I don’t know about you, but I love the range. Weekend mornings when you know there is no way the wife is giving you the green light to go play a 5 hour round of golf is a great time to sneak out to “hit a few balls”Unfortunately, most of us do this:  Get a 100 balls, head to the range, whack them as fast a possible then go home. While I am all for whacking 100 balls, it is just not a good way to improve.  Over the past year or so, I have really learned to enjoy actually practicing. My typical long format routine is to get a small bucket of balls and take them over to the chipping green. I will hit about 10 balls from a few different spots using a couple of different clubs so that I can become more comfortable with a variety of shots.

I then head to the driving range. Prior the going to the range (like at home), I think about what I want to work that day on so that I have a plan. Tinkering around with swings is not only a horrible thing to do during a round, but it is also not a great idea for the range.  That is not to say you should not try something new on the range but you should not be hopping around from idea to idea looking for a silver bullet.  Maybe you just read a swing tip in a golf magazine-great time to try it out. But not a great time to vary stance, grip, take away and swing plane in random order.

Besides being cheaper, the other advantage of only getting a small bucket is that it makes you more patient. This way I am more likely to line up my shots and vary the clubs I hit. Sometimes I will play the 1st five holes on my home course in my head. And the best part about Saturday mornings at the range is that there are always guys who have to leave their extra range ball to go tee off. Thank you very much!

My last stop is the putting green. Rolling 40 foot putts is what I mostly work on. Specifically, I am now trying to better utilize the power of the brain. I really believe that the brain can do a great job of judging pace and direction if you let it. As a test, try looking at the hole the entire time you putt a 40 footer. You will be amazed how well you do. I am now spending more time just looking at the line trying to let my brain take in the information. One other drill I like is to take a single ball and simulate a 20-40 foot situation, trying to get down in two. I will do this 10 times and see how many times I convert.

So that is it. Takes about 90 minutes but you really feel like you have played a lot of golf. Best part-it only costs 1 token!

Since we only shoot under our handicap about 20% of the time, we often reach the 4th tee box and realize our swing is not exactly Tigerish that day.  This is the point when depression sets in knowing all of our hopes and dreams of going low that day are fading away.

Now if you are like Matt, who just cares about hitting it pure, then change nothing except swing harder and drink twice as many beers and normal.  However, if you are like me and want to try to post a decent score then here are a few things to consider:

1) Try not to fix your swing mid-round. However you may need to be able to go to a simpler place.  For me, it is a shorter back swing.  If you watch most pro’s, they seem to barely take the club back.  In fact they are getting a ton of tork, but their arms really do not swing too far.  Taking a shorter back swing (with a one piece take-away) will help to minimize the bad stuff.

2) Focus on your short game.  Believing that despite shaky driver and iron play, you can still score with a good short game.  With this confidence you can reduce big numbers and scramble for pars here and there.  Even high handicappers never jack a putt into the woods so we don’t have to worry about going OB with a wedge or putter.  This knowledge should allow us to focus on being really good around the green.

3) Think Tiger.  Yea, I am a Tiger lover so getting into that mode of finding a way to get a decent number even when you are playing your C+ game can be fun and challenging.  Plus it takes away the focus on what you are not doing so well that day.

So hopefully your next round will be all fairways and greens, but if not, see what you can do about banging out a respectable round.  It will also come in handy when you are in a position to go low and need to salvage a par or bogie from a bad tee shot on the 16th hole.

Probably the greatest fault that everyone who doesn’t play golf for a living makes is aligning themselves incorrectly.  Before we’ve tried to make any move on the ball, we are lined up in a way that makes it extra hard for our body to make a good golf swing, no matter how much we’ve worked on our form or technique.  That may sound crazy, but if you watch the greatest pros when they practice on the range, they almost all lay down a club or alignment stick… not because they’re forgetful or idiots, but because there is an optical illusion in golf that is really hard to make your brain believe.

One of the easiest ways to see it is to find a relatively straight section of cart path, and stand on one side of the cart path—left side if you are right handed, right side if you are left.  Now, imagine that you are holding a monster long driver that would reach across the cart path, and your ball was teed up on the other side of the path from you.  If you take a look down the cart path, your intended target would be on the line of the other side of the cart path.  If you are right-handed, that would look out to your right.  If you imagine taking a swing with that monster driver, and trying to get the ball started on the line of the other side of the path, you’ll see what I mean.  You will feel like you would really have to swing out to the right to get it going online.  It’s the same thing with your actual clubs.

So, on the course, it’s a really good idea to get directly behind your ball when you are looking at a shot, and pick out a couple of targets inline between your ball and your target.  I like to try to pick out something in the 5 to 10 foot range in front of my target, and then maybe something 30 yards out.  When I then take my practice swings, I try to do that behind the ball, swinging out to the right (it will feel like swinging out to an imaginary second baseman) towards those intermediate targets I have picked out.  I then set up to the ball, with my feet parallel left of the target line, give those intermediate targets a glance, glance at the target and start my takeaway.

For me, the times I get in the most trouble with loss of height, distance and accuracy with all of my clubs, and even my chipping, is when I don’t setup to swing out to my right, but somehow try to swing towards a target that is on my toe line.  This leads to a pull across the ball every time.  And so, I try to work on this every time I’m at the range or playing; and I hope this idea can help you too.

No, I am not talking about the driver.  What I am talking about is your irons.  How many times do we fly the green?  Almost never.  What we do a lot is come up short.  Why?  Because we measure the distance to the middle or front of the green and club appropriately with the assumption we will hit it pure.  Unfortunately, we hit it pure not nearly as often as we would like.

Try this, club to the distance to the back of the green.  Yes, you may fly it every so often, but your misses will be better.  I love stats, so I would recommend charting a few rounds.  See how often you come up short. If it is significant, start clubbing to the back of the green.

Finally, I think this advise holds for chips and putts as well. Again, check your own stats.  If you are like most mid to high handicappers, we leave everything short like there is an extra penalty for going long.  The old saying is true, it can’t go in the hole if you don’t get it to it.

Good stuff, Adam.  I really appreciate the conversation about chipping, and after spending some time on my chipping yesterday with different degree wedges, I’m reminded of how much more time I need to spend on it : )

I also thought that I would share something that has helped my lag putting tremendously.  My ex-father-in-law had me stand open to the target line on my putting when he was teaching me how to put, and I didn’t really understand why.  He wasn’t always the greatest at explaining why he wanted you to do something, even if he had won a lot of money doing it that way. And what I mean by ‘open’ is that instead of lining up to putt in the traditional way where your feet are lined up parallel to the target line, he had me stand more facing the target, where my left foot was behind the parallel line that my feet are on, and toed more open towards the target, than when I take my normal swing stance (I am right-handed).

I know that Jack Nicklaus stood open to the target line, but he crouched way over and also stood pigeon-toed, and so I didn’t really get it until I saw another tip where the instructor talked about how good your targeting is with your dominant hand—for me, again, my right.  He said that if you faced the target and took a ball in your right hand and simply tossed it at the hole, you’d get it very close.  Gary McCord has gone as far as redesigning his putter to be straight up and down so he can face the target and swing beside his leg at the hole while simply facing the hole.

I’m not that ‘open,’ but I do get my read for each putt, facing the hole, and then always imagine tossing the ball at the hole, underhanded with my right hand.  Then I take my stance and just try to toss the putter head that same way toward the hole, or on my intended line.  The human targeting mechanism is an amazing thing—some of you may have read a book called ‘instinct shooting,’ about shooting a gun, and it’s the same idea.  If you’re having trouble getting your putts close, you may want to use some trial and error with how ‘open’ to stand, but give this a try, and let your natural dominant hand targeting help you.

For mid to high handicappers, double bogeys do not come from bad drives as much ase they come from dumb short game decisions.  Here is what happens- we hit a decent drive, hit an iron to 15-35 yards off the green then chunk/skull a chip, get mad and chip again,  two putt for double bogey.

Now I am not going to give anyone advice on how to chip as I have my own issues, but what I can tell you is that an average golfer is horrible at getting up and down-we just don’t do it.  Sure, every so often we snuggle one up to the hole, but that is the exception. The good news is that we putt pretty well. Typically we can two putt from most anywhere.  Don’t believe me?  Track how many times you get up and down in a round (even if it is not for par).  Track how many 3 putts you have and track how many times you have to chip more than one time to get on the green.  If you don’t get up and down more times than you have to chip more than once then this advice is for you!

Once you acknowledge the fact that amateurs can’t chip for beans, you can approach the situation smarter.  For example, if you ever are thinking “I just need to lightly pitch it to the fridge and run it down to the hole” …STOP!  You are not going to make that shot nearly as many times as you are going to chunk the ball and have to make the same shot again.

Statistics show, amateurs rarely get up and down outside of 10 yards off of the green so we should be thinking-Just get it on the green.  Take your chance at a 15 foot par putt and settle for a tap in bogey.

If you are taking 3-7 doubles a round, I would bet nearly all of those come from dumb play around the green.  I really think that by watching the pros play, we start to believe we should be trying to chip to 4 feet no matter what.  Well, I am sorry, we are not that good.  Learn to play safe chip shots and you will quickly eliminate the doubles.  Just find a club and spot that is the safest.

It seems like everyone wants to have Tiger’s swing, or maybe Phil’s, but what about Rocco?  I mean didn’t this guy take Tiger to the limit a few years ago?  I know it is not super pretty or technically perfect, but it actually looks a lot more like us regular guys.  I will admit I am a bit of video whore when it come to golf, but I really like this one.  He makes some very simple points, namely keeping your elbows toward the ground at all times.

Like most amatures, we all get caught up in too many swing thoughts so finding just a few simple ones can really help.  Rocco helps to show that a simple not so technical swing can be very effective.

Feel vs Real: My day job is that I’m a professional musician, and I’ve had the pleasure of doing that for the past 20+ years.  One thing I understand is muscle memory, and what it’s like to perform under pressure. And despite being from a very athletic family, I’ve never done anything like golf; where one day, or even for 9 holes, or even three holes for that matter, you’ll seem to have it, and then it seems to go away–  the feel… the ‘it’ that you can sense in your swing.  The ball is going the right distance, the right trajectory, and things seem pretty good, and then maybe you make a few rough swings and then you feel it slipping away, and in a few holes the good feelings are lost.

Today, I played a decent front 9 for me, and made some key up and downs when I missed the green.  I was feeling like I didn’t have my normal distance on my drives, but I was mostly hitting it where I was looking.  Somewhere as I turned to the back 9, I felt like I was starting to come across the ball, and I started losing distance. It only got worse as I tried harder to feel what was wrong and make changes.  After the bogies piled up and I couldn’t get it together except for a few decent swings, I went to the range to see if I could make any sense of the change from the front 9 to the back 9.

Something I try to look at every time I’m at the range is a few keys… grip, posture, setup, connection with my left arm laying on top of my chest.  Finally after hitting some decent shots, but still fighting an outside-in move, which is not normal for me, I checked a position in my takeaway where I’m halfway back.  I like the club to be parallel to the ground, and on my toe line when the club is just below waist high at that point.  And as turned my shoulders and I swung back to check that point, I realized that I had felt like I was in the right position, but in fact, I had been taking the club away outside, and missing where I wanted to be.  I knew from there, I was taking the club up and then swinging back down outside the downswing path I wanted, and then across the ball on my release.

So, I worked on hitting some shots where I made sure that I hit the position I wanted on the way back.  And it felt wrong at first… too inside and like maybe I was crowding myself.  But in working with the ‘wrong’ feeling, my ball flight straightened out, my distance returned with short and long irons, and I even it the exact post on the fence with my driver that I was aiming at around 250 yards out.

I went back out and played three more holes, and made very easy pars where the birdie putts just rolled across the edges.  Good drives, good approaches and straight ball flight back to my correct distance.  Does any of this sound familiar?  I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts and experiences on how your ‘feel’ vs. ‘real’ affects your game.

So there you are in front of the TV watching golf when the sudden urge to hit balls comes over you. Here’s a little trick to get you over the craving. Just take a little piece of practice mat and gather some of those pesky gum balls that drop in your yard. They actually fly pretty true and you get a little yard work done while you groove your swing.