Cutting Strokes off Your Game Without Changing Your Swing

There are several ways you can cut strokes off your game.

1) You can improve your swing,
2) you can buy new clubs,
3) you can practice more,
4) you can practice more effectively, and
5) you can improve your strategy on the course

I. The Trouble With Improving Your Swing

A. You Have to See a Professional

The trouble here is that this can only be done with the help of a qualified golf instructor who will watch your swing and guide you through the changes. Many golfers think that they can read a book or an article in a magazine (or one like this on the web) and figure out what is wrong.

But if something is wrong with your swing, three things are true. 1) You don’t know what is going on; 2) You don’t know what’s wrong; and 3) You don’t know how to fix what is wrong. If these three things were not true, then you would fix your swing and that would be that.

Try it out if you like. But you will not be able to consistently improve your score by self diagnosing your problems. Simply reading an article about proper swing technique leads to a diagnosis by someone who has not seen your swing (you). It also results in a diagnosis from someone with no particular expertise in the area (you). You don’t take stock tips from a clown at the circus do you?

B. Even a Professional Can’t Improve You Past A Certain Point

No matter how good your golf instructor is, you can only reach a certain point of improvement in your swing technique. This could be for different reasons. Some of us have physical problems which compel certain swings. As you get older, you can’t generate the club head speed of a younger man. You may not be able to get into the optimal position at impact to strike the ball perfectly.

No matter how old or young you are, you may not have the athletic control over your body to consistently hit the ball in the center of the club with high club head speed. Professional golfers of all shapes and sizes have the very rare ability to generate club head speed and consistently get into the proper position at impact. The average golfer does not have this ability, and will never have this ability.

II. The Trouble With Buying New Clubs

There’s nothing wrong with buying new clubs as a remedy. This is especially the case if you are using clubs that are 10 years old or more. The old adage about how the player should blame himself and not his equipment is true for the pros, but not for amateurs with a high handicap.

The pros hit the ball right on the screws 99% of the time. Having a bigger sweet spot on the club really doesn’t help them much. Amateurs hit the ball on the screws far less. New clubs have bigger and bigger sweet spots and as a result have become more and more forgiving. The pros don’t need forgiveness. Amateurs do.

The trouble is that you may have just recently purchased new clubs. If that is the case, then this remedy won’t work for you. Perhaps you are on a limited budget and you don’t have a grand to throw down on a new set of woods and irons. If that is the case then buying new clubs won’t work for you either.

III. Practicing More

The trouble with practicing more is that you are likely just ingraining your bad habits more and more unless you combine that practice with instruction from a qualified golf teacher. Further, practicing your swing takes time, and not all of us have that.

IV. Practicing Smarter

This is one of the two things that we can do, and I will address it later in this work

V. Changing Your Strategy on the Course

A change in course strategy is the most promising outlet for improvement as it does not cost any money and it doesn’t take much in the way of extra time. It just requires you to think differently about things. There are several categories of change, and I’ll work from the general to the particular.

A. General Considerations

1. Par Is Not Average

The first mistake that most amateur golfers make is that they think that “par” in golf means “average.” They may know in the front of their heads that it does not, but in the back of their heads they are disappointed with bogey or double bogey. Let’s get something straight. About one percent of all golfers can regularly shoot par. Item No. 1: That means that “par” is not average. It is incredibly beyond average. Item No. 2: Those golfers shooting par are very disappointed in their games and want to improve.

The point here is that you need to stop trying to shoot a certain score. You need to start trying to reduce the number of strokes you take going around the course. This may seem to be the same thing, but it isn’t. Here’s the difference:

On the first hole, a short 360 yard par four, you drive the ball into the rough and there are some trees between you and the green that you may be able to get over, and that you may be able to get through. If you are trying to shoot par, you will want to try to hit the ball from the rough, either over or through those trees, land on the green, and have a shot at a one putt birdie or a two putt par. The chances of this happening are low. They say that a tree is 90% air. So is a screen door.

The chances are far higher that you will strike the ball into the trees and it will bounce into some unknown part of the universe. The rules allow you to search for five minutes. A lost ball means stroke and distance, and you are now lying three preparing to take your fourth shot from a drop where your ball was last sitting motionless, still in the rough and still behind the trees. Seven looks likely now.

But a high handicap amateur whose goal is to lower his score will chip the ball out onto the fair way near the 150 yard marker. Now he lies two and has a seven or six iron into the hole from a good lie with no obstruction. A ball anywhere on the green is now a one putt for par or a two putt for bogey five. You still may shoot a seven or worse, but you are playing the percentages toward lower scores.

2. You Are Competing Against the Course, Not Other Golfers

You should not be trying to get the best score of the foursome within which you are playing. Your foursome may suck. Or it might be Woods, Couples, Faldo, and you. You should be trying to cut as many strokes off your total as possible.

This seems an easy concept, not worth mentioning. But how many times have you tried to out drive the other persons in your group for distance? How many times have you tried to get “closest to the hole” on your approach shot? The longest drive does not mean the lowest score. The same goes for closest to the hole.

Example time. You have a 350 yard par four. The first three guys in your group pull out drivers and smack 300 yard drives right down the middle. They are all 50 yards from the pin. You pull out a three iron and put the ball in the fairway, 150 yards from the pin. You have the advantage. Why?

The answer is because you can take a full swing with a six, seven or eight iron (depending upon what club you normally hit that distance). But your opponents must hit a difficult half swing pitching wedge. You can put as much spin on the ball as a full swing will generate, giving your shot full stopping power on the green.

Your opponents’ balls are going to hit without much spin because they could not generate sufficient club head speed and still have the ball only travel 50 yards. On a dry day it is easy for such balls to run right off the back of the green.

Further, with half swings, your tempo can go awry and you can chunk it or hit it thin, or top it. The tendency when you are close to the green is to try to get it as close to the hole as possible. But course superintendents often put pin placements (especially on Sundays) in areas where if that is where the ball lands, the ball will run right off the green. Most of the greens at Augusta, where they play the Masters, require landing the ball far from the pin and letting the contour of the green take the ball down to the hole.

3. You Are Not Playing 18 Holes. You Are Playing One Hole at a Time

Most golfers think of a round of golf as 9 or 18 holes. That is incorrect. Golf is played one hole at a time. This is not merely semantics, but rather an important distinction. Here’s how:

If you took double bogey on the first three holes, you may be shaking your head thinking about how much it sucks to be plus six after just three holes. There is a strong and mistaken instinct to try to “get some strokes back” by getting birdies on the next few holes. You change your strategy to “make up for the previous mistakes.” You try to hit risky/high reward shots instead of high percentage/low risk shots.

The trouble is that those mistakes from the first three holes are written on the paper in pen in indelible ink. Those strokes will never come back. With three holes in one, those double bogeys are still there. You can’t do anything about them now. They are part of your score and can’t be undone. You are only going to get into worse trouble by going away from your game plan and putting yourself into low percentage positions that your ability can’t handle.

The high handicap golfer who wants to cut his stroke total understands that stroke explosions are going to happen. The smart golfer stays with his game plan, avoids his weaknesses and plays high percentage shots. If he gets lucky and a few drop in that’s all fine and good. Cutting strokes off your game requires smart recovery and limiting damages. This can only be done on a hole by hole basis.

4. Put It To The Test

Play three rounds your way, where you go for par on every hole no matter what the risk. Then play three rounds my way, where you are playing safe to avoid big numbers. Most of you will do better my way.

B. Semi General Considerations

1. Knowledge of the Course

Nearly every course has a website these days where you can get a layout of the course. Why not get one the night before and map out a plan for how you are going to approach each hole? If the course does not have an online presence, perhaps you can stop by and pick up a score card with a drawing of each hole, or better yet a course description booklet with distances.

2. Club Selection

Club selection is your second key to improvement. Examine the hole. Where are the dangers? Where are the choke points (narrowing of the fairway). If you hit a driver, is the fairway bunker going to come into play? Will you really be damaged by hitting a three or four iron? You want to hit the club with the least risk every time.

a. Shorter Clubs Have Less Risk

All things being equal, shorter clubs entail less risk that longer clubs. Example time: Your normal distance for your driver is 260 yards and your normal distance for your seven iron is 150. You make a mistake with either club and slice the ball five degrees to the right. With a driver, the ball goes further, therefore the five degree mistake is magnified. You will likely end up in the rough on the right side of the fairway or worse.

But with the seven iron, the ball does not go as far, and the mistake is minimized. You will likely end up on the right hand side of the fairway or in the first cut of rough.

1) No. 17 at Pine Hill

There is a course of State Route 33 in Ohio between Columbus and Lancaster. It is called Pine Hill. The course finishes with two par fives. No. 17 is a 600 yard par five dead straight and dead flat. It could be a landing strip for crop dusters.

All along the left side of the course is a chain link fence and any ball hit over it is O.B (stroke and distance, hit your tee shot out of bounds and you are about to hit your third shot again from the tee). The fairway has rough on either side, and all through that rough are short pine trees which may or may not block your subsequent shots (either their path or perhaps the path of your club to the ball).

Most golfers who don’t think much about strategy hit a driver as hard as they can, then try to hit a three wood as hard as they can in the vain attempt to reach the green in two and be putting for eagle. But those who want to cut their stroke total take a different strategy.

What if you hit a seven iron off the tee? Chances are that ball will go 150 yards. Then you hit it again. 150 yards. Then you hit it again. 150 yards. Then you hit it again. You are now on the green and one putting for par, two putting for bogey. There is almost no chance of going O.B. There is very little chance of going off the fairway into the deep rough and getting behind one of those pine trees.

What if your four iron normally travels 200? You could hit it three times and you would be on the green. Your fourth shot would be for birdie and your fifth for par. The point of all of this is that the high handicap golfer has very little use for drivers and three woods. The risk/reward spectrum normally takes these clubs out of play. When I really want to shoot a low score, I leave my woods in the trunk.

C. Particular Considerations

1. Use The Clubs That Are Working

It should come as no great surprise to anyone that some days you play well and some days you don’t. Sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you are the bug. But it is a rare day when you are hitting every club badly. Take note of which clubs you are hitting consistently and which ones you are not. If the six iron is working for you, hit the damned thing all day long.

I have had days when I could not hit approach shots into the air. I would chunk them, hit them thin, or top them. The hozzle would hit the ball and my shot would travel nearly 90 degrees to the right. But I found that if I hit a half swing four iron, I could run the shot up to most greens and sometimes dribble on to the front. So I put the lofted clubs in the bag and played four and five iron bump and run shots from 150 yards and in. Everybody thought I was crazy by I went around OSU Scarlet and carded 85.

2. Putt, Don’t Chip or Pitch.

There is an old saying in golf that a bad putt almost always ends up closer to the hole than a good chip. Lee Trevino used to term this technique “Using the Texas Wedge.” The “Texas Wedge” was the putter. Here’s how it works.

You are five feet short of the green and in the fairway. There are no obstructions between you and the hole, and the fairway surface is cut low and even. Your ball lies 25 feet from the hole. You can pitch the ball high into the air and try to land it with spin right next to the hole. This is a low percentage play.

You can take out a five iron and chip the ball onto the green and try to roll it up next to the hole. This is a better percentage play, but it is still difficult to get distance and direction control. You can top it, or chunk it, or hit it thin.

Lastly, you can take out your putter and treat the whole process as a long putt. With a putter there is almost no chance of getting the direction wrong, no chance of topping it, and a small chance of hitting behind the ball. Your only risk here is that the ball might get caught up in the fairway grass and come up short. The “Texas Wedge” is the high percentage play here. A bad putt will leave you 8 feet from the hole. A bad chip will leave you 15 feet from the hole or worse.

VI. Practicing Smarter

I told you above that I would get back to this one, and now I will. For most golfers, just over half of all shots on a golf course are struck from either on the green or within 20 yards of it. Since most shots are putts, chips or pitches, it makes sense that you should spend most of your time working on the short game when you practice. But what do most golfers do? They get a bucket of balls and beat them out onto the range. They are done in 15 minutes, so they get a second bucket and beat those out onto the range as well. Then they go home. Here is how it should be done:

A. Select Your Driving Range Carefully

Only go to driving ranges which have putting greens and chipping greens. If possible, go to one that has a sand trap to practice from.

B. Spend Most of Your Time Off the Driving Range

Purchase the smallest bucket of balls you can and take them directly to the putting green. Pull four of them out and practice putting for 20 minutes. Start with four footers and work backwards. Practice putting from off the green, even through longer grass to get a feel for some Texas Wedge Shots.

Then move on to chipping. Chip over obstacles. Practice chipping with different clubs and take note of which ones provide the most consistent results. Spend 15 minutes here.

Then move back farther and practice pitching and sand shots if possible. You are still working with the same four balls. Spend about 10 minutes on this.

Now you are ready to move to the driving range. But even at that point, work through your bag from the most lofted clubs down to the driver. Make up a course in your head using markers on the driving range so that you have laid out a fairway in your mind. Invent water hazards and tree lines. Pretend that there are sand traps guarding the front of the greens. Judge your shots not just by direction, but also distance. Practice bump and run shots.

This last portion out on the range itself should take you about ten minutes and your hour of practice is complete. You will have gained a great deal more than just hitting two large buckets of balls out into the ocean that is the driving range.