Instruction
8 ways to sharpen your focus on the golf course
Becoming complacent in the sport of golf can often be at the detriment of your game.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Say you’re playing your home course from the same tees you always do, and you come to a par-3 you’ve played countless times. Without thinking you grab the same club you always hit and walk to the tee, possibly giving a quick glance at the pin position or the wind. Then you make a swing and the ball lands on the green. Nice shot.
But what just happened here? You’ve barely placed one ounce of thought as to why or what you’ve just done, and simply put your body and mind on autopilot. This is a dangerous way to play golf, because when there’s a shot on the line that really matters and you try to concentrate “harder” your body and mind will be out of their element.
In this article, I list 8 of my favorite situational drills or ways of thinking that will train you to sharpen your focus on the course. They might just save you strokes when it really matters.
Switch it up
Do you always play the same tees at your home course? And if so, are they are usually never more than a few yards apart from day to day? Take the time to play each hole from different tees every time you play. This will force you to think about club selection, and you’ll most likely notice things about each hole’s design that can help you score better.
Be strategic on the tee
Do you always tee up the ball on the side of the tee closest to the cart path? It’s convenient, but generally ineffective. Instead, do what the pros do. If you play a draw, tee off from the left side of the tee box and aim down the right side of the fairway. If you play a fade, tee off on the right side of the tee box and aim down the left side of the fairway.
Read your chips, too
Is your goal to get the ball as close to the hole as possible when pitching? Would you accept 3 feet most of the time? “Sure,” you say. But what if I gave you a full 18 holes of downhill, left-to-right 3-foot sliders on super fast greens? That wouldn’t make you so happy.
Statistically, right-handed golfers make more uphill, right-to-left putts (lefties make more uphill, left-to-right putts), so try to leave yourself an uphill putt that breaks toward you. Before you take your next chip shot, give some thought to the slope around the hole and think about the putt you want to leave yourself.
Lie analysis
Do you really look at your lie closely when hitting a longer club from the fairway? Even balls in the fairway can sit more up or more down than usual, and if you’re hitting a hybrid or fairway wood the lie can make a huge difference in the carry, height, and landing angle of your shot. Check out the lie, and choose your club accordingly.
Sand in the bunker
Do you ever pay attention to what you feel under your feet when walking into a bunker? Most people don’t. You cannot test the surface of a hazard when playing golf, but you can pay attention to what you feel with your feet. If you walk around in the bunker, you will be able to feel where the bunker has more and less sand, which will control how you play the shot at hand.
Topography
Have you ever hit a putt on your intended line only to see it break away from the hole, or drastically misjudged the speed of a putt? I’m guessing you have. Before reading your putt, take a look the topography of the green complex itself. You might just find yourself on the side of a hill running one way or the other, affecting your read.
Laying up
When you lay up on a par-5, do you always hit your shot as close to the green as you can? Most people do, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you should ask yourself a few questions before simply wailing away.
- What does the fairway do?
- Where is the best yardage?
- What is the best angle to the green from the fairway?
- What is your best yardage?
Related: A strategy to score lower on par-5s
Last Look
When you’re aiming away from trouble or trying to avoid it, what is the last thing you look at before you hit your shot? It better be your target and not what you’re trying to avoid. Your body and the golf ball usually gravitate toward what you look at last before pulling the trigger, so make it the right thought
Remember, take the time to mix up the game, and don’t forget to use your brain! Your handicap index will thank you.
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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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Brando
Sep 23, 2016 at 10:58 pm
A good time to hijack this thread given Tigers face to this article…..any of you heard Tiger being part of a Chinese consortium to buy TalorMade Golf where he’ll be the face of TM? I’m surprised Wrx hasn’t published an article on it yet…maybe they’re writing it as we speak? Can’t see it happening…what do you think guys?
tom stickney
Sep 23, 2016 at 12:33 pm
I will do an article on “Lie Analysis” for everyone as well! 🙂
devilsadvocate
Sep 23, 2016 at 6:42 am
Funny to read all the “what you should have done” and “what you forgot” comments … Great Jon Tom keep up the good work
devilsadvocate
Sep 23, 2016 at 6:39 am
Wow good one! What a zinger!
Oooh
Sep 23, 2016 at 3:21 am
What’s wrong with a nice sip of coca-cola every hole just to keep it up? No guzzling, just a sip after every green.
Emilia
Sep 23, 2016 at 3:15 am
Agreed about articles on lie analysis. It’s something I’ve learned to focus on from the rough, sand and around the greens but much less in the fairway.
KoreanSlumLord
Sep 22, 2016 at 10:35 pm
Boy have times changed. Whatever happened to just sparking up a j when the beer was making your swing sloppy? I sure missed living and playing in Hawaii in the 70s and 80s.
Double Mocha Man
Sep 22, 2016 at 8:44 pm
“If you walk around in the bunker, you will be able to feel where the bunker has more and less sand…” Yes, but who is going to rake the entire trap for me? I usually get a feel for the density of the sand near my ball when I scrunch my feet down into the sand. If I hit rock bottom pretty quick I know what to expect. If it’s dry sand like at the beach and my feet just keep drilling down, I know what to expect.
mctrees02
Sep 22, 2016 at 3:32 pm
What goodwill do you earn by posting negative comments on an article? I struggle to understand why some feel the need to trash simple, helpful information just because they are all-knowing.
While some/most of these things may seem obvious to many of the avid golfers that read this website, it’s never a bad idea to get a refresher on the mental game.
ooffa
Sep 22, 2016 at 3:52 pm
Calm down dude. geeeez,
Bert
Sep 23, 2016 at 9:00 am
Agree! Tom’s article is constructive. We can all, as I did, worry about slow play. Good constructive comments Tom.
emb
Sep 22, 2016 at 2:31 pm
Nothing group breaking here, I can’t believe people don’t already do all these things anyways, if you’re not then you’re not allowing yourself to play to your potential. These should already be second nature if you’re truly trying to score your best and not just go out there and swing away aimlessly.
Nomnom
Sep 22, 2016 at 2:24 pm
OMG I can’t believe this article forgot to mention the most obvious one:
Hit a different club for a change. In that Par 3 scenario, so you change tee position and you also change from which side of tee.
Why not hit a different club? So you hit a 9 iron all the time, take an 8 or a 7 and see if you can hit the target.
Same with every other hole. May be this one day you just don’t play the driver.
Etc etc.
I don’t think the writer of the article knows how to play golf
Patricknorm
Sep 23, 2016 at 8:21 am
I think you just outed yourself. Tom’s forgotten more than you’ll ever know. Maybe take a moment and peruse his past 150 articles. And how often have you broken 70? Not all of us are scratch.
Bert
Sep 23, 2016 at 9:06 am
I knew Tom when he was teaching at Sandestin Golf Resort many years ago. He was a great teacher then and obviously better now and yes, he can play!
tom stickney
Sep 23, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Nom—
We’ll all be waiting for your article on how you’d teach and play golf…
GregC
Sep 22, 2016 at 12:20 pm
Maybe you could do an article on Lie Analysis. What to look for, what to expect, etc., from certain lies. Seeing output from Trackman might lend additional context to the discussion. What causes a flier, how things change when it’s wet, does it differ with 4 irons vs 9 irons. I always hear “read your lie” but no one ever seems to say “here is how you do it”.
mctrees02
Sep 22, 2016 at 3:30 pm
Agreed about an article on lie analysis. It’s something I’ve learned to pay attention to from the rough, sand and around the greens but not as much in the fairway.
JayG
Sep 22, 2016 at 12:02 pm
simple, great stuff here!