Instruction
Game of the Weekend: 18 holes of up-and-down… with a twist
If you’re like most golfers, you expect to go out this weekend and hit great shots and great putts. And it’s these great ones that keep golfers coming back. The reality is, however, that golf is a tough game and golfers mostly hit average shots — whatever that is for you.
So how to you hit more great shots? It starts with the proper practice, which means you need to simulate on-course pressure on the driving range, short game area and putting green. For that, you need games that help you measure your performance so you know what skills need to improve.
For this week’s Game of the Weekend, you’ll start by imagining that you’re having a tough day of ball striking. The key to scoring well on these days is to realize that bad ball striking days are going to happen, regardless of your skill level. If you can come to that realization and create a scenario like we have in this game, you’ll learn how to shoot “A” scores with your “C” long game.
The Game: 18 Holes of Up-and-Down … with a twist
- Gear needed: A putter and your chipping clubs.
- Time needed: About 20-30 minutes to play one round.
Rules: The “twist” is in how you prep this game. You need to pretend you’ve missed every single green in regulation. It’s been a terrible day of ball striking, but you can still salvage a good day of scoring with a great short game. From within 5 yards of the green, hit a shot to the hole and proceed by putting out. You’ll do this for a total of 18 “holes” that are played from a different location each time.
Add up your scores just as if you were playing on the course. If you chip-in, then you’ve earned a birdie. If you get up-and-down, scoring a two for that particular attempt, that’s a par. Taking three shots leaves you with a bogey, and so on.
You can enter your scores into our interactive practice website, www.golfscrimmages.com, which should be based on a par-72 course. For example, if you have zero chip-ins and fail to get up-and-down five times — scoring a bogey for each of those times — then you’d be 5-over par. The score you should enter is a 77.
Benefits: Here’s what this game helps you with.
- Seeing a decent score next to your name after such “a terrible day of ball striking” should give you confidence that even on your worst day of ball striking you can still salvage the day.
- When you do have a tough day with your full swing, you’ll be better prepared, and by playing this game you’ll worry less about your full-swing woes and more about getting the ball in the hole.
Enjoy this great Game of the Weekend!
More Games
- Game of the Weekend: 100
- Game of the Weekend: Go Low
- Game of the Weekend: Chipping Median
- Game of the Weekend: Drawback
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Trojan
Sep 1, 2015 at 3:22 pm
I use a similar version with a twist. I get a random number generator app for my phone and set the number of pins on the putting. / chipping green. Then let the god decide what hole I’m going for. This is much better as you have no say in the type of shot ( prevents subliminal favouring of your best type of shot ). Next day start from a diff position for variety.
golfraven
Aug 31, 2015 at 9:16 am
I like the idea. Do you focus on pitching/chipping/putting only or also bunker play? I could imagine that you can replicate different positions around the green and also pin position – short, long, left and right of the green dependent on the hole. For instance you could practice to play a position short of the green on each hole and assuming you know the golf course and holes you would have bunch of different lies and challenges – downhill, uphill, over a bunker, over water/longer pitch, long or short chip.
JH
Sep 1, 2015 at 8:33 am
I’ve been doing a similar version of this for a while before I even read this article. To answer your question it is all up to you. The key is to use 1 ball and play it like it is a mini course. If you want to play it out of sand go for it. I have several times. I try to play through each scenario at least once when I do it.
My version is a Par 2/3 course and play as far back as 50 yards from the green, or where a full Lob wedge shot can be played. I take my shot, putt it out and record how many strokes it took me. then I’ll replay that same distance and try to beat my score, unless I made par. If I do I pick a new spot, if I don’t I replay it again and again until I do.
It is a great practice tool and has helped tremendously with my wedge play. The articles version is just as good, but I like to think of every hole being a Par 2 or 3 instead of trying to get up and down in 2 and recording it as a 4.
Ronald Montesano
Aug 29, 2015 at 12:05 pm
Wouldn’t a par of 36 work? If you drive into the woods and have to punch out, you’ll then miss the green with your third shot and try to get up and down for bogey, not par. That said, I like the idea…no I love the idea of this game. I plan to incorporate it into my varsity team’s practice schedule this fall.
sgniwder99
Aug 29, 2015 at 9:23 am
I’ve played a version of this game before (not really imagining a score, just aiming for as many up-and-downs with one ball per hole location, 9 holes at a time, as I could manage). It’s definitely a great game for bringing some “reality” to your chipping practice. My issue with it is primarily that I haven’t actually found many places where I can do it very often. Most courses don’t let you chip on the putting green, and if they do have a chipping green I hate to be that annoying guy who’s obliviously practicing his putting in the way of everyone who’s trying to practice their chipping on the green designated for that purpose.
Chuck
Aug 28, 2015 at 1:41 pm
btw: The article clearly gives the link to the scoring website. I should have looked more carefully at that. It is pretty clearly my fault alone.
But the video, which I watched as soon as I saw the video link without reading the entire article, talks about “entering” your score without mentioning the [alternative] scoring website.
Rob
Aug 28, 2015 at 12:55 pm
When I was in college, me and a buddy couldn’t afford to play so we would play this game competitively. We took turns picking spots around the practice green and picking which pin to hit to. We typically played match play format, and the gamble was a beer a hole. Nothing simulates in-round pressure like having to get up and down for “par” on the 18th hole with a case of beer (the presses got pretty insane) on the line, when you have barely enough gas money to make it home.
If you really want to improve, play against a person who is much better than you and instead of just picking spots, mandate a club selection too and you’ll get really creative.
We played for hours and it took a while for all that practice to carry over to the course, but after one season I had knocked 4.5 strokes off my index.
Chuck
Aug 28, 2015 at 12:48 pm
So this is a great drill. They way that I would employ it, would be to do it with a friend, and bet some money on it in a match play format. (Or do it at 6:00 after work, and bet drinks on the outcome.) Match play puts pressure on repeated holes, virtually every shot. The outcome ought to be a real win, or a real loss.
BUT…
I have grave doubts about anybody introducing these “scores” into the GHIN system through your local golf association. I think that it’s a potentially serious distortion of the handicap system. I would NEVER enter a score from a game like this for purposes of establishing or updating a handicap! And I am not even going to bother to look up which handicapping rules it might violate.
Steve
Aug 28, 2015 at 1:04 pm
Where was GHIN ever mentioned? The article talks about entering scores into their interactive practice website…
Chuck
Aug 28, 2015 at 1:37 pm
As quick as I could, I tried to log back on to say that I misunderstood; nobody is turning in the scores to GHIN; scores are to be turned into a score-posting site for this game.
My. Bad.
I. Apologize.
And yeah, as I originally said, I still think the game is a good idea, and I like it and I’ll definitely do it.
Mark
Aug 28, 2015 at 11:40 am
Great practice routine! I teach the same game to my students, but have it 14 up and downs for par and 4 for birdie (greenside on a par 5 in two shots). Gives a little excitement to the game, and there’s nothing like a good up and down for birdie.