Golf tips

Use the driver judiciously and lower your score: How to play within yourself

The driver is a seductive temptress. Do not fall prey to her call. In this day and age, everyone wants to hit the ball farther. There’s no other feeling like solidly hitting a tee shot and watching it soar for several seconds through the air. Sometimes you can even feel the ball give at impact and then shoot off the club-face. The driver is so seductive that the memory of the few times that you have absolutely crushed the golf ball straight and far occludes the many times that the driver has landed you in a mess of trouble. When I look back on many of my rounds, I’m often left with an empty feeling after the realization that using the driver on certain holes cost me several strokes. In other words, if I had just used a different club and made the same swing, I could have saved several strokes. You heard right, if I made the same less than average swing with a different club, I could have saved several strokes.

Besides technical swing errors, there are two principal reasons that a mistake with the driver can be very costly. First, mistakes with the driver are more drastically amplified then the same mistakes with other clubs. Second, the driver tempts the golfer to swing all out.

A good example of the first happened to me recently. I was playing a reachable par 4 with water to the right. I pulled out the driver but was aware that a mistake leading to a fade or slice would not be good with water along the right side of the fairway. I ended up hitting it long with a bit of a hook on the shot. The ball landed in the rough but took a hard bounce left and ended up in very tall grass, an unplayable lie. I had to take a drop and ended up turning an easy par 4 into a triple bogey. If I would have used a three or five wood off the tee and hit the same shot, it would have stayed out of the tall grass. I would not have hit the ball with as much velocity with either of those clubs and less velocity would have reduced the effect of my swing error. The ball would have likely stayed in the rough and I would have had an easy shot to the green with the chance of scoring a birdie and par almost assured. The same swing with a different club would have resulted in a shot I could have worked with despite my less than average swing.

The same scenario also illustrates the second reason that mistakes with the driver are very costly. The driver tempts you to swing as hard as you can. After all, the driver is the longest club in the bag and the idea is to hit it far. Besides the technical swing errors that result from doing so, swinging as hard as you can places a lot of pressure on your golf game. Doing so translates from the driver to your other clubs so that every shot becomes an effort to hit it as far as you can. The pressure to pull this off on every shot compounded with the inevitable frustration upon failing to do so and the resulting, impossible situations from which you must extract yourself destroy your ability to score. There’s too much pressure and frustration to even begin to relax.

Instead of the all-out mentality brought on by impetuously pulling out the driver on almost every hole, consider the three or five wood or five iron. These clubs will not exaggerate your mistakes and will often leave you with a second shot you can play. Focus on setting up your approach shot. Get the ball in play and give yourself a chance to score well. I call this playing within yourself rather than trying to pull off the miracle tee shot or the miracle shot through the trees, over the lake and to the green that results from your poor decision off the tee.

If you can eliminate the all out approach to each shot, you’ll reduce the pressure on your golf game. Even the pros can’t pull off the miracle shot on every shot, and they certainly don’t try to hit the ball as far as they can on every shot. Doing so would create an immense amount of pressure on each and every shot. We all eventually crack under constant pressure. Take the pressure off of every shot and then the few times you find yourself in trouble, you will perform better because you will have limited the pressure situations that occur in each round.

Another example may be helpful. The typical golfer steps up to the tee with the mindset of wanting to hit the driver as long and as straight as possible. In other words, he is requiring himself to hit a perfect shot. He has to hit is perfectly solid and perfectly straight and he has to do this while swinging all out. That’s a lot of pressure to pull off the shot, and it’s all self-imposed pressure. If he doesn’t pull off the miraculous tee shot and actually mishits it, chances are he will find himself in trouble off the tee. His mentality becomes – “I need to make up for my mistake with this next shot.” Now he is trying to pull off the miraculous recovery shot. Does it ever end?

Wouldn’t it be nice to step up to the tee with a five wood and know that you just have to bloop one out there – not too far and not necessarily on the fairway – but just in play. If you make a mistake with the driver your little mistakes become enormous. If you make a mistake with your five wood, you will probably end up with something you can play. I’m not saying leave the driver in the trunk. I’m just saying it’s not for every tee shot.