Golf Instruction

I played golf last Friday with a group of guys at my club, all of whom are new golf buddies to me, as I just joined this past spring.

One of my playing partners was an emergency room physician who is a 4 handicap. Hits it a mile, but was commiserating about his difficulty inside 100 yards or so – he expressed real problems controlling distance on his wedge shots.

After complementing me on a couple of good pitch shots I had made, he realized that I was “that wedge guy” he had heard about.

So, he asked me what I thought was keeping his short game from being up to the standard of his long game. You can imagine I get that often, but I totally enjoy trying to give someone guidance that will help their scoring. Of course, on-course fixes are difficult, and I expressed that to him, but he wanted it anyway.

In his case, as I see so often, his short game was too much in the hands, that is, he was manipulating the clubhead back to the ball with a full wrist cock and “flip” of the hands to get the club back to the ball.

This leads to inconsistent contact and very poor distance control. My suggestion to him was to feel like the wrists were not cocking at all at the end of his backswing, and that he should release the club with his body rotation, rather than with his hands.

I shared a mental picture with him where you feel like the shaft of the club is pointed straight upward as you reach the end of your backswing, rather than to hinge so that it points back toward the target.  (It really doesn’t do this, but it will feel like it.)

This is what we call “quiet hands”, and it is the mark of a good wedge player. One way to achieve that is to focus your mind on your grip pressure. You should feel control of the club in the fingers of your left hand (for right hand players), with little or no pressure felt in your “pincher” – formed by the thumb, forefinger and middle finger – of either hand.

Try this and let me know your results.

It’s often said that when you are only a few feet off the green, and the lie allows it, an average putt will end up closer than a good chip.

Well, that may be true, but here’s a twist – you don’t always have to “putt” with your putter. That’s right, you can “putt” with any club in your bag, and you can get some outstanding results by doing so.

Picture this: Your ball is only about five feet off the green, but the grain is growing against you and the collar grass is not very smooth. One side of your brain says “putt it”, but the lie isn’t that encouraging.

Not a problem. Just choose a different club to “putt it” with.

You may be surprised how well you can “putt” from the fringe with a four or five-iron, hybrid, or even shorter iron, when the pin is cut closer.

Here are the keys to executing this shot:

• Take your normal putting stance and set up
• Grip down on the club since it’s longer than your putter
• Put the ball a little further back in your stance than you do when you putt
• Most importantly, grip the club much lighter than you do with your putter, because your putter is the shortest, but heaviest club in your bag
• Make your normal putting stroke and watch for great results

This is a wonderful scoring shot when putting from off the green is an option, but the lie really doesn’t allow it to be done with confidence. 

If you’ll spend just a few minutes around the putting/chipping green with this shot – experimenting with two to three different clubs, you’ll quickly add a new shot to your arsenal.

As always, let me know how this works for you, and what other shots you’d like me to offer my insight and experience on.

I watch lots of golfers play this crazy game, and one of the most common mistakes I see is the almost trance-like approach to the game most take, especially when they play the same course often.

I can assure you that if you will engage your mind at a higher level . . . analyze holes and specific shots and explore the alternatives . . . you will cut strokes from your score.

Here are some examples.

1. I recently joined a very nice club, with an opening par five of only 495 yards. Well, a great drive can put the average good player in position to go for the green from 210-225, but there’s water on the left, bunkers on the right, the green slopes to the water and is very firm and fast.

Like the other guys I play with, I began playing this hole with a driver off the tee, then a 5 to 7-iron to lay up just short of the green.

Then I realized this puts the bunker in play off the tee, and the water in play on the second.

Then it leaves you with a 30-50 yard pitch into a firm green.

So, as an experiment, I started hitting 4-wood off the tee, which cannot reach the bunker (and the fairway is wider there), then a 4- to 6-iron to the 100-yard mark, again where the fairway is wider.

That leaves me a full gap or sand wedge to the hole, which I can spin better.

I’m making more birdies than before and almost never an opening bogey. I drew some strange looks when I started doing this, but now several others guys are doing the same thing.

THINK ! There are several ways to approach each hole – which one gives you the best odds for par or bogey, and the least chance of a big number ?

2. We have very firm greens, and when the pin is cut close to the front, especially downwind, you often cannot stop the ball anywhere close.

So everyone just complains and keeps trying.

I woke up to the fact that taking one less iron and intentionally trying to land short of the green would often result in the ball jumping up onto the green, but at the very least would leave me an easy uphill chip to the flag, usually from inside of 30’.

On this course that beats the heck out of a long putt from the back of the green.

THINK ! Your best approach shot is not always at the flag or even the green.

3. Our 10th hole is a bear. It’s a dogleg right, with a prevailing left to right wind.

It’s the #1 handicap hole and anything right off the tee is dead but there’s a bunker straight away on the left that is also big trouble.

It took a while, but I finally realized that a 4-wood or “bunted” driver off the tee would not get to the bunker, and while it leaves me 175-185 from the green, at least I’m almost always in the fairway.

This elevated green is hard to hit anyway and behind it is dead, so I find that this approach lets me hit a draw 4- or 5-iron into the green, with my goal always to hit it short or skip it up onto the surface.

I average about 4.5 on this hole now, and rarely make a double, which on the number 1 handicap hole, is totally acceptable to me.

THINK !  Even for a low-handicap golfer, they are not all “par” holes. And you guys that play to double digits, there are plenty of “good bogey holes” out there.

Let me know your own stories of engaging your brain to lower your scores.

I read recently that less than 12% off all golfers have EVER taken a lesson from a golf professional. I was floored. Off all the things you can do to improve, lessons from a good professional are the most immediate and reliable – or I should say “they can be.”

I was fortunate growing up to have a father who was a good player and a golf professional who took a great interest in kids. So I was given a great foundation. And throughout my adult life, I have never hesitated to go to a pro when I am having trouble. As much as I know about the game, my swing and playing golf, another set of eyes is invaluable. I like this game too much to struggle with a problem for very long.

But a golf pro is not a “one shot wonder”. They can’t work miracles overnight.

“A lesson” is not what most golfers need or want. What you want is to develop a relationship with a teaching professional so that he or she can be your full time coach.

Whether your goal is to completely re-vamp your game to change your level of play, or just to have someone there who can keep you on the straight and narrow, a good golf professional is your answer.

One lesson is not the answer !!!

A series of sessions with a teaching professional is required to make change that works and lasts. Regular visits are one of the best investments in your game that you can make.

That all said, just like clubs, there are good teachers and better ones. For any good relationship, you have to clearly communicate your goals and needs, and find someone who can understand and work with you.

Your first meeting should be one that is inside over a glass of tea or coffee. Ask him or her if they are interested in working with golfers of your skill level. Share your golf history.  See what questions they ask you. Tell them what you want to achieve. Get to know each other and determine if there is “chemistry.”

With the off season encroaching, this is a good time of year to begin this journey. You can do a lot to improve your swing indoors over the winter, and a good teaching professional can be your guide.

Just an idea.

Ask me anything about this subject or any other golf related subject by using the Ask Terry button in the right sidebar. I need some subjects to talk about and talking about what you want to hear seems to be a better idea than just talking !

I’ve written about lots of topics here over the past few months, but this is “TheWedgeGuy”, right ?  So, I’ve been encouraged to outline what I believe are the most common mistakes golfers make around the greens that prevents them from optimizing their scoring.  So here goes, not in any particular order:

1. Tempo - Maybe the most common error I see is a tempo that is too quick and “jabby”.  In my upcoming book, “The Secrets of Scoring”, I talk about “gravity” being the key to developing a solid tempo for your chips and pitches. I also wrote about this in this month’s EIDOLON NEWS. Comparing golf to painting a room, your short shots are your “trim brushes” – a slower stroke delivers more precision.

2. Set Up/Posture - To hit good chips and pitches, you need to get down more to the ball. Get closer to your work for better precision. Too many golfers I see stand tall and grip the club to the end.

3. Grip Pressure - A very light grip on the club is essential to good touch and proper release through the impact zone. Trust me, you cannot hold a golf club too lightly – your body won’t let you. Concentrate on your forearms; if you can feel any tenseness in the muscles in your forearms, you’re holding on too tightly.

4. Hand position - Another topic I delve into deeply in “The Secrets of Scoring”. Watch the tour players hit short shots on TV. Their arms are hanging naturally so that their hands are very close to their upper thighs at address and through impact. Copy that and your short game will improve dramatically.

5. Lack of Body Core Rotation - When you’re hitting short shots, the hands and arms have to begin and stay in front of the torso throughout the swing. If you don’t rotate your chest and shoulders back and through, you won’t develop good consistency in distance or contact.

6. Club selection - Every pitch or chip is different, so don’t try to hit them all with the same club. I see two major errors here. Some golfers always grab the sand wedge when they miss a green. If you have lots of green to work with and don’t need that loft, a PW or 9-iron will give you much better results. The other error is that golfers are afraid of their wedge and are trying to hit tough recoveries with 8- and 9-irons. That doesn’t work either. Go to your practice green and see what happens with different clubs, then take that knowledge to the course.

7. Clubhead/grip relationship - This error falls into two categories. The first is those golfers who forward press so much that they dramatically change the loft of the club. At address and impact the grip should be slightly ahead of the clubhead.  I like to focus on the hands, rather than the club, and just think of my left hand leading my right through impact. Which brings me to the other error – allowing the clubhead to pass the hands through impact.  If you let the clubhead do that, good shots just cannot happen. And that is caused by you trying to “hit” the ball with the clubface, rather than swinging the entire club through impact.

So, there are my Top 7. Obviously there are others, but if you eliminate those, your short game will get better in a hurry.

Robert sent this in:

On my sand wedge and lob wedge shots from the fairway, I am producing too much back spin and backing the ball up 15-25 feet. What is the best way to limit back spin to hit a one hop and stop type of shot (move ball forward / back) ?

Hey Robert, It’s rare to hear a golfer complain of “too much spin“, but it can happen.

If the ball is backing up that much, tell your course superintendent to quit watering the greens so much !!

In all seriousness, however, that much spin can be controlled by a few changes in your swing. To begin, let’s dissect spin as the combined function of four elements - loft, quality of grooves, angle of approach and clubhead speed.

In order to minimize spin on such shots, I’d suggest the following as the simplest - use a lower loft wedge. In other words, when you want to minimize spin, go down to your gap or pitching wedge, grip down a bit and hit the shot.

At this point I’ll ask a question about how far you are hitting your sand and lob wedges ?

For even the strongest players, in my opinion, you should get about 75-80 yards from a “full swing” lob wedge and 100 yards from the sand wedge.

If you are hitting them further than that, your higher clubhead speed is probably the main contributor to this kind of spin. Practice gearing down your swing speed to hit them shorter distances. That will also reduce speed.

In my upcoming book, “The Secrets of Scoring“, I spend a lot of time and attention on controlling swing speed with body core rotation, rather than hand speed.

If you will work on “quieting” your hand action through impact and controlling your distance with the speed of your body core rotation, you will find much more consistent success.

The final element is angle of approach to the ball. I’m guessing you hit down rather abruptly on the ball, taking large divots - is that correct ?

Practice hitting wedges with less break of the wrists going back and think “W-I-D-E-R” in your backswing.

Then focus on the forward edge of the ball as you come through and swing “THROUGH” the ball, rather than at it, trying to take very little or no divot.

It’s very hard to give instruction on short blog-type answers, but please let all of us know how these drills work for you.

Thanks for using the Ask Terry button.

One of the things all of us are “guilty” of is hitting poor shots because we are trying to hit the ball higher or lower.

That causes us to try to change our swings and approach to the ball and ends up often with a poor shot. Even for low handicap players, we don’t practice enough to have a full range of shots/swings with each club. Heck, it’s hard enough to get one swing that is reasonably reliable.

But in any round of golf, there are a number of times that you think you need to hit the ball lower or higher to negotiate the wind, trees, or what have you. So, let’s examine a much easier way to achieve the goal, using the geometry of the clubs in your bag, instead of trying to “manufacture” some kind of hybrid swing that you really haven’t practiced.

To begin, let’s look at the high shot. The easiest way to get the ball to fly higher is to use a more lofted club, right ?

But if you’re behind a tree, for example, and you need an 8-iron loft, but can’t get an 8-iron all the way to the green, you have other options.

The easiest is to just take a 7-iron and lay the face open a few degrees and aim a few yards left of your target. This will give you the loft of an 8-iron, but the longer shaft will give you distance more like a 7-iron.

You can even lay open a 6-iron and possibly get the results you need. The key to hitting this shot is to make sure you grip the club with the face open the desired amount, and not that you rotate the hands to open the face at address.

If you do that, your hands will return to their natural position through impact and the face will square. Laying the face open a bit is a very good way to hit high soft approach shots when you are playing firm greens, too.

On the other hand, let’s say a breeze is in your face and you want a lower shot.

Too often, golfers try to hit a “punch” shot, and what they do is pinch the ball cleaner, implying more spin and end up with an up-shooter that dies in the wind.

A much easier way to lower the trajectory of any iron is to simply take one more club and then choke down one half inch, so that it’s effective length is the same as the shorter club you were contemplating.

Because you have the stronger club in your hands, you will tend to swing smoother, imparting less spin, so that the shot will bore into the wind much better.

Both of these shots should be practiced on the range, and it can be fun.  Hit shots with the face open varying amounts and choking up varying amounts to watch what happens to trajectory and distance.

I think you’ll learn a lot about this game by doing that.

While I was traveling and playing golf with my partner the week before last, I noticed he had made some changes in his short game technique . . . and not for the better.

Ralph is a great “lab rat” for me, as he is a 12-14 hcp player, who loves the game and loves to practice.

But he also loves to experiment.

For all the years I’ve known him, his short game is pretty good, and he always could hit these very nice soft, high pitch shots.

Well, on the past two trips with him, I noticed he had moved the ball way back in his stance and was dramatically forward pressing his hands, de-lofting his 60* lob wedge significantly.

Because he has good touch, he was not chipping all that bad this way, but he had totally lost that soft high pitch.

When he needed a soft pitch with spin, he no longer had it.

So, we talked about it, he moved the ball back up, with his hands only slightly ahead of the ball, and quickly regained that very effective shot.

Here’s my point: We all tend to exaggerate tips that we find that work for us. In his case, he found that when he moved the ball back a bit, and his hands forward, he made cleaner contact. So far, so good.

But then he just kept moving the ball further back and the hands further forward until he was totally out of kilter.

When you are making changes in your golf game, always remember two things;

1.    Make small changes and monitor results carefully.
2.    Too much of a good thing . . . is a bad thing.

If you have passed “through” a period of good ball striking, chipping, pitching, putting, etc., because of a tip, you probably just went too far with the application. Move back “toward the center” and see if it doesn’t help.

This game is tough, and the laws of physics and physiological dynamics are working very fast during a golf swing.  Your body cannot process mid-swing thoughts and corrections, so it is imperative that you begin each swing with the proper posture, set-up and ball position.

Review those basics often on the practice tee and even with practice swings in your garage or back yard.

And remember, when you want to make changes to a shot – hit it low, high, etc. – the required adjustments are very small.

I’m very fortunate to play at a great little country club in Victoria, Texas, a town of about 70,000, which is two hours from Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

You’d never expect to find this kind of a golf course “ way out here ”. But we have brand new Mini Verde greens ( the same as the new greens at the TPC ! ) which are kept fast (11-12) and very firm. We also have nasty Bermuda rough and very narrow fairways. At about 6,900 from the tips, it’s not overly long, but you just cannot score this course from the rough.

Since moving here, I have had my clubmaker build me a new driver, with my instruction being “ I want one that won’t go left ”.

When I played my best golf in my 30’s and early 40’s, I always hit a fade, and I wanted to get back to that. This game is so much easier when you reduce your shot pattern to one direction.

I selected a deep-face, small profile 400cc Alpha head with 10* loft ( I just don’t like the look or sound of the big 460’s ), which is 1* open. It’s also got a nice sound, which I insist on.

Then we chose a low launch Swing Science 800 shaft, which he set up about 6.1, a little stronger than I typically play, at 44-1/2” long. [ If the pros don’t swing drivers over 45”, I sure don’t want one that long ! ]

I’m learning to love this driver, because I just don’t hit it left ( unless I come over the top ). So that effectively takes one side of the golf course out of play. I’m still learning how to trust my alignment, however, to just set up down the left side and hit it.

But we have several holes where I know I just have to hit it in the fairway, so I’ve begun hitting what I call the “ half ” driver.

All I do is choke up ½” to ¾” on my 44-1/2” driver, and think about keeping the hands light on the club and “ swing it easy ”.

If I’ll just do that, this driver produces a lower ball flight, and very nice little “ slider ” that drifts a few yards left to right. I can take it right down the left side and let it work toward the middle of the fairway.

And you know what ? Very often, because I’m making a smoother swing, I hit it dead center more often than not, and my distance really isn’t that much shorter than if I try to bomb it. Go figure.

This shot is also my bread and butter on those holes that are dead into the wind, which always blows down here, it seems.

Sometime on the range, I strongly suggest you practice this shot. I think you will find that you hit the ball very solidly and not that much shorter than your normal “ full ” swing.

I’ve showed this shot to a number of middle handicap players who now choke up on their driver all the time.

Just another idea gleaned from a lifetime in this business and game.

I wrote about the driver shaft experimentation done with our Certified WedgeFitter, Mike Fix, in Virginia last week, but we had another eye-opener regarding proper ball striking with the wedges and short irons I’d like to share.

As I was growing up, we always heard the phrase, “thin to win”, anytime we hit an iron shot a little on the skinny side (not a complete skull, mind you).

Invariably, especially with short irons, you got more ball flight distance, a lower trajectory and plenty of spin. We also know that good short iron players always hit the ball first, then the turf, and “trap” the ball into the turf a bit.

That produces those nice boring trajectories with lots of spin. But the masses hit short irons and wedges that fly too high, with inconsistent distance. Well, watching the data on the TrackMan launch monitor really opened my eyes.

I hit about a half dozen full pitching wedges for Mike to get a base of data for me. The average distance was 114 yards, a higher ball flight than I like, with about 7,000 rpms of spin.

Then I began to intentionally try to pick the ball off the turf, my swing thought being to actually try to “blade” the ball.

As I did this, I saw trajectories come down to where I’d really like them, distance increased to 118-120 and spin rates actually increased to about 8,000 rpms !

I was taking no divot, or just brushing the grass after impact, but producing outstanding spin. On my very best couple of swings, distance with my pitching wedge was 118-119 with almost 10,000 rpms of spin !!! And a great trajectory.

I share this with you because I know we all misinterpret the snippets of advice we get from friends and the magazines, and one of the most damaging is “hit down on the ball”.

That is a relative truth. But it has most golfers attacking the ball with their short irons and wedges with a very steep angle of attack and gouging huge divots.

The facts are that if the club is moving only slightly downward at impact, you will get the spin you want, and if the clubhead is moving on a rather shallow path, you will get a more direct blow to the back of the ball, better trajectory, more distance and improved spin.

Besides, shallow divots are easier on the hands and joints.

If this is interesting, go to the range and actually try to blade short iron shots. As you learn to do this, you will be able to zero in on the proper impact that produces a very shallow divot, and a great looking shot.

It will take some time, but I’ve been doing it since I got back last week, and am already hitting better short irons and wedges than ever.