square.   I would occassionally be able to do it.  The reason for that, is that the dragging effect I talked about above, made it very hard to square the face.  Recently it’s gotten somewhat better, where I could keep the face in the +2 to plus 5 degrees open.  With a path enough from the inside these allow for little draws, or baby fades.

With the changes that I made last night, and this morning, I was able to keep the face 0.0 to 0.7 degrees open, consistently.  This is essentially a square face.  That is a dramatic improvement.  You can imagine how shocked I was when I was able to do this 20 times in a row.  But I didn’t just want to take the simulator’s “word” for it.  So I went to the driving range to see if the results held up there too.

They did.  I don’t remember ever hitting the ball as straight as I did this morning.  And it just kept happening, ball after ball.  I believe that I will be out of my slump soon, and in a weird way, I have the slump to thank for this.  It got me to the point where I knew that what I was doing before, just was not going to work in the long run.  I knew I had to get to the root of the major flaw and fix it.  So, thank you Slump, you’re a great teacher in disguise.

It is amazing how golf connects to and reminds of every day life.  I know people who will play golf with potential business partners to see how they handle themselves on the course, as it is often a reflection of how they deal with adversity in life.

But the journey of improving your golf game can also have an impact on improving your life in general.  My life has changed as a result of playing golf.  I’m reminded of a quote “Whoever said golf and life are similar was wrong.  Golf is harder.”

Josh’s journey in which he learns to stop worrying and love his swing is a journey filled with ups and downs, meeting fascinating people, and making connections to things that on the surface seem unrelated to golf. But Zen and other disciplines have many similarities.  For me I always understood Zen to be about letting go.  It was about letting your body do what it does, instead of trying to control it with your conscious mind.  After all, a warrior who has to control his muscles consciously won’t last very long.  He will quickly be defeated by a foe with flow.

I love this quote from the inside cover of the book.

“Throughout the ages, the ancient arts of Zen and meditation have helped warriors prepare for battle,  brought philosophers to enlightenment, and opened the path to inner peace for countless practitioners.  Perhaps most importantly, however, these practices have allowed golfers to transcend their game and shave precious strokes off their handicap.”

I find that golf does indeed mirror many things in life.  Hard work pays off.  Tough rounds are interspersed with moments of glory, when we are in the moment and in the zone.  These highlights keep us wanting to come back to the course, to subject ourselves for what we know can be either bliss or frustration, and that’s half the fun.  You don’t know what you’re game is going to be like on any particular day.  You don’t know what your swing and your chipping or putting are doing that day until you get on the golf course and start hitting shots.

I said that my journey mirrors in many ways Josh’s journey.  I have not seen the people that he’s met but outside of golf I have been exposed to transformational techniques, and in many ways I’ve bridged the gap between them.  You can see part of that in the domain name of this website.  But the connections go deeper.  People who know me well, know that I am a bit of a philosopher and thinker.  It is partly why I created this website.  I wanted to write about what it takes to become a better golfer from a different perspective then almost everything else I see on the subject.  What I write about improvement is based on ideas, conversations and insights that germinate, then grow and develop, sometimes from the most unusual sources.  But like life, all things are connected.

I’m willing to try unconventional things to improve my game, and in that way Josh and I are very similar.  Get this book.  If any of what I wrote above connects with you at all, then you are going to love it.  He writes with a great wit and refreshing style. For me, this book is as close to a must read, as you will find.

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“.

1. Not every shot is a full shot.  The more you can learn to master partial shots, the more control you’ll have approaching greens.
2. Dealing with the wind.  Lower trajectory shots fly better in the wind and are less likely to be taken off line.  Have a short shot and it’s a windy day? Take more club and use a partial shot to take the wind out of play.
3. Helps your short game.  Partial shots are all about feel, control and imagination, learn to do this and it will make your wedge game and short irons so much more effectively.  It will also open up more of the green enabling you to play safer shots to tucked pins and still get the ball close.
4. Learn solid contact.  Partial shots require you to stay within yourself.  The more you practice these the more you’ll learn to feel how a solid shot feels.  Trust me, it transfers to your long game and full shots and makes you a better ball striker with every club.

Take the 30 day challenge: wedges and learn how to control your irons and wedges with more imagination and creativity.  You’ll learn valuable things that will help your entire game and make you a better player.

From what I’ve seen on “The Haney Project” this season, Ray seems to be getting more and more confused.  The focus has been entirely on Ray’s swing with only a little bit of work on short game.

If Ray really wants to break 80 he needs to learn how to get the most out of what he has.  That will improve his scores tremendously, then any improvements he makes to his golf swing will pay even more dividends.  The problem as I see it is that the focus isn’t really on breaking 80, it’s on fixing swing flaws and mechanics.

First place Ray could cut a lot of strokes: Putting.

On the show Ray’s putting has been very weak.  He missed a 40 foot putt 20 running it 20 past the cup.  That will introduce 3 and 4 putts all day long.  Hank needs to get Ray to two putt, and rarely 3 three put.  That will probably take 5 to 10 strokes of his game right away.

The next area where he has seemed very weak: Chipping and shots around the green.

It’s very difficult to save par when you leave your chip shots 15- 20 and 30 feet from the pin.  In order to break 80 he is going to have to get good at chipping.  He is not going to hit a lot of greens in regulation so he needs to make the most of his chipping and pitching opportunities.  He can probably save another 5 to 10 shots like this.

Now to the long game.

Clearly Ray can occasionally hit some good tee shots and certainly prefers the ball teed up even with his irons.  What he needs is enough to consistency to not get in too much trouble off the tee.  He needs a go to shot that he can get out there long enough, but that’s unlikely to wind up OB or way off the fairway in the trees.  Whether that means teeing off with a fairway wood or long iron, I don’t know, but he needs to find the fairway.  The extra yards he gets with the driver don’t offset the number of shots he loses from going OB, in the trees, or into a hazard, or topping it.

Along with a go to shot, he needs to understand the safest way to plot around the course so that he can get himself near the green in regulation.  Good chipping/pitching could give him plenty of par opportunities, and he’ll hit a few greens and get a few birdie opportunities.

The above points will get him much closer to breaking 80 than simply fixing his swing.  He needs to realize that his focus with the long game should be to improve the quality of his bad shots, so that they are less penalizing.

His game didn’t improve. Each teacher he saw contradicted the previous one. First he stood up too tall, then his posture was too upright. After seeing those teachers, going to their 4 day workshops, he ended up more confused than ever. He would make incremental gains, then lose them as quickly as they came. He was in golf overload, and he still couldn’t break 90.

Larry, a successful feel player when he was young, was now turning 60 and decided he needed more distance to play better. After seeing a number of teachers, his head was filled with tips and swing thoughts. The new distance did not materialize, and now his body was confused. He used to be able to self diagnose and make changes on the course, but he had so much going on in his head that he couldn’t play the way he used to. It took him years to get back to playing golf the way he used to, from feel.

Although I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent, these are not unusual stories. There is more information than ever on the golf swing. There are so many websites advertising their tips. Golf magazines are filled with instruction. But is the average golfer getting any better?

Sadly the answer is no. Average golf scores have not changed in the past 20 years, even with the improvements in technology and equipment, the care of the courses, and the huge amount of information available to your average golfer.

So what is happening? Is golf just a really hard game, or are there other reasons the average score has not dropped?

A new player to the game certainly faces some challenges to begin. Where and who should I take lessons from? What equipment do I need? Should I use Stack and Tilt, One Plane or Two Plane, X Factor? Should I use Phil Mickelson’s short game technique or Stan Utley’s? Should I learn the golfing machine? Should I buy an ebook? Should I just figure it out myself with tip from magazines and the internet? Should I just use a video camera and some swing analysis? What about Leadbetter, Butch, or Haney?

In the old days golf was simpler to learn. You were a member at a golf club (the only way it was possible to even play the game) and you learned from the teaching staff at the club, which was led by a Head Pro. If you wanted to get better, you took lessons from him, and you played. You might mention something you saw Ben Hogan do, and the pro would determine whether you should incorporate it or not. There was no video analysis and it was about feel.

I think the expansion of the game, making it available for anyone, has been phenomenal. I think it’s great there are so many public courses. Because the golf equipment sector is so competitive, a new player can actually get good equipment fairly cheaply if they get last year’s model. There are so many resources to learn about the golf swing and I think all of that is good.

One problem that this wealth of information creates, interestingly enough, is uncertainty. A golfer can quickly be overloaded with choices and information. It’s no wonder the average golfer hardly improves. Too much information leads to either paralysis by analysis or making choices that end up working against each other. Hopping from swing theory to swing theory is a simple way to confuse your body. But it’s understandable why this happens. Golfers don’t see improvement, so they ditch what they are doing, for the next thing they see that promises to solve their problems.

In the next few articles from this series we will look at the different methods available, the impact of technology and equipment and what it takes to make real improvement.

The poster wrote that he often experiences breakthroughs while on the range, but they disappear as quickly as they came the next time he plays golf or practices.

I would bet almost everybody goes through this.

So how can you take a breakthrough and build on it, rather than letting it slip away?

Imagine what would happen if every breakthrough you had practicing, stayed with you?  You would quickly become an excellent golfer.  You would have a more consistent repeatable swing.  And you would have more fun on the golf course.

Here’s why breakthroughs don’t last.

1. We don’t document what we did.
2. If we do document, we document the wrong thing
3. We try to extend the breakthrough
4. If we can’t get it back quickly, we forget about it

We don’t document what we did

One of the best things you can do is keep track of your progress in some kind of written form.  A notebook, a pad, a laptop, or even a blog will do.  I hard that Annika Sorenstam kept copious notes of every practice session, every practice round and that she has notebooks filled with her insights, thoughs, and feelings.  Those are invaluable.  As golfers we go through periods when we are playing well, and periods when we’re not.  The game is filled with ups and downs.

It’s nice when you’re not playing well, to look back at times when you were, see what you were doing right, and it might spark some new enthusiasm or just get you back on track.  That is actually one of the main reasons I started this blog.  I know that any time I’m not playing well, I can just come back to this blog, see when I was playing well, and read some entries around that time.  It might lead to an a-ha moment that can set me on the right track.

If we do document, we document the wrong thing

If we do take notes of our practice sessions we tend to write about the wrong things.  We may write about some mechanical aspect of it.  Our elbow was here, or my feet were set like this…etc.  I think it’s more important to document feelings.  What felt right about the swing.  What did you feel in your body, your hands.  What was your mindset like?

These things are more important because they change how you approach your practice sessions.  By focusing on feelings you can learn to recreate those.  By recreating feelings you are more likely to get back to the results you were having that day.  If your swing has changed over time, the mechanics that you look at or remember, may no longer apply.  In fact you may be doing more damage by trying to work those mechanics back into your swing.

We try to extend the breakthrough

Ever notice that when you’re striking it particularly, there is a feeling of “wow, if I’m hitting it this far at 85%, I can really get it out there at 100%”.  These thoughts are deadly.  What happens is that you then lose the success.  The breakthrough dissipates and is not heard from again.  What happened here?

You tried to extend the breakthrough.  You tried to make it do more instead of keeping it, feeling it, and making it a part of your swing.  It’s sort of like killing the goose to get the golden eggs.

If we can’t get it back quickly, we forget about it

Ah defeat.  You’ve lost the breakthrough because you killed the goose.  Now what?  If you can’t get it back you wind up forgetting about it and hoping another breakthrough comes along.  It will, but you’ll probably lose it again unless you change what you do when you get a breakthrough.

So what should you do?

Focus on the things that are re creatable.  Mainly how things feel in your body, and your mindset.  At first it will be difficult to document how the swing feels.  Over time you will get better a describing it.  In describing it you’ll be accomplishing two things.  You’ll make the feeling more real so you’re body will remember it better, and your creating a document you can look back on to get you back on track when things are off.

It’s just as important to describe your mindset.  If you can get back to into the same mindset you will probably start to get those results back.  If you combine the mindset with the feelings, you should be able to quickly get back on track.

Well not a tundra, but the driving range was covered in about 6 inches of snow, and more snow was coming down as I was hitting balls.  I turns out I was the last customer before they closed for the day.  To top it off , the heat was not working.

So what did I do?

I hit balls.  I hit one large bucket of balls and kept focusing on my hands and shot shape.  The past 4 days I was practicing with only a lob wedge, 8 iron and driver.  Today I got a little bit more variety.  I hit some 5 irons as well as a fairway wood (4w to be exact).

I find it truly amazing that what I do with my hands has so much of an effect.  I tried a very interesting little drill.  With the driver in hand, I alternated between hitting high cuts and high draws.  So I would hit one high draw, then one high cut and rinse and repeat.  It was pretty cool.  I had never had this amount of control with the driver.  Occasionally my high draw, would go straight and not really draw back, and occasionally the high fade would stay a bit left.  Still I was not disappointed by that.  I was thrilled that I could get as much consistency as I did.

The driving range really did look pretty covered in a blanket of snow.  Problem was that I couldn’t see where the balls landed.  Still I was very happy with the trajectory and shot shapes I was able to create.  Interestingly the 2 hybrid gave me the most trouble.  I’m not sure why.  But the 5i was beautiful to hit.

Improving drives me.  If I’m hitting my chips to 6 feet, I want to hit them to 2 feet.  So I’ll set up a goal and work toward it.  As I see my chips get to 5 feet, then 4 feet, etc, it drives me to get even better.  It’s exciting, it gets me to the range, or to the putting green, and it makes the game so much more fun.

That’s not to say that every golfer should try to do this.  Weekend players, who tee it up a few times a year shouldn’t have this attitude.  They just won’t practice enough to get the benefits of it.  But for anyone serious about becoming a good golfer this attitude is a must.

If you improve just 1% each day, in a year you will have transformed your game because improvement, in my experience does not happen on a linear scale.  When you work at it everyday, it begins to happen in a way, similar to compounding interest.  Over a year, it really pays off.

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.

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.”

Bobby Jones

Ah, the mental game of golf.  Have you ever noticed that some of your best rounds occur when you can just get out of your own way?

When you look at the literature surrounding the mental game, whether it’s Dr. Bob Rotella, Dr. Joseph Parent, or any of the other excellent sports psychologists and mental game coaches, one of the recurring themes is getting out of our own way,

They all have their own approaches to achieving this but it is certainly not easy.  Especially not when something is riding on the line (your club championship, your best round, your first time breaking 100, 90 or 80).

One of the reasons that I kept the word Zen in this website is that I have come to believe that the Zen philosophy is completely applicable to golf.  My view of Zen is that optimal performance occurs when the thinking mind is silent, when we allow the body to do what it has learned, to simply react to the shot and situation.  But how often does that happen?

The truth is that we enter an autopilot like state nearly everyday.  If you drive a car, you do it instinctively.  Have you ever had the experience of driving, and during the drive you “zone out” for a few minutes, and you look around and recognize that you are still driving perfectly well, miles down the road?  That’s the autopilot taking over.

That can be used in golf.

However the main obstacle that gets in the way is thinking about technique.  Often when we hit a poor shot, we automatically go into diagnosis mode and technique mode.  We try to figure out what went wrong.  Did my elbow stick out?  Was my backswing too long?  Did I take the club back too far inside?

I think the first response should be “Did I pick out a good target?”  or something along those lines.  Once you are on the golf course it is too difficult to change technique.  Many of the bad shots that we do have don’t come from bad swings, but they come from bad decisions.

A bad decision can happen when we don’t inspect the lie carefully.  It can happen when we don’t take the slope or the wind into consideration.  It can happen when we don’t know our distances very well and under club.   I would imagine that the average golfer can shave 5 strokes off their game by making better decisions.

Ray Floyd in his excellent book “The Elements of Scoring” says that if he was playing against you, and he had the same physical game as you, he could beat you every time because he would make better decisions.

That’s something to think about.  Those decisions are not related to swing technique (although your options are constrained by your skill level).  They are related to your game plan and what information you take into account.

Elements to a successful mental game

1. Carefully evaluate the situation
2. Plan your shot
3. Visualize the shot vividly
   
4. Fully Commit to the shot
   
5. Execute
   

The steps above can help to keep you away from entering a technique mindset.  Focusing on the target, visualizing the ball flight, and trusting your swing will usually produce excellent results.  Focusing on technique brings your conscious mind into play.  Your conscious mind is not the best swinger of the club.  Your unconscious or subconscious mind that runs your body does a far better job.  Keep your conscious mind occupied on strategy, visualization and trust and you can allow your subconscious to produce the swing you need.

Do your best to keep technique-related thoughts out of your mind while playing a round.  Changing your mental game will take practice and discipline but it should pay dividends.

One chapter into I would considering recommending it.  When I look at the differences when I am able to pull off great shots and when I’m not there does seem to be an element of fear in it.  I think a lot of pressure comes from fear; fear of losing, fear of looking foolish, fear of slicing, fear of hooking, fear of hitting it fat, etc.

Do you ever notice when you are practicing that effortlessly a lot of shots come off great.  Your chips are closer to the hole with several going in, your putts are firm, on line and track right in, your drives are long and straight?  Then you get on the course and that ease is gone…

I think a big reason is that there are now consequences, penalty shots, lost balls (OB or in hazards), difficult lies etc.  All of these things that can go wrong creep into your thoughts unless you are determined to keep a strong mindset.  But like Dr. Valiante says, we actually get the fear response before we can even consciously recognize it.  If we don’t do anything about it when we do recognize it (hopefully before we swing), then it’s too late.

The next time I go out to play, I’m going to make a point of approaching every shot with confidence and certainty that I can pull it off.  Obviously it is unlikely that I’ll pull off every shot, but going into it confident that I can will make a big difference.

I shot a 78 even though I only hit 6 greens and had 31 putts.

It was a good round though.  I hit the ball very solid.  I had a lot of good tee shots leaving me with wedges into the greens.  Most of my misses came on the approach shots.  I flew a few greens from 125 yards and in, since I’m still getting used to hitting the ball at bit further (even with the colder weather) so my distances are not totally dialed in.  I had a couple of nice birdies and just had a good round overall.  My putting can definitely improve and that’s something I’m going to work on.  I also need to get a bit more accurate with my irons, especially the short irons.  Getting into the mid and low seventies is going to be a challenge but I’m definitely looking forward to spending more time in the seventies.  I feel like I’m getting to know the game better and that I can score well even when I’m not hitting a lot of greens.  I feel like I’m becoming a better scrambler though of course I would prefer to hit more greens.  I’m confident that will happen.  My main miss is a pull when I get bit quick but I’m begining to more consistently hit nice baby draws.

My last 5 18-hole scores in relation to my course handicap.

1. +1
2. -1
3. -2
4. E
5. -1

They are not bad, in fact, I’m achieving my goal of shooting better than my course handicap.  But I’m not content.

The reason is that I feel like I’m leaving a lot of shots on the table due to short game errors.  I need to come up with a good plan for improving my short game.

What’s been especially frustrating has been the putting.  I’m hitting most of my putts on the line I want, at the speed I want, and they are just not going in.  I’m burning so many edges that it is really annoying.

I spoke with a PGA pro I know and he recommnded patience.  He said that sometimes it just goes like that with the putting.  But if you’re patient you can start making a couple of extra putts per round, then you start making a couple more, and your scores drop from 79 to 76 to 73, etc.

I know he’s right but it’s not easy to do.

I don’t get up and down enough.  I know that I have to improve my short game.  I need to leave short game shots close enough to easily one putt but it’s tricky.  This is my next challenge.  I feel like I’m plateauing around the 79-81 range.  And yet walking off the course I know where I left shots on the table.  Today I had an 81, which is one under for my course handicap so again, it was a solid round.  Although I do feel it could easily have been 4 or 5 strokes better.

I had a thought that was helpful on the golf course today. The image of the inner workings of a clock, seeing all the gears moving, synchronized, no one gear speeding up.  It seemed to keep me much more synchronized and helped with the long game.  I had a really good driving day and I had a lot of good shots.  It does get to me when I have a wonderful tee shot, and a bad approach shot.  It’s a nice drive wasted and it drives me crazy.  I had two of those, with the approach shots coming up way short (I had enough club but actually hit the ball fat).  I’m pretty sure that is just a mental game thing.

A couple of things were interesting.  I really felt comfortable driving the ball, and I also felt really comfortable with my fairway woods.  I’m not sure why that was but it was nice.  On 18 I hit my drive off the toe but still got it out with pretty good distance and in the fairway.  I had about 230 up hill and I hit a nice 4 wood, pin high, but in the rough on the left side of the green.  I ended up 1 putting for a par 5 but could easily have had a birdie if I had chipped it close.

I burned the edge on so many putts today.  Had a few of those gone in it could have been a stellar round for me.  I realized that I was reading 1″ too much break on each putt.  I didn’t correct that until the 17th hole but it made a difference once I figured that out.

Today I tried something while practicing that led to an eye opening experience.  I decided to try to create a fuller release.

I recorded  two swings with the first one being my normal swing and second being a full release swing.  The full release swing looked much better.  It encouraged me to get wider in back and in trying to create a fuller release it ended up creating effortless power.  It didn’t take any more effort to create a fuller release, but when I played back the videos I was startled by how much more club head speed the full release swing seemed to be generating.  I didn’t have a launch monitor handy so I took an old fashioned approach and counted up the frames for the downswing.

The regular down swing took 7 frames.  The full release took 5.  And yet I wasn’t trying to swing faster.  All I was focusing on was making a full release and the speed generated was effortless.  I need to see what this does on the range but I was definitely surprised.