For any golfer who wants to play great golf
Posts tagged Course Management
PGA Tour: Tee-to-green key to Donald’s rise
Jun 1st
Interesting article with an in-depth look at Luke Donald’s stats. With Luke Donald ranking low on the driving distance category you would have expected him to rank higher in accuracy, given that his low ranking in distance would put him at a disadvantage on approaches from the rough.
I’ve always considered myself a decent iron player, but I’ve made a concerted effort as well to improve my accuracy off the tee. I’ve noticed an improvement in my scores from that. Here’s what Luke had to say about his improvement in this area.
Rickie Fowler – He gets it
Feb 25th
Watching Morning Drive this morning, I was in total agreement with the comments that Brandel Chamblee (@BrandelChamblee) made about Rickie Fowler.
“You understand the best way to play golf, this is my opinion, is to go out there and try to hit shots…You know,it’s the big lie to me, that you can go out there and swing perfectly. And I understand why guys do it. I mean literally they’re trying to play this game in the most organized fashion, there’s so much money out there, and if you can stay on tour a long time, you can get ridiculously rich. So what are you gonna do? You’re gonna work out, you’re gonna get a sports psychologist And you’re going to take all these lessons ’cause you want everything to be perfect. And Rickie’s like ‘No, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna hit golf shots. I’m gonna hit it high, I’m gonna hit it low, I’m gonna draw it, fade it.’ And I know it’s because of the way he was taught the game. His teacher was very much into hitting golf shots. And that’s why he plays fast. Because he’s not out there thinking about a pre-shot routine, and he’s not out there thinking about swing mechanics. He’s out there thinking about golf shots.”
There’s a ton of wisdom in what Brandel said this morning. This is why Rickie is the future of golf. And I think he is going to stun us with what he is going to accomplish in his career.
Twelve Days at the Academy (Golf Channel)
Dec 7th
Since this blog is focused on getting better, let’s take a look at the Golf Channel’s 12 Days at the Academy. What I have been doing is recording the shows onto my DVR and then watching them for the most solid information. Since we all are all working on different parts of the game and we have different strengths and weaknesses you may not agree entirely with me on my assessment.
The episodes I have so far are: Michael Breed, Brandel and Frank, Martin Hall, Greg Normal, Mediate and Ballard, Annika Sorenstam, and Sean Foley.
Strong Episodes
For me, the two most impactful episodes have been Brandel and Frank and Sean Foley.
Never give up
Dec 6th
Never Give Up
GMac’s victory at the Chevron this weekend over Tiger Woods is a wonderful example of not giving up.
He continued fighting even as things seemed to be breaking down around him. His miraculous bogey on 17 kept him in it. Tiger then hit it tight on 18 giving McDowell a must make putt with a lot of pressure. He made a gritty 15 footer for birdie putting the pressure on Tiger’s short putt.
On the first playoff hole, as they played 18 again, Tiger left himself with an almost identical distance for his approach shot. Graham had a shot from about 175 over the trees. He hit a good shot and left himself a nearly identical putt to the one he made to force the playoff.
Lessons from the WGC Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone
Aug 9th
This week’s WGC Bridgestone Invitational provided a unique learning experience.
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.
US Open: Strategy, Ball Striking and Putting will determine winner
Jun 17th
Watching the marquee group on usopen.com, you begin to get a sense for what these players are facing. This is a stern test of golf on a scale that is hard to me imagine for me not having played any conditions like that in my life.
The rough is truly punishing, the fairways are fast and the greens, well, it’s amazing these guys can keep it on there, and even more amazing when you see shots land softly.
In a sense it both magnifies their almost superhuman abilities, and yet it also shows them in ways that resemble the way we often feel as golfers. I don’t often see tour players be so uncertain, careful, and vulnerable as they can be during this tournament. And yet it also elevates them simultaneously. Great shots are even more spectacular and magnificent because of the difficult conditions.
It does feel like golf as it should be. I’m not saying that they should play open conditions every week, or that average golfers should be faced with open conditions. But watching the PGA tour week in and week out, they can make the game seem too easy. Then again TV coverage is normally skewed, showing the best players on the planet, on their best days. One of the reasons I love watching them in person is that you can follow players who aren’t playing their best and you’ll see that even if they are spraying the ball (which tour players are capable of) they manage to score well. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes in golf we need to unlearn before we can learn
Jun 14th
The last couple of weeks have been up and down in terms of my scores, but I have learned some very valuable lessons along the way.
In my last five rounds I have two of my best scores for the season, two of my worst, and an average round. What does that tell you? It tells me that golf is a game of patience. You can’t control the outcome. You can only control your process.
Golf is interesting because you can’t force a good shot, you can only let it happen, but you can definitely do a lot of things to create bad shots. The opposite of that is what I think sports psychologists call “getting out of your own way”.
Today’s Round – swing changes and surprising strategy pay off
May 14th
Today I headed up to play Richter Park Golf Course, one of the public course gems in Danbury, Connecticut. I was unsure of what results I was going to get as this morning I decided to implement some swing changes. I also upon arrival at the course, took my 4 wood out of the bag. This club has been giving me trouble recently as the shaft has a completely different flex than what I am now used to in my irons. I decided that I did not even want to be tempted by it.
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.
Asking the right questions
May 13th
I was reading Fearless Golf by Dr. Gio Valiante, and in chapter 4 he talks about the questions that guide us. I’m reminded of that scene in “The Matrix” where Trinity and Neo are at the nightclub early in the movie and she says to him, “It’s the question that drives us.” In his case the question was “What is the Matrix?”, but in golf the question is “What is my target?”.
Often though we get caught up in things like our score, our competitors, pressure, what I did on the last hole, or 3 holes ago and we get away from asking “What is my target?”. But Dr. Valiante is right. The questions do drive us. Asking the right questions can help us play better, make better decisions and keep us in the moment, while asking the wrong questions, can quickly take us out of the moment and down that road we’ve been before, and we know where that road ends.
The wrong questions introduce fear and distractions, they make us focus on the past or on the future, and they take us out of the zone if we were in it, or more likely, just take us further away from being in the zone.
So how do we get to the point where we are asking the right questions? One of the key ways I think is to think well about the strategy, the way we want to play the hole. Thinking about strategy puts us back squarely in the present. Asking ourselves the question “How do I want to play this hole?” is much more constructive than something like, “I usually hit way right on this hole, what if I do that again? Or worse, what if I hit it in the water? What if I look like a fool?”. One question gets your mind moving in a direction that allows you to marshal your resources, the other takes you out of the present, introduces fear and doubt, and makes it hard to focus on this shot right now.
Be your own caddy
Apr 26th
As I kid I learned how to play golf on a golf course with caddies. We never took the golf cart, but we usually had a couple of caddies.
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.
