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Wh e n Ba d Th i n g s H a p p e n t o B a d G ol f e r s Troubleshooting the 150 most troublesome shots
G a r y P e r k i n s o n a n d T. J . To m a s i
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Wh e n Ba d Th i n g s H a p p e n t o B a d G ol f e r s Troubleshooting the 150 most troublesome shots
G a r y P e r k i n s o n a n d T. J . To m a s i
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2008 by Gary Perkinson and T. J. Tomasi. All rights reserved Photographs copyright © 2008 by David Bergman/www.DavidBergman.net. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Perkinson, Gary. When bad things happen to bad golfers : troubleshooting the 150 most troublesome shots / Gary Perkinson and T.J. Tomasi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-19061-6 (cloth) 1. Golf. 2. Golf—Technique. I. Tomasi, T. J. II. Title. GV965.P444 2008 796.352’3—dc22 2007035509 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To frustrated golfers everywhere
Contents
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction
1 Pa rt I
The Five Faces of the Perfect Club 7 Ball Position
9
Shoulder Position
10
The Five Faces
14 Pa rt II
The Tee Box 21 Chapter 1: Trouble Ahead
23
1-1. What’s the best way to prepare myself for my tee shot?
23
1-2. Which club should I hit off the tee?
26
1-3. How should I grip the club in the tee box?
26
1-4. How do I know if I’m standing properly on the tee?
29
1-5. How do I know if I’m aiming properly on the tee?
31
vi
Contents
1-6. Where in the tee box should I tee the ball?
32
1-7. How high should I tee the ball?
32
1-8. How do I adjust my tee shot for the wind?
34
1-9. How do I keep from getting fleeced on the first tee?
37
Chapter 2: Tee-Box Swing Disasters
39
2-1. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball with my driver.
39
2-2. I keep hitting the ball thin, off the bottom of the clubface.
40
2-3. I keep hitting grounders off the tee—I can’t get the ball airborne.
42
2-4. I keep missing the ball completely on the tee.
43
2-5. I keep popping up my tee shots.
45
2-6. I can’t get any distance with my driver off the tee.
46
2-7. My tee shots go straight right.
49
2-8. My tee shots go straight left.
52
2-9. My tee shots start right and then slice farther right.
53
2-10. My tee shots start left and then hook farther left.
55
2-11. My tee shots start straight and then slice right.
57
2-12. My tee shots start straight and hook left.
58
2-13. My tee shots start left and slice right.
59
2-14. My tee shots start right and hook left.
61
Chapter 3: Tiny Terrors
63
3-1. Where should I aim my ball on a par-3?
63
3-2. How much less club should I take on a downhill par-3?
65
3-3. How much more club should I take on an uphill par-3?
66
3-4. Should I ever lay up on a par-3?
67
Contents
vii
Pa rt III
The Fairway 69 Chapter 4: Okay, Now Do It without a Tee
71
4-1. Which club should I hit from the fairway?
71
4-2. When should I lay up? How do I pick a layup spot?
72
4-3. What should I do if I’m “between” clubs?
73
4-4. How do I know if I’m standing properly for a long shot from the fairway?
74
4-5. How do I adjust for the wind on shots outside 100 yards?
75
Chapter 5: The Unfairway
77
5-1. My ball is above my feet in the fairway or the rough.
77
5-2. My ball is below my feet in the fairway or the rough.
79
5-3. My ball is sitting in a divot on the fairway.
80
5-4. My ball is sitting on a downhill slope.
81
5-5. My ball is sitting on an uphill slope.
82
5-6. My ball is sitting on bare ground.
83
5-7. My ball is sitting in heavy rough off the fairway.
84
5-8. My ball is sitting in light rough off the fairway.
85
5-9. My ball has landed on a bed of pine needles.
86
5-10. My ball has landed in the middle of a fairway bunker.
87
5-11. My ball has landed in the back of a fairway bunker.
88
5-12. My ball has landed under the front lip of a fairway bunker.
90
5-13. My ball is buried in a fairway bunker.
91
5-14. My ball has landed on a cart path.
92
5-15. My ball has landed in rocks.
93
5-16. My ball has landed in a stand of trees.
94
viii
Contents
5-17. My ball has landed close to a wall, a tree, or another large object.
95
5-18. My ball has landed in a couple of inches of water on or near the fairway.
98
5-19. My ball is sitting in the weeds.
99
5-20. My ball has landed on a parallel fairway.
100
5-21. I need to hit a blind shot over a hill to the green.
102
5-22. I need to hit a high shot over an obstacle.
103
5-23. I need to hit a low shot under an obstacle.
104
Chapter 6: Fairway Swing Disasters
106
6-1. I keep hitting the ball fat with my hybrids and fairway woods.
106
6-2. I keep hitting the ball thin with my hybrids and fairway woods.
108
6-3. I keep topping my hybrids and fairway woods.
110
6-4. I keep missing the ball completely with my hybrids and fairway woods.
110
6-5. I keep shanking my hybrids and fairway woods.
111
6-6. I can’t get any distance with my hybrids and fairway woods.
112
6-7. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods go straight right.
112
6-8. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods go straight left.
113
6-9. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start right and slice farther right.
115
6-10. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start left and hook farther left.
115
6-11. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start straight and slice right.
115
6-12. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start straight and hook left.
115
Contents
ix
6-13. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start left and slice right.
116
6-14. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start right and hook left.
116
Pa rt IV
The Short Game 117 Chapter 7: Getting Closer
119
7-1. Which club should I hit from inside 100 yards?
119
7-2. How do I adjust for the wind inside 100 yards?
120
7-3. What’s this funny-looking thing on the bottom of my sand wedge?
122
7-4. My ball is above my feet near the green.
123
7-5. My ball is below my feet near the green.
124
7-6. My ball is in a divot near the green.
126
7-7. My ball is on a downhill slope near the green.
127
7-8. My ball is on an uphill slope near the green.
128
7-9. My ball is on bare ground near the green.
129
7-10. My ball is in heavy greenside rough.
130
7-11. My ball is in light greenside rough.
132
7-12. My ball is sitting on pine needles near the green.
133
7-13. My ball is in the middle of a greenside bunker.
134
7-14. My ball is in the back of a greenside bunker.
136
7-15. My ball is buried in a greenside bunker.
137
7-16. My ball is half-buried in a greenside bunker.
138
7-17. My ball is under the front lip of a greenside bunker.
139
7-18. I’m in a greenside bunker with very little green to work with.
140
Contents
7-19. My ball has landed in a pot bunker near the green.
141
7-20. My ball is in the middle of a bunker 50 yards from the green.
142
7-21. My ball is in the back of a bunker 50 yards from the green. 145 7-22. My ball is half-buried in a bunker 50 yards from the green. 146 7-23. My ball is on an uphill lie in a greenside bunker.
146
7-24. My ball is on a downhill lie in a greenside bunker.
147
7-25. My ball is in deep rough 50 yards from the green.
148
7-26. My ball is in the rough at the base of a steep greenside hill. 149 7-27. My ball has landed in rocks near the green.
150
7-28. My ball has landed in a stand of trees near the green.
151
7-29. My ball has landed close to a wall or a tree near the green. 152 7-30. My ball has landed under low-hanging branches near the green and I can’t get an iron on it.
152
7-31. My ball has landed in a couple of inches of water near the green.
153
7-32. My ball has landed in the weeds near the green.
153
7-33. My ball has landed in a waste area.
153
7-34. I need to hit a high shot over an obstacle near the green.
154
7-35. I need to hit a low shot under an obstacle near the green.
155
7-36. My ball is in a wet sand bunker.
156
Chapter 8: Short-Game Swing Disasters
158
8-1. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball on full shots with my short and mid-irons. 158 8-2. I keep hitting the ball thin on full shots with my short and mid-irons. 160 8-3. I keep hitting grounders on full shots with my short and mid-irons.
161
8-4. I keep my missing the ball completely on full shots with my short and mid-irons.
161
Contents
xi
8-5. I keep shanking my short and mid-irons.
162
8-6. I keep pulling my full-shot short and mid-irons.
164
8-7. I keep pushing my full-shot short and mid-irons.
165
8-8. I keep hitting the ground behind my ball on chips and pitches.
166
8-9. I keep hitting my chips and pitches thin.
168
8-10. I keep leaving the ball in the sand on greenside bunker shots.
170
8-11. I keep skulling the ball out of the bunker.
171
8-12. I just can’t hit a proper greenside sand shot. Is there an alternative?
172
Pa rt V
The Green 175 Chapter 9: Getting Ready to Roll
178
9-1. Which type of putter is best for me?
178
9-2. What’s the best way to grip my putter?
182
9-3. How do I know if I’m standing properly as I putt?
183
9-4. What’s the best way to stroke a putt?
186
9-5. What can I learn from the design and topography of a putting green?
187
9-6. How does plumb-bobbing work?
189
9-7. How will bent grass affect my putts?
190
9-8. How will Bermuda grass affect my putts?
190
9-9. When should I putt from off the green?
191
9-10. When should I chip from off the green?
192
9-11. Should I keep the flagstick in when putting or chipping from off the green?
194
xii
Contents
Chapter 10: You Want Me to Aim This Where?
195
10-1. How do I putt downhill?
195
10-2. How do I putt uphill?
197
10-3. How do I read and stroke a left-to-right putt?
197
10-4. How do I read and stroke a right-to-left putt?
198
10-5. How do I determine the break on a short putt?
198
10-6. What’s the best way to determine the speed of a short putt? 198 10-7. How do I determine the break on a long putt?
199
10-8. How do I determine the speed of a long putt?
199
10-9. How do I putt from a lower tier to a higher tier?
200
10-10. How do I putt from a higher tier to a lower tier?
201
10-11. My ball is blocked by a dogleg in the green.
202
Chapter 11: Putting-Stroke Disasters
204
11-1. I keep bouncing and skipping my putts.
204
11-2. I keep hitting the ball with the toe of my putter.
205
11-3. I keep hitting the ball with the heel of my putter.
207
11-4. I keep hitting the ball with the bottom edge of the putterface.
207
11-5. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball with my putter.
209
11-6. I keep missing my breaking putts on the high side.
210
11-7. I keep missing my breaking putts on the low side.
210
11-8. I keep missing my putts long.
212
11-9. I keep leaving my putts short.
213
11-10. I keep pushing my putts right.
214
11-11. I keep pulling my putts left.
215
Glossary
216
Index
221
Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our warmest thanks to the following people for their help in making this book possible: Nancy Banks, David Bergman, Matt Bevan, Amy Meyerson, Mitchell Spearman, and June Tomasi; our agent, Paul Fedorko; and our editor at Wiley, Stephen Power.
xiii
Introduction
T
he year was 1992. The place was Phoenix, Arizona. I was a struggling young golf writer working one of the toughest beats in the country: the seedy, cutthroat world of Southwestern PGA Section golf. (Okay, okay. I was actually kind of a lazy, slightly overweight, early-middle-age golf writer who lived in a nice apartment with a balcony overlooking the mountains, drank a lot of beer, flew around to tony resorts, got lots of free golf shirts, and teed it up for nothing.) But though I may not have struggled much with the Arizona lifestyle, the game of golf was definitely another story. I wasn’t a complete waste of time on the golf course—like a lot of hackers, I’d played other sports, and I could occasionally put together a few good shots, or a few good holes, or even a couple of decent rounds from time to time. But in the overall skill hierarchy of the industry in which I worked, I pretty much sucked. Working down the hall from me at the time was a crotchety, chessplaying golf professional from Burlington, Vermont, named T. J. Tomasi. We’d met a few years earlier in New York, but we hadn’t really
When Bad Things Happen to Bad Golfers
hung out until we met again in our Phoenix offices and realized that we were living right around the corner from each other, he next to a golf course, and I, somehow fittingly, next to a mall. We soon became fast friends, playing courses all over the valley and then retiring to the Tomasi homestead to drink, play chess, and watch golf. I listened reverentially as the master complained about the vagaries of his own game and then analyzed the swings of the guys on TV. I realized pretty quickly just how much I had to learn about this old, mysterious game, and I also realized that whether I liked it or not, I was probably going to have to learn it from this guy. My real golf education with T. J., however, was reserved for those ovenlike Phoenix summer days when we would trudge over to the local daily-fee courses that the tourists avoided like the plague. I think he and I enjoyed these rounds not only because we entertained each other—I with impossible 2-iron shots out of the desert scrub that never worked, and he with silent fits of rage over just-missed shots that I would have died for but that he deemed to be complete garbage—but because we both knew that we were probably the only people in the state of Arizona willing to put up with each other’s nonsense. I drifted out of the golf world a few years later, but I kept in touch with T. J. as he made his way to various head professional positions around the country and I took my writing and editing skills to fields as weirdly unrelated as baseball and animal welfare. And when my career eventually came full circle and I took a job in 2006 writing instruction articles for Golf magazine, T. J. had already been elected to the magazine’s “Top 100 Teachers in America” list, which meant that we would officially be imparting—or imposing, depending on your point of view—our vast collected knowledge of the golf swing to the masses. It was around this time I started thinking that if I had learned anything over all those years of writing about swing planes, reverse weight shifts, and spine angles, it’s that average golfers are desperate
Introduction
for information that they can take to the golf course the next day, or the next weekend, and use to fix—even temporarily—whatever it is that’s ailing their game. They all know that they should be taking lessons, and some of them do. But most of them don’t, sometimes due to cost, but more often due to a lack of time. I knew that golf magazines—with all of their drawbacks and limitations—and, more recently, the Internet, were serving that purpose, but I also knew that even at their best, these sources of information were often unable to bring together under one roof all the problems and situations that a typical weekend golfer faces when he heads out to the course with his friends or business associates. The simple fact is that as a golfer, you may take lessons every day of the week, read every golf magazine on the newsstand, and visit every golf site on the Internet, but when you slice your tee shots, or shank your wedges, or leave every putt short, you want answers at that moment—not after the round, or a couple of days later, but right then and there. It’s that simple—and it’s exactly what this book is designed to do: pinpoint what you’re doing wrong, and then tell you in simple terms what you need to do to fix it before your next shot. This book will offer creative solutions to shot problems—solutions that may occasionally have you scratching your head (or questioning our sanity), but that can often help turn a disastrous situation on the golf course into something a lot more palatable. This is not to say that we won’t tell you to lay up or to hit your ball back to the fairway, because in many cases, that’s absolutely the correct play. But like the 2-irons I tried to hit from the jumping-cholla plants in the Arizona desert, creativity is what makes the game fun and what keeps you on your toes out there. There are probably few things more satisfying than making par from what everyone else had deemed an “impossible” lie. The book starts out with a description of the “five faces,” an instructional concept developed by T. J. that moves away from the limit-
When Bad Things Happen to Bad Golfers
ing idea that the clubface must always be square at impact. It works on the assumption that five angles of attack can be created with the clubface—square, open, closed, hooded, and laid back—and that when you match these angles with the position of the ball in the stance (forward, middle, or back) and the direction in which the shoulders are pointed (left, right, or straight), you’ve broken the code. (A quick note: throughout the book, the terms “left” and “right” are used as they apply to a right-handed golfer. Left-handers should reverse these designations as necessary.) You have all the information you need to hit the ball out of any lie, from anywhere on the golf course. And the best part is, you don’t have to have a world-class swing to take advantage of the five-faces system, and you don’t necessarily have to change your swing to reap the system’s benefits. We provide a detailed analysis of every swing problem that appears in the book, but the fact is, once you’ve grasped the concept that five clubface positions, three ball positions, and three shoulder positions are behind the trajectory of every shot in the game of golf, how you get the club down to impact becomes almost secondary. You can play well with the swing you’ve got—and over time, consistent use of the five-faces system will actually teach you how to make a better golf swing. Once the five-faces concept is understood, the golfer can move to the second part of the book, which is a situation-by-situation description of just about everything that can go wrong on a golf course, and how—using your knowledge of the five faces—you can successfully navigate the problem and keep your scorecard from being littered with round-wrecking double and triple bogeys. The rest of the book is divided into four parts, each representing the four main sections of a golf hole: the tee, the fairway, the shortgame area around the green, and the putting green itself. Each part answers general questions about that particular area of the golf course and tackles the specific obstacles, situations, and swing problems normally encountered on that part of the course.
Introduction
You’ll find that many of the problems and solutions overlap with other problems and solutions, which is really not surprising since there is a finite universe of physical moves that a human body can make when it’s asked to stand next to a small white ball, lift a golf club up around its shoulders, and then swing down and successfully make contact with the ball. But as it turns out, this was an advantage for us, because it allowed us to present a variety of solutions to problems that were similar but not identical. For example, if you’re hitting your wedges fat but also topping your drives, you may well have a weightshift problem, and both are addressed in this book. For this reason, if you don’t find exactly the cure you’re looking for in one place, we encourage you to browse through the book and check out other tips for alternate solutions that may help your problem. The book is designed primarily as a reference text, so if you choose to read the book straight through from cover to cover, you’ll encounter some unavoidable repetition. For this reason, once you’ve read through and absorbed the information presented in the chapter on the five faces, you can feel free to skip ahead to the section of the book that specifically describes your problem. As two guys who have played the game for a long time—and who have played it both well and (at least in my case) horribly—we’re confident that every golfer who picks up this book will find something that will improve his or her golf game—today. Believe me, if you’ve done it or been stumped by it out there on the golf course, so have we. The good news is, the solution you’ve been looking for is inside.
pa r t i
The Five Faces of the Perfect Club If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they’d starve to death. —Sam Snead
M
ention the face of a golf club to most golfers, and if you don’t receive a blank stare, you’ll almost certainly get something along the lines of, “Keep it square!” That’s not horrible advice, and it’s certainly true in many cases, but it would be a lot more applicable to reality if golf were a game played in a huge indoor arena with artificial turf and eighteen perfectly straight fairways of the same length and width boxed in by walls and a ceiling; no bunkers, water hazards, hills, trees, or rough in sight; and bowl-shaped greens with the pin always cut smack-dab in the middle of the bowl. In this case, a square face would be all you’d need to play decent golf. But of course, golf is anything but the neat and clean game described above. In fact, if golf is anything, it’s really a never-ending series of problems that require solutions. Golf is bad swings, bad lies, bad weather, bad luck, and bad vibes. Of course, it’s also good swings, good lies, good weather, good luck, and good vibes, but most mortals don’t seem fully prepared to deal with what happens when all the good and bad things are jumbled together in one big cosmic bag and dumped in front of them during a round. That’s golf—and “keeping it square” just isn’t going to cut it (or fade it, for that matter). Along with the “keep it square” mantra that’s drilled into most golfers’ heads are the knowing admonitions that you’re “opening the face at impact,” or you’re “snapping the face shut,” or that you “really smothered that one.” These may all be true on any given shot, but the fact is that no spin/trajectory combination is bad in and of itself. The flight of the ball (low/high, right/left) is either appropriate or inappropriate for the shot at hand. The sooner the average golfer disabuses himself of the notion that there is one magic clubface position or shoulder position or ball position that’s going to have him hitting the ball like a tour pro, the sooner he’ll actually start getting closer to hitting the ball like a tour pro. As Ben Hogan said, “Golf is a game of adjustments,” and the sooner you learn how to make these
The Five Faces of the Perfect Club
adjustments by matching up your clubface, ball position, and shoulder alignment to create the ball flight you need to pull off the shot, the sooner you’ll max out your talent and ability to play the game. Before we get into the specifics of each of the five faces and how they affect your ball flight, it’s important to first discuss the two other key aspects of your setup—the position of the ball in your stance and the alignment of your shoulders relative to the target line—and how they combine with the five faces to give you an arsenal of shots that will allow you to tackle any situation on the golf course.
Ball Position If you’ve taken lessons or played the game for any length of time, you’re probably aware that there’s a standard or “normal” ball position for each type of club in your bag, and these positions generally move farther back in your stance as the club you’re using becomes more lofted (and physically shorter). For example, the normal ball position for a shot with your driver is off the heel of your front foot, while the same position with your wedge is in the center of your stance, equidistant between your feet. But when you want the club you’re using to produce a different trajectory from the one that’s built into the face at the factory, you need to adjust your ball position. The position of the ball in your stance at address—whether it’s directly in the center, far forward off your front heel, far back off your back heel, or anywhere in between—is the primary factor controlling the height of your shot. Positioning the ball back in your stance creates a low shot because it effectively delofts the face of whatever club you’re swinging. In other words, when a club contacts a ball in the back of your stance, the shaft is angled toward the target, which reduces the effective loft of the clubface at impact—and less loft equals a lower shot trajectory.
10
When Bad Things Happen to Bad Golfers
Positioning the ball forward in your stance has the opposite effect. The face now has more effective loft because the shaft is leaning away from the target. A forward ball location gives the club you’re swinging a little more time to reach the ball, which in turn gives the face of the club more time to lay back (point up toward the sky) before it reaches the ball. (An important point to remember is that as you move the ball forward or backward in your stance, the butt end of the club handle should remain in the same position, roughly even with the inside of your front thigh. The only thing that moves forward or backward with the ball is the clubhead.) Not surprisingly, you can do many different things with a golf ball just by moving the ball forward or backward in your stance—you can hit a low shot under the wind or a high, soaring wedge shot that drops straight down on the green, spins, and stops. You can get the ball under a low-hanging branch or to clear the top of an eighty-foot tree. The question is, why stop there, when you can also add shot variations created by the position of your shoulders in relation to the target line, and later, by the five faces themselves?
Shoulder Position If you’ve spent any time reading golf articles, you’ve undoubtedly run into the concept of an open, closed, or square stance. Invariably, these articles describe these stance positions by referring to the position of the feet, usually through an imaginary line across the tips of the shoes known as the toe line. We think this is misleading for one primary reason: the golf club isn’t connected to your feet. The golf club is connected to your hands, which are connected to your arms, which are connected to your shoulders—and, biomechanically, the arms swing on the shoulder line. You can have your feet aligned perfectly parallel to the target line,
The Five Faces of the Perfect Club
11
but if your shoulders are pointed left, chances are good that the ball will go left. Conversely, if your shoulders are square to the target line, you can pretty much put your feet anywhere you want and the ball will probably start straight down the target line. In short, pretty much everything that’s ever been said about the toe line—at least when it comes to aligning your body correctly to the target—should have been said about the shoulders! It’s the position of your shoulders at address and their relationship to the target line— that is, the line that runs from your ball at address to the target—that determines exactly how the clubhead approaches and makes contact with the ball. That, along with the face of the club, controls the direction (left, straight, or right) in which the ball will travel just after impact. For this reason, we will pay only minimal attention to the toe line in this book. It is our belief that you will have an immensely easier time understanding the flight of your ball if you understand the direct link between the position of your shoulders and the path of your swing.
Shoulder Options Briefly then, what are your shoulder options? You’ve probably already figured it out: if a line drawn across the points of your shoulders (known hereafter as the shoulder line) is parallel to your target line, and your clubface is square at impact, your shot should start down the target line. If your shoulder line is open to the target line—that is, if it’s pointing left of the target line but not parallel to it—your ball should start left after impact. And if your shoulder line is closed—in other words, if it’s pointing to the right of the target line—your ball should start to the right of the target line at impact. It’s important to note that in all cases, we said “start.” Where the ball finishes depends on its curve (left, right, or straight), and this is controlled by the position of the clubface (square, open, or closed) at impact.
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When “Open” Is Closed Before we go any further, let’s clear up an issue that understandably confuses many golfers. The terms open and closed do, in fact, have completely opposite meanings when applied to the clubface or to the shoulder line. The clubface for a right-hander is square when it points straight down the target line, open when it points to the right of the target line, and closed when it points to the left of the target line. Your shoulders, on the other hand, are considered to be open when your shoulder line points left of the target line but not parallel to it, closed when your shoulder line points right of the target line, and parallel or square when your shoulder line is parallel with the target line. To understand this concept better, picture a railroad track. If your stance is square, the face of your club should point directly down the
Open Shoulders: The shoulders are open, or pointed to the left of the target line.
Closed Shoulders: The shoulders are closed, or pointed to the right of the target line.
Square Shoulders: The shoulders are parallel to the target line. 13
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outside rail toward the target, while your body lines—your feet, knee, hip, and shoulder lines—should all point directly down the inside rail toward the target, which is also known as “parallel left.” Get it? Great—now let’s take a closer look at each of the five faces.
The Five Faces The five faces denote the five possible positions that your clubface can be in at impact—square, open, closed, hooded, or laid back—and they’re the final ingredient in a three-part formula that will have you hitting the ball exactly where you want it to go, whenever you want. When you combine these five clubface positions with the three primary ball positions and the three shoulder positions explained earlier, you end up with forty-five possible shot combinations (5 faces 3 3 ball positions 3 3 shoulder positions) that you can use to get yourself out of just about any unpleasant predicament on the golf course. (In fact, if there’s a playable situation that one of these forty-five positions doesn’t address, please let us know.) 1. Square At address, the clubface is considered square when it points directly at the target (in other words, when it’s exactly perpendicular to the target line) and the butt of the club is off the inside of the front thigh. The square face combines with the forward ball position to hit a high, straight shot; with the middle ball position to hit a straight shot of normal height; and with the back ball position to hit a low, straight shot. The square face combines with the open shoulder position to hit a ball that starts to the left; with the square shoulder position to hit the ball straight; and with the closed shoulder position to hit a ball that starts to the right. The square clubface can also be used with various combinations of both ball positions
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Square Clubface: The clubface points at the target, while the clubshaft points at the inside of the front thigh.
and shoulder positions to hit, for example, a high shot to the left or a low shot to the right. 2. Open At address, the clubface is considered open when the shaft of the club remains in the same position relative to the body that it was in for the square position, but the face points to the right of the target. The open face combines with the forward ball position to hit a high shot that curves to the right; with the center ball position to hit a shot of normal height that curves to the right; and with the back ball position to hit a low shot that curves to the right. The open face combines with the open shoulder position to hit a ball that starts to the left and curves to the right; with the square shoulder position to hit a ball that starts straight and curves to the right; and with the closed shoulder position to hit
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Open Clubface: The clubface points to the right of the target, while the clubshaft points at the inside of the front thigh.
a ball that starts to the right and curves farther to the right. Like the square clubface, the open clubface can be used with various combinations of both ball positions and shoulder positions to hit, for example, a low shot that starts to the left and curves to the right or a high shot that starts to the right and curves farther to the right. 3. Closed At address, the clubface is considered closed when the shaft of the club remains in the same position relative to the body that it was in for both the square and open positions, but the face of the club is turned to the left of the target line. The closed face combines with the forward ball position to hit a high shot that curves
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to the left; with the center ball position to hit a shot of normal height that curves to the left; and with the back ball position to hit a low shot that curves to the left. The closed face combines with the open shoulder position to hit a ball that starts to the left and curves farther to the left; with the square shoulder position to hit a ball that starts straight and curves to the left; and with the closed shoulder position to hit a ball that starts to the right and curves to the left. Like the square and open clubfaces, the closed clubface can be used with various combinations of ball positions and shoulder positions to hit, for example, a high shot that starts to the right and curves to the left, or a low shot that starts straight and curves to the left.
Closed Clubface: The clubface points to the left of the target, while the clubshaft points at the inside of the front thigh.
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4. Hooded The hooded clubface has less effective loft and therefore hits the ball lower. At address, the clubface is hooded when the shaft is pressed forward toward the target while the clubface remains pointed at the target—which makes the clubface point more toward the ground and less toward the sky. The hooded clubface is used when you want to hit a shot that will travel on a lower trajectory than the clubface’s built-in loft could produce. Like the other clubface positions, the hooded clubface can be used with various combinations of ball positions and shoulder positions to hit, for example, an extra-low shot that curves from right to left or an extra-low shot that curves from left to right.
Hooded Clubface: The clubface points at the target, but the clubshaft is angled toward the target so that it points at the middle of the front thigh, which hoods the clubface forward so that it points more toward the ground.
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5. Laid Back The laid-back clubface adds loft to the shot and allows you to hit higher shots than the loft already built into the clubface would normally produce. At address, the clubface is considered to be laid back when the shaft is leaned back away from the target while the clubface remains pointed at the target—which makes the clubface point more toward the sky and less toward the ground. The laid-back clubface can be used with various combinations of ball positions and shoulder positions to hit extra-high shots that curve to the left or the right. It should be obvious by now that certain match-ups naturally go together—open and laid back are a match, as are closed and hooded. And since you always swing along your shoulder line,
Laid-back Clubface: The clubface points at the target, but the clubshaft is angled away from the target so that it points at the back thigh, which lays the clubface back so that it points more toward the sky.
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open shoulders match up with an open face, while closed shoulders match up with a closed face. So if you wanted to hit a low, drawing shot, you’d hood the clubface (which keeps the ball low), close the face (which puts right-to-left or draw spin on the ball), move the ball back (which also keeps the ball low), and close your shoulder line (which also helps promote draw spin). On the other hand, if you’re trying to hit a high fade, you’d lay back the clubface (to create an extra-high trajectory), open the face (to impart left-to-right or fade spin to the ball), move the ball forward (which also promotes a higher trajectory), and open your shoulders (for more left-to-right spin). And that, in a nutshell, is how the five faces, alone and in combination with the three ball positions and the three shoulder positions, work to give you a huge number of options on the golf course. In the next part of the book, we’ll answer general swing- and course-related questions, as well as discuss in more detail particular swing- and course-related problems that confront golfers. Throughout these discussions, we’ll not only refer to the clubface positions, ball positions, and shoulder positions explained above, but we’ll also provide a “Five-Faces Shot Analysis” with most of the swingspecific problems we address. If at any point a clubface, ball-position, or shoulder-position issue becomes unclear, please refer back to this part of the book for clarification. And please remember that no spin/trajectory combination is bad in and of itself—it’s only inappropriate for the shot at hand. The key to golf is to never be surprised—never plan for one spin/trajectory combo but produce another. By using the five faces, you may not hit perfect shots every time, but you’ll never be surprised—except by your lower scores.
pa r t i i
The Tee Box
Obviously, a deer on the fairway has seen you tee off before and knows that the safest place to be when you play is right down the middle. —Jackie Gleason
Y
ou know the drill. It’s a dewy summer morning just after sunrise. The air is thick with the electric whir of peppy, just-washed golf carts; the sharp click of parking brakes eagerly being set; the rattling of clubs. There’s lots of khaki, lots of coffee, an occasional ceremonial stogie, and plenty of steely-eyed practice-swing bravado. It’s the first tee—and you’re already choking. Nowhere else on the face of the earth does such drop-dead gorgeous scenery elicit such gut-churning waves of “Mommy, I want to go home” fear in otherwise grown men. You gaze out to the vast green expanse before you, letting your eyes wander farther and farther afield. That’s where they hit them, you say to yourself—the Tigers . . . the Phils . . . the Vijays . . . and, of course, the guys from sales. You let your eyes drop sadly to the neatly manicured yet clearly pathetic apron of grass between your tee box and the red ladies tees 30 yards in the distance. That’s where I hit them, you whisper to yourself, a fist-size knot of panic growing in your gut. Now, of course, comes the inevitable bargaining session with God: “Please . . . just let me get it airborne. Just this once. A weak pop-up to the right? Great! A dying 100-yard screamer to the edge of the fairway? Works for me! A 280-yard banana-ball that flies 100 yards into the woods and out of bounds? Ummmm, well . . . okay, sure! Who’s counting, anyway? But hey, God, listen, really—anything will do: just don’t let me top the goddamn thing.” Meanwhile, two other manly foursomes have pulled up behind you, and now the gates of your personal golf hell are officially wide open: You have absolutely no idea where your tee shot is headed, and now you’ve got plenty of witnesses ready to attest to that fact. Hey, buddy, you’re up! Have a great round. If this sounds like your idea of fun, then God bless ya—hair shirts and cat-o’-nine-tails are available at the turn. But if you’d like to learn how to pay that $125 greens fee without completely regretting it eighteen minutes later, take some time to browse our humble collection of first-tee tips and wisdom. 22
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1-1. What’s the best way to prepare myself for my tee shot? For starters, try to give yourself some time to relax and stretch before arriving at the first tee. Running from your car to the tee with your shoes in one hand, your bag (with tees and balls flying out of the back pocket) dangling off your shoulder and a cup of scalding coffee in the other is no way to start your round. Ideally, you should get to the club early enough to get your shoes on, drop off your bag, pay for your round, grab a bite to eat and some coffee or water to drink, stretch lightly, and then head out to the range and the putting green for a few minutes. Don’t kill yourself on the range—loosen up with some easy wedge shots, and if you insist on swinging your driver, limit your shots to half or even quarter swings. There’s no reason to try to hit the ball 270 yards on the driving range—nobody cares, and you’re only going to 23
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get discouraged when you start spraying your drives because you’re not warm yet. Tee up a couple of balls and swing your driver back to waist high, down through impact, and then back up to waist high in the follow-through. The ball will probably only go 100 yards or so, but you’ll be amazed at how straight and smoothly you can hit the ball with this kind of swing. The key word before your round should be tempo. Forget everything else. Once you’re up on the tee and zero hour is imminent, start your pre-shot routine, which should be a sequence of events that happens the exact same way every time you make a full swing. First, stand behind the ball and make a plan for how you’re going to get the ball from point A to point B—in other words, from where you’re standing to whatever happens to be your target. Now find a spot just in front of your ball—it can be a discoloration in the grass, a divot, or even a cigarette butt—and make this your intermediate target. An imaginary line that runs from your ball, through the intermediate target, and then on to your final target is called—brace yourself—the target line. After you’ve picked this line, take a practice swing and make it a true rehearsal of the actual shot by swinging in the direction of the target, off a similar lie, and at the same speed you’ll use for the swing you’re about to make. If you’re hitting a driver from the tee, make sure you don’t take a divot with your practice swing; if you’re hitting an iron, make sure the club takes a little grass. Once you’ve pictured the shot in your mind and have made a practice swing, take a deep breath to relax and then walk around to the side of the ball. Step into your address position with your back foot leading the way. Before you bring your front foot into position, sole the clubface behind the ball, so that it points at the target. Then, while keeping the clubhead in this exact position, bring your front foot into position so that your body is perpendicular to the leading edge of the clubface. You’ve now locked in your direction. From this position, take one look at the target by rotating your head without lifting it, waggle the club, and then swing, allowing the
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speed of your swing to produce the correct distance. Each player will have nuances to his or her routine—for example, you may want to look at the target twice before you swing. But the important point is to be consistent. If you normally look at the target twice, but find yourself looking down the fairway a third or fourth time while playing a particular shot (usually under extra pressure), your routine has been broken and this is a clear indication that you’re uncertain about some element of the shot. Treat this as a signal to step away and gather more information (perhaps switch clubs), then step up to the ball with a reaffirmed commitment to your plan and make your best swing. If your pre-shot routine still doesn’t completely settle you down, a couple of other thoughts might come in handy. For starters, try pretending that you’re simply hitting into a huge curtain or net stretched across the tee just a few feet in front of you (as you would at a golf store or an indoor range). Many golfers hit the ball better into a net because they don’t have to worry about being embarrassed by bad ball flight. Now’s the time to use the relaxed tempo that the half-swing drill on the driving range taught you. You don’t want to take a half swing here, but a great thought to have as you take the club back is the 80 percent rule. If you can concentrate on swinging at only 80 percent of your maximum power on the tee, your accuracy—and often your distance—will improve dramatically. A final swing thought concerns your breathing. If you’ve ever lifted weights, you know that you’re supposed to inhale as you let the weight down and exhale as you push it back up. The best time to take your driver back is right after you’ve exhaled and your muscles are no longer straining to keep the air in your lungs. So once you’ve set up to the ball, breathe normally, and when you’re ready to go, take in one big breath, release it, and as you finish releasing it, start the club back. You’ll definitely notice the difference in your muscles if you make an effort to time your breathing this way, and you can even make this a regular part of your pre-shot routine.
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1-2. Which club should I hit off the tee? Although most people don’t think of it this way, the tee box is the one place on the golf course where you’re allowed to artificially elevate the ball, so the idea is to hit the least-lofted (and therefore the longest) club possible from this “gimme” lie. On most par-4s and par-5s (we’ll discuss par-3s separately in chapter 3), this means that you’re going to hit your driver. Although most drivers feature anywhere from 8 to 13 degrees of loft (which is really not that much when you consider that a putter usually has about 4 degrees of loft), the upward path that the teed ball allows the clubhead to take into impact will give you all the height you need on your shot, and the long driver shaft will allow you to generate more swing speed—and, therefore, more distance—than any other club in your bag. This doesn’t mean, however, that the driver is always the right club off the tee. A hole that features sand or water protecting the spot where you expect your ball to land, or that doglegs sharply to the left or right at that same point, or that features an especially narrow fairway, is begging you to swallow your pride and take out a safe club such as a fairway wood, a hybrid, or a long iron on the tee. Leaving yourself a slightly longer second shot from a comfortable lie in the fairway is always a better option than facing a shorter approach shot from junk—or, of course, than having to take a penalty shot and then trying to get up and down from 160 yards.
1-3. How should I grip the club in the tee box? Not surprisingly, many golfers take one look at what seems like an ocean of grass spread out in front of them and decide right then and there that no flimsy little clubshaft is going to stand between them and a 300-yard drive. That may be a noble sentiment, but it’s also a pretty deadly one
To take the proper grip, start by balancing the club on your right shoulder with only your left hand on the club. Make sure your left thumb is under the shaft.
Place your right hand on the shaft so that your palms face each other, and use the heel and thumb pads of your right hand to form a pocket for the left thumb.
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If you can extend your right index finger down the shaft so that the shaft is directly between that finger and the target, your right hand is correctly positioned.
for your game. The formula is very simple—the more you strangle the club, the shorter you’re going to hit the ball. Too much tension in your hands prevents your wrists from cocking correctly, and power-wise you can’t recover from a bad wrist cock. Plus, any tension in your hands immediately radiates up your arms and into your shoulders and chest. This severely restricts your ability to properly coil your body in the backswing, and then, in the downswing, to unwind whatever torque you may have managed to store in your upper body. You may have heard the old canard that you should grip the club as though you were holding a baby bird. Maybe, but more specifically, you should grip the club so that the handle only touches various spots on your fingers and palms—it shouldn’t be smothered by all of the flesh on your hands. Let the club float in your hands, with just enough contact to keep it from flying out of your grasp during the swing. Many golfers have trouble taking the proper grip when the club is
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soled on the ground, so here’s a better way. Start by balancing the club on your right shoulder (for right-handers), with the toe of the club hanging straight down. Place your left thumb on the handle so that it’s directly under the shaft. The club should now rest between the two diagonal palm creases in your left hand so that when you close your hand, the handle is anchored under the heel pad, which gives you control of the club without having to squeeze it to death. Your right hand now comes in from the side, so that your palms face each other. The handle should be held in the fingers of your right hand, with the heel and thumb pads of the right hand forming a pocket to accommodate the left thumb. When your right hand is closed on the club, your thumb and index finger should form a trigger, and your right thumb should be to the left of the shaft. Once both hands are on the club, you can check to see if your right hand is placed correctly by simply extending your right index finger down the shaft. If it extends exactly down the side of the shaft so that the shaft is directly between your index finger and the target, it’s in good position. If it’s on either the top or the bottom of the shaft, you need to make an adjustment.
1-4. How do I know if I’m standing properly on the tee? Whatever else golf is, it’s definitely a game of geometry—it’s lines and angles on a three-dimensional playing field that connect the golfer, the ball, and the target. And the place to begin with correct geometry is the setup, because the address position writes the script for the entire swing. When you’re preparing to set up to the ball, remember this golf variation of the old KISS acronym: Keep It Simple . . . and Square. After you’ve lined up your shot from behind the target (as outlined in section 1-1), take your address position with your driver so that your
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heels are shoulder-width apart, your hands are directly below your chin, and the ball is teed up opposite your left heel. When you’ve done this, picture an imaginary box on the ground that has one corner at the ball, another corner at your left heel, a third corner at your right heel, and a fourth corner at a point behind the ball on the target line that’s even with your right heel. (When you’re on the range, you can actually construct this box with four golf clubs to help you visualize it better.) Now square everything else up to the box. Keep your feet pointed straight ahead, perpendicular to the target line. Align your shoulder line to the target line. Then take a relaxed, neutral grip and square the clubface to the ball. You now have a simple, repeatable setup that you can be proud to display on any tee box—even the one directly in front of the clubhouse. Of course, not everyone is going to have the exact same posture at address. All golfers don’t have the same posture when they walk, so why should they all stand the same way when they’re hitting a golf ball? When you’re building your stance, you should take the time to customize it to your physique. If your chest is large or you’re not very flexible, for example, drop your back foot into a closed position with more flare and bend more from the hips. If you’re very thin chested, try standing more upright with less flare; if you’re tall, flex your knees a bit more. Once you’ve customized your stance and you’re set up square to the ball and your target, it’s time to make a swing. Take the clubhead straight back along the target line as you turn your upper body around your right leg and allow the folding of your right elbow to elevate the club up to the top—don’t lift the club with your arms. At the top, start your downswing by shifting your weight into your front hip and then turning your hips back toward the target. Simply bring the clubhead back down to the upper left-hand corner of your box, watch the clubface meet the back of the ball, and let the force of your rotation carry
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your club into a full, unrestricted follow-through. It’s a simple setup and a simple swing, and you’ll be amazed at how many fairways you hit if you make a point of watching the clubface meet the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
1-5. How do I know if I’m aiming properly on the tee? One factor that many golfers don’t take into account when they’re aiming their ball on the tee (or anywhere else on the golf course) is the concept of parallax. In a nutshell, parallax is the apparent shift of an object against a background caused by a change in the position of the observer. Why should you care? Because the imaginary line that you see between your ball and the target when you’re standing behind the ball seems to move to the right when you approach the ball from the left to address it. In fact, nothing has changed but the position of your eyes. But if you’re not aware that this illusion is taking place, you’ll aim to the right, where your brain has tricked you into thinking your target is. Tests show that parallax is the reason why 95 percent of all golfers aim to the right of the target, so make sure that you’re in the 5 percent who don’t. The problems that parallax can cause are exactly why it’s so important to pick an intermediate target—usually a divot or a discoloration in the grass a few feet ahead of your ball—while you’re standing behind the ball looking down the target line. It will give you a reference point and a line that won’t change when you address the ball. At that point, all you need to do is to line up your clubface and shoulder line with this line just in front of your ball and let ’er rip.
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Remember: keep your intermediate aiming points as close to you as possible, because it’s easier to aim at something that’s 12 inches in front of you than at something that is 40 yards away.
1-6. Where in the tee box should I tee the ball? If your idea of a good drive is to simply advance the ball—anywhere, and for any distance—you really don’t need to worry about where you’re putting your tee in the ground. Worry, instead, about your feet—find a level piece of ground that you can stand on comfortably and tee your ball, if possible, behind a good-size divot, which can be very useful as an aiming point (see sections 1-1 and 1-5). If you’re at a skill level that allows you to at least understand how most of your drives fly, or if you can actually work the ball and make it do what you want it to do, then you can start thinking about tee-box position. Here are a couple of basics: if you tend to hit a fade, tee your ball on the right side of the tee box and aim down the left side so that your normal fade will put the ball in the center of the fairway. If the ball doesn’t fade the way you planned, it’ll still land on the left side of the fairway, and if you overcook that trusty left-to-right shot, you’ll be hitting your second shot from the right side of the fairway. If you tend to naturally draw the ball—that is, if your normal ball flight is right to left—reverse these instructions.
1-7. How high should I tee the ball? It depends on which club you’re hitting. If you’re using an iron or a hybrid from the tee box, the tee is basically there for insurance—you’re using it simply to give yourself the best possible lie and to keep yourself from hitting a flier, causing it to fly farther than anticipated. For this reason, the tee should be pushed almost all the way into the ground, so
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that the head of the tee is the only thing visible. This will ensure that your clubface makes contact with the ball first and then the turf. The opposite is true with a driver. Because the head of the driver is bigger (higher from top to bottom and longer from back to front), it must be teed higher so that the top edge of the driver is below the center of the ball. This is especially important with today’s big-headed drivers, which have a hot spot that is located above the traditional sweet spot on older clubs. You’ll never hit the ball on the hot spot if the ball is teed too low. A common misconception is that teeing a ball high will result in pop-ups with your driver or your fairway wood, but the only way this can happen is if you’re hitting down on the ball too steeply, rather than sweeping the club up through impact. If you hit down on a high-teed ball, the clubface will literally dive under the ball, and you’ll make contact with the top edge of the face and pop the ball up. But if you remember to sweep your woods up into the ball, pop-ups will become a thing of the past. (See also section 2-5.)
When hitting your driver, tee the ball so that the top edge of the clubface is below the center of the ball.
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When hitting an iron off the tee, tee the ball just high enough for the thin part of another tee to fit between the ball and the ground.
1-8. How do I adjust my tee shot for the wind? It depends on the tee and the direction of the wind. If you’re on the tee of a par-4 or a par-5 and you’re hitting directly into a headwind, you need to keep the ball low to prevent it from ballooning up into the wind. If you’re talented enough, you may want to turn the ball over a bit (impart draw spin to the ball) for maximum roll when the ball hits the ground. To do this, tee the ball lower than usual and just inside your left heel, then strengthen your grip (turn both hands to the right on the handle of the club). Address the ball and then move your left toe forward an inch or two to close your stance. Take the club back on a shallow swing plane, but make sure you take it back and then down again along your shoulder line (which is pointing right of the target), not your target line. This will create an inside-to-out swing
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path, which, together with your strong grip, will impart right-to-left draw spin on the ball. Make sure to turn your right arm over your left through impact and finish the swing by taking the club low and around your lower back. If you’ve got the wind at your back, “tee it high and let it fly” definitely applies—you want to get the ball as high as possible into a tailwind for the maximum amount of carry down the fairway. Tee the ball up as high as possible off your left heel, or even slightly farther forward than that, toward your left toe. Maintain a neutral to slightly strong grip and finish with your hands and the clubhead high over your left shoulder. Your ball should rise high into the carrying tailwind, and the draw spin that your closed stance and the release of your forearms impart to the ball will give it those extra few yards of roll when it lands. Playing into a left or a right crosswind depends on your skill level and the kind of tee shot you’re most comfortable with. If you’ve got
If you need to hit a tee shot with your driver into a headwind, move the ball back a few inches and tee it so that the top of the ball is even with the top of the clubface.
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a left-to-right wind and you’re comfortable hitting a fade, tee the ball up on the right side of the tee box, aim toward the left side of the fairway, open your stance slightly, and then swing down your shoulder line, rather than your target line. Your ball will start left, but the leftto-right crosswind and the cut spin that your open stance is imparting to the ball will then take it back to the center or, at worst, to the right side of the fairway. If you prefer to hit a draw into that same left-to-right wind, however, tee the ball up on the right side of the tee box, aim down the center of the fairway, close your stance slightly, swing down your shoulder line, rotate your forearms through impact, and finish the swing with low hands at shoulder level. The draw spin you put on the ball will fight the left-to-right wind, and you should end up in the center of the fairway or down the left side. If you’ve got a right-to-left crosswind, simply reverse the previous instructions in order to play whichever shot—draw or fade—is more comfortable for you. If you’re teeing off on a par-3, first determine how much more or less club you should take to compensate for any tee or green elevation (see sections 3-3 and 3-4). With that information in hand, you can then make your wind calculations. An unscientific but generally safe rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t change your club when the wind is below 5 mph, but you should take one more or one less club for every 10 mph above that. So, for example, if you normally choose a 7-iron on a level 150-yard par-3, you should take a 5-iron when hitting into a 20-mph wind on the same hole, but an 8-iron if you have a 10-mph wind at your back. On the other hand, if you’re playing a 150-yard hole from an elevated tee into a 10-mph wind, you first determine how much less club you should take to adjust for the drop in elevation (let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you decide you need one less club), then apply your wind calculation to that club selection. So if you normally
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take a 7-iron on a level 150-yard hole, you would now take one less club (an 8-iron) to compensate for the elevation change, and then take one more club (back to a 7-iron) to compensate for the 10-mph wind in your face.
1-9. How do I keep from getting fleeced on the first tee? One reason that golf is such a popular game is that it lends itself to betting, and for millions of golfers the game wouldn’t be the same without a little something on the line. Even the United States Golf Association (USGA) loosens its collar a bit in the rulebook, saying that there is “no objection to participation in wagering among individual golfers or teams of golfers when it is incidental to the game, the players in general know each other, participation in the wagering is optional and limited to the players, the sole source of all money won by players is advanced by the players, and the amount of money involved is not considered excessive.” Of course, you may have a different definition for the word “excessive” than your Porsche-driving playing partners, but there are ways to cut your losses ahead of time. The fact is that the higher a player’s handicap, the less likely he or she is to shoot a score reflective of it. Low handicappers usually score a lot closer to their handicap (primarily because they actually have a real handicap) while high handicappers can very easily shoot scores much higher than their handicap—especially under the pressure of playing against a low handicapper. So be careful if you’re a 25 and just off your best round (which you happened to record at sunset, with your dog sitting in the cart as your witness), because the odds are that you may not shoot anywhere near your handicap when you’re up against the club champ on a busy Saturday morning with cash on the line. The first-tee negotiation process is part of the fun, but if you’re not on your toes, you can lose the match right there. Think of it this way:
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If you’re going to bet, the negotiating process is crucial to your chances out on the course—it’s the only thing you can do to improve your odds of winning that has nothing to do with your talent as a player, so you might as well get good at it. There are two types of first-tee negotiations: the kind with people you know, and the kind with people you don’t know. It’s easier to make the process work in your favor with golfers you know—just use the 10 percent rule: If you’re the low handicapper, give your opponent 10 percent less than he or she asked for; if you’re the high handicapper, ask for 10 percent above your handicap. If you’re negotiating with people you don’t know, keep the bet small. If someone starts egging you toward a bet that’s bigger than an amount you’re comfortable losing, don’t hesitate to bow out gracefully—it’s your money, not his. Strangers who want to play for significant stakes are usually pretty sure they’re going to win, even if they have to cheat. Perhaps the most important point is to make sure that everyone understands the rules for the day’s wager. Every gambling game is different, and some can get confusing, so make sure you know the nuances of the game before you leave the first tee.
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Tee-Box Swing Disasters 2-1. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball with my driver. The good news is that your weight is on your right side at the top of the backswing. The bad news is that you’ve probably swayed your weight over to your right side instead of rotating it there, and worse, your weight never leaves your right side during the downswing. The result is an ugly position in which your upper body is bent to the right as you start the club down, which effectively shortens the distance between your hands and the ground. Unless you’re swinging a magic driver that also shortens itself during the downswing, your clubhead soon runs out of room and crashes into the ground behind the ball—an error otherwise known as hitting it fat. It then either bounces up and tops the ball or digs in under the ball and pops it up. Either way, it’s not pretty. You first have to understand what a turn actually is. When you turn your upper body to the right in the backswing, you don’t lean it to the 39
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When Bad Things Happen to Bad Golfers
right. You don’t bend it to the right. And you don’t slide or sway it to the right. You rotate it to the right. To give you a better idea of what this means, pretend that your legs are two posts in the ground. All you want to do during the swing is to turn your upper body away from the target and around the right post in the backswing and then back toward the target and around the left post in the downswing. Your upper body should never move to the right of your right leg in the backswing, or to the left of your left leg in the downswing and followthrough. Your sternum—or, for easier reference, the buttons on your shirt—simply rotates to the right until it’s facing directly away from the target (or as close to that position as your old muscles and bones will allow). Then, in the downswing, you simply rotate your sternum back to the left until it’s facing the target. Note that it’s absolutely critical that your upper body not be leaning over to the right when you start your turn back to the left in the downswing, because your right side will be too close to the ground and you literally won’t have any room to get the clubhead down to the ball, let alone through impact. Mr. Clubhead, meet Mr. Grass.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-2. I keep hitting the ball thin, off the bottom of the clubface. This is a variation of the problem described in section 2-1. You’re hanging back, or hanging on your right side, as you start the downswing—in other words, you’re not transferring your weight from your right to left side. In lesser beings, this improper lean to the right simply results in
To make solid contact with your driver or any other club, your spine angle (straight line) should be in the same position at address (left), at the top (center), and at impact (bottom).
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the clubhead crashing into the ground behind the ball as it runs out of room. Your slightly more clever brain, however, senses the impending doom, and like an alarm on a nose-diving airliner, sends the alarm to your muscles: “pull up!” And pull up you do. To give the crashing clubhead enough room to get to and through the ball, you overcompensate and abruptly raise your upper body and spine out of the angle you had at address. The clubhead now has plenty of room to get through impact, but you’ve overdone it and stood up too far. In this case, you still manage to get a little bit of the clubhead on the ball, which is enough to advance it—either on the ground or just above it—but not much else. To make purer contact with the ball and avoid ugly tops and thin shots, refer to the solution in section 2-1. Your upper body and spine should be bent forward at address so that your hands hang down comfortably under your shoulders, but your upper body should not be leaning to the right or to the left of your legs. You then simply rotate your upper body, like a screw or a top, first to the right and then to the left as your arms and hands bring the clubhead down to the ball on a shallow angle. This rotation encourages your weight to transfer to the right during the backswing and to the left during the downswing.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-3. I keep hitting grounders off the tee—I can’t get the ball airborne. This inability to get the ball into the air is more commonly referred to as topping, and it can result from two very different faults. First, you may tend to top the ball if you sway to the right in your backswing
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rather than turning around your right leg. If you can’t compensate for this sway and simply stay on your right side in the downswing, the club will bottom out before impact, start back up again, and clip the top of the ball at impact, sending it shooting across the ground. (To understand the difference between swaying and turning in your backswing, refer to section 2-1.) Conversely, you may be bringing the club back on a far too horizontal path (that is, around your lower back rather than up around your shoulders) and then, in an effort to make room for the club in the downswing, you bring it high over your right shoulder and then vertically down on top of the ball at impact, which smothers it—and, you guessed it, drives it into the ground. As we outlined in section 2-1, pretend that your legs are two posts in the ground. All you want to do during the swing is to turn your upper body away from the target and around the right post in the backswing and then back toward the target and around the left post in the downswing. Your upper body should never move to the right of your right leg in the backswing or to the left of your left leg in the downswing, and your spine should retain the angle it had at address.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-4. I keep missing the ball completely on the tee. Whiffing on the tee—especially the first tee—is probably due more to a combination of mental and physical errors than just about any other shot. (See section 1-8 for more on handling first-tee pressure.) Nevertheless, there are definite mechanical reasons for golf’s version
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of the “air ball,” and you don’t have to look much further than the first two sections in this chapter for answers. The whiff is simply the most extreme result of a panicky pull-up in the downswing. First, you’ve taken the club back to the top by swaying your body to the right rather than rotating it in that direction, which immediately shortens the distance between your hands and the ground. (If you’re still not sure what this means, stand up with your hands by your side. Raise your right arm until it is parallel to the ground, and note the distance between your right hand and the ground. Now, with your arm still extended out to the right, simply lean your body in that direction. What happens? Your right arm points down and your right hand gets closer to the ground, right? Now stand up straight again with your arm again extended to the right. This time, instead of leaning to the right, simply rotate your upper body to the right so that your arm moves behind you and your eyes move to where your right hand used to be. What’s happened to the distance between your hand and the ground? Nothing— your extended arm and hand are now behind you, but your hand is still the same height off the ground as it was before you turned. This again is the difference between swaying and turning in your backswing.) Now, with your body leaning to the right and your hands lower to the ground than they were at address, you’re suddenly trapped—there’s no way you’re going to get the clubhead through impact from this position, and you know it (or at least your brain does). So as the downswing begins, what do you and your brain do? You desperately try to make room for the club by standing up out of the spine angle you had at address, and the closer you get to impact, the more panicky you get about being able to get the club through the ball. In your panic, you overcompensate, stand almost straight up, and completely miss the ball. Remember: the golf swing is a turn, or a rotation—it’s not a lean. You rotate your upper body to the right in the backswing and then unwind that turn and rotate back to the left over your front leg in the downswing.
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2-5. I keep popping up my tee shots. Let’s start by dispelling the popular myth that teeing the ball too high causes you to pop the ball up. You can certainly pop the ball up when you tee the ball high, but you can also pop the ball up just as easily from an average tee height. The problem, in short, isn’t your ball or your tee— it’s the angle of your swing path. The driver is designed to be swept on an upward path into the ball—that’s why the pros hit bullets with their drivers whether the ball is four inches or one inch off the ground. They consistently bring the clubhead on an upward path into the ball. If you’re not sweeping the head of your driver up into the ball, chances are good that you’re bringing the clubhead down on the ball, much as you might for a punch shot with an iron. And when you combine the long shaft and low loft of a driver with a steep, downward path into the ball, the result is usually not very pretty. If you manage to hit the sweet spot and catch the ball flush, you might get away with hitting a low screamer that will at least get you out into the fairway. But if you catch the ball anywhere below the center of the clubface, you’ll top it, and if you contact the ball at the very top of the clubface (the new extra-large clubheads actually give you more room to miss above the center of the clubface), your ball will go straight up, and short. Add an open clubface, and you’ll have yourself a nice pop slice that’ll probably leave you in the rough short of the fairway. Not a fun place to be. The key, then, is to work on developing a consistently upward sweep of the driver head into the ball at impact. And the first place to look for answers is in how—or even if—you shift your weight onto your right leg during the backswing. A classic mistake is the reverse pivot, which occurs when you swing the club up to the top by simply bending your upper body toward the target in the backswing. Most of your weight lands on your left side, and from this position, all you can do to get the club back down to the ball is to literally throw the clubhead over your right shoulder and down onto the ball, with predictably ugly results.
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Remember our earlier discussion about rotating versus leaning. You rotate your upper body around your right leg in the backswing and then back to the left and around your left leg in the downswing. Your weight shifts, but it’s not a matter of your upper body first leaning to the left and then back to the right—it’s really a circular motion in one direction, followed by a circular motion in the opposite direction. To groove that feeling, use your sternum and your belt buckle as benchmarks. In the backswing, turn to the right until your sternum is almost pointing straight backward—away from the target—and your belt buckle is pointed not quite as far back as your sternum, roughly halfway between the address position and all the way back. Once you reach the top, keep your right elbow in toward your side and shift your weight, reversing the direction of your hips, so that you’re turning them in a circle around your left leg. Finish the swing with both your sternum and your belt buckle facing the target and most of your weight on your left side.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-6. I can’t get any distance with my driver off the tee. Let’s start with the basics. Two factors determine how much power you ultimately deliver to the ball at impact: rotation and leverage. Rotation is simply how efficiently you turn your body to the right in the backswing to store up energy and how efficiently you then unwind your body to the left to release that energy. Leverage is the up-anddown movement of your arms and the club and how efficiently you
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move them up to the top and then down to impact in order to transmit and multiply the energy created by the coiling and uncoiling of your body to the ball. If you’re not getting the distance and power that you think you should be getting with your driver, chances are very good that one or both of these two factors are breaking down during your swing. Let’s start with rotation. Perhaps the most common mistake that amateurs make when it comes to rotating their body is that they don’t rotate. They may understand the concept intellectually, but a closer look reveals that they’re simply swaying or leaning to the right in the backswing instead of turning and then swaying or leaning back to the left in the downswing, again instead of turning. You can’t generate power by leaning one way and then another. It doesn’t work. Pick up a baseball and try it. Stand as though you’re pitching from the stretch (that is, with your left shoulder facing the target and the front of your body facing 90 degrees to the right of your target). Now simply lean as far as you can to the right (don’t turn at all, just lean), extend your arm to the right, and then—again without turning at all—lean back to the left, bring your right arm across your body, and release the ball toward the target. It doesn’t go very far, does it? That’s because you haven’t created any resistance through rotation—you haven’t stored any energy by coiling your upper body over your lower body.
Rotation How do you learn to rotate instead of sway? Start by using the various parts of your body as landmarks during your swing. Your first landmarks are your legs, around which you rotate in your backswing and downswing. Your next landmarks are the buttons on your shirt (which represent your sternum) and your belt buckle. At no time should the buttons on your shirt move to the right of your right leg, or to the left of your left leg. If they do, you’re swaying. Instead, as
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you rotate around your right leg in the backswing, the buttons on your shirt should make a 90-degree turn to the right and face directly away from the target at the top of your swing. Your belt buckle, meanwhile, should make a 45-degree turn in the same direction. The torque created by turning your chest 90 degrees and your hips 45 degrees is called coil. In the downswing, both the buttons on your shirt and your belt buckle should rotate from their positions at the top of the swing to the finish, where both should look directly at the target. And that’s rotation.
Leverage Leverage, on the other hand, is how you use your arms and wrists to multiply the power that you’ve generated through coil. What happens if you have rotation but no leverage? Tee up a ball and address it with your driver. Now, start rotating your hips to the right and take the club back as you normally would, but don’t bend your arms at all—just continue all the way back to what would normally be your position at the top, but with your arms as straight as they were at address. Now uncoil your hips to the left and swing the club down toward the ball, but again, without bending your arms. What happens? You can hit the ball, but it doesn’t go very far. The energy created by the coiling, or rotation, of your upper body over your lower body isn’t enough by itself to propel the ball the distances we know can be reached by a correctly swung golf club. That stored energy has to be multiplied by the use of levers—in this case, your wrists and elbows. Your primary power lever is the L formed by your left forearm and the clubshaft as you cock your wrists on the way to the top of your swing. The key to creating pro-like power in your swing is to maintain that L all the way back down until just before impact, while at the same time slowly rotating your left forearm to the left as the
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club approaches the hitting zone. This allows the clubface to return to the square position just as it meets the ball. (Contrary to what it may look like on TV, good players don’t keep the clubface open all the way down and then simply snap their left wrist shut at impact—it’s a much more gradual process, though hard to see.) But maintaining your L position won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t unwind your body in the proper sequence. This is fairly easy to understand, but not quite as easy to execute. As you reach the top of your swing and start back down, your hips begin to rotate to the left, starting the transition of your weight from your back leg to your front. After the hips begin to unwind, the chest follows suit, then the shoulders, then the arms, and then the wrists, until the clubhead is finally square to the ball at contact. If you can train your body to unwind into the ball as described here and still maintain the L until just before impact, you’ll start to see a measurable increase in your driving distance (and your distance with other clubs, as well), because you’ll be swinging with less wasted motion and therefore transmitting a greater amount of your coiled energy into the ball.
2-7. My tee shots go straight right. For right-handers, this is known as a block. The good news is that you’ve managed to get the clubface square to your swing path at impact. The bad news is that your swing path is pointing to the right of the target, for one of two reasons: (1) you’re simply aiming your shoulders to the right and don’t know it; or (2) you’re bringing the club down to impact on a very inside-to-out path, which, combined with your square clubface, starts the ball to the right and keeps it there. As you’ll see as we proceed, you want to approach the ball with a slightly inside-to-out path, but it must not be so far inside that the clubface doesn’t have time to square by impact.
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To fix the problem, first check your clubface aim and shoulder alignment. Lay a club on the ground outside your ball so that it’s parallel to the target line. Now align your shoulders so that they’re parallel to the club on the ground—you can hold your club across your shoulders if it helps you match your shoulder line to the target line. Hit a few balls with the club on the ground. If the blocked shots disappear, you’ve found the problem. If they continue to plague you, however, check your swing path. Chances are you’re bringing your driver around your back in the backswing, rather than over your right shoulder, and when you maintain this very shallow swing path in the downswing, you end up just barely missing your right leg with the driver as you come down to impact, which pushes the ball in the only available direction: right (unless, of course, you compensate by throwing the clubhead out-
Laying a club on the ground outside your ball during practice is a great way to make sure that your shoulders are parallel to the target line.
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ward to give your swing more room and then drag it back across the ball from outside to in, creating a big pull to the left—more on that ahead). To correct this problem, take the clubhead straight back from address as far as you can, until your natural body turn begins to lift the club up to the top. Don’t try to manipulate the club with your arms—if you let your body turn do all the work, it’ll bring the club up correctly over your right shoulder, rather than around your back. Once you have your backswing under control, here’s a simple drill that will help you find the correct swing path. Find a lightweight box (the box that golf clubs are shipped in is perfect—ask your pro for one) and lay it parallel to your line of flight. Tee a practice ball so that the toe of your 7-iron is two inches from the box and make a smooth half-swing. Concentrate on swinging your club from slightly inside the target line during the downswing to square at impact and then back to inside during your follow-through. When you can do this without hitting the box, move the ball so that the toe of your clubhead is one inch from the box and hit your next series of ten practice shots. Go through your bag in ten-ball increments, moving the ball progressively closer until the toe is only a half inch from the box. When you can consistently hit shots without wiping out the box, you’ll know you’re in that rare 10 percent of golfers who come at the ball from the correct direction on the downswing—from inside to square.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
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2-8. My tee shots go straight left. For right-handers, this is known as a pull. And like the golfer who is blocking his or her shot to the right, your clubface is square to your swing path at impact. Unfortunately, your swing path is either aiming to the left of your target, or you’re lined up correctly with the target but your clubhead is approaching the ball on an outside-to-in path and your square clubface is pulling the ball to the left. The procedure for solving this problem is the same as the cure for a block. Lay a club down on the ground outside your ball so that it’s parallel to your target line. Now align your shoulder line so that it’s parallel with the club on the ground and hit a few balls. If your previously pulled shots straighten out, voila—you simply had an aiming problem, which has now been fixed by the club on the ground. Continue to use this aiming guide whenever you practice. If your aim is correct, however, and you’re still pulling the ball, check your swing path. You may be bringing the club back on a very steep path—almost over your head—and then swinging it down from outside to inside, sending the ball straight to the left. As with the cure for the block, try to take the clubhead back from address as far as you can, until your turning body naturally lifts the club up and over your right shoulder, rather than over your neck or head. From this position, it should be much easier to bring the club down to impact along the target line, rather than on a pull-inducing outside-to-in path. Another quick way to help yourself get a feel for the proper insidesquare-inside swing path is what we call the headcover drill. Golf can be a strange game when it comes to the correct “feels”—for example, during the downswing (for the right-handed golfer), the left hip feels as if it’s going to left field, while the clubhead goes to right field and the ball goes to center field. The headcover drill will help you get the feel of that right-field path. Place a headcover six inches outside and about three inches ahead of your ball. Then try to hit it after you hit the ball. If you’re making the proper inside-to-square swing, you
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won’t be able to do it, because your clubhead will be turning the other way as it follows the arc of your swing. But it will definitely give you the feeling of what swinging “inside-out” is all about.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-9. My tee shots start right and then slice farther right. This is an uglier version of the blocked tee shot described in section 2-7. Uglier because not only are you aimed right of your target or coming into impact on a much too inside-to-out path (or both), but you’re doing so with an open clubface, which imparts left-to-right curve—in other words, slice spin—to the ball. So your incorrect aiming or swing-path problem has now been compounded by an incorrect clubface position at impact. The result is a ball that’s often referred to as going “right of right.” Needless to say, right of right is not “right.” Since we know by the slicing flight of the ball that you’re hitting it with an open clubface, it’ll be necessary to get that under control first. So start by setting up at address with a club on the ground outside your ball and parallel to the target line. Check your grip—are the V’s formed by the thumb and index fingers on both hands pointing at your right shoulder? Good. Now check your clubface. Is it square to the target line? In other words, is the leading edge (the bottom front edge) of the clubface perpendicular to the clubshaft on the ground? Great. Now take the clubhead up to the top and check your left wrist. If your V’s were pointed at your right shoulder at address and your left
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wrist is flat at the top, chances are good that your clubface will also be square at the top. If, however, your left wrist appears bent back, or cupped, at the top of your swing, your clubface is probably open at the top of your swing and is likely to stay open at impact. Conversely, if your left wrist is bent forward, or bowed, your clubface is probably closed at the top and will probably stay closed through impact. Practice getting the feel of a flat left wrist—you can even place a ruler or a pen under your watchband and along the back of your left hand and wrist to give you instant feedback on when your wrist strays from the flat position. If your grip is correct and your left wrist is in the proper position at the top of the swing, you’ll have a much better chance of bringing a square clubface to impact, regardless of whatever else you may be doing wrong in the swing. (Note: If you normally use a super-strong grip on the club—that is, if your hands are both turned far to the right on the handle at address—your left wrist will naturally be slightly bowed, or bent forward, at the top, rather than perfectly flat. Similarly, if your grip is weaker
When addressing the ball with your driver, the V’s formed by your thumbs should point at your right ear.
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than normal—that is, if your hands are turned farther to the left on the handle at address—your left wrist will tend to be cupped at the top. Strong and weak grips are common and should be taken into account when you’re checking for a flat left wrist at the top of the swing.) Once you’ve got the clubface square at address, at the top, and, most important, at impact, refer to the fix in section 2-7 to correct your aiming and/or your swing path problem so you can get the ball started down the target line—and keep it there.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-10. My tee shots start left and then hook farther left. This lovely shot is known as a pull hook or a duck hook. You’ve managed to not only start the ball to the left of the target by coming over the top but you’ve also done it with a closed clubface. The only possible saving grace of a shot like this is that it doesn’t stay in the air very long and therefore self-minimizes the damage it’s about to do to your scorecard. For starters, let’s work on getting that closed clubface back to square. First, check the position of your clubshaft at address—is it pointed just slightly left of center, at the inside of your left thigh, or is it pressed even farther forward than that? In an attempt to get square at address, some golfers press the clubshaft too far forward (toward the target), but this tends to deloft the club and usually closes the face. Remember that on all normal full shots the butt of the club should point at the inside of the left thigh, or just slightly left of center.
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If you’re sure the clubface is square at address, check the V’s formed by your thumbs and forefingers. A strong grip is perfectly fine, but if your V’s point outside your right shoulder at address, you’re overdoing the strong grip and making it all too easy to close the clubface at impact. Make a practice swing and check your left wrist at the top—if it’s bowed, your clubface is closed at the top and is likely to remain closed at impact. When you’ve got your wrist angles correct and you’re confident that you’re bringing a square clubface to impact, start working on that big ol’ pull you’ve got going. The flat backswing is definitely a prime suspect, especially if you’re pulling your drives. Many golfers are aware that their driver swing is supposed to be more sweeping than the more vertical swing they use for their irons, and in an effort to get the club going on a truly sweeping path, they take the club back almost around their waist. Then, when they get the club behind them on such a low, flat plane, there’s literally no room between their hands and the ground for them to swing the clubhead down to impact. So they either continue back toward the ball with a low, baseball-style swing and try to get the clubface square by whipping the clubhead to the left at impact (which generally whips it way past square), or, in a much more likely scenario, they lift the club over their head, cast it outward, and then quite literally pull it across the impact area and send the ball straight left. If this sounds like you, practice taking the clubhead straight back along the target line as far as you can at the start of the backswing. If you trust your turn and allow your right elbow to fold and your wrists to cock upward, your club will automatically slot itself on the correct plane. As a further check that you’ve slotted the club correctly at the top, check your left arm—it should be pulled straight across and past your collarbone, so that the point of your left shoulder points behind the ball. During the downswing, rotate your hips to the left, but don’t whip them all the way around to the left the second you start your move
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down—this will only pull the club across the ball at impact. First comes the weight shift to the left and then you simply let your body unwind in sync with the downswing—the hips start left, followed immediately by the chest, then the arms, then the hands, and then finally the clubhead. No part should outrace any of the others.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-11. My tee shots start straight and then slice right. Well, the good news is that you seem to have the swing-path thing down pat. And that really is good news. But now you need to find out why your clubface is open at impact. Start with your grip. Without thinking about it, take your normal left-hand grip on your driver. Now check and see exactly how the grip is sitting in your hand. If you’re like a lot of amateur golfers, the handle will run diagonally across your hand, from the base of your left index finger down to the heel pad, or even farther toward the center, into the lifeline. When you try to close your left hand around the grip when the handle is sitting in your hand this way, you’ll find that it’s difficult to even get your thumb up on top of the handle, let alone in a stronger position on the right side of the handle. The proper way to hold the club in your left hand is to let the handle of the club lie straight across the base of your fingers. You then wrap the heel pad—that’s the pad at the bottom of your hand, below your pinky—over the top of the handle. It may feel a little weird at first, but if you do it correctly, you’ll notice that it completely frees up
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your thumb to move where it needs to—just to the right of the top of the handle. You’ll also notice that it’s almost impossible to open the clubface at impact from this position, which will definitely bode well for that slice of yours.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-12. My tee shots start straight and hook left. Correct path, wrong face, so it’s time to go through your checklist again. Start with your shoulders—unless you’re intentionally trying to turn the ball to the left, your shoulders should be square at address. Although it’s admittedly a little difficult to check your own shoulders, there are ways to do it. If you’re on the range, grab an iron and place the shaft across the points of your shoulders, so that it’s parallel to your target line. Without moving, look to your left and see exactly where the club is aimed. Is it pointing to the right of your target? If so, your shoulders are closed, which is causing you to start the ball to the right of the target. (If you don’t have a club handy, another way to check your shoulders is to look down at the buttons on your shirt at address—if they’re pointing to the right of center, your shoulders are closed; left of center, you’re open.) Conversely, since we know that the arms swing on the shoulder line, if your ball starts straight, you can assume that your shoulders are okay—it’s the face that’s off, not the path. Now check your clubface and grip. Make sure that the face is truly perpendicular to the target line—the shaft should lean ever so slightly toward the target. The V’s formed by your thumb and forefin-
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ger should be pointing no farther right than your right shoulder—if they are, you need to get your hands a little weaker on the club handle (turned more to the left). And even if your V’s aren’t outside your right shoulder, some grip weakening can’t hurt that closed face at impact. Finally, make a practice swing and check your left wrist at the top of the swing. Is your left wrist bowed (arched toward the sky)? If so, you’re closing the clubface at the top and then bringing it down to impact closed. Because your swing path is correct, the ball starts straight, but the closed face then puts hook spin on the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-13. My tee shots start left and slice right. Well, if there’s anything to be said for this problem, it’s that there’s at least a chance the pull will cancel out the slice and get you in the fairway. Of course, there are easier ways to get your ball in the fairway, and when you come right down to it, the ol’ pull slice isn’t exactly a “go-to” shot for most successful golfers. So let’s work on that open face first. Go back to sections 2-9 and 2-11 and revisit some of the common ways that a golfer can allow the clubface to open before and during impact. Is the handle of the club sitting at the base of your fingers, rather than diagonally across your palm when you take your grip? Is it easy to extend and shorten your thumb on top of the grip? If you’re holding the club correctly under the heel pad—not under the thumb pad—it should be.
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Now, without thinking, tee up a ball and take your normal driver address position. Where are the V’s formed by your thumbs and forefingers? The V’s in both hands should be pointing at your right shoulder at address, and the shaft should be pointed toward the inside of your left thigh, so that the clubface is perfectly square to the target line. If those positions are in order, check your left wrist at the top of the swing. If it’s is cupped (bent backward, so that your knuckles are higher than your wrist), you’ve opened the clubface at the top, and it’s probably arriving at impact in the same position. Once you’ve straightened out the face problem, take a look at why you’re bringing the clubhead across the ball and to the left at impact. A pull is usually a symptom of a faulty swing plane: you’re either taking the club back on an overly flat line around your back and spinning your hips out in the follow-through (the causes and fixes for these two problems are discussed in section 2-10), or you’re letting your right elbow fly away from your body in the downswing. This takes the clubhead out of the slot (the proper plane or line on which the club should be moving into impact) and casts it forward, away from your body. The only way you can now rein the club back in so that it makes contact with the ball is to yank it hard to the left across the target line, and you end up pulling the ball dead left. If you sense that your right elbow is flying away from you in the downswing, the age-old towel drill should help get it under control. Place a small towel under your right armpit at address. Take the club up to the top (you’ll notice that the top of your right arm has to stay connected to your body to do this) and make a normal swing. If your right elbow is disconnecting from your body on the way down, the towel will fall to the ground. But if you make a point of keeping the towel under your arm during the downswing, you’ll quickly learn that the only swing you can make takes the clubhead on an inside path to the ball so that it’s in a square or slightly open position at impact. Say good-bye to those pulls!
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
2-14. My tee shots start right and hook left. Here’s another shot that because of opposing swing forces, might just end up in the fairway. And frankly, if you’d meant to do it, we’d even be tempted to say that it’s actually a pretty cool shot. But since we’re pretty sure that you didn’t mean it—otherwise, why would you be reading this book?—let’s just work on getting it straightened out. The right-to-left ball flight is good as long as it’s a gentle draw rather than a quick hook. To find out where your hook is coming from, start with the processes described in sections 2-7 and 2-12. Is your clubface truly square at address? Are your hands turned so far to the right on the handle of the club (often in a desperate attempt to avoid a slice) that the V’s formed by your thumbs and forefingers point to the right of your right shoulder at address? You probably won’t slice the ball with that insanely strong grip, but you may hit it so far left that it ends up behind you. Get those V’s pointed back inside your right shoulder. Now make a final check of the left wrist at the top—if it’s bowed, you’re closing the face in your backswing. With your setup taken care of, let’s take a look at that push swing path that’s got your ball starting to the right. It’s important to do the shoulder check first, because if the shoulders aren’t parallel with the target line during the swing, nothing else matters—remember, as go the shoulders, so goes the ball. So hold a clubshaft across your shoulders, as described in section 2-12, and take a peek to see which
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way the shaft is pointing—if it’s right of the target, your shoulders are closed, and a good swing will send the ball to the right. As we’ve discussed, ball position can also play a role in pushed and pulled shots. The standard ball position for the driver is roughly off the left heel, although that can move around a bit depending on the golfer’s physique and comfort level. But if the ball is noticeably too far back in your stance—say, for example, that you’ve put it in the center of your stance—the clubface may literally not have enough time to square by the time it meets the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
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Tiny Terrors
3-1. Where should I aim my ball on a par-3? Regardless of where the pin may be placed on the next par-3 you play, these little testers are almost by definition sucker holes for most amateurs. They’re usually invitingly short—so you don’t have to pull out the driver you’ve been hitting OB all day long—and if you’re really lucky, someone has placed a beautiful new car next to the tee box, which you get to take home if you make a hole-in-one. So, of course, that’s what you try to do, every time. Unfortunately, the odds of an average golfer making a hole-in-one are somewhere in the vicinity of twelve thousand to one, so it’s a pretty safe bet that first shot of yours isn’t going in. Which means that if you want to score well on a par-3, you should definitely start planning for your second shot before you hit your first one.
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What do we mean by planning? Start by taking a moment on the tee to examine just what sort of green you’re up against. Is it flat? Does it slope from front to back, from back to front, or from one side to another? Is it completely surrounded by bunkers or by water, or is there a bailout area? If you’re hitting to an island or a peninsula green, or your sand game is questionable and the green is basically surrounded by a beach, your plan has already been drawn up for you: you’re going for the dead center of the green. Don’t even think twice about it. If the green gives you a few more options, you can start getting more specific about where you want to land your ball. First, check the pin placement, then divide the green into four sections, with the pin as the midpoint of those four sections. As you study these four areas of the green, you should have one thought in mind: where do I have to land the ball to give myself an uphill putt for birdie or an uphill twoputt for par? That’s all you want to know. If you can use your tee shot on a par-3 to give yourself an uphill putt for your second shot, you’ll definitely score well on these holes. Now look at the four imaginary quadrants you’ve created. Identify the ones that give you an uphill putt to the hole and eliminate the rest as potential targets. Let’s say that the pin is cut in the right center of the green. If you divide this green into four parts, with the flag at the center of the four sections, you’ll end up with two small quadrants to the right of the pin and two large quadrants to the left. Now let’s say that after examining the slope of the green, you decide that the front right quadrant and the back left quadrant offer uphill putts, while the other two quadrants don’t. The latter two are then eliminated. Of the two remaining sections, however, the front right quadrant is bordered by a small creek on the side and a pot bunker in front, while the back left quadrant is not only larger, but pretty much free from hazards. You eliminate the more dangerous front right quadrant and your decision is now simple: you want to place your ball in the back left section
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of the green—the rest of this green should basically stop existing for you. This small section is your new green. You’ve now given yourself a much better chance to make par—which, unless you’re on tour, is always a great score. Unless your first shot goes in, that is.
3-2. How much less club should I take on a downhill par-3? Downhill par-3s generally come in two varieties: the steep, off-thecliff downhill par-3—that is, any hole that features more than a 45degree drop from tee to green—and the gently sloping downhill par-3, which features a drop shallower than 45 degrees. The difference is important, because the gently sloping downhill par-3 that’s not fronted by a hazard usually gives you more room to make a mistake short of the green. So first decide what’ll happen if you come up short. Is there a stretch of fairway leading to the green that will give you an easy pitch for your second shot or is the green protected in front by sand, water, or a waste area? If it’s the former, and your club provides yardages to the front, center, and back of the green, play to the distance listed for the front edge of the green with the club you would normally take for that distance. If you hit the shot fat or have it knocked down by the wind, you should still have a decent chance to get up and down. Hit it thin or have your shot ride the wind, and you should still have a putt from the back of the green. If coming up short isn’t a particularly pleasant option, and you’re dealing with a drop to the green of more than 45 degrees, aim for the center of the green and pick your club according to the wind. If the wind is in your face, take your normal club for the distance listed to the center of the green. If the wind is calm, take one less club. And if the wind is at your back, take two clubs less than what you’d normally take for the distance listed to the center of the green.
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If reliable distances aren’t available, you can also try the “count the flagstick” method (which we lifted from Dana Rader, a great teacher who works in Charlotte, North Carolina). Look at the flagstick from the tee and determine roughly how many flagsticks you would have to pile on top of one another for the stack to reach your height above the green. Multiply that number by 8 (for the height in feet of the flagstick), divide your result by 3 (to change feet into yards), subtract that result from the yardage listed to the pin, and club down accordingly. So, for example, if you’re playing a downhill par-3 that’s 155 yards from the tee to the flagstick, and you decide it would take four imaginary stacked flagsticks to equal the height of the tee above the green, you’d multiply 4 3 8, which would give you 32 feet. You’d then divide 32 by 3, which would give you approximately 11 yards. Subtract those 11 yards from the 155-yard listed yardage to the pin, and you now have 144 yards to the pin. So instead of taking a 6-iron, you might club down to a 7-iron.
3-3. How much more club should I take on an uphill par-3? If the course you’re playing provides you with good yardages to various points on the green, a quick rule of thumb is to determine how far it is to the back edge of the green and use that yardage to choose your club. The logic is that if you hit a great shot, you’ll be putting from the back of the green (or, if the green slopes from back to front, as many do, your shot to the back of the green may just hit the slope and roll back toward the hole). Hit the ball a little less than perfect, and you’ll still end up somewhere in the center of the green. And even if you hit it a little fat, you still may get lucky and hold the front of the green. In all of the above, take an extra club for any wind between 5 and 10 mph in your face, and two clubs for any headwind between 10 and 20 mph. If the wind’s at your back, don’t club down—simply play the
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yardage to the center of the green, rather than the back. Ignore any wind that’s below 5 mph. If good yardages are lacking, you can use the “count the flagsticks” method mentioned in section 3-2, only in reverse this time. Look at the flagstick up on the green and try to imagine how many flagsticks you’d have to stack below that one to reach down to a point that’s on the same level as the tee you’re hitting from. Multiply that number by 8 (to give you the elevation of the green in feet), divide that result by 3 to give you that elevation in yards, and then add that number to whatever yardage the scorecard is giving you from your tees to the center of the green. Let’s say, then, that you’re playing an uphill par-3 that according to the scorecard is 166 yards from your tee to the center of the green. Looking up at the green, you figure it would take four eight-foot flagsticks to reach from the cup down to an imaginary point on the ground that’s on the same level as the tee box you’re hitting from. So that’s 4 3 8 = 32 feet of elevation. Divide that by 3, which gives you roughly 11 yards. Add 11 to 166 (the nominal yardage of the hole), which gives you 177 yards. Then simply club for 177 yards, rather than the scorecard’s 166.
3-4. Should I ever lay up on a par-3? You’re not going to come across too many 250-yard par-3s, but more of them exist than you probably think. And much better players than you have had a lot of success swallowing their pride and laying up on particularly difficult par-3s. In the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, for example, Billy Casper laid up on the difficult par-3 third hole every single day—and won. In the 1951 British Open, Bobby Locke also chose to play it safe every round on the par-3 14th hole at Royal Portrush (although interestingly, that happened to be the only Open Championship between 1949 and 1952 that Locke didn’t win).
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But if you do happen to encounter an unusually long par-3—that is, any hole that you’d at least have to hit a driver or 3-wood off the tee to reach (and, of course, that features fairway grass between the tee and the hole)—think long and hard about how well you’re hitting the long sticks versus how well you can play the old bump and run before you get up there and just whale away. If you’re spraying your woods, you’re almost certainly going to be laying up anyway after your banana-ball tee shot, and you may end up hitting your second shot from someplace way uglier than the fairway. In fact, for an average player, the odds of making par on a 230-yard hole are probably better with two irons and a putter than they are by trying to hit the green stiff with a fairway wood or a driver. You can even lay up on normal but particularly nasty par-3s, especially if there is fairway between the tee and the green and the front of the green is open. If you’re all over the place with your irons or your sand game is nonexistent and the back and both sides of the green are ringed with bunkers (or, of course, water), be smart—pick an iron that will let you land the ball 10 or 20 yards short of the green and then bump your second shot up there with a 7-iron. Golf is a game of risk management and control, not heroism, so if you can’t control your ball in the air, you might as well go to plan B and control it on the ground.
pa r t i i i
The Fairway
If you’re going to throw a club, it’s important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don’t have to waste energy going back to pick it up. —Tommy Bolt
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errible Tommy certainly knew what he was he talking about—and he was good. For most average golfers, the fairway is the Great Deceiver—especially if you’ve arrived there in style. How many great drives—or even decent drives—are rendered insignificant long before the architect of those drives even reaches the green, thanks to an ugly, disheartening series of fat, thin, or shanked shots that seem to appear out of nowhere? Just what the hell’s going on here? For all the trepidation and humiliation that can accompany a trip to the tee box, at least they allow you to prop the ball up there. Once you’re in the fairway—or, at least, within shouting distance of the fairway—you’re on your own. There’s nothing between your golf ball and the cold, hard turf except . . . well, except nothing—there’s literally nothing between your ball and the cold, hard turf! All those high, soaring irons that you squeezed off on the synthetic mats back at the range? You’re now about to get a firsthand lesson in just how many of them you actually hit fat. And trust us—it ain’t gonna be pretty. Common wisdom in the golf world seems to be split between those who believe that the tee box gives amateurs the most fits, and those who believe that the short game—especially the putting game—is what separates the men from the boys. We’re not going to take sides in that argument, but we would like to cast a vote for the Great Middle—that huge area roughly 200 yards from the tee and 100 yards from the green—as the real graveyard into which Mr. Everyman Golfer routinely buries his hopes of a decent round. If the fairway is so darn easy, why do so many high-handicappers get there in one, but leave there in five—or worse? This part of the book is dedicated to those purveyors of 20-foot dribblers, 90-degree shanks, and dead-center tree ricochets that leave you 30 yards farther from the green than you were just a shot before. May you find some solace in these words.
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Okay, Now Do It without a Tee 4-1. Which club should I hit from the fairway? There are certainly more and better options than there used to be. The 1-iron has all but disappeared into antiquity—the last PGA Tour pro to win a tournament with one in his bag was Joey Sindelar at the 2004 Wachovia Championship—and the 2-iron and 3-iron, at least for most amateurs, are heading in the same direction. Older players first started replacing irons longer than the 5-iron with easier-to-hit specialty woods in the 1990s, and the introduction of the modern hybrid club over the last decade has accelerated that process. In fact, many PGA Tour pros routinely use hybrid clubs now, because they’re so versatile from so many different lies. Many amateurs, however, still swear by their long irons—at least up to their 3-iron, anyway—and although the masses have reacted to the hybrid and its ease of use with nothing short of slack-jawed 71
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astonishment, some golfers still find them uncomfortable to use. So let’s leave it at this: Do you have to replace your long irons with hybrids? No. Should you carry at least one hybrid in your bag? Definitely. Even if you don’t use it all the time, there are going to be situations where it’s the perfect club for the job. You can drive with them, work the ball with them, chip with them, and even putt with them—and with a little time and practice, you may just decide to embrace them.
4-2. When should I lay up? How do I pick a layup spot? As a general rule, any time you’re more than 200 yards from a green that is fronted by hazards—whether you’re on a par-4 or a par-5—you should lay up. This is simply common sense—if you don’t reach the hazard with your shot, then you’ve essentially laid up anyway. And if you do reach the water, you’ve also essentially laid up—and you’re now hitting your fourth or fifth shot into the green. In a nutshell, if you’re not absolutely positive you can carry the hazard, don’t be a hero. (If it makes you feel any better, PGA Tour players hit the green from more than 200 yards only 41 percent of the time.) On the other hand, if you’ve got a wide-open shot to the green, your decision should be influenced by the conditions. Uneven lie? Lay up. One- or two-club wind in your face? Lay up. Trouble on the left, and you happen to hit the ball right to left? Lay up. Otherwise, let ’er rip—a miss will simply be as good as a layup anyway. Where to lay up is generally a matter of comfort. For the most part, however, a good rule of thumb is to always leave yourself with a full shot into the green. Don’t lay up to a spot that is 40 yards short of the green if it’ll require you to hit less than a full sand wedge. You’re basically being given a chance to place the ball where you want for your approach shot—why put it in a spot where you have to think about making less than a full swing? As in almost any endeavor, the fewer the variables, the better.
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That being said, you shouldn’t lay up more than 150 yards from the green, because it’s going to be a lot harder to get a 5-iron to check up on the green than it would be to drop a high, soft 9-iron in there. (And here’s another “feel good” fact: The guys on tour hit the green from outside 150 yards only approximately 60 percent of the time.) So the bottom line is to lay up to a spot that’ll allow you to hit your next shot into the green, making a full swing with your most lofted iron.
4-3. What should I do if I’m “between” clubs? Let’s say your normal, garden-variety 9-iron goes 125 yards and you have 130 yards to the pin. Which club do you choose? These “tweeners” are never easy. It’s too far for your 9 but too short for your 8, and the danger is that because you’re worrying about which club to hit, you’ll make a bad swing. If your tweeners have a history of being pulled and/or pushed, or flying short and/or long, here’s the solution. If you’re a fast-swinging power hitter, take one less club and hit it harder (in this case, take the 9). If you’re a smooth swinger with a syrupy action, take one club more and hit it easy. In other words, match your club selection to your swing tempo. This way you’ll never have to violate your internal metronome, the personal gauge that sets your natural swing pace. Abiding by your internal wiring will put you at ease, and you’ll be able to handle those awkward in-between shots with no problem. Of course, you first need to have an honest, unbiased idea of just how far you hit each club. The best way to figure this out is to take the time and effort during the first couple of rounds of the season to document exactly how far you really hit every shot. Don’t kid yourself and try to think that you can figure it out on the practice tee with a couple of range buckets—not only will you probably be hitting off a mat to hard, uneven landing areas, but you’ll also be guessing the exact yardage from 175 yards away using flags stuck in the ground
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roughly every 25 yards or so. Plus, range balls are notoriously old and decompressed. So suck it up and walk off as many shots as you can early in the season—you’ll absolutely save a substantial amount of strokes due to poor clubbing later.
4-4. How do I know if I’m standing properly for a long shot from the fairway? If you’re hitting a fairway wood, a hybrid, or a long iron, play the ball off the logo on your shirt (if you don’t have a logo, off your left chest). The length of each of these clubs will also affect the distance you stand from the ball; you’ll be slightly farther away from the ball with a fairway wood, and progressively closer with a hybrid and a long iron. The important point to remember, however, is that regardless of the club, you want to have the shaft leaning slightly toward the target at impact, so make sure that you don’t play the ball too far forward, as many golfers do.
When hitting a hybrid, play the ball off your left chest or shirt logo.
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Some experts say that you should sweep your fairway woods into the ball, but we prefer to simply talk about ball position when it comes to arriving at impact with these clubs. The reason so many average golfers frequently top and thin the ball with their fairway woods is that they’ve been told to sweep the clubhead into the ball, like you would a driver. The problem with that approach, unfortunately, is that when you’re hitting your driver, your ball is teed up about three inches. For simplicity’s sake, try to remember one thing: excluding your putter, you really only need one swing for all of your clubs—the club’s specifications (loft, lie, etc.), along with the five faces, three shoulder positions, and three ball positions will take care of everything else.
4-5. How do I adjust for the wind on shots outside 100 yards? As we’ve said, you can ignore any wind below 5 mph. Above that speed, if you’re playing into the wind, take one extra club for every 10 mph of wind speed. If you’re playing with the wind, take one less club for every 10-mph increase in wind velocity. If you’ve got a fairly substantial wind in your face, or a left or a right crosswind to deal with, it’s a good idea to change your setup to hit a low shot with more topspin that will stay under the wind. If you’re hitting an iron or a hybrid, play the ball in the center of your stance, which will press the shaft a couple of inches toward the target and hood the face slightly, and then swing normally. The ball should stay low and land with a lot of roll. If you’re hitting a fairway wood, move the ball back so that it’s off the logo on your shirt (your left chest). Don’t worry about hooding the face here—just make your normal swing. With all three types of clubs, if you’ve got a very substantial crosswind to deal with (i.e., more than 10 mph), aim to the left of your original target if the wind is coming from your left, and to the right for a crosswind coming from your right.
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If the wind’s at your back, you should play your normal shot with all three clubs, although you can move the ball slightly forward in your stance if you want to get the ball up a little higher so that it can ride the wind for a little more distance. For heavy crosswinds, adjust your aim left or right so that you can hit into the wind as much as possible.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (iron/hybrid into wind) Clubface Position: Slightly hooded Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood into wind) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (iron/hybrid with wind) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood with wind) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
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The Unfairway
5-1. My ball is above my feet in the fairway or the rough. When the ball rests above your feet, you’re forced to swing flatter and more around your body, which causes your shot to fly to the left of the target, usually with a right-to-left spin. The tendency is to pull hook the ball, but there are several adjustments you can make to offset this situation. Since all good swings depend on balance, the first order of business is to neutralize the tendency to be pulled down the hill. Flex your knees into the hill for balance and keep your weight forward toward the balls of your feet and leave it there as you swing. Also be sure to keep your weight on the inside of your back foot. The danger is that as your swing progresses, the momentum of your turn will topple you backward down the hill, which is an error you can prevent if you’re well anchored on your back side. 77
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Take one more club and choke down so you can stand closer to the ball. To account for the tendency to pull the shot, move the ball back in your stance and allow your shoulders to close, an alignment that will aim your clubface to the right of the target (left for left-handers). With both your shoulders and your clubface aimed to the right, your swing takes an inside path that offsets the tendency for the ball to start left. Once you’re aimed properly, simply swing the club using a threequarter arc, allowing your setup to determine your swing path. If you remember one thing about this kind of lie, it’s this: don’t change your posture during the swing! Most golfers want to either lean in and get closer to the ball or stand up to make what they perceive to be more room for the club on the downswing. Both moves are killers. Get yourself into a well-anchored posture that tricks your mind into thinking you’re on a normal, flat lie, and stay there. If you’re faced with a ball above your feet in the rough, play the shot as you would from the fairway lie, with a couple of changes. In addition to aiming right to compensate for the slope of the hill, you should also open your clubface slightly—when a clubhead passes through heavy grass, the resistance from the grass closes the face of the club. But with your clubface open at impact, the grass will simply shut the face to square.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Closed
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (rough) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Closed
5-2. My ball is below my feet in the fairway or the rough. This is generally a lot trickier than trying to hit a ball that is above your feet. For one thing, you can’t move your hands anywhere on the handle to compensate for the extra distance between your hands and the ball—you’re right up to the butt end of the club as it is. What you can do, however, is stand closer to the ball—this forces you to hold your club more vertically, which effectively lengthens it to help close the gap between your hands and the ball. If you’re still not able to get the clubhead down behind the ball, try widening your stance and pigeon-toeing your feet, bending your knees, and bending a little farther forward from the hips, all of which will help lower the club down to the ball. Make sure you aim to the left of the target, because a ball below your feet will naturally move to the right after impact. The same swing principles you used to hit a ball above your feet also apply to this situation. In short, do your best not to fall backward or lean forward out of your posture during the swing. To do this, play the ball farther forward than you normally would and anchor your weight on your heels. If you’re faced with a ball below your feet in the rough, you can play the shot as outlined previously with a couple of adjustments. In addition to aiming left to compensate for the left-to-right slope of the hill, you should also open your clubface slightly, for the same reason you do it when your ball is above your feet in the rough—the grass will
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simply shut the face to square, or worse, to closed. Because you’re so close to the ball when you bend a bit more from the waist, your swing will automatically be more upright, which will help ensure that your clubhead encounters less grass on its way to the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (rough) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
5-3. My ball is sitting in a divot on the fairway. Another great drive ruined. Don’t feel so bad—divot lies often look worse than they actually are. Just remember two things: you want to hit down on the ball and you want to hit the ball first. So put the ball slightly back of center in your stance and make sure that your feet and shoulders are square to the target line or even slightly open. Your weight should favor your left side—this will allow you to take the club sharply up and then down on the back of the ball without having to think about it. That doesn’t mean that this has to be a punch shot—if you follow through as you would on a shot from a normal lie, you’ll get plenty of height on the ball—but it’ll force you to let the lie of the club do its job, rather than making you try to manipulate the ball out of the divot.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square to open Ball Position: Slightly back of center Shoulders: Square to open
5-4. My ball is sitting on a downhill slope. The key to this shot is getting your shoulders parallel to the slope at address and then keeping them there during the swing. Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done. If you’re standing on a downward slope and you need to get your shoulders even with the slope, you’re going to find out pretty quickly that the only way to do this is to tilt your upper body even farther down the hill, a move that dramatically increases your chances of tipping over. And even if you do successfully achieve this position, you have to keep your shoulders there as you make a full swing to have any chance at a decent shot. A few small adjustments, however, can make shots from this tricky lie a lot easier. First, take one less club than you need for the yardage, since the downhill slope will effectively deloft your club. Then, adjust your shoulders so that they point down the slope. Whatever else you do from this lie, you don’t want to lean the right side of your body into the hill. If you do, you’ll either hit the shot fat (your club will bottom out into the hill before reaching the ball) or, if you manage to make room in your downswing for the club to swing through impact, you’ll top the ball or hit it thin. To get your shoulders even with the slope, set up so that the ball is an inch or so back of the center of your stance, turn your left (downhill) toe toward the target, and keep your weight on your left side—this will help you swing along the slope, rather than into it. Since you want your hips as level as possible, draw your rear foot back until they are. Good balance is the key here, so don’t try to turn on the power and
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don’t try to lift the ball into the air. Your job is to let the ball go where the slope naturally takes it, which in this case is low and running.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Slightly back of center Shoulders: Square
5-5. My ball is sitting on an uphill slope. Once you’ve learned how to hit a shot from a downhill lie, learning how to hit a ball that is on the upslope of a hill is simply a matter of reversing everything. Like a shot from a downhill lie, the important thing about setting up for an uphill lie is to get your shoulders even with the slope. You will be even more tempted to lean into the hill on this shot than you were on the downhill shot—primarily because leaning into the hill will seem to make it easier to hit down into the back of the ball and punch it out. This may be true, but such a punch shot will leave you well short of your target. To hit a full shot the proper distance, you need to make your lie as flat as possible, and you do this by tilting your shoulders to match the slope. Before you address the ball, take one more club than you need for the yardage, because the uphill slope will effectively add loft to your club. Set up so that the ball is slightly ahead of center in your stance, then turn your right (downhill) toe away from the target (which will help stabilize your coil), bend your right knee slightly, keep your weight centered, and make a three-quarter swing up the slope— not into it. You’ll be able to make a full follow-through from this lie, but just remember that the more you follow through, the higher the ball will fly. So if you’re concerned about not reaching the target, you can stop your follow-through earlier to create a lower ball flight.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Ahead of the normal position for whichever club you have Shoulders: Square
5-6. My ball is sitting on bare ground. Few things make golfers more uncomfortable than a ball that’s sitting in a tight lie—that is, in a spot on the course where there’s very little padding between the ground and the ball. This is why a lot of amateurs prefer to hit out of the first cut of rough rather than the fairway—the slightly longer grass helps tee up the ball slightly. But a ball that is sitting on bare ground—also known as hardpan— is the most extreme example of a tight lie (outside of hitting off a cart path). There is little margin for error as far as contact with the ball is concerned—you’ll either catch the shot perfectly or the leading edge of the club will bounce into the ball and hit it thin. The key to this shot, therefore, is to increase as much as possible the chances that you’ll do the former, and decrease the odds that you’ll do the latter. First, decide where you want the shot to go. Do you have a clear path to the target, or do you need to bend the ball around a dogleg or some other obstacle? If it’s the latter, keep in mind that it’s going to be more difficult to work the ball left or right on command, so your best bet is to forget about trying to cut or draw the ball—just concentrate on making good contact. To do that, start with your ball position. Set up so that the ball is in the center of your stance or slightly back of center—this will ensure that you contact the ball first. Put your weight on your front leg and keep it there while you swing. Open your shoulders and make your normal swing, making sure to turn back and through. The key to this
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shot is to avoid trying to help the ball into the air—you’ve already put the ball slightly back in your stance, which really makes this shot no more troublesome than a shot from a good lie in the fairway. You want to pick the ball off the ground or even hit it slightly thin, and your setup—coupled with a minimal weight shift that will produce a mostly upper-body, arms-and-shoulders effort—will help you do that.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center or slightly back of center Shoulders: Open
5-7. My ball is sitting in heavy rough off the fairway. The first question you need to ask yourself in this situation is, “How am I going to get the club on the ball?” If the ball is essentially buried in the grass—that is, if you had to search for a while and it’s still hard to even catch a glimpse of it—the answer is, “You’re not.” Forget about trying to do anything with the ball except advance it to a safe place for your next shot. You should locate the nearest area of fairway or short rough and play the ball to that spot as you would for a sand shot, making sure to open both the clubface and your body. This move will help counter the tendency of the grass to grab the face of the club and close it. To play this shot, take your sand wedge (which is the heaviest club in your bag), choke down an inch or two and increase your grip pressure (to keep the club from twisting in the grass), and place the ball about an inch behind the center of your stance, which will cut down on the amount of grass the clubhead has to move through. Open your stance and cock your wrists quickly in the backswing, which will bring the club up on a very steep path, and then bring it back down firmly
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into the rough an inch or two behind the ball. The key to this shot is to rotate the chest and the hips, but not the forearms. In the full swing you rotate all three in unison, but in deep, gnarly grass you want to slip the clubhead as far under the ball as you can, and you can’t do that with a shut clubface. The biggest mistake that golfers make in this situation is to drop the back shoulder down toward the ground in an attempt to get the clubhead under the ball. This increases the amount of grass that your clubhead must travel through and makes the shot all but impossible.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
5-8. My ball is sitting in light rough off the fairway. Believe it or not, this is one of those rare occasions when a situation on the golf course bothers the tour pros more than it should bother you. It’s not that the pros have trouble hitting the ball out of light rough, it’s that they can’t spin the ball on the green when hitting from the first cut of rough like they can from the fairway, because grass gets between the clubface and the ball and changes the normal spin patterns. And with the kinds of precision games they have, that can mean the difference between birdie and par. Amateur golfers, however, don’t generally have that problem, because most amateur golfers can’t spin the ball from anywhere. Whether they’re hitting from the fairway or the first cut, most average players just fire the ball up in the air and hope it lands and stops rolling somewhere near the pin. In fact, many amateur players prefer the
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first cut of rough, because the ball usually sits up nicely on the longer grass (to many average players, tour-quality fairways seem almost like hardpan—basically, an invitation to bounce the clubhead into the ball at impact). There are a couple of things that amateurs should know about the light rough, however. As we mentioned, it’s harder to put spin on the ball from the first cut—balls generally land, release, and roll on the greens. So you may want to club down a bit. And that lack of spin doesn’t just apply to forward and backward spin—sidespin is harder to put on the ball, too, which means it’s a little bit harder to work the ball left to right or right to left from the rough than it is from the fairway.
5-9. My ball has landed on a bed of pine needles. The good news is that you’ll almost always have a clean lie if your ball is sitting on a bed of pine needles. The bad news is that you’re not going to be able to do much with the ball once you get it in the air. The slippery surface of the needles prevents the ball from spinning very much on contact, which means you can’t tell how much backspin the ball will have—it may or may not check up when it lands. Nor will you be able to control the sidespin on the ball—in other words, you won’t be able to “work” it either left or right with any certainty. Your only choice in this guessing game is to decide where you can realistically land a shot that is generally going to fly straight and roll far. Do you need to get the ball around a tree to get to the green? Then forget about getting it to the green. Find a straight line that’ll allow you to advance your ball as far as possible up the fairway (if you’re having trouble finding even that, refer to section 5-16). Estimate the yardage you have to the farthest point on the fairway and then take one club less than you normally would for that distance. Put the ball in the center of your stance or even an inch or two back (you want to hit the ball
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before the pine needles), open your stance and keep your weight on your left side, hood the clubface slightly, hover the clubhead over the ball, and then take a full swing and try to pick the ball off the needle carpet. The ball will come out low and without much spin, but the fact that you took one club less should keep the ball from rolling too far.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square/hooded Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
5-10. My ball has landed in the middle of a fairway bunker. Chances are pretty good that you’ll have a decent lie—fairway bunker sand is usually firmer than greenside bunker sand, and your ball probably entered the bunker on a low trajectory, which usually prevents any plugged or buried lie problems. Obviously, the center of the bunker is a good location—you shouldn’t have to worry about clearing the front lip of the bunker (assuming that the face of the bunker isn’t unusually steep) or having to stand with one foot outside the bunker as you would at the very back of the bunker. Although this is a sand shot, it’s not a greenside sand shot in which you hit the sand before the ball—here, you actually want to miss the sand at impact. So for starters, stand a little taller than you normally would at address by narrowing your stance and bending a little less from your hips—this will effectively make you taller and elevate the bottom of your swing arc, which will help you hit the ball slightly thin, without taking any sand. The guiding theme is to think “pick.” Play the ball in the center of your stance (this is a little more insurance against hitting the sand before the ball) and dig your feet into
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the sand just enough to give them some stability—you don’t want to dig in too much, because for every inch you dig in, you need to choke down an inch to keep from taking too much sand. So just get your feet comfortable and then choke down a quarter to a half an inch on the club to compensate for your lowered feet. Make sure to take an extra club or two—the fact that you’re going to be hitting the ball thin will send it out of the bunker on a low trajectory, but since you’re not going to be hitting down on the ball and fully compressing it, you won’t get the same distance that you’d normally get for your chosen club. You want to try to sweep the ball off the sand while keeping your legs quiet during the swing—excess movement when hitting from any unstable lie such as sand can easily throw off your swing arc, causing you to hit the sand first or to top the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square to slightly open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square to open
5-11. My ball has landed in the back of a fairway bunker. There are few things more annoying than watching a great tee shot slow up as it approaches a bunker and then roll in at the last second. If you’re lucky and the ball has rolled more than a couple of feet into the sand, you can play it just like a regular fairway bunker shot (see section 5-10). But if you’re a foot or less from the back lip of the bunker, you need to make a decision: do you want to safely advance the ball onto the fairway and leave yourself with a long up-and-down opportunity (say, 150 yards or more), or do you want to roll the dice
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and either give yourself a wedge shot into the green—or a third shot from the same bunker? If you choose the safety route—and that’s what we recommend— skip forward to section 7-14 and learn the proper way to hit your ball from the back of a greenside bunker. But if you’re the adventurous sort, and the front lip of the bunker is fairly low, grab a long-range club and get ready to roll—maybe literally. The problem when you’re less than a foot from the back lip of a bunker is, of course, the back lip. Not only is it going to impede any normal backswing or downswing you try to make with a fairway wood or a hybrid, but your back foot will almost certainly be out of the bunker, complicating things even more. So let’s start by getting your back foot into the bunker. Do this by placing it into the sand even with the ball and then checking your clubhead clearance. As long as the clubhead clears the lip on both the way back and the way down, keep edging your back foot back so that you can get the ball as near to the center of your stance as possible while still clearing the lip. (Keep in mind that this is going to be more of an up-and-down swing rather than a sweeping move, so this will give you a little bit more wiggle room.) Once you’re satisfied that you’ve gotten the ball as far forward in your stance as you can, set your left foot into the address position so that your stance is a little narrower than usual and you’re bending a little more from the hips. Keep your grip light, your arms loose, and a little bit more weight on your left side, and then simply fold your right elbow, cock your wrist abruptly, and bring the clubhead right back down again on the back of the ball—hard. If you catch the ball with a lot of clubhead speed just before you hit the sand, the ball will shoot forward low to the ground and carry roughly 50 percent of the club’s normal distance. So if your lie in the bunker is 180 yards from the flag and you use a 5-iron that you normally hit 170 yards for this shot, you can expect to leave yourself with a 95-yard third shot into the green. The key to this shot is to keep your spine angle intact through impact—any lifting or dipping will cause problems.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square to open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
5-12. My ball has landed under the front lip of a fairway bunker. This depends on exactly what you mean by “under the lip.” If your ball is at least three or four inches from the actual lip (that is, where the encroaching grass overhangs the sand in the bunker), and the bunker is fairly shallow—as in flat—you can probably advance the ball farther than you think. For this shot, set up with the ball as far forward as you can, preferably off your left chest—you want to get the clubhead on the ball first in this situation, but you don’t want to put the ball too far back in your stance and risk hitting the lip when the ball comes off the clubface low. Chances are that your left foot is probably going to be outside the bunker and higher than your back foot, so once you’ve got both feet comfortably in place, bend your spine slowly to the right until your shoulders are parallel to the slope between your higher front and lower back feet. You’ll now be effectively swinging from a flat lie. Take the longest iron in your bag that’ll get you over the lip, get comfortable over the ball, and open both your stance and your clubface as much as possible. Take the club back with a steep upswing and swing down on the same sharp angle, making sure that the clubface contacts the ball before the sand. (Because you’ve bent your spine slightly to the right to compensate for the slope, you risk burying the clubhead in the ground behind the ball if you try to make a shallow, sweeping swing. This shot requires you to get the club up over your right shoulder as quickly as possible in the downswing and, most important, to swing up the hill.) If the ball is truly under the lip, your options are limited. Your best and probably smartest bet is to treat your ball as though it’s buried in
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the sand and play the buried-lie shot described in section 8-15—you should consider a successful shot back to the fairway as a job well done. If you want to get adventurous, however, you can try using the extra mass in a hybrid, a fairway wood, or even a driver head to try to blast your way through the grass at the edge of the lip. This works best if your ball is on a slight incline leading up the lip—don’t try it if the lip is more than six inches or so high, or if your ball is sitting flat on the sand. Set up as you would for any teed-up ball with your hybrid, fairway wood, or driver. Both feet should be in the bunker, and the ball should be as far forward as you dare, with the face wide open. Take the usual shallow swing that you should always make with your woods, and make it a full one—you want to sweep up into the ball with a lot of force at impact, and you don’t want to take any sand. With luck, the ball will actually clear the lip and fly a long way, but even if it doesn’t, it may still rip right through the lip and at least get you back to the fairway.
FIVE-FACES SHOT SHOT ANALYSIS FIVE-FACES ANALYSIS Clubface Position (iron shot): Wide open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open Clubface Position (wood shot): Wide open Ball Position: Left heel or toe Shoulders: Open
5-13. My ball is buried in a fairway bunker. You’re probably not going to see this situation very often. It can happen in one of three ways: you can either pop your tee shot up and have the ball come straight down in a fairway bunker that’s relatively close to the tee; you can bomb your drive long but so high that it, too, comes down on a very steep trajectory and buries itself in a fairway bunker;
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or you can hit a drive that flies on a normal trajectory but dives straight into the side of a pot bunker or a steep-faced fairway bunker. Whatever the circumstances, this is one situation that cleverness isn’t going to solve. Take your medicine and get your ball out to a better place. Refer to section 7-15 to learn how to hit a ball out of buried lie, and simply aim for the nearest short grass. You’ll be happy you did.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly closed Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
5-14. My ball has landed on a cart path. In most cases, your choice here is simple: take the free drop offered by the rules of golf. Find the nearest spot no closer to the hole that allows you to drop the ball, stand, and swing without interference from the cart path. But there are times when a free drop isn’t really so free. What if there are woods on both sides of the cart path and your only relief blocks you off from the green? And just to sweeten the pot a bit, what if the cart path itself gives you a clear shot to the green? If you decide to play the ball off the concrete path, treat the shot like a hardpan shot, but with a couple of adjustments. First, commit to making at the most a three-quarter swing. Soft spikes are much more amenable to standing and swinging on concrete than the old metal spikes were, but your footing is still going to be much more tenuous than it would be on grass. A three-quarter swing will therefore allow you to make a much more stable pass at the ball. To compensate for the shorter swing, take one or even two extra clubs.
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Second, while hardpan is a trickier surface to hit a golf ball from than grass, it’s still not concrete. Hardpan has some give—it won’t damage your clubs, and it probably won’t injure your wrists, even if you hit down on it. A concrete cart path, on the other hand, is very unforgiving. So you really want to do your utmost to swing the clubhead on an angle that will allow it to merely clip the ball off the surface without actually touching the concrete. In this sense, the shot is almost exactly like a shot from a fairway bunker. Set up as you would for a normal iron shot. When you’re trying to pick the ball off the ground, it usually helps to stand a little taller, but in this case, your spikes are already doing that for you by raising you up slightly above the concrete. Place the ball in the center of your stance—this will encourage you to make a sweeping motion while still allowing you to contact the ball first. Make sure to keep your weight left while you swing—if you hang back on your right side, you’ll hit the ball fat, and concrete is definitely not the place to hit a fat shot. Make a full follow-through and finish with your hands high, which will help add some height to a shot that will probably be on the thin side.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
5-15. My ball has landed in rocks. You may think that this is just another candidate for the “just go ahead and take a drop” file, but why waste a stroke if you don’t have to? The reality is, unless your ball is actually under a rock and truly unplayable, there are lots of ways to extract yourself from this unpleasant situation. Let’s take a look at just a few.
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If your ball has landed on ground that is studded with lots of small rocks—those of you who have played desert courses from spots other than the fairway will be quite familiar with this terrain—play the shot like you would any shot from hardpan (see section 5-6). If you’ve got a rock behind your ball that prevents you from making a clean pass through impact, and the rules don’t allow you to move it, set up so that the ball is back of center and grab an iron (if you’ve got a clear opening that’ll allow you to advance your ball up the fairway, or you need to pop the ball over an obstacle such as a bush) or your putter (if you’re just trying to keep your ball low to the ground and squirt it back to the fairway). By keeping the ball so far back in your stance, you’ll take the rock behind your ball out of the swing. With your weight centered on your left side, bring the clubhead up steeply and then down hard on the back of the ball. The ball will shoot out low, but if you need to clear an obstacle, use a sand wedge to get the ball as high as you need it to fly. If, on the other hand, there’s a rock or group of rocks in front of your ball, take your highest lofted club—preferably your lob wedge, if you carry one—and set up for a high, soft lob shot. (See section 7-34 to learn how to hit this shot.) On the off chance that your ball is actually sitting on top of a large rock, refer to section 5-14 and play the ball as you would a shot from a cart path.
5-16. My ball has landed in a stand of trees. We’re talking here about a couple of trees off to the side of the fairway, not a forest. First, check the clearance you have between each pair of trees, and eliminate any shots that would have to thread their way through less than a foot of space (and a foot is actually pushing it—to be safe, and depending on your skill, you might want to skip anything that requires you to split trees any closer than two feet apart). Of the remaining shot possibilities, find the ones that give you the opportunity to make an unimpeded full swing at the ball. If none
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of them do, punch out to the fairway through the opening that best allows you to advance the ball toward the green. Finally, if you have the choice of at least two openings wider than a foot that you can make a full unimpeded swing at, simply choose the opening that will best get you down the fairway in the direction of the green and swing away.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
5-17. My ball has landed close to a wall, a tree, or another large object. We’re assuming in this situation that your ability to make a swing is impeded in some way by the wall or tree. Depending on the position of the obstacle, one of three situations generally applies: (1) you can’t make a backswing, (2) you can’t follow through, or (3) you can’t assume your normal stance—in other words, the only way you can make a clean pass at the ball is to turn around and hit it away from your target. Let’s address each situation. Situation 1. If you’re unable to make a backswing, and you’re within 100 yards or so of the green, you’ve still got some options that can have you putting on your next shot. First, stand in front of your ball, so you’re between it and your intended target, and pick the line you want the ball to travel on. Then pick an object on the ground just in front of your ball that is on that line and use it as an aiming point. Next, take the longest iron in your bag or a hybrid (fairway woods and drivers are not a good choice for this shot, because their longer shafts make them harder to control) and set up so that the ball is roughly two feet or so to the right of your right foot.
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Set up with your stance closed and your feet closer together than usual—this will allow you to stand a little taller and to reach back toward the ball with greater ease. Make sure you have enough clearance between the obstacle and the club you’ve chosen. Reach back with both hands and your club, as though you’re halfway into your backswing, and hold the clubface over the upper back of the ball. Make sure that you can swing the club up to about shoulder height and back down to the ball without impacting the wall or tree. Once you’re set up correctly, double-check the aiming point you chose in front of your ball, hood the clubface slightly, and simply bring the club up as high as you think you need for the distance to the green and down hard into the back of the ball. The ball will shoot out toward the green on a very low trajectory, land hot, and roll with a lot of topspin toward the green. Situation 2. If you can’t follow through with your club, chances are good that there’s little hope that you can get the ball over the obstacle (especially if it’s a tree), let alone to a green that is more than 50 yards away. That leaves you with two options. You can punch out to the fairway, or you can take your chances with your lie and try to work the ball around the obstacle. Since the punch shot has been described elsewhere, let’s concentrate on trying to work the ball around the tree. Stand behind your ball and pick a line that is no more than a ball or two away from the tree—you need to give yourself as much chance as possible to both clear the tree and bend the shot enough to get it headed toward the green. Set up so that the ball is in the center of your stance, open your stance fairly wide (you might want to move your front foot away from the target line by as much as a foot), weaken your grip slightly (that is, move your hands to the left on the handle, so that the clubface stays open through impact), set the clubface open to the target line, and make a hard but otherwise normal swing along your open shoulder line, not the target line. Depending on the stability of the surface that your ball is lying on, the combination of an open stance, weak grip, and open face should put a good amount of slice spin on the ball
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and send it straight out past the tree and hard right toward the green. Situation 3. If your ball has landed against a wall that runs down the left side of the fairway, so that your only clean shot is backward into more woods or weeds (or, with luck, the fairway), you have several options, some much better than others. First, of course, you can take that clean shot and go backward to a better lie that will give you a clear shot to the green. Second, you can use your putter (see section 7-30) or other low-lofted club to hit down on the back of the ball and punch it out to the fairway. And, third, if for some reason you can’t punch out and you can’t hit the ball backward and there is at least a foot or so between the ball and the wall, you can actually hit the ball into the wall so that it ricochets backward and hopefully out to the fairway. For safety reasons (i.e., a ball in the head or broken wrists on the wall), we suggest you refrain from the last option. But if you’re feeling lucky, go for it. FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (situation 1) Clubface Position: Hooded Ball Position: Back of center Shoulders: Closed FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (situation 2) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (situation 3) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
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5-18. My ball has landed in a couple of inches of water on or near the fairway. First things first. If your ball is actually sitting in a couple of inches of water on the fairway, then it’s almost certainly sitting in casual water, which means you get a free drop from the nearest point of relief. So take it. If your ball is sitting in a puddle of water in a bunker, you also get to drop the ball, this time in a dry part of the bunker (if there are no dry parts of the bunker, you can drop your ball outside the bunker and no closer to the hole, but it’ll cost you a stroke—so by all means, do everything you can to find a dry part of the bunker and take relief). Or, if you absolutely can’t find a dry spot and don’t want to take a penalty, you can play out of the water. Likewise, if your ball has landed in the water at the edge of a regular hazard, you can take a drop anywhere short of the hazard (making sure to keep the point where your ball last crossed the hazard between you and the hole)—along with a one-shot penalty—or you can try to hit the ball out of the water with no penalty. And in a lateral hazard, you can drop your ball two club lengths from where the ball last crossed the margin of the hazard—and no nearer to the hole—or, again, try to hit the ball out of the water. And this is where the fun begins, because in each of these situations, you’re obviously going to choose to hit the ball out of the water, right? We thought so. The water shot is executed much like a sand shot—except that you don’t want to use your sand wedge. Why? Because your sand wedge is designed to bounce off the sand—that’s what that big hunk of metal on the bottom of the clubhead is for (see section 7-3). The last thing you want to do from a lie like this is to bounce the clubhead off the water. You need a sharper-edged implement, and since you’re a good distance from the hole and would presumably like to advance the ball as far as you can (otherwise, why not just take the drop?), take a 9-iron instead.
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Step into the water with your right foot so that the ball is in the middle of your stance, then step in with your left foot so that you’re slightly open to the line you want the ball to travel on. (You may want to take your shoes and socks off to do this—otherwise, you’ll be playing the rest of your round in wet shoes and socks.) Keep more of your weight on your left side. Lay the clubface open slightly, and once you’re comfortable, take the club back on a steep angle—start cocking your wrists as soon as you take the club back—and then bring the clubhead down hard into the water an inch or two behind the ball. The water will exert a lot of resistance, but you want to try as hard as you can to keep the club moving through impact. Don’t make a full follow-through (you probably won’t be able to), and try not to move your head in anticipation of a face full of water. If you do this properly, the ball should ride out on a wave of water created by the clubhead and fly out of the hazard. How far it’ll fly at that point is anyone’s guess, but hey, no matter—you avoided taking the penalty, and your playing partners will be duly impressed by your improvisational skills. Oh, and you’ll probably be covered in mud and water, but hey—that’s the price of fame.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Laid open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
5-19. My ball is sitting in the weeds. Depending on the kind of weeds you’re talking about, the shot required here is similar to the shot described earlier in this chapter for extricating a ball from heavy rough. If the weeds happen to be a bed of ivy or some other extremely dense, dark undergrowth that is completely hiding your ball, you might want to think about taking a drop. On the off chance that
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you even make contact with the ball from such a lie, you may simply end up advancing it just a few feet farther into the same undergrowth, and the strokes you take will only begin to grow exponentially from there. On the other hand, if the weeds happen to be of the tall, thin grassy variety—if they’re fescue or any number of sea grasses—you’ve got a much better chance to advance the ball meaningfully toward the green (if you don’t have a clean lie, however, just take a short iron and play safe). As with the shot from heavy rough, the key to this shot is getting the clubface on the ball. This means that you want the clubhead to enter the weeds and contact the ball on a very steep angle—sweeping the clubhead through the weeds is not going to work. Start by taking the club that you would normally use for the required distance. Set up so that the ball is located between the center of your stance and your right heel. Open your stance an inch or two (in other words, aim your shoulders left of the target), and open and lay back the clubface slightly to offset the tendency of the grass and weeds to shut the face at impact. Bring the club up quickly and steeply and then back down, swinging along your shoulder line (that is, left of the target). You’re not trying to simply punch the ball out, so try to make as complete a follow-through as the grass will allow and be sure not to allow your right hand to turn over your left through impact—that closes the face, which is exactly what you don’t want in this situation.
FIVE-FACES SHOT FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open and laid back Ball Position: Slightly ahead of center Shoulders: Open
5-20. My ball has landed on a parallel fairway. Before you do anything else, thank your friendly architect for parallel fairways—they’re one of the rare friendly loopholes in golf’s iron-
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fisted penal code. Assuming that you’re far enough into the other fairway to not have to worry about hitting over any trees or other obstacles between the two holes, you should have a pretty routine shot back to the correct green (or the correct fairway, if you’re playing a par-5). The key, then, is to get your distance correct, especially if you’re going for the green. Walking off the distance in the traditional way won’t work, but you can still use what you hopefully learned in tenth grade to get a good approximation. First, look over and find the 150-yard marker in the fairway that you’re supposed to be in. Then, picture an imaginary line running from the green you’ll be hitting to back through that 150-yard marker. Now walk straight across (that is, in a perpendicular line) from your ball to that imaginary line, measuring the distance with your strides as you go. That distance (let’s say it’s 75 yards) will represent the bottom of an imaginary right triangle. You should now be standing on the line that runs from the green out through the 150-yard marker—you’ll either be behind or ahead of the marker, depending on how far you hit your previous ball. Now simply walk off the distance from that spot to the 150-yard marker. If you had to walk back to get to the marker, subtract that distance from 150. If you had to walk forward to get to the marker, add that distance to 150. Let’s say you had to walk 10 yards back—that gives you a total distance of 140 yards from the green to the spot that is directly across from your ball, and this 140 represents the vertical side of our imaginary right triangle. So now we have two sides of an imaginary triangle measuring 75 yards and 140 yards, respectively. Using the old a² + b² = c² formula, we get 140² + 75² = c² (with c being the distance between your ball and the green). That gives us 19,600 + 5,625 = c², or 25,225 = c². Now simply find the square root of 25,225 and, voila!—you’ve got your distance: 158 yards. Now, assuming that you don’t normally bring a calculator with you when you play golf, you should probably only hold up about six or seven groups behind you while you do these calculations. But don’t worry—they’ll appreciate
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your dedication. In fact, they may even let you know how much they appreciate you when you get back to the clubhouse. Or you can just do what we really do: look straight across from your ball to the fairway you’re supposed to be in, figure out how far you’d be from the hole (or your layup spot) if you were on that fairway, and then guess how many yards to add or subtract. Works every time.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Normal for given distance Shoulders: Square
5-21. I need to hit a blind shot over a hill to the green. A little bit of preparation will go a long way toward making this shot routine. Without slowing up your group or the group behind you, walk or drive your cart to the top of the hill and survey the green. Is it open in front with trouble in the back, or is there trouble in front that is going to force you to fly your ball onto the green? Is there trouble on either or both sides of the green? And, of course, where is the pin? Stand at the top of the hill, on a line directly between your ball on the fairway and the center of the green. Look behind the green and find three reference targets, which should be as high as possible behind the green—trees are ideal, as are telephone poles and radio towers (and in pinch, even relatively stationary clouds can work). The first reference target should mark the line from your ball to the center of the green. The other two targets should mark the farthest left and farthest right points from the center of the green that you can safely miss your shot. Taken together, these three points will create an in-
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visible landing area for you to aim at—it’s almost like trying to land a plane in the fog using only instruments. Once you’ve framed your landing area, go back to your ball and select your club. Walk off the center-of-the-green distance from your ball to a nearby yardage marker and then go back to the survey that you made of the green. If the green is wide open in front with trouble in the back, take the club that you would normally hit to that distance. Even if you come up short due to the hill, you should still be just in front of the green with a reasonable chance for an up-and-down. If there is trouble in front of the green, however, take one extra club. You should be able to fly your ball to the center of the green with a good shot, but a miss long or short will again leave you with a decent chance to get up and down. Put the ball slightly forward in your stance for a little extra elevation, and aim for the center of the imaginary landing area that you’ve created. Forget the pin—it would obviously be nice to hit your approach shot stiff here, but the smart player takes what the situation allows. In this case, the blind shot makes par an excellent score on this hole.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Slightly ahead of center Shoulders: Square
5-22. I need to hit a high shot over an obstacle. If your only option on an approach shot is to hit the ball over an obstacle, or if you find yourself standing at the bottom of a hill facing an almost vertical shot to an elevated green, you need to find a way to enhance the natural loft of whichever club you decide to use to cover the distance.
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First, do a little research on exactly how much club you need to clear the obstacle and reach the target. Lay the club you think you might use on the ground next to your ball, with the butt end of the club facing the target and the clubface pointing up at the sky. Now step on the face until the clubshaft rises as far as it will go into the air. The angle of the shaft at this point is the trajectory that your ball will take if hit properly. Is the butt end of the club pointing over, or at least at, the top of the obstacle? And can this club carry the yardage required to get to the target, plus roughly 10 yards (to account for the height of the obstacle)? If you can answer yes to both questions, good. Now you’re ready to adjust your stance and swing. Address the ball so that it’s even with your left heel—regardless of which club you’ve chosen. With most of your weight on your left leg, take the clubhead back along the target line, making sure to set your wrists as much as you can. Also, take care to make a full coil by rotating your shoulders in a full turn—you want to make a very vertical backswing on this shot, but you also need the power of a good coil to send the ball up and over the obstacle. Allow the centrifugal force of your arms to sling the clubhead through the ball, and finish the swing with your hands high and your body fully turned toward the target. The ball should shoot off the clubface on a high trajectory, clear the obstacle, and carry toward the green.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
5-23. I need to hit a low shot under an obstacle. How low do you need to go? If it’s under two feet or so, use your putter, which is the lowest-lofted club in your bag. You won’t be able to advance
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the ball more than 50 or 75 yards, but using any other club—even if you put the ball back and punch down on it—probably won’t get you under the obstacle. Set up so that the ball is anywhere from a foot or two to the right of your right foot, take the club back until your hands are about shoulder high or less (depending on the distance you need to cover), and then bring the putterface down hard on the back of the ball. The ball will shoot out along the ground or just above it with a lot of topspin. It’s an easy shot to hit, and also an easy one to control. If the obstacle you need to go under is more than two or three feet off the ground, use the “step on it” method described in section 5-22 to gauge which club will give you the most distance with a trajectory low enough to clear the bottom of the obstacle. If you determine that the shaft angle of the club you’re thinking about using is below the bottom of the obstacle, you’re good to go. Put the ball in the center or just behind the center of your stance, strengthen your grip so that the face closes on the way down, and— while trusting that you have the correct club—make your normal swing. It’s important that you hit the ball before you hit the ground, so add a little more weight to your left side at address and leave it there. If you do so, the ball will shoot out like a watermelon seed and run low and hot toward the target. If you use the step-on-it method and the club you’d normally take for the distance won’t get you under the obstacle, keep taking more club until you find one that will—you may have to go all the way down to a 3-iron to clear the obstacle. If this is the case, make the same swing described previously, and remember that even though you have a longer club in your hand, you don’t have to change your swing.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Closed Ball Position: Center to right heel Shoulders: Closed
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Fairway Swing Disasters 6-1. I keep hitting the ball fat with my hybrids and fairway woods. Hitting fat shots with your fairway woods is usually the product of an incorrect swing plane and/or a faulty weight shift. These clubs are built to be swept back and then swept down and through the ball, and trying to swing these clubs with the more vertical swing you use for irons usually will not work. You might get lucky and bring the clubhead down perfectly on the back of the ball, but chances are much better that you’re going to hit the ground before you hit the ball—and then you’ll definitely not get the distance you were looking for. To make efficient use of your hybrids and fairway woods, start by placing the ball off your left armpit for your fairway woods or off your left chest for your hybrids. In the backswing, keep your head behind the ball (look at the back of the ball, not the top) and then simply turn around your right leg as you bring the club back along the target line 106
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as long and low as possible. Don’t think about how far back along the ground you need to take the club—just keep it moving back along the target line until your right elbow folds to elevate the club. As the club moves to the top of your swing, concentrate on keeping your left wrist flat. You want your swing plane to be slightly flatter than usual, but you’re too flat if the clubhead feels heavier than usual in your backswing—this means that the clubhead is too low and has begun to literally hang down off the end of the shaft. Your swing path should be fine if you keep your left wrist flat, bring your left arm directly over the point of your right shoulder, and maintain a light feeling in the clubhead. Fairway woods and hybrids can also be hit fat if you neglect to shift your weight from your right side to your left in the downswing. As soon as you start hanging back on your right side in the downswing, you run out of room to swing the club—you literally can’t get it down to impact. You either slam the club into the ground, or you try to compensate by standing more erect, which is exactly when you hit the ball thin (see section 6-2). Remember: the downswing is simply a rotation—you unwind toward the ball over your right leg and then smoothly onto and around your left leg.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left armpit Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (hybrid) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Shirt logo (left chest) Shoulders: Square
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6-2. I keep hitting the ball thin with my hybrids and fairway woods. One of the toughest things for many average golfers is to trust the loft on their club. This is especially true with hybrids and fairway woods, which feature clubfaces with loft angles in the teens or low twenties—for the uninitiated, the low end of that range isn’t a whole lot more than the amount of loft found on many drivers. (The differences between hybrids and fairway woods are adjusted for by ball position, and although we discuss these differences to bring them to your attention, you should not try to do anything different when you swing a hybrid than you would with a fairway wood. Conscious manipulation is the ruination of the golf swing.) The average golfer’s brain sees this frighteningly vertical clubface at address and says, “Hey, this club’s going to need some help if we’re going to get this ball up at impact!” So instead of transferring your weight properly from your right side to your left (which is necessary for both irons and woods), you stay back on your right side, in the mistaken belief that this will help you stay behind the ball and help it up. But once you start the downswing and suddenly realize that because you’ve stayed on your right side, you now have to make room for the long club to get through impact, you come up out of your spine angle— in other words, you stand up—which causes the clubhead to reach the bottom of its swing arc early and then start right back up again before it meets the ball. With any luck, the lower half of the clubface contacts the ball at its equator, sending it forward on a low, weak trajectory. (Without luck, the ball is topped or, worse, missed completely.) Let’s first address ball position. Many golfers play the ball too far forward when hitting their hybrids and fairway woods, primarily because these clubs are mistakenly lumped in with the driver in the longshafted, low-lofted distance-club category. The problem is that when you’re hitting your driver, the ball is normally teed up, and you actually
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want the driver clubhead to be moving upward into the teed ball at impact. But that same upward motion with fairway woods and hybrids will not work. Depending on your athleticism, the clubhead will either come down, hit the ground first, and then bounce into the ball and hit it thin, or you’ll come up out of your spine angle, miss the ground, but hit the center or top of the ball, also hitting it thin. So for a fairway wood, address the ball so that it’s about even with your left armpit. For your hybrids, play the ball off your left chest, or the logo on your shirt. In the backswing, allow the fairway wood to swing low along the ground until it elevates naturally, much like a Ferris wheel. It should then return on the same shallow path, which will allow you to sweep the ball off the ground with a strike that is moving forward toward the target. The key here is to not make the mistake that most golfers do: you do not try to slide the bottom of the clubhead under the ball at impact. This faulty image is the number-one reason that golfers have trouble with both woods and hybrids. Your goal should be to drive the ball forward rather than up with the clubface so that the loft of the face is responsible for getting the ball airborne. There is no room under the ball for the clubhead and trying to get it under the ball causes both fat and thin shots. With your hybrids, the swing is naturally more vertical due to the ball position, but a weight transfer to your left side must still occur. Although it may sound counterintuitive, getting your weight onto your left side at impact allows the loft on the clubface to work the way it’s supposed to—and that’s what gets the ball up in the air.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left armpit Shoulders: Square
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (long iron/hybrid) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Square
6-3. I keep topping my hybrids and fairway woods. See section 2-3.
6-4. I keep missing the ball completely with my hybrids and fairway woods. This is an extreme form of the problem described in section 6-2, in which you hit the ball thin with your hybrids or fairway woods. As in the previous case, you tend to come up out of your spine angle in a misguided effort to help the ball into the air, but your hand-eye coordination fails to make a last-second manipulation. When you combine this incorrect move with the folding of the elbows—which shortens your arms and, effectively, the clubshaft—you’re destined to whiff at impact. All the poor clubhead can do is wave at the ball as it goes by. You’ve undoubtedly heard the old canard that insists you must always “keep your head down.” What that is really referring to is the need to keep your spine angle intact throughout the swing—in other words, the angle that your spine makes with your lower body should remain the same at address, at the top of the swing, and at impact. While understanding exactly how this feels and making it an unconscious part of every swing takes time (and, preferably, lessons), there are ways to provide yourself with a quick reminder of just what position you want your spine angle to be in throughout the swing.
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Perhaps the easiest to remember is the “invisible wall” drill. Take a good address position, with your weight centered over an imaginary line running down from your shoulders, through your knees, and into the balls of your feet. Your knees should be bent, your rear end out, and your upper back straight. (You’ll know it’s straight if it feels as though you’re pinching your shoulder blades together slightly.) Your arms should hang almost straight down from your shoulders, but there should be at least a couple of inches of space between your upper arms and your torso—you don’t want your arms pinned to your body. When you’re comfortably in this position, pretend that your forehead is resting against a wall in front of you and keep it in contact with that wall throughout your swing. Your head can—and should—move a few inches to the right during your backswing and back to the left during your downswing, but at no point should your head move higher or lower on the wall. If you can keep your head at the same height on this imaginary wall, your spine angle will stay the same throughout the swing, and you should stop missing the ball. Another drill that can help you keep your arms extended through impact is a variation on the old weighted baseball bat trick. When you’re practicing your swing, try using two or even three clubs instead of one—the extra weight will not only help straighten your arms out through impact, it will also groove the feel of a long, flowing, rhythmic swing, rather than a hurried up-and-down chop.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Square
6-5. I keep shanking my hybrids and fairway woods. See section 8-5.
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6-6. I can’t get any distance with my hybrids and fairway woods. See section 2-6.
6-7. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods go straight right. Let’s start with the simplest explanation: you’re playing the ball too far back in your stance. Your swing path and clubface are fine, but because you’re playing the ball in the center of your stance, rather than ahead of center, the clubface is still pointing to the right as it approaches the ball from just inside the target line, and before it has a chance to get square with the ball and the target line, impact is reached and the ball is pushed to the right. As you move down in shaft length from fairway woods to hybrids, the proper ball position for each gets progressively closer to the center of your stance, but we’re talking very small degrees. You should play your fairway woods off your left armpit, and move back a bit—off your left chest or shirt logo—for your hybrids. If you’ve corrected your ball position and the pushing problem persists, check your shoulder line at address. Lay a club on the ground outside your ball and parallel to the target line and then hold a club across your shoulders on what you believe is also a line parallel to the target line. Now glance left to see exactly where the club is actually aimed. You may find that your pushing problem is actually an aiming problem—you were hitting the ball where you were aimed, but you were aimed right of the target. A third possibility is that you’re not turning your right arm over your left arm through impact—in other words, you’re not releasing the club—which leaves the clubface open and pushes the ball right. In addition, you may be “chicken-winging” your left arm through
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impact—your left arm comes away from your body and your elbow points at the target, which makes it impossible for you to close the clubface in the follow-through. To learn how to release your arms and finish properly (and eventually, how to hit a nice draw), make sure that your right forearm is always on top of your left forearm at the end of the swing and that the clubface is pointing at the ground and to the left, not at the target. The motion of your right forearm through impact should be similar to that of a discus thrower, except that you want to rotate both forearms to release the clubhead. You might start hitting some hooks if you really turn your right forearm over your left, but that’s okay—once you ingrain the feeling of rotating your forearms through impact, you can exaggerate it less and start hitting those coveted right-to-left shots.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Square
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (hybrid) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left armpit Shoulders: Square
6-8. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods go straight left. If your shoulders are excessively open to the target line at address, and you properly take the club back along the target line, you’ll soon
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discover that as you get the club up to the top and start your downswing, there is no room for your arms to swing down to impact—your right side is in the way! The only way to get the club down to impact from this position, in fact, is to throw the clubhead out in front of you and then pull it back toward the ball from outside the target line, which sends the ball shooting dead left. Since this is a rather unpleasant and unwanted result, set up to your ball and do the club-across-the-shoulders drill explained in section 6-7 and elsewhere. When you get your shoulders correctly squared to the target line, double-check your clubface position in relation to the target line (and remember, you may think that pointing the shaft directly at the center of your body means that the clubface is pointed directly at the target, but that is not the case—for all full swings, you need to press the shaft slightly toward the target so that it’s pointing at the inside of your left thigh). Then check your ball position. Many players understand that the ball should be played farther forward in their stance with these clubs than with shorter clubs, but they often go too far forward—placing the ball off the left toe or even farther left—under the mistaken assumption that this will help them sweep the ball off the ground better with their longer clubs. What happens, unfortunately, is that by the time the clubhead reaches the ball, it’s already starting to move back to the left (after being square where the ball should have been placed) and it simply pulls the ball in that direction.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (fairway wood) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left armpit Shoulders: Square
Fairway Swing Disasters
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (hybrid) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Square
6-9. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start right and slice farther right. See section 2-9.
6-10. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start left and hook farther left. See section 2-10.
6-11. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start straight and slice right. See section 2-11.
6-12. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start straight and hook left. See section 2-12.
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6-13. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start left and slice right. See section 2-13.
6-14. Shots with my hybrids and fairway woods start right and hook left. See section 2-14.
pa r t i v
The Short Game
Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again. —Alan Shepard, Apollo 14 commander, preparing to take another swing with a golf club on the surface of the moon in
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rom inside 100 yards, and especially from inside 50 yards, a golf hole becomes a lot like the red zone in football—you’re this close to scoring, but suddenly everything is compressed. The hole’s defenses—the bunkers, water hazards, rough, and pin placement—get closer and tougher, your ability to make a full swing is lessened, and your mistakes are magnified—suddenly, that shot you happily overcooked on the fairway for an extra 20 yards is now over the green and under a tree, or worse, in a pond. It’s remarkable, then, to think how utterly unprepared most amateur golfers are for the kinds of shots they need as they approach the green. Short-iron practice for many is either nonexistent, a luxury to be enjoyed when a course happens to have a chipping green, or something novel to do with the last four balls in the bucket. Sand practice, meanwhile, is almost unheard of, and we would bet that the majority of average golfers step into the bunker during their rounds with one plan in mind: hope. Our best guess is that the short game tricks average golfers in much the same way that the putting game does: It offers them false hope. It seduces them with a siren song that whispers, The ordeal is over, my son. You’re home. And not surprisingly, the average golfer is all too ready to buy into the fantasy. “Hey, I’m only 10 yards off the back of the green” or “Thank God I stayed in the rough and didn’t roll into that bunker” or “Hell, I’m only 40 yards short—I’ll just run it up there close and make par!” The outcome, of course, rarely lives up to the golfer’s own hype, and five minutes later, when he’s walking off the green with a six or seven on his scorecard after taking four shots to get down from the lie that was “only 10 yards off the back of the green,” he can only shake his head and wonder what might have been. And, of course, go on to the next hole and never do anything about it. We can’t make you practice what you don’t want to practice, but we can say this: The next time you go to the range, you’ll get much more out of five little shots with your sand wedge than you will with thirty prodigious drives off the net at the back of the range. Golf is tempo and feel, and your short irons are where you learn those concepts. More important, golf is a game of scoring, and you don’t score with your driver. You score with your short irons, and your wedges, and your putter, and you score down in the red zone, inside 100 yards, where you pay a lot more dearly for your mistakes than you do out in the fairway. With that in mind, why would you practice anything else? Beats us. 118
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7-1. Which club should I hit from inside 100 yards? If you’re a truly prepared golfer, you should be thinking about this question before you get inside 100 yards, especially if your previous shot was not intended to reach the green. As we mentioned in section 4-2, the best strategy when setting up a final approach shot from within 100 yards of the green is to give yourself a full shot. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to hit a full shot without thinking about it than it is to think about hitting a shot with less than a full swing. This is also why it’s a great idea to carry four wedges—a pitching wedge (48 degrees of loft), gap wedge (52 degrees), sand wedge (56 degrees), and a lob wedge (60 degrees)—in your bag. You can make full swings all the way down to about 50 yards from the green with these clubs (in fact, you can also find 64-degree wedges, which will allow you to make a full swing from as close as 35 to 40 yards). 119
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Of course, if you’re not particularly comfortable hitting wedges (especially high-lofted wedges that look more like soup ladles) or if you simply don’t like the idea of hitting full shots so close to the green, there’s always room for low-shot creativity inside 100 yards, especially if the front of the green is wide open. There’s absolutely no shame in keeping your ball low to the ground as you approach the green, even if it’s not windy out. A ball that is rolling on the ground, in fact, is easier to judge for distance than a ball in the air, and although your approach shots won’t look like high, pin-seeking, PGA Tour missiles, you can get just as close to the pin by running it up there as you can by flying it there. The only problem with that is that you can’t rely exclusively on a pitch-and-run game, unless you play a single course with open-front greens for your entire life. Golf is a game of obstacles, and sooner or later, you’re going to have to put the ball in the air from inside 100 yards. So why not buy the four wedges and then cultivate both styles of short-game play? You’ll certainly be a better player for it.
7-2. How do I adjust for the wind inside 100 yards? The wind becomes much more of a factor when you’re this close to the green. That might seem somewhat counterintuitive—after all, wouldn’t a shot from 200 yards away have more potentially troublesome wind to pass through than a shot from 75 yards?—but it’s the higher trajectory and slower speed of the shots you’re hitting when you’re close to the green that make them more susceptible to the wind. Due to its markedly shorter shaft, a typical sand wedge is normally swung about 20 percent slower than a driver, and its 56-degree loft is about five times that of a driver and twice that of a mid-iron. This means that a normal wedge shot into the green is launched into the air at a much slower velocity and at a much more vertical angle than
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any other club, making it much more prone to not only the wind in general but also to the higher winds found above the treetops. When you’re contemplating a high, soft, and full shot into the green from outside 75 yards or so on a windy day, you need to check the direction and speed of the wind at or above the treetops—not solely at head level. Tour players will throw grass into the air to get a general idea of what the wind is doing at ground level, but they and their caddies also survey the treetops and any flags that may be flying around the course to see how their shot will be affected when it’s fully exposed to the upper-air currents. And it will be affected. A shot with a fairway wood or a mid-iron, for example, may very well stay low enough to bore under a headwind, but a wedge shot hit into the same wind will often balloon upward as though it’s climbing a wall—you may literally only get half your normal wedge distance when hitting into a 20-mph headwind, and your short-iron shots will also be pushed offline in both directions by crosswinds of similar speeds above the trees. Of course, a tailwind will likewise dramatically increase the distance covered by your wedge shots—often to your surprise and chagrin. So, is the answer simply to take more club when you’re faced with a stiff headwind inside 100 yards? Sometimes. If you know what you’re doing, taking two more clubs and choking down on the grip will give you a low shot, but you have to really practice this technique. But another way to keep the ball low is to learn how to hit a knockdown shot, which will cover slightly less distance than what the club is designed for, but at a lower trajectory that will help to keep the ball from ballooning. Set up so that the ball is somewhere between the center of your stance and your back foot, and aim a bit to the right of the target. Stay in a tall posture and keep more of your weight on your left side throughout the swing, so that you literally pinch the ball between the clubface and the ground. Let the club swing more around you on the slightly more shallow swing path fostered by your taller posture. The ball will come out hot with a lot of spin, but you need to make sure that you
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keep your follow-through much shorter than usual—don’t let the clubhead go any higher than your shoulder after impact. Not only will you keep the ball under the wind with this shot, but you’ll almost certainly find that your accuracy and ability to control the ball increase dramatically. It’s a fun shot to pull off, and you may find yourself wanting to use the knockdown in a lot of other situations, especially when you find yourself starting to play out of the short grass with amazing regularity.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly closed Ball Position: An inch back of center Shoulders: Slightly closed
7-3. What’s this funny-looking thing on the bottom of my sand wedge? Back in the 1930s, hall-of-fame pro golfer Gene Sarazen decided to try building up the sole of his pitching wedge with solder, effectively creating the first flange (that’s the funny-looking thing on the bottom of your sand wedge) and, with it, the first modern sand wedge. (There were earlier clubs designed specifically for use in the sand, but Sarazen’s was the first one that didn’t feature a concave face, which by that time had been banned.) Sarazen’s flange ensured that the leading edge of his new sand wedge wouldn’t dig into the sand when the club was soled. Instead, the flange allows the sand wedge to skid through the sand, pushing forward a wave of sand that lifts the ball into the air and out of the bunker. The size of the flange is expressed in terms of degrees of bounce (taken from the observation that the sand wedge seems to bounce off the ground, rather than cut into it); the greater the bounce, the more the clubhead will slide through the sand rather than dig into it.
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The average sand wedge has roughly 56 degrees of loft and 11 degrees of bounce, but many combinations of loft and bounce are available, and it pays to try out a couple of wedges with different loft and bounce specifications to find one that you feel comfortable with. Just remember that the tighter (less cushioned) the lie you’re playing from (whether you’re using your sand wedge in a bunker or on the fairway), the less bounce you want. This is why it’s a good idea to carry at least two sand wedges with different bounces, so you’ll be ready for anything that the course might throw your way.
7-4. My ball is above my feet near the green. Unlike the same kind of lie farther out in the fairway, this situation gives you a couple of options. If you’re on the fairway within 50 yards of the green and there are no obstacles between you and the green, or if you’re just not completely comfortable hitting a high shot with a short iron from this lie, then by all means take a mid-iron and set up to play a low shot that you can run up close to the pin. If, on the other hand, there’s a hazard or some other obstacle between you and the green, you’re in the rough and there are more than 20 or 30 yards of additional rough between you and the green, or the pin is right up front, giving you very little green to work with, hit the high shot. To hit the low runner from the fairway or the rough, play the ball an inch back of center, choke down on whichever mid-iron you’ve chosen (to move you closer to the ball), and put your weight as much on the balls of your feet as necessary until your body has moved forward into your normal stance (in other words, adjust the club—don’t lean into the hill). Aim slightly right of the target to compensate for the right-to-left movement that the slope will impart to your ball, and make no more than a three-quarter swing. The ball should shoot out low and run to the pin with topspin.
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To hit a high, soft shot from this same distance, use whichever one of your wedges will cover the required distance. Play the ball in the center of your stance, aim slightly right of the target, lay the clubface open slightly, and then make a long, sweeping full swing. Allow your hands to lead the clubhead into the ball, and whatever else you do, don’t quit on the shot—stay down through impact and finish with your hands high, pointing toward the sky.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (low running shot) Clubface Position: Slightly closed Ball Position: One inch behind center Shoulders: Slightly closed
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (high, soft shot) Clubface Position: Laid open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
7-5. My ball is below my feet near the green. As we explained in section 5-2, this is a tougher shot than having the ball above your feet, primarily because you can always choke down when the ball’s above your feet, but there’s nowhere for your hands to go on the handle of the club when things are the other way around. However, as you would for a similar shot from the fairway, start by doing everything you can to effectively lengthen your club. First, stand closer to the ball, which makes the angle of your clubshaft more vertical and makes it easier to get it down to the ball. Then, widen your stance
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so that your feet are slightly outside your shoulders, bend your knees a little more than you normally would, and bend down a little farther from your hips. All of these changes should get the clubhead down to the ball and into something resembling a normal address position. As with any uneven lie, the key here is to not allow yourself to move your spine angle up or down from this new position—it’s way too easy to hit the ball fat or thin in this situation if you’re not careful about keeping the bend angle between your upper body and lower body stable and consistent in the backswing, at the top, and down through impact. To achieve this stability, place the ball in the center of your stance or, if the ball is well below your feet, slightly ahead of center, and keep your lower body as quiet as possible throughout the swing. The wider stance will help you do this, but as you take the club back with your arms, concentrate on keeping the clubhead low to the ground and as far as possible from your hands and let your natural body turn move the club about three-quarters of the way to the top. Any premature lifting of the club will immediately give your upper body the opportunity to move upward out of the proper spine angle, which is disastrous on this shot. As with any shot in which the ball is below your feet, make sure you’re aimed left of your target before you get into your stance—a ball that is sitting on a hanging lie will tend to go to the right after impact. If you’re really unsure of your ability to pull off the contortions described previously, you do have another option when you’re fairly close to the green: you can use your driver, a fairway wood, or a hybrid to pull this shot off. Because these clubs are much longer than your wedges, you can often get them down behind the ball without having to make wholesale changes in your stance. You should use these clubs only from a clean lie, and forget trying to get the ball airborne—you’re merely trying to advance the ball along the ground toward the green. But if there’s nothing between your hanging lie and the pin, who cares which club you use, as long as it works? It’ll look like a high, soft lob shot with a lot of spin on the scorecard.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center or slightly ahead of center Shoulders: Open
7-6. My ball is in a divot near the green. Once you stop swearing, try to think rationally about the situation. As discussed in section 5-3, this is not a particularly difficult shot. The biggest problem is most likely a psychological one—because the ball is sitting down in a hole in the turf, your reptile brain wants to help it up, and this is exactly when you try to scoop the ball into the air. The result is either a fat shot—if you’ve stayed on your right side—or a screaming skull. The biggest difference between a ball that is sitting in a divot out in the fairway and a ball that is in a similar lie close to the green is that your mistakes are going to be magnified the closer you get to the hole. That bladed divot shot that you advanced 75 yards down the fairway? Ugly enough, but you still advanced it. That same mistake around the green, however, will cost you—a bladed shot here goes into a bunker, or worse, into a pond. So play a divot lie that’s close to the green a little more conservatively. If you’ve got a clear path along the ground to the hole, grab a 7- or an 8-iron and set up for an easy pitch and run. Address the ball so that it’s between your right heel and the center of your stance, strengthen your grip slightly to close the face a bit at impact, and keep all your weight on your left side. Depending on the distance to your landing area (the spot where you want the ball to stop flying and start rolling), take the club back half to three-quarters of the way to the top, then follow through to about waist high.
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If you’ve got to clear an obstacle in front of the green such as a bunker or a creek, move the ball to the middle of your stance and use a more lofted club to give the shot more height. Open the face and don’t go any higher than a pitching wedge, because the flange on a sand wedge can cause the club to skid into the ball at impact, resulting in a skulled shot.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
7-7. My ball is on a downhill slope near the green. This is a tough shot—especially if you don’t have a lot of green to work with—but it can be pulled off successfully with a little bit of preparation. For starters, take the highest-lofted club in your bag—your sand wedge or lob wedge, if you have one. The slope of the hill already automatically delofts whatever club you choose, and since you’re close to the green, you need as much loft as possible to keep your ball from flying out low and “airmailing” the green. Now set up for the hill. Put most of your weight on your left side and let your shoulders tilt until they’re parallel to the slope, which effectively gives you a flat lie. Keep the clubshaft pointed at the midline of your body, draw your back foot away from the target line to level your hips, and keep your weight on the downhill leg—these moves will help you make contact with the ball first. You want to bring the clubface down into the back of the ball, which will eliminate the effect of the flange on the bottom of the clubhead and keep it from bouncing off the ground into the ball—and probably skulling it across the green.
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Take about a half swing and make sure to keep your forearms from rotating through impact—you’ll know you’re doing this if the underside of your right forearm remains pointed at the sky all the way into your follow-through. This will keep the clubface open. Once the ball is in the air, keep your arms moving forward and swing down the slope to a low finish.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Slightly back of center Shoulders: Open
7-8. My ball is on an uphill slope near the green. Like the uphill shot from farther out in the fairway, the key here is to get your shoulders tilted to match the slope and your hips as level as possible by opening your stance. By doing this, you effectively put your body on a normal lie, although one of the toughest things about this shot is keeping your shoulders in position throughout the swing. The second you start to lean into the hill too much, you’ll hit the ball fat, and should you lean back as you swing, you’ll smother it into the side of the hill. So focus on keeping whatever spine tilt you start with all the way through impact. Remember that when hitting from an uphill slope, the hill adds a good amount of loft to whatever club you choose, so take one more club (if you’d normally hit a sand iron from this distance, for example, take a pitching wedge) and put the ball in the center of your stance. Turn your lower foot out a bit for stability, keep your eye on the lower back of the ball (not the top) and then make a three-quarter backswing. Keep your weight slightly more on your right side and swing up
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the contour of the hill—don’t try to lift it; just let the loft of the hill do the job for you. Follow through with your hands high.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
7-9. My ball is on bare ground near the green. If you’ve got a clear path to the pin from this lie, don’t even think twice about this shot—putt it. You should be able to make a perfectly clean pass at the ball with your putter, and you won’t have to worry about blading the ball over the green or chunking it. The fewer things you have to worry about on a shot like this, the better, so don’t be proud—keep the ball on the ground and watch those pars pile up. Of course, there’s always the chance that some obstacle like a bunker or a pond will be blocking your path, in which case you’re pretty much obligated to get the ball up in the air. Here’s how to do it with a minimum amount of swearing and club-throwing. Take your sand wedge or lob wedge—the lob is better because it has less bounce— and set up so that the ball is in the center of your stance. If the ball’s any farther forward than this, you run the risk of bouncing the sole of your club off the hard ground, resulting in a bladed shot. But you also don’t want to put the ball back of center, because you then run the risk of hitting a low punch that may also not clear the hazard. Set up with your hands higher than normal, which will put the club up on its toe a bit and decrease the chance that the heel will catch the ground at impact. (A quick rule of thumb: in deep grass, lower your hands to keep the heel of the club down, which will help keep the
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grass from twisting the hosel. On hardpan, raise your hands and get the heel away from the ground.) Make sure your weight is on your left side throughout the swing—this will help ensure that your hands lead the clubhead into impact, which will let you bring the clubface cleanly to the ball. Take a half or a three-quarter swing, depending on the distance, and keep your left arm and wrist solid and in line with the shaft as you move through the ball—you really want to hit this shot with your chest instead of your arms. Just keep your chest moving through the ball and feel as though you’re dragging the leading edge of the clubface through impact and along the ground. This dragging motion will allow the loft of the club to do its job without any potentially disastrous interference from the hands or wrists. Also be sure to make a full follow-through—if you don’t, you may end up pushing the ball right of your target.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
7-10. My ball is in heavy greenside rough. The safest way to play this shot is to treat it as you would a greenside sand shot. The only difference is that you’re going to let the grass do the work, rather than the sand. This method will work whether the ball is sitting up in the grass or hidden deep in the rough; you’ll simply play the former like a regular sand shot, and the latter like a buried lie in the bunker. If the ball is sitting up, or at least part of it is above the grass line, set up so that the ball is off your left chest (or, if you have one, the logo on your shirt). Lower your hands to get the heel of the club down
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into the grass (a technique described in section 7-9) and weaken your grip by turning your hands to the left on your sand wedge. Then, depending on the length of the grass, open your stance—wide for a lot of rough, not so wide for shorter grass—and keep most of your weight on your left side. To start the swing, turn your chest to the right and simply cock your wrist and swing your left arm to nine on the clock. Then rotate your chest through impact—making sure to keep your forearms from rolling over—let the clubhead slide into the grass an inch or two behind the ball, and follow through completely. When you finish your swing, you should be able to see the scoring lines on the clubface—this will show you that you’ve kept the face from shutting down, which is the biggest error on this type of shot. The ball should ride up and out of the rough on a wave of grass. If the ball is completely immersed in the grass, get your cudgel out—as we mention in section 7-15, where we talk about buried sand lies, the only way to get a ball out of deep, heavy grass is with brute force (applied correctly, of course). So first, open up your stance and the clubface, increase your grip pressure to “strangle,” and set up so that the ball is in the middle of your stance with your weight on your left side. Maximum grip pressure is key to not losing control of the club when you blast through the grass. In the backswing, take your wedge up abruptly and then enter the grass about an inch behind the ball—hard. But don’t force the followthrough—simply pound the clubhead down into the grass and let it go where it will. The concussion will force a wall of grass into the ball and pop it up onto the green with little or no spin.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (normal lie) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (buried lie) Clubface Position: Very open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Very open
7-11. My ball is in light greenside rough. Okay, so there are bigger problems in the world than your “bad” lie in light greenside rough. You’re not marking your ball and cockily waiting with putter in hand for the rest of your group, but you’re still in pretty good shape—unless you do something pretty dumb, like chunk your wedge when you’re two feet from the putting surface. And that’s never happened, right? First, decide exactly what kind of “light” rough you’re in. If you’re on the apron of the green, grab your putter—unless you’re on the back edge of the apron, butting up against the first cut of rough. In that case, don’t grab your putter. Putts from the apron are generally a no-brainer, but when you’re frozen against the taller cut of grass, weird things can happen to your putting stroke, because you’re forced to lift the putterhead to clear the taller grass. Instead, select your favorite short to mid-iron for this shot—a 7- or an 8-iron is usually perfect. Set up in your putting stance with the ball slightly back of center, close the clubface slightly, and then concentrate on simply brushing the taller grass on the way back and brushing it again just before impact as you simply make a putting stroke with the iron. The extra weight of the head will get it through the slightly taller grass and into the back of the ball with no problem. Just make sure that you maintain a solid left wrist through impact—the back of your hand and wrist should not move at all as the clubhead contacts the ball.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly closed Ball Position: Slightly back of center Shoulders: Square
7-12. My ball is sitting on pine needles near the green. If your ball is sitting on pine needles, chances are pretty good that it’s also sitting among pine trees. If this is the case, let the trees—along with any other hazards—dictate the kind of shot you make. If you’ve got an opening in the trees and no trouble between you and the green, a low, running pitch shot with a mid-iron is a great choice. Use a lesslofted club such as a hybrid or a 5-iron, which will keep the ball low. To give your ball more time on the ground, set up so that the ball is in the center of your stance. Close the clubface slightly, then swing back and through the ball as though you’re making a long, hard putt—in other words, use your shoulders with quiet hands. Keep your left wrist and arm firm and in line with the shaft, and make sure that your left hand moves through impact ahead of the clubhead. The real key to hitting this shot successfully—as with all short-game shots—is to keep your chest moving through impact. And remember that because the ball is sitting on pine needles, it will come out almost like a knuckleball, with little or no spin, so expect your ball to run. If you have to clear a bunker or other hazard to get to the green, choose a more lofted club that’ll allow you to fly the hazard but will also let you clear any low-hanging branches on your way out of the pines. (See section 5-22 to learn how to use the “step on it” method to determine whether your ball will fly over or under an obstacle.) Once you’ve found a club that’ll get you through whatever opening you may have, place the ball in the center of your stance and keep your lower body quiet by anchoring your weight on your front side as you make
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a three-quarter rotation—again, mostly with your chest. Just concentrate on making clean contact with the ball—you won’t get any spin off the pine needles, so your ball’s really at the mercy of your landing area. If you can get the ball to fly just over the hazard and land in the fringe around the green, you’ve made a great shot. The best-case scenario is that the ball will bounce in the fringe and then feed onto the green, but even if it doesn’t, you should be in excellent shape—especially considering the lie you had to work with.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly hooded Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Slightly closed
7-13. My ball is in the middle of a greenside bunker. Assuming that you have a decent lie in the sand (and if you don’t, see sections 7-14 and 7-15), it’s time for a good ol’ garden-variety sand shot. Now, you’ve probably read or heard a hundred times how easy this shot really is, and we’ll admit—once you understand exactly what’s going on, it is pretty easy. But we’ve also noticed that a lot of golf instruction either glosses over or completely ignores the one thing that you really have to remember when you’re trying to hit a ball out of the sand: always open the clubface first (in other words, slant the leading edge of the clubface to the right of your target) and then finalize your grip on the club. (Be careful not to touch the sand with your clubhead when you do this, because that’s a penalty.) If you take your grip first and then just roll your arms to the right to open the clubface to the ball, your arms will simply roll back to the left through impact, which will return the clubface to square, or, even worse, close the face.
The wrong way to open the face of your sand wedge is to grip the club first and then simply turn your hands the right.
To open the face of your sand wedge correctly, start by opening the face first, and then placing your right hand on the club.
Then bring your left hand together with your right, so that you now have a normal grip but a wide-open clubface. 135
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Once your grip is set, point the butt end of your club at the center line of your body and open your stance by drawing your front foot away from the target line until the clubface is once again pointing directly at the target. Since you want to contact the sand behind the ball, position the ball off your front heel. This lets you open your shoulders and, since your club swings along your shoulder line, you’re now set for an outside-to-in swing path that will slice the ball out of the sand. With your weight on your front foot throughout the swing, use only upper-body rotation to move the club, and be sure to keep your right forearm from rotating on top of your left forearm, as you would in a normal swing. The key here is to open up your shoulder line and swing along that line, and remember not to allow your forearms to rotate. The ball should ride up and out of the bunker on a wave of sand.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Front heel Shoulders: Open
7-14. My ball is in the back of a greenside bunker. This is the worst of both worlds—your ball has just rolled off the short grass and now it’s sitting in one of the worst bunker lies possible. The biggest problem here is clearing the back edge of the bunker in your backswing—if you make a normal backswing, the back lip of the bunker will catch the clubhead. Then, in your downswing, you’ll unconsciously try to avoid the edge of the bunker by standing up slightly, which will usually cause you to top the shot. But first things first. If your ball is only a couple of inches from the back edge of the bunker, chances are pretty good that you’re going to have to address it with your back foot out of the bunker and
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higher than your front foot, which is still in the sand. If this is the case, you’re basically faced with a downhill lie, and as you learned in section 5-4, the first rule is to adjust your shoulders and hips to the slope. In this case, since your right foot is higher than your left foot, your right shoulder should be higher than your left shoulder, and you should draw your right foot back from the target line in order to level your hips and make room for your hands to swing. Depending on the distance to the front lip of the bunker and then to the pin, select either a pitching wedge or a 9-iron for this shot. Don’t use a sand wedge—you’re going to be swinging on a steep angle, and there’s a chance that the flange on the bottom of your sand wedge will bounce off the sand into the ball, causing a skulled shot. With your clubface open to the target, cock your wrists immediately, then swing back down along the slope line so that you catch just the tiniest bit of sand behind the ball—you want the ball to ride out on a cushion of sand, but if you take the normal amount of sand (about an inch), you’re probably not going to clear the far edge of the trap. Finish the shot by turning your belt buckle toward the target, but don’t make a complete follow-through—keep the clubhead low to the ground after impact and don’t finish any farther than hip high.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
7-15. My ball is buried in a greenside bunker. For a buried lie in a greenside bunker, forget everything else you may have learned about hitting a sand shot, because just about everything is going to be different. The standard sand explosion shot won’t
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work with a buried lie, primarily because the ball is sitting too low in the sand to be pushed out. The only way to unearth a buried ball in the sand is with brute force and a sharp object—namely, the leading edge of your pitching wedge. So for starters, don’t open your stance and your clubface the way you would for a normal sand shot—both of these moves will encourage your club to skip through the sand, rather than dig. Put the ball in the center of your stance and keep your feet square to the target and the leading edge of your wedge closed to the ball. You want to create a sharp, half-V-shaped swing path for this shot, rather than a long, U-shaped path. To do this, take the clubhead immediately up to the top in your backswing—almost as though you’re lifting an ax over your right shoulder—and then bring it back down to the ball on the same steep, vertical path, keeping most of your weight on your left side. Swing hard and let the sharp leading edge of your wedge cut into the sand an inch behind the ball. This is where the half-V-shaped swing begins to make sense. Unlike a normal sand shot, you don’t want to follow through when you’re trying to unearth a ball that is buried in a bunker. In fact, if you hit the shot correctly, you probably won’t be able to follow through at all. That’s because the force of the impact will push the ball and the sand around it up onto the green. This shot will not, however, impart much spin to the ball, so expect it to run a bit once it reaches the green.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
7-16. My ball is half-buried in a greenside bunker. This is also known as a “fried-egg” lie—the ball has come straight down into the bunker and created its own crater (thus, the appear-
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ance of a fried egg), but it’s not buried. Not surprisingly, this lie calls for an intermediate kind of sand shot—you can still get the clubhead into the sand and under the ball, but it’s going to take more force to move it a given distance than it would if the ball was sitting nicely on top of the sand. Square your shoulders and slightly open the clubface. Keep your weight on your left side, and set up so the ball is just slightly ahead of center in your stance. You want to take a V-shaped up-anddown swing that’s steeper than one you’d use for a regular bunker shot, but not as vertical as the backswing you use for a buried lie in the bunker. You create this by adjusting the ball position. Swing the club across the ball and enter the sand closer to the ball than you would for a regular sand shot—the last thing you want is for the clubhead to sweep or drag through all that sand. The follow-through, however, is the same—you want your hands and the clubhead to finish as high and around your body as possible, to help get the ball up. You should be able to see the scoring lines on your clubface, which is an indication that your forearms haven’t rolled the clubface shut.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Slightly ahead of center Shoulders: Open
7-17. My ball is under the front lip of a greenside bunker. Depending on how high the face of the bunker is, you can play this shot in one of two ways. If you’re in a relatively shallow bunker without much lip and the ball is tucked up under the front lip, grab a sand wedge or a lob wedge and open both your stance and the
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clubface. Take the wedge up sharply, bring it down hard into the sand behind the ball, and don’t follow through. The impact of the club should pop the ball up over the lip of the bunker and onto the green. If the face of the bunker is steep, however, and you’re faced with a stance in which your left leg is higher than your right, you may find it difficult to swing the club down into the sand with enough force to pop it out—not only will you be off balance, but you’ll almost certainly have to choke way down on the grip to shorten the club enough to make contact, which will also cut down on your power. If this is the case, there is another shot you can try. Choose your most lofted club—your L-wedge is good, if you have one, but your sand wedge will do—and stand just outside the bunker, between your ball and the green. Move over to the edge of the bunker so that your right foot is as close to the edge as possible without going in (your ball will now be below and to the right of your right foot). Now close your stance slightly, bend your knees more than usual, and lower yourself down toward the ball until the clubface is behind and slightly lower than the ball. Open the clubface wide, keep your weight on your right side, and using only your arms, take the club back no more than waist high and bring it back down so that the leading edge makes contact right where the ball meets the sand. The face should cut under the ball and pop it straight up in the air and over the lip of the bunker.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Wide open Ball Position: Outside the right foot Shoulders: Open
7-18. I’m in a greenside bunker with very little green to work with. If you’ve got a decent lie and elect to play a normal sand shot, use the most lofted club that you’re comfortable with—a lob wedge is ideal,
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but a sand wedge will work, too—and set up as described in section 7-19. Place the ball off your left heel, weaken your grip, and open the clubface and your body—a lot. Then, lean the shaft away from the target to increase the loft of the clubface, aim the clubface at the target, and swing down your shoulder line. (If you happen to be under the lip, just exaggerate these moves.) Practice will show you how much to open your stance and the clubface. But here’s a hint: the more you open up, the higher and softer the shot will be. Again, the key is to keep the face open through impact, so don’t allow your right forearm to roll over your left after impact.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Laid back and wide open Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Wide open
7-19. My ball has landed in a pot bunker near the green. If you find yourself in a small, deep bunker with an especially large wall between you and the green, check your lie. If you have anything other than a perfect lie—that is, if your ball is buried or half-buried— forget trying to fly the ball to the green and just play safe. There’s no reason to make an 8 when you can make a 5. Find the least-severe side of the bunker and pound your ball back out to the fairway or the rough. Use the techniques in sections 7-15 and 7-16 if you’re not sure how to play a buried or half-buried ball out of the sand. If you do have a perfect lie, however, you can try a couple of things if you’re determined to get your ball on the green immediately. First, set up for a normal sand shot (ball forward, weaken your grip, open the face, open your shoulders—see section 7-13), and then lay the clubface even farther back by tilting the clubshaft away from your
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target—at this point, the clubface should be almost horizontal, or facing up at the sky. Take the club up and back down on a long, slow path and drive the flange of your wedge into the sand an inch or two behind the ball. This shot absolutely requires a full swing and follow-through—the sand should simply get in the way of your swing at the midpoint. Alternately, if you have a lob wedge in your bag, you can take this into the bunker instead (something that many PGA Tour pros are doing). Set up exactly as you did previously, but you probably won’t have to lay the clubface back much or at all—the extra loft on the lob wedge will take care of that. What you will have to do is hit the sand a little closer to the ball at impact, because the lob wedge doesn’t normally have a flange like a sand wedge, and it’ll therefore dig into the sand deeper and more quickly. Hit the sand too far back, and you won’t be able to get the club through impact—and, needless to say, you won’t get the ball up on the green.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (sand wedge) Clubface Position: Laid back Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Open
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (lob wedge) Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Open
7-20. My ball is in the middle of a bunker 50 yards from the green. This shot is probably feared by more golfers than any other, but it’s not as hard as it looks, and it’s certainly not something that should
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make you resort to just hitting your ball back to the fairway and trying to get up and down from there. It is true, however, that your normal sand wedge and sand shot won’t get you there—it’s physically impossible for the usual sand explosion to carry your ball 50 yards. And while you theoretically can try to pick the ball off the top of the sand as you would from a fairway bunker, remember that you’re not going to be making a full swing as you would from a fairway bunker, which means that you’re going to have to throttle down on a pitching wedge and hope that you can maintain good tempo on a half-swing shot that you never practice and pick the ball cleanly off the sand. Good luck. What’s needed here is sort of a hybrid shot, something that can be hit like a sand shot but that will carry as far as a ball picked off the sand with a regular iron. So for starters, lose your sand wedge. The flange, or wide iron sole, on the bottom of your sand wedge is designed specifically to bounce into the sand behind your ball and explode the sand—and your ball—a short distance up onto the green. From 50 yards out, you need an 8- or a 9-iron in order to take a little sand and still cover the extra distance. (You can experiment with different distances and clubs—you might want to take a pitching wedge for shorter long-bunker shots, or even a 7-iron for sand shots over 50 yards.) Now, get into the bunker and set up like you would for a normal sand shot. Place the ball in the middle of your stance and then open your shoulders and your clubface to the target line (in other words, your shoulder line should point to the left of the target, while the clubface will point to the right of the target). Unlike the technique used for a regular bunker shot, however, which entails picking the club up sharply and bringing it back down hard into the sand, an inch or two behind the ball, you want to use a longer, more U-shaped swing for this shot. Take the club back long and loose along your open shoulder line (in other words, you’ll be taking the club back outside the target line, not along it), keep your weight on your left side, and then bring it back down along your shoulder line on a sweeping path that allows you to bring the clubface into the back of the ball without taking any
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sand until after impact, then swing through and into your finish. Remember, this is a full-swing shot that needs be hit hard—it requires you to keep the clubhead moving at full speed through impact and into the follow-through. The ball is only the halfway point of the swing. But what if your ball is also below your feet in a bunker 50 yards from the green—that is, what if you have to stand outside the bunker to play a ball in the sand? For starters, take a pitching wedge and stand as close to the edge of the bunker as you can while still being able to make a pass at the ball—this will effectively make your club longer, which will help you get down to the ball. You can also try widening your stance, if necessary, which serves the same purpose. But remember, you don’t want to get all the way down to the sand, because (1) you’re going to try to pick the ball clean without hitting the sand, and (2) touching the sand in a bunker with your club is illegal—it’s considered to be testing the surface of the hazard. So get close to the ball, widen your stance, and then bend more from the hips until your clubhead is hovering behind the ball, just above the sand—at this point your hands should be at the very butt end of the club. While staying down in this admittedly uncomfortable position (if it helps, you can imagine that your forehead is leaning against a wall in front of you and you’re not allowed to move your head from the wall), keep your lower body still, turn your chest to the right and then back to the left, and just pick the ball off the top of the sand and follow through as far as you can. The ball should fly out low and hot and land just short of the green with a lot of roll.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Middle Shoulders: Open
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7-21. My ball is in the back of a bunker 50 yards from the green. If you’ve got a normal stance in the bunker, just play the shot described in section 7-20, but use a little more power. If you don’t have a normal stance, and your back foot is outside the bunker, set up to play the downhill bunker shot explained in section 7-24. Get the ball as close to the middle of your stance as you can, then tilt your upper body down the slope so that your shoulder line is even with the slope created by your higher back foot. Club down even further than you would for a shot from the back of a greenside bunker—not only are you farther from the green here, but the lie and your left-tilting stance are going to dictate that you make less than a full swing and follow-through. So where you might take a pitching wedge or a 9-iron from the back of a greenside bunker, you may want to go down to a 7-iron for this shot. Once you’re set up comfortably, take the club straight up into the air on your backswing—because of your stance, you’ll actually be taking it back on a normal plane. Keep your lower body as still as you can and just let your arms swing down to the ball (make sure the downswing is on the same vertical path—if you try to sweep this shot, you may hit the grass behind the bunker. Bring the clubhead down on the back of the ball exactly where it meets the sand—the clubhead will continue into the sand, but the ball will shoot forward off the clubface and fly low toward the green. Your 7-iron should give you just enough distance to land the ball short of the green and run it up to the pin.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
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7-22. My ball is half-buried in a bunker 50 yards from the green. This is a tricky one. Unlike the regular 50-yard sand shot (section 7-20), you’ll probably find it fairly difficult to get the ball out of the heavier sand that surrounds this lie with an 8- or a 9-iron. But if you don’t use an 8- or a 9-iron, you almost certainly won’t be able to cover the 50 yards to the green. Faced with this Hobson’s choice, the lesser of two evils is to make sure you get the ball out of the sand first and then worry about how far the shot is going to fly. So go with the sand wedge and pick a spot outside the bunker (preferably on the fairway) that you can definitely reach but that will also advance you toward the green. Square up your shoulders and the clubface—you’re going to need a little more oomph behind this shot. Make sure the ball’s slightly ahead of center in your stance, take the club back high and long, and then bring it down hard into the sand, as close to the ball as possible. But remember, you need to follow through completely on this shot—if you don’t, and you leave the clubhead in the sand, the concussion of the blow will merely pop the ball up in the air and leave it in the bunker.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Slightly forward Shoulders: Square
7-23. My ball is on an uphill lie in a greenside bunker. The fundamentals of hitting a ball from an uphill lie in a greenside bunker aren’t much different from those used to hit a ball from an uphill lie outside the bunker (section 5-5). As with any shot from an
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uneven lie, the key is to get your shoulders even with the slope. This is especially true in the sand. Leaning into the side of the bunker—rather than leaning away, to level your shoulders—will make it impossible for you to follow through on the shot. You may still be able to get the clubhead into the sand behind the ball, but that is where it’s going to stay. And that is where the ball is going to stay—in the sand. Once you’ve got your shoulders even with the slope, play the shot just like a regular sand shot. Because the uphill slope is going to automatically add loft to the shot, you may be tempted to move up from a sand wedge to a pitching wedge or even a 9-iron. But we don’t recommend it—the flange on your sand wedge will help keep the club from burying in the sand, which is especially important on this shot. If you’re worried about hitting the ball too high from this lie, don’t open the clubface as much as you would for a normal sand shot, and square up your shoulders to the target line a little more. Set up so that the ball is ahead of center in your stance, take the club back on a long, high path (the slope will make it seem flatter than it is), and then bring it back down into the sand behind the ball. Make sure you complete your swing by turning your hips to the left and finishing with the club high and around your left ear. Remember: this is a full shot!
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Slightly ahead of center Shoulders: Square
7-24. My ball is on a downhill lie in a greenside bunker. You probably know the drill by now—from this kind of lie, you need to tilt your shoulders to match the slope of the hill. To do this without
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tipping over, set up to the ball so that it’s positioned roughly in the center of your stance. Open your stance and your shoulders slightly, flare your front foot, and then tilt left and put your weight on the ball of that foot. This should give you enough room on your right side to bring the club down to impact without hitting your leg before you hit the ball, but if you still feel as though you’re too close, you can choke down on the club slightly. Just remember that this will shorten the distance that you’re able to hit the shot. Make sure to lay back the face of your sand wedge for this shot— the downward slope effectively delofts the club, so you need as much help getting the ball up as you can get. Take the club back without leaning into the hill, slide the club into the sand an inch or so behind the ball and make as full a follow-through as the slope will allow.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open and laid back Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
7-25. My ball is in deep rough 50 yards from the green. It would be a pity to have to lay up from such a short distance, but depending on the length of the rough, you may not have to. If the ball is barely visible in the grass, forget going for the green. Locate the nearest area of fairway or shorter rough and play the ball to that spot as you would for a sand shot. If the top half of the ball is clearly visible, however, you can probably reach the green. But don’t get cute. Don’t aim for the flag, or even for a spot on the green that you think will feed the ball down to the hole. The whole green should be your target, and to make sure that you get to that target, take enough club to get you to the back of the green—especially if there’s trouble between you and the front edge.
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Put the ball in the center of your stance, lower your hands to get more of the heel and less of the toe moving through the grass, open the clubface (the heavier the rough, the more you want to open the face), keep a little more of your weight on your left side, and make a steep backswing and downswing—you don’t want to sweep the ball on this shot, because the clubhead will almost certainly get caught in the heavy grass. You’ll probably feel a lot of resistance at impact, but make sure you follow through and finish with your hands and the clubhead high—this will help get the ball up for maximum carry on what will probably be a lower-than-average shot trajectory. You should use maximum grip pressure on this shot.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Open
7-26. My ball is in the rough at the base of a steep greenside hill. Well, it depends on your definition of rough. If you’re talking about five-inch U.S. Open rough (and you’re not playing in the U.S. Open), forget about it—get thee to the nearest short grass, grasshopper. You could be hacking around in there for days. If, on the other hand, your ball is sitting up in some standard-issue, second-cut grass at the base of an elevated green, there’s no reason you can’t take a crack at hoisting your ball over the mountain. Your first instinct will probably be to grab your lob wedge for this shot, and the 60 degrees or so of loft featured on this club would certainly seem to recommend it for the task. But if the ball is sitting up fairly high on some fluffy growth, think again—the lob wedge could cut right under the ball, pop it up a few feet into the air, and then drop
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it roughly at your feet again. A safer bet is probably your sand wedge, if only because the flange at the bottom of the clubhead can help you plow through the grass a little easier. Set up with the ball slightly ahead of center (or even off your left heel for an especially steep hill) and lay the clubface back a few degrees by tilting the shaft away from the target. As stated earlier, shaft lean is accomplished by moving the ball—in this case, forward. With your weight centered, take the club up to the top a little more steeply than usual, and then bring it down hard but smoothly into the grass just behind the ball. Keep the club plowing down toward the ground after impact, but don’t leave it there—this shot requires constant acceleration through the ball, and you should make a complete follow-through and finish with your hands high. Whatever you do, don’t allow the hill in front of you to make you think you need to help the ball up—you don’t!
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Laid back Ball Position: Slightly ahead of center to left heel Shoulders: Open
7-27. My ball has landed in rocks near the green. You probably don’t see this situation too often outside of the Southwest, but if you play a lot of desert golf, you know it doesn’t take much of a miss with your approach shot to put you in a position where you’re trying to get up and down from the rocky desert floor (and, more often than not, from out behind one type of desert flora or another). Before you do anything, check the line between your ball, the edge of the green, and the hole. If you have an absolutely clear path out of
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the desert, over the fringe, and up onto the green, there’s certainly no shame in playing the ol’ “Texas Wedge”—that is, using your putter to run the ball up to the pin. If you choose to do this, put the ball behind the center point of your stance so that the putterhead hits the ball first instead of the ground. Next, take a 25 percent bigger backswing than you think you need and make a nice, fluid pass through the ball, remembering to make your follow-through at least as long as your backswing and to make the ball only the halfway point of the swing, not the end. (If you’d like to get your ball up in the air a little bit to clear some desert scrub at the beginning of the shot, a mid-iron can be used with the same swing described here.) However, if you need to clear an obstacle between your ball and the hole such as a hazard or a hill, take out your sand wedge and play a normal hardpan shot. Set up so that the ball is slightly behind the center of your stance and your weight is on your front leg, both of which will help you make clean contact (rather than skipping your wedge off the ground behind the ball). Open your shoulders slightly, then bring the club back no higher than waist high, keeping your lower body still as you use your arms and shoulders to make a smooth swing back, down through the ball, and into your follow-through, which should mimic the length of your backswing.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly open Ball Position: Slightly back of center Shoulders: Open
7-28. My ball has landed in a stand of trees near the green. See section 5-16.
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7-29. My ball has landed close to a wall or a tree near the green. See section 5-17.
7-30. My ball has landed under lowhanging branches near the green and I can’t get an iron on it. In a situation like this, your best friend may be your putter. You won’t be able to make a full swing at the ball, but you won’t have to. First, pick your target line. If you’ve got an opening to the green, you can run this shot right up to the pin. If you don’t—if there’s a hazard or other obstacle in the way—you’ll have to be content with getting the ball out to the fairway. But either option is better than taking a drop. Once you’ve picked your line, set up to the ball so that it’s back of center—you’ll notice that this setup comes in particularly handy when you’re trying to reach a ball that is under a bush. Now take your putter, press the shaft slightly forward, and, depending on how far you want the ball to travel, swing your hands back about waisthigh and bring the putterface down on the back of the ball—hard. (If you’re not comfortable using your new putter for this brutal task, feel free to use any of your less-lofted irons.) The ball will shoot out with tons of topspin and usually run a lot farther than you think. Practice this shot before using it, because the ball definitely comes out hot.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Hooded Ball Position: Back of center Shoulders: Square
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7-31. My ball has landed in a couple of inches of water near the green. See section 5-18.
7-32. My ball has landed in the weeds near the green. See section 5-19.
7-33. My ball has landed in a waste area. For starters, make sure you’re actually in a waste area, not in a regular bunker. How can you tell? First, check the scorecard—many clubs designate waste areas of the course there. If you’re still not sure, the primary difference between a sand bunker and a waste area is that the former has been specifically prepared by the operators of the golf course to be a hazard. Waste areas, on the other hand, are simply natural sections of dirt, rock, or scrub on the golf course property that are in play but not subject to any hazard rules. And this, as far you’re concerned, is a good thing, because it means that you can pretty much do anything you want: ground your club, test the surface, take practice swings, remove loose impediments—hell, it almost makes you want to land your ball in a waste area! As far as what you need to do to get your ball out of this free-andeasy waste area, simply play it as it lies. If the sand is deep or fluffy, play your standard fairway bunker shot (see section 5-10). But if the waste bunker is hard-packed and scrub-covered, refer to section 5-6 for tips on how to play your ball off hardpan and other similarly ugly surfaces.
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7-34. I need to hit a high shot over an obstacle near the green. This is definitely a job for the lob wedge, but you can use a gap wedge or a sand wedge if that’s all you have in your bag. Many average golfers are scared of the lob shot—it feels counterintuitive and downright strange to lay open the face of a wedge until it’s basically flat on the ground and then take a full swing at the ball when you’re about 20 yards from your target, but it’s a great skill to learn, and it’s really not that hard to master. The biggest change in your setup should take place in your grip. You need to weaken your grip substantially, which means moving your hands to the left on the handle of the club so that the thumb of your left hand sits on top of the handle, and your right hand is joined to the left in a similarly weak fashion. You then want to tilt the clubshaft away from the target by moving the ball forward, which will lay the clubface back and increase the effective loft. If you make sure not to rotate your forearms, these two moves will keep the clubface wide open as you swing through impact, which will allow you to pop the ball up on a high, soft trajectory. Play the ball off your left heel, which will also help you keep the clubface laid open (again, during the downswing, you’ll keep it that way by preventing your right forearm from turning over your left through impact). This is a full swing using only one-third power, and it’s important to remember that impact is merely the halfway point of the swing—the ball almost incidentally gets in the way of the swing. Done correctly, you’ll end up making a gentle, circular swing, and just as you pass the ground, the ball will shoot straight up in the air off the clubface. That’s a good lob shot, and you’ll be amazed at how high it flies and how quickly it stops on the green.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Laid back and open Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Open
7-35. I need to hit a low shot under an obstacle near the green. If the ground in front of you is clear all the way to the green, but you’ve got to get under a low-hanging branch or some other obstacle, the putter shot described in sections 5-23 and 7-30 is an excellent way to go. Not only will the shot stay on the ground—which makes it amazingly accurate—but you don’t need to take a big backswing, and because the ball comes out with a lot of topspin, you can use the shot to run the ball up the fairway, across a green, and even through the light rough. You can also make a putting stroke with a hybrid to run the ball. If running the ball up is not an option, you can take basically the same shot with a much higher-lofted club, which will allow you to fly the ball under the obstacle in front of you and then to, or close to, the green. First, grab a mid-iron and perform the step-on-it test to check the club’s trajectory—if the shaft points on a trajectory that’s under the obstacle you’re trying to clear, you’re good to go. Place the ball off your right heel and keep most of your weight centered over your left leg. Take the club back until your hands are about waist high and then bring the clubface down on the ball. The ball will shoot forward like it does when you play this shot with a putter, but the extra loft on the iron you choose will get the ball up in the air (but still keep it under the tree branch
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or other obstacle in front of you). Don’t expect much spin when the ball lands, however—it should release right away and roll for a good distance.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Hooded Ball Position: Right heel Shoulders: Closed
7-36. My ball is in a wet sand bunker. Of course, we’re talking here about damp sand, not a sand bunker filled with water. If your ball lands in casual water in a bunker, you’re allowed to take a drop in the bunker that gets you out of the water and leaves you no closer to the hole. But if your ball finds a bunker filled with damp and/or hard-packed sand, you can get your ball out by playing this shot just like you would the high shot off hardpan, which is described in section 7-9. Take your sand wedge or lob wedge (your lob wedge is probably a better idea, if it has less bounce) and set up with the ball in the center of your stance. This will keep the sole of your club from bouncing off the sand into the center of the ball and skulling it up the face of the bunker. Open both your stance and the clubface slightly, and keep most of your weight over your left leg as you swing, which will help bring your hands into impact first and ensure a clean downward blow on the ball. You don’t want to take as much sand with this shot as you would with a bunker shot from fluffy sand, but you don’t want to pick the ball off the sand, either. Instead, aim for a spot in the sand no more than a half inch behind the ball. This will allow you to take a thin sliver of
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sand as you move through impact. Finish the swing with a full followthrough—if you leave the club in the sand, you may leave the ball in the bunker, too.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Left chest or shirt logo Shoulders: Open
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Short-Game Swing Disasters 8-1. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball on full shots with my short and mid-irons. Like most fat and thin shots, chunking the short irons and mid-irons is almost always a center of gravity problem. Instead of rotating the torso to the right in the backswing, the average golfer simply leans to the right, which moves the bottom of the swing arc back—in other words, the bottom of your swing arc may have been exactly at the ball at address (as it should have been), but the tilt of your spine to the right has now moved the bottom of that arc six inches or a foot behind the ball! So even if you make a perfect swing from your bad position at the top of the swing, your clubhead will now bottom out into the ground, rather than at the ball. To keep yourself from swaying in the backswing, there are a couple of good swing thoughts that can get your weight where it should 158
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be at the top and teach you the feeling of a rotary turn, rather than a sway. The next time you set up to play a short-iron or a mid-iron shot, play the ball in the center of your stance and make sure that your weight is just slightly more centered over your left leg. You shouldn’t feel as though you’re leaning on your left leg during the swing; it’s just a matter of slightly favoring your left side. An easy way to ingrain this thought during the swing is to make a point of keeping your left heel down during the swing—you’ll immediately notice that it’s an antidote to hitting it fat. There are, of course, other well-known antisway tips and drills. These include the “rotate as though you were in a barrel” drill—which is a great way to understand how the golf swing is circular, rather than lateral—and various “swing your right side against a wall” tips, including the drill that places a golf shaft in the ground outside your right leg, which is a good tactile reminder to keep the upper body stacked over the lower body during the backswing, rather than sliding your
Play your mid- and short-iron shots with the ball even with your sternum, or the buttons on your shirt.
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hips out from under your upper body. But just about anything that stresses core rotation over a sway or a lean can help you keep the clubhead out of the ground behind the ball and make crisper contact with your irons. And remember: this game is played on the left side coming down to the ball, so don’t cheat on “getting left” with your weight during your downswing.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-2. I keep hitting the ball thin on full shots with my short and mid-irons. Two things (separately or together) may be happening here. First, check your weight distribution. If you’re taking the club back by leaning your upper body to the right rather than turning it, you’re automatically changing the bottom of your swing arc. This will cause you to either hit the ground behind the ball or, if you stand up in your downswing to give the club some room to get to the ball but don’t time it perfectly, to hit the ball with the leading edge of the clubface. In the first scenario, you’ll usually hit the ball fat, but if you’re swinging a sand wedge, the flange on the bottom of the club will often merely bounce off the ground and contact the center of the ball. That’s thin shot number one. The second scenario is more obvious—you try to help the ball into the air by standing up out of your spine angle during the downswing, but you overdo it, the clubhead races ahead of your hands, and the leading edge hits the ball at or above the center line, shooting it forward just a couple of feet above the ground.
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When you’re hitting your short irons, remember to keep your weight centered or slightly over your left leg and then simply rotate around your right leg in the backswing and back around your left leg in the downswing and follow-through—don’t let your upper body lean to the right past your right leg in the backswing. The downswing is nothing more than an unwinding of the turn you made in the backswing—your hips lead your chest to the left, which leads your arms to the left, which leads your hands to the left, which finally lead the clubhead into the ball. That final step—the hands leading the clubhead to impact—is key. If you can rotate rather than lean into the backswing, and then unwind so that the clubhead is the last thing to reach the ball, you’ll find it exceedingly difficult to hit the ball thin.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-3. I keep hitting grounders on full shots with my short and mid-irons. This is a more extreme case of hitting the ball thin with your short and mid-irons, described in section 8-2.
8-4. I keep missing the ball completely on full shots with my short and mid-irons. This is the most extreme case of hitting the ball thin with your short and mid-irons, described in section 8-2.
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8-5. I keep shanking my short and mid-irons. For a shot that has achieved almost mythical status in the game of golf, the dreaded shank rears its ugly head for a pretty ordinary reason: you’ve hit the ball with the hosel of the club (the metal cylinder that connects the clubhead to the shaft) rather than with the clubface. In other words, you’ve pretty much missed the ball as badly as you can without completely whiffing. A shank can result from two different swing-path mistakes. First, instead of taking the clubhead straight back along the target line, you take the clubhead inside (behind you) as soon as you start the backswing. Many golfers do this because they’ve heard that it’s better to come down to impact on an inside-to-out path, so they try to get inside right away. Or, conversely, you take the club outside (away from you) as soon as you start it back. Players who take the clubhead inside right away usually compensate by looping the club to the ball, while those who start the club outside do a reverse loop and try to get the club back inside. In both cases, the hands end up farther away from your body at impact than they were at address, which exposes the hosel to the ball at impact, causing the ball to shoot straight right off the cylindrical steel hosel. The fix for the shanks is simple: take the clubhead straight back and allow your folding right elbow to lift it into the air—don’t try to just pick the club up in the backswing. A good antishank drill to use on the practice range is to place a long box parallel to the target line and an inch or so outside your ball at address. The idea is to take the club up to the top and then down to impact without touching the box. You definitely won’t be able to take the club outside the target line in the backswing, and if you’re one of those shankers who starts the club inside right away, the box will still prevent you from bringing the club back down to impact on an outside-to-in path.
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If you don’t have a box handy, you can also use one of the coneshaped paper cups commonly found at golf courses to groove an inside-to-square swing path. Take your normal address position with a mid-iron, and once the ball is positioned where you want it, turn the paper cup over (so the bottom of the cup is facing the sky) and draw an “X” on the side of the cup, just below the lip. Now place the cup over your ball, so that the “X” is pointing away from the target, but more toward your feet than straight back (in other words, the “X” should be just inside your target line). Concentrate on simply hitting the “X” in your downswing—this will show you the ideal inside-to-out swing path that will quickly cure the shanks. If you’re out on the course and you’re bitten by a case of the shanks, it’s obviously both impractical and illegal to throw a box or a cup down next to your ball for each shot. But there are a couple of things you can do. One fix worth trying is the heel/toe drill with a 9-iron or a pitching wedge. It may be a little frightening at first,
To cure the shanks, draw an “X” on a cup, place the cup over your ball with the “X” facing back and to the inside, and then hit the “X.”
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because the idea is to line the ball up at address with the heel of the clubface (yes, that’s right, the area of the face closest to where you’ve actually been hitting it). From that starting position, your job is to make a swing in which you try to hit the ball off the toe of the club. The only way to do this is to move your hands closer to your body as you swing back to the ball, which is the opposite action from the one that causes the shank. One other swing thought can be very helpful when a case of the shanks makes an appearance. At address, concentrate on just one thing: making sure that your hands start straight back along your toe line. Don’t make any other conscious moves during the swing—just get your hands and the grip of the club moving straight back. If you’re diligent about making sure that your hands return to the toe line during the downswing so that the clubshaft is parallel with the target line when the hands reach the right foot just before impact, you’re almost guaranteed to stop shanking the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-6. I keep pulling my full-shot short and mid-irons. Many golfers who tend to pull their chips and pitches have had a run-in with the shanks at some point in the past. They understand all too well from experience that contact between the ball and the hosel is a big no-no, so they do everything in their power to keep the hosel from coming anywhere near the ball at impact. This usually involves a conscious effort to close the clubface at impact and then just clip
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the ball with the toe of the club (which is the last part of the face to close) and send it straight down the line. The problem, unfortunately, is that if this isn’t timed perfectly for every shot, the center of the closed clubface will contact the ball rather than the toe and simply pull it left. The idea of closing (or, at least, squaring) the club at impact isn’t necessarily a bad one, but it needs to be done while the clubhead is coming at impact from slightly inside the target line. Of course, trying to consciously come at the ball from the inside raises the old shank fears of exposing the hosel to the ball at impact, but if you’re already closing the face as you move through impact (and you are), coming from the inside will just help you close the face a little later, and those pulls will start heading straight for the target. You don’t have to make any big setup changes to do this—just change your focus. Instead of trying to hit the exact back of the ball, make it your mission to aim for the inside back corner of the ball and then just swing normally. At impact, you’ll now be closing the club to get to square, rather than closing the club to get to closed.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-7. I keep pushing my full-shot short and mid-irons. Like push shots with longer clubs, you’re probably spending so much time concentrating on making solid contact with the ball that you’re actually finishing your swing right at the ball, rather than treating impact as the halfway point in your swing and then continuing on to
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make a complete follow-through. When you quit on a swing at impact like this, the clubface doesn’t have a chance to close completely, and the open face pushes the ball to the right. One quick fix for this problem is to simply move your ball forward an inch or so at address. This will effectively give your clubface a split second longer to close (since it now has to travel an inch farther), and the now-squarer face will start the ball down the target line or even a little bit to the left. A slightly less-quick fix, of course, is to get into the habit of finishing every swing, whether it’s from 200 yards or 20 yards. A good way to do this is to practice keeping your eyes focused on the point of impact until the point of your right shoulder passes under your eyes. By this time, your arms will be parallel to the ground in your follow-through, and as you turn your upper body and head to finally follow the flight of the ball, your momentum will carry the club up into a complete, balanced finish.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-8. I keep hitting the ground behind my ball on chips and pitches. Fat chips and pitches are usually a result of a weight shift or a change in spine angle that moves the center of gravity (and thus, the bottom of the swing arc) several inches behind the ball, rather than right at the back of the ball itself. The clubhead naturally makes contact with whatever’s at the bottom of your swing arc, so if it’s the ball, great. If not, then into the earth you go.
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So why, then, would a golfer shift his weight or change his spine angle when chipping or pitching? Simple—it’s a desperate (and 180degree incorrect) attempt to help the ball into the air. A golfer who tilts his spine away from the target, or who shifts most of his weight onto his right side and keeps it there, is unconsciously attempting to get behind and under the ball so that he can do what he thinks the ball needs to do: start low and go high. But that’s exactly what the ball doesn’t need. As we’ve learned, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, you need to hit forward on the ball to make it go up. You need to pinch the ball against the clubface so that the ball rides up the face and the loft of the club then propels the ball forward and upward at the prescribed loft angle. Remember: none of this involves getting the clubhead under the ball, a concept that has ruined many swings. With that in mind, it should be pretty clear that when your spine is tilted to the right, or most of your weight is on your right side, it’s practically impossible to hit forward on the ball—you physically can’t do it. The only way to get the clubhead in a position to pinch the ball between the clubface and the ground is to have most of your weight over your left side through the impact zone. How do you do this? For starters, you really don’t need a weight shift when you’re chipping and pitching—there’s literally not enough time in such a generally short swing to successfully move your weight right and then back to the left again. And even if you could do it, we’ve already seen the riskiness of getting most of your weight over to the right on chips and pitches. If you’re not athletic enough to get it back in time, you’re dead. Fat City. So don’t do it. Instead, place the ball in the middle of your stance and practice making your chips and pitches with your feet together, or even while standing only on your left foot. Both drills (and especially the latter) will not only prevent you from shifting your weight to the right—or from tilting your spine to the right at address—they’ll also teach you to make an arms-and-shoulders swing that brings the club down into the
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ball, squeezing it into the turf and driving it up into the air with a lot of spin. The two-feet-together drill will also show you what it feels like to have your spine directly over the ball at both address and impact, which also makes it difficult if not impossible to hit the ball fat.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-9. I keep hitting my chips and pitches thin. Before we get into any mechanical explanations for thin chips and pitches, your problem may simply lie in your ball position. For a chip shot, you should play the ball no farther forward than the center of your stance—this will angle the clubshaft forward and help keep the ball low. For a pitch shot, however, you want the ball to spend more time in the air, so the idea is to adjust your ball position on a sliding scale from the middle of your stance to your left heel, depending on how high you need to hit the ball—the higher you want the pitch to fly, the closer to your left heel you need to position the ball. Many players simply default to a ball position off the left chest or shirt logo for every club, and while you can get away with that for your longer clubs and mid-irons, you’re playing with fire if you try to chip from a ball position that’s too far ahead of center. Remember, your wedges are the shortest clubs in your bag (outside of your putter), and it doesn’t take much to just miss the ball with them. If you’re playing the ball off your left toe, and your sand wedge bottoms out even an inch behind that spot, you’re almost certainly going to hit the top half of the ball and thin it. So remember to play your pitch shots from the center
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of your stance to your left heel, depending on the desired height of the shot, but your chips no farther forward than the center of your stance to ensure crisp, consistent contact and to keep the ball low. If your ball position is correct and you’re still hitting thin shots with your wedges, now’s the time to check your mechanics. Like a fat shot around the green, a thin chip or pitch can usually be traced to improper weight distribution or a change in your spine angle just before impact. What often happens is that you understand that your weight needs to be on your left side to make proper contact with the ball, but instead of simply keeping your weight over your front foot and making an arms-and-shoulders swing, you slide your body forward through impact and end up leaning toward the target, which pulls the clubhead off the ground slightly and drives it into the top half of the ball, shooting the ball forward hot and low to the ground. Similarly, while you may not tilt your spine to the right as you do when you hit a fat chip or pitch, you can still stand up out of your
Play your short chip and pitch shots no farther forward than the center of your stance.
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spine angle just before impact, usually in another attempt to help the ball into the air. This also effectively raises the bottom of your club’s swing arc, and you end up making contact with the top half of the ball. And even if you don’t come up out of your spine angle, other movements that change the location of the bottom of your swing arc—such as straightening your knees or bending your elbows at impact—will also pull the clubhead up and result in a thin shot. Hitting balls with your feet together or off your left foot alone (both described in section 8-8) works just as well for problems with thin shots as it does for the chunky ones: you have to make an arms-andshoulders swing, which stops you from sliding toward the target. These drills, however, won’t necessarily keep you from standing up out of your spine angle at impact; if this continues to be a problem, go back and use the “invisible wall” drill described in section 6-3.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
8-10. I keep leaving the ball in the sand on greenside bunker shots. If you’re hitting the sand behind the ball, which you’re supposed to do, but your ball is flying just a few less-than-explosive feet and staying in the bunker, your clubface is digging into the sand behind the ball, rather than bouncing off and forcing up a wave of sand that lifts the ball up into the air. Why? Most of the time, it’s because you have too much weight on your right side at impact. Practice some bunker shots by initially setting up as described in section 7-13, then shift all your weight to your left side after your
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setup by raising your back foot up onto its big toe. Hitting sand shots from this one-legged setup will teach you to keep your weight on your left side, where it should remain from start to finish.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Left heel Shoulders: Open
8-11. I keep skulling the ball out of the bunker. Shots from the sand are notorious for triggering the primitive “I have to help this ball up” response in otherwise rational golfers. Although you understand intellectually that you have to hit down into the sand behind the ball to make the ball go up, your brain (unless it’s been trained otherwise) thinks that such a notion is counterintuitive and tries to get you to stand up and pick the ball out of the sand and over the edge of the bunker. And that, of course, is where the skulled shot out of the sand comes from. As soon as you start the clubhead down with your brain subconsciously chanting, “Pick it! Pick it!” you either overbend your elbows, stand up out of your spine angle, or slide your hips forward toward the target—or any combination of the three. This effectively shortens your club, causing the leading edge to pull up and catch the ball at or above its equator, sending it screaming across the green, or, if the face of the bunker is high enough, into the front wall of the trap. To get the sand shot right, make sure that your weight favors your front foot. Open your stance slightly to the target line, then position the ball off your left heel and focus on keeping your spine angled and your weight fixed. To avoid trying to help the ball up, forget about the
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ball—pick the spot behind your ball at which you want your clubhead to enter the sand, and make that spot your focus and the bottom of your swing arc. Just remember to take as much sand after the ball as you do before the ball—if you enter the sand an inch behind the ball, your clubhead should exit the sand an inch beyond the ball, too.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Open Ball Position: Between left heel and center Shoulders: Open
8-12. I just can’t hit a proper greenside sand shot. Is there an alternative? Although it certainly pays to spend some time with a teaching pro to learn once and for all how to hit a sand shot (and as you’ve probably already heard—and not believed—it’s really not a hard shot), there are other ways to skin a bunker shot—provided that your ball isn’t buried. If it is, you’re going to have to hit the sand before the ball whether you like it or not. (Read the section on buried lies to learn more about that.) If your ball is sitting up and you’ve given up on trying to hit a normal sand shot, play a chip from the sand. As long as the lip is no higher than your knees and you have a clean lie, you’re in business. You can use any club from a 7-iron to a pitching wedge, depending on the height of the lip and the length of the shot. If the lip is up to the level of your knees, go with the wedge. If there’s barely any lip, you can escape with an 8- or a 9-iron. The biggest danger in chipping from the sand is catching it heavy. Unlike the regular bunker shot where you take sand before you contact the ball, the idea of the chip
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is to catch the ball cleanly and then take a bit of sand. To carry out this “ball-first” mandate, you need to make several adjustments to your normal chipping technique. Pick a club that will land the ball about two paces on the green, where it can run the rest of the way to the hole. The more loft you use, the more inconsistent your results will be, so always use the least loft you can while still clearing the lip. Next, raise your club up on its toe to make the shaft upright like your putter. The advantage of the heel-up method is that there is less surface on the bottom of your clubhead to catch in the sand. You’ll have to stand closer to the ball with your eyes over the target line, just as you would for a putt. Finally, turn the clubface in slightly until the top line of your club is perpendicular to the target line. Sidespin is the enemy of roll, since with sidespin you can never be sure whether the ball is going to run, to check up, or to slow down and then skid. This “toed in” position squares the clubface to the target and discourages the sidespin that makes it so difficult to produce the right distance. Now, make a chipping stroke and keep your weight left so you make ball-first contact (just like a chip off the grass). The biggest difference between this and a traditional explosion shot is that it will roll more, especially with the lower-lofted clubs, so aim for the fattest part of the green. The sand chip is also the shot of choice when the pin is up on a tier and it would be all too easy to hit a normal bunker shot a foot short and watch it spin it back down the slope, leaving you with a long, difficult putt up a steep slope.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Slightly closed and hooded Ball Position: Back of center Shoulders: Slightly closed
pa r t v
The Green
I miss. I miss. I miss. I make. —Seve Ballesteros, describing his four-putt at Augusta’s No. 16 in 1988
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erhaps the biggest misconception about the game of golf—at least, on the part of those who don’t play it well or don’t play it very often—is that putting is easy, or if nothing else, that it’s easier than the rest of the game. The genesis of this belief seems easy enough to pinpoint, and it is eerily reminiscent of the reason why so many golfers pay such scant attention to their short game: not only is the putting green the front entrance to golf’s version of the promised land, the penultimate stop on the winding and often brutal journey to that little four-and-a-quarterinch cup in the ground, but more important, it’s also the point at which the brutalized golfer no longer has to get the goddamned ball up in the air. That’s the allure of putting—plain and simple. The torture is over— all you have to do is roll the ball along the ground like a two-year-old. But, of course, the torture has only just begun. And when you objectively look at the act of putting—that is, when you look at exactly what you’re being asked to do, at the tools you’re expected to use, and at the conditions under which you’re expected to do it—you have to scratch your head and ask yourself, “How can anyone in their right minds think this is easy?” One analogy we like to make is with the game of pool. Like any game, billiards is difficult to play well. If it weren’t, everyone would be doing it for a living. It takes a lot of talent and a lot of hard work to play it at the highest level. Well, guess what? Putting is just like billiards—except that the ball is smaller, your hands are three feet farther away from the ball, your eyes are five feet farther away from the ball, the pool table is up to a hundred feet long, the surface varies from hole to hole and course to course, and it’s crisscrossed with a random selection of hard-to-see hills. Piece of cake, right? But the proof, as they might say, is in the putting. The absolute worst putter on the PGA Tour averages roughly thirty-one putts per round. How many putts do you think a typical amateur who shoots in the low to mid-90s (and that is what a typical amateur shoots) takes 176
during an average round? Let’s be really generous and guess that this golfer averages twelve two-putts and six three-putts per round (yes, that ignores one-putt birdies—which is maybe one or two a round— but it also ignores four-putts, so we can call it even). That means that the average golfer is typically attempting roughly forty putts per round—almost half the total strokes he or she makes over eighteen holes, and nine or ten strokes worse than the worst putter on the PGA Tour. Putting may be easy to do, but it clearly isn’t easy to do well. But hey, if you’re down near thirty-one putts per round, feel free to skip over the entire next section—you won’t find anything useful there. But if you’re struggling with the flat stick, and you want to knock those forty putts per round down to thirty-five, or maybe even thirty, then read on.
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Getting Ready to Roll 9-1. Which type of putter is best for me? If there is a piece of sporting equipment that comes in more shapes and sizes or has more “new designs” introduced each year than the putter, we can’t think of it. And if that doesn’t tell you that putting drives more golfers crazy each year than any other aspect of the game, nothing will. The good news is that this avalanche of putter sizes and styles makes it extremely easy for the average golfer to pick up a comfortable, supercheap model (as in, say, $10 on eBay) and use it for the next twenty years (or, of course, throw it away in twenty days). That doesn’t make it any easier, unfortunately, to figure out just what kind of putter is good for your posture and your stroke. So let’s try to simplify things a little. There are really four primary types of putters: blade putters that are connected to the shaft at the heel of the putterhead; blade putters that are connected to the shaft in the center of the putterhead; mallet putters that are connected to the shaft at the heel of the putterhead; and mallet 178
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putters that are connected to the shaft in the center of the putterhead. A blade putterhead, in general terms, is any head that is much longer from heel to toe than it is from front to back—in other words, it’s a thin (i.e., a half-inch to an inch wide), usually rectangular but sometimes oblong piece of metal with little or no material extending back behind the shaft. A mallet putterhead, on the other hand, is usually shorter from heel to toe than a blade model, and it is also much wider from front to back. These include any of the many “pod” putters you see out there that feature a round or a semicircular body. Whether you use a blade or a mallet putter is pretty much a matter of personal feel and comfort; what’s more important is where the shaft connects to the putterhead. Putters that have the shaft connected to the putterhead in the center of the head are generally better for putters who take the putter straight back and then straight through the ball; the center placement of the shaft helps keep the putterface from opening or closing during the stroke. Putters with a shaft position at the heel, however, are more amenable to a putting stroke that goes back straight and then inside on the takeaway, and then straight forward through impact and inside again on the follow-through; this shaft position helps the putterface open on the way back and then close in the follow-through (see section 9-4 for a description of these two putting strokes). Putters are also balanced (in other words, the putterhead is weighted) in three different ways. A putter can be face-balanced, toe-balanced, or 45 degree–balanced. You can tell how your putter is weighted by simply balancing the shaft on your finger. If the putterface is parallel to the ground, your putter is face-balanced. If the toe of the putterhead points at the ground, your putter is toe-balanced. And if the toe of your putter points halfway between face-balanced and toe-balanced (in other words, if it points out at a 45-degree angle when you balance it on your finger), your putter is considered to be 45 degree–balanced.
The putterface on a face-balanced putter should be parallel to the ground when the putter is balanced on your finger.
When a putter is toe-balanced, the toe of the putterhead will point at the ground when balanced on your finger. 180
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If the toe of your putter points halfway between parallel and the ground when balanced on your finger, it’s considered to be a 45 degree–balanced putter.
Shaft length, of course, is another factor in choosing a putter that is right for you, as is lie angle. Both really depend on your putting posture—if you like to crouch over your putts like Jack Nicklaus, get a shorter, face-balanced putter that swings like a pendulum (and watch those back problems!). If you’re more comfortable standing upright when you putt—like, say, Tiger Woods—you’ll be better off with a longer shaft and a toe-balanced putter that opens and closes. A more extreme variation on shaft length can be seen in the belly and long putters that have been used by a small number of pros and amateurs over the last two decades. Both of these putters were designed to cure various manifestations of the yips—a condition that causes the golfer to jerk the putter off-line. The long putters help take the wrists out of the stroke—the belly putter by literally connecting the shaft to both the body (at the stomach) and the hands, and the long putter by acting as a pendulum that’s held at the top with one hand and swung through the ball with the other. If you decide to go to one of the longer models, however, be
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aware that your feel for long putts can suffer with these types of putters. Putting grips are also a matter of personal preference—some golfers like to have the grip built up so that it fills their hands and creates a more stable feel, while others contend that a thinner grip gives better feedback from the clubhead to their hands.
9-2. What’s the best way to grip my putter? The way you grip your putter is as much a matter of personal preference as the style of putter you choose. The key is to find a way to hold the putter that is comfortable and that won’t allow your left wrist to break down (bend backward) before or during impact. For this reason, most golfers tend to default to the reverse overlap grip, in which the index finger on your left hand covers the pinky of your right hand. Why would such a grip be beneficial to your putting stroke? To find out, take the regular overlap grip—you can even do it without a club. Note the angle of your left wrist; it should be either straight or slightly cupped. Now change your overlap, extending the index finger on your left hand to cover the pinky on your right hand. This extending of the left index finger over the right pinky actually forces the left wrist to straighten or even bow slightly. And this solid left wrist is exactly what you need to make a smooth, consistent putting stroke. Of course, there are lots of ways to make sure that your left wrist doesn’t break down during the putting stroke, and golfers—especially the pros—have pretty much tried them all. There’s the Bernhard Langer grip, which entails holding the club at the bottom of the handle with the left hand and then holding the left forearm and the top of the puttershaft together with the right hand; there’s the left-hand-low grip, a variation of the Langer grip that puts the left hand at the bottom of the handle and the right hand at the top; and there’s the truly
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scary-looking “claw” grip, along with its equally disturbing cousin, the “saw” grip. These last two methods involve placing the left hand at the top of the handle in its normal position, but then putting the right hand below it by hooking the right thumb behind the shaft and placing the palm of the hand on top of the shaft. If the right fingers are then wrapped around the shaft, it becomes the claw, popularized on the PGA Tour by Chris DiMarco; if the fingers (either two or all four) are extended and not wrapped around the shaft, the grip becomes the saw, which has been used by Mark O’Meara. The Langer and lefthand-low grips are used for their ability to lock the left wrist in place, while the claw and saw grips keep the right hand in place and allow the arms and shoulders to make a firm, connected stroke.
9-3. How do I know if I’m standing properly as I putt? While putting is easily the most individualistic and “interpretive” part of the game of golf, not all interpretations are necessarily good ones. As far as stance is concerned, great players have won with a variety of open stances, closed stances, square stances, hunched-over stances, and upright stances over the years. Does this mean that you can just go out there and play well with any old putting stance? Sure—if you’re a great player. Let’s first talk about the shoulder line, which determines whether your putting stance is open (pointing to the left), closed (pointing to the right), or square (parallel to the target line). If you feel more comfortable putting with your feet slightly open or closed (and we’re mentioning a closed stance strictly for the sake of thoroughness; few people intentionally putt with their shoulder line closed to the target), that’s fine—just remember two things. First, regardless of where your feet are in relation to the target line, your shoulders should always be square to the target line, because as in
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the full swing, the arms—and, therefore, the clubhead—swing along the shoulder line. If your shoulders are open to the target line, chances are good that your putts are going to roll left of the target, unless you manage to correct the problem during the stroke. It’s possible to play like that—after all, people can compensate for pretty much anything—but why would you want to, when putting is such an aggravating pursuit to begin with? Second, regardless of where your feet are pointing, your eyes should either be directly over or just slightly inside (that is, closer to your feet) the ball. If you’re unsure about whether your eyes are in the correct position at address, use your putter as a guide. Take your address position and align your eyes so that they’re over the ball. Now bring the butt end of the putter up between your eyes and dangle it straight down. If the center of the putter lines up with the center of the ball or is just inside the center of the ball, your eyes are aligned properly. This little trick is something you can use every time you putt, until you learn to do it automatically.
To make sure that your eyes are either over or just inside the line of putt, dangle your putter from a spot between your eyes and see where the center of the putterhead hangs.
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Now, what about your body position on the green? You really need to look no further than Jack Nicklaus to find one of the most hunchedover (and successful) putting stances of all time. On the other side of the coin, you have very upright and very successful golfers such as Hall-of-Famer Vijay Singh. Who’s right? They both are, of course. That’s the individuality we talked about earlier. However, as with the position of your feet, there are a couple of things to remember about crouched versus upright putting. When you’re in a crouch, your shoulders necessarily turn on a much more vertical plane—your right shoulder goes up as your left shoulder goes down, and vice versa. This motion is very conducive to a “straight back and straight through” putting stroke (aka “squareto-square”), in which the putterhead is taken straight back along the target line in the backswing and then straight down the target line to impact, rather than inside the target line in the backswing and then square at impact (see section 9-4 for more details on the putting stroke). Suffice it to say, if you’re going to crouch over when you putt, you’ll be doing yourself a favor by using a straight-back– straight-through motion. In fact, if you use your shoulders correctly, you’ll probably find it annoyingly difficult to take the club inside in the backswing from a crouch. The opposite, of course, applies to an upright putting stance. When you stand more erect while putting, your shoulders necessarily move on a more horizontal plane—your right shoulder turns behind you as your left shoulder turns in front of you. Not surprisingly, this posture is much more conducive to an inside-square putting stroke, and chances are you’ll find it uncomfortable to make a straight-back– straight-through stroke from this position. The bottom line is that you should putt from a position that allows you to relax your body and to keep your head still. But when you pick a position you like, don’t neglect the biomechanical fundamentals that go with that position.
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9-4. What’s the best way to stroke a putt? Although putting is one of the most individualistic parts of the game, there are two standard ways to roll the ball to the hole: the straightback–straight-through approach and the inside-square method. The straight-back–straight-through method is the simpler of the two, and for beginning (and/or bad) putters, we think it’s the way to go. All putterfaces open and close to some extent, except on very short putts. The best part about the straight-back–straight-through stroke, however, is that the putterface is more square to the target line—it doesn’t open in the backswing or close in the follow-through nearly as much as the face on an inside-square putter. It feels like a pendulum, because it’s controlled by the forward and backward rocking of the shoulders, and for this reason, the golfer only needs to concern himself with how far he takes the putter back on the line that he’s chosen and then make sure he follows through to the same distance or more. That’s pretty much it—it’s a simple, efficient stroke for the more mechanically inclined, less feel-oriented putter. The inside-square school of thought treats the putting stroke as a miniature version of the full swing. Instead of the shoulders simply rocking the putter back and forth, the upper body almost imperceptibly rotates to the right in the backswing and then back to the left in the downswing. Although the putterface appears to open in the backswing and then close in the follow-through, that’s really an illusion—it may point to the right of your ultimate target (the hole), but it’s actually just moving along (and is square at all times to) the arc formed by your putter, rather than staying directly over the target line throughout the entire stroke. This method is generally favored by less mechanical and more feel-oriented players. Regardless of the method you choose, the one thing every golfer must remember is that the ball is not the target—it’s merely the cen-
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ter of your putting stroke. Probably the single biggest mistake that most average golfers make is that they decelerate the putterhead as it approaches the ball. You can tell that golfers are decelerating when they make a short, stabbing poke at the ball, the ball bounces off-line, or their putts routinely finish well short or well past the hole. Nothing wrecks a putting stroke faster. To be a good putter, you have to accelerate through the ball. No matter how far you take the club back at the start of a putt, it has to be picking up speed as it moves through impact. You can finish your stroke two inches past the ball or all the way up around your ear if you like, as long as you’re accelerating the putterhead through impact and not quitting at the ball. Commit to your backswing and accelerate through the ball, and you’ll stroke your putts smoother than you ever have.
9-5. What can I learn from the design and topography of a putting green? Probably a lot more than you think. Today’s highly manicured and scientifically controlled putting greens may look more like something out of a botanical garden than an actual living part of the landscape, but they live on the same air, water, and sunlight that every other living thing out there does. And more important, the people who design them and take care of them know that. Let’s look at something as basic as drainage, which is a factor that 95 percent of the golfers out there don’t think once about—let alone twice—when they walk up to the green with their putter in hand. But each putting green is really a topographical map that tells you where water collects and where it doesn’t—and you can use this information to mentally map out the faster and slower areas of the green. The tops of mounds and other rises shed water, so these will be drier and faster. Wide, low areas of the green, on the other hand, tend to collect water
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from the higher parts of the green, and these areas will be slightly wetter, greener, and slower. Are there any homes or buildings, such as the clubhouse, near the greens? These are usually built on higher parts of the course to reduce the threat of flooding, so putts will tend not to break toward these structures. Pay attention to the topography immediately off the green—it can tell you a lot about where your putt is headed. Is the line between your ball and the hole parallel to a bunker? If so, chances are that your ball will break away from the bunker. Why? Because architects design their greens so that heavy rainfall doesn’t empty into the bunkers. The opposite is true, of course, if you’re putting near a collection area—one of those funnel- or bowl-shaped grass depressions with a drain at the bottom—just off the green, or anywhere there’s a body of water—such as a lake, a pond, a river, or the ocean—situated below the green. What about the general area around a hole? Green speed on a golf course can vary from front 9 to back 9—or even hole to hole—if the surrounding flora changes drastically. For example, you may finish the front 9 on a large, wide-open, parkland-style hole that allows a lot of wind and sunlight to reach the green, making the putting surface dry, hard, and fast. But the very next hole may dive into the woods and lead to a green shrouded in dense, humid foliage that blocks out light, and you’ll suddenly find yourself scratching your head when your first putt comes up five feet short. Even the growing grass can have an effect on your putting game. We discuss the effects of the grain (the direction in which the grass grows) on both bent- and Bermuda-grass greens in sections 9-7 and 9-8, but the grain’s effect changes as the day progresses. Freshly cut greens are quicker in mid-morning (after any dew has burned off) than they are in the late afternoon, when the grass has grown a tiny bit. And the grain tends to follow the sun across the sky throughout
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the day, so a putt that’s fairly quick at 9 a.m. may be noticeably slower by 5 p.m. (even if you’re not around to see it). Of course, the greens can increase in speed as the wind blows and dries them out so it’s good to know how long and how hard the wind has been blowing before you tee off.
9-6. How does plumb-bobbing work? As popular as plumb-bobbing seems to be, it’s a pretty inexact science, and in many cases it’s not much more than a placebo. That said, plumb-bobbing is a simple technique that can give you a basic idea of which way a putt is going to break. It’s not particularly helpful on double-breaking putts, and it can’t give you an exact idea of how far outside the cup you should aim your ball, but when a caddie tells you that your putt is “one cup outside the hole” and your usual response is an embarrassed “Which side?” plumb-bobbing may be for you. The first step is to find out which of your eyes is dominant. To do this, pick a point anywhere in the distance (a tree, a sign, a lamp on the other side of the room), create a circle with your thumb and forefinger, and with both eyes open, sight the object through the circle formed by your fingers. Now close your left eye. If the object remains in the circle, you’re right-eye dominant. If it moves out of the circle, you’re left-eye dominant. To plumb-bob a putt, stand a few feet behind your ball and keep the ball directly between you and the hole. Hold the handle of your putter between the thumb and the forefinger of one hand and allow it to dangle straight down in front of you so that the shaft intersects the hole and the ball. Now close your nondominant eye and look at the shaft of your putter. If it now appears to be left of the hole, your putt will break left to right. If it appears to be right of the hole, your putt will break right to left. It’s simple and seat-of-the-pants, but then so is building a sundial with a stick when you’re completely lost in the woods.
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9-7. How will bent grass affect my putts? Bent grass, as opposed to Bermuda grass (see section 9-8), is a less heat-resistant strain of grass used extensively on putting greens in the northern two-thirds of the United States and in Canada. Bent grass has a soft, dense texture and tends to lie flat on the ground, which makes greens sown with this variety smoother and more uniform than their Bermuda counterparts. You still have to pay attention to the break and speed of a bent-grass green, as well as outside elements such as sun, water, drainage, and general lay of the surrounding land, but because bent grass creates a much more uniform surface on every part of the green, you don’t have to worry as much about which direction the grain of the grass is growing, something that will definitely affect the break and speed of your putts on a Bermuda green.
9-8. How will Bermuda grass affect my putts? Bermuda grass is a heat-resistant strain of grass found primarily in the southern and southwestern regions of the United States. It is a tough, wiry strain that puffs up and grows more unevenly than bent grass, and the resulting variations in the surface must therefore be accounted for when putting on such a green. The most significant factor on a Bermuda-grass putting green is the direction in which the grain of the grass is growing in relation to your line of putt. Blades of Bermuda grass will bend noticeably toward the setting sun, so depending where your ball is on the green and the time of day, the grain will be a factor (although with some of the new strains, this is becoming less so). How do you tell? It’s fairly easy—stand behind your ball and look at the grass between your ball and the hole. If it’s a dark green—especially compared to other areas of grass around it—you’re putting against the
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grain, your putts will roll slower, and you’ll play for less break. But if the grass is a much lighter, almost silvery green, the grain is growing away from you—in other words, it’s growing with your putt—and your putts will roll faster and you’ll have to play more break. So plan accordingly.
9-9. When should I putt from off the green? Whenever you can. Let’s face it—the average golfer is much more accurate and can make more solid contact with a putter than with a wedge or, to a lesser extent, a mid-iron. So, under the proper conditions, why wouldn’t you greatly reduce your risk of chunking or blading the ball with an iron by simply rolling the ball toward the hole with your putter? The answer is pretty simple: you watch too much golf on TV. If those guys rarely putt from off the green (or at least from more than five feet off the green), they must know something that the average golfer doesn’t, right? They sure do—they know how to play their wedges with almost unerring consistency. You don’t. And until you do, stop shooting yourself in the foot. Keep the ball on or close to the ground as often as you can. Oddly enough, this is especially the case when you’ve landed in the fairway short of the green. You would think that given a perfect lie and a wide open path to the pin, the average Joe could step right up to the ball with his lob wedge or sand wedge and land a soft, high shot next to the pin. But of course, that’s not the case. In fact, it’s our contention that more unnecessary strokes are added to an amateur’s scorecard from perfect lies within 50 yards of the pin than from anywhere else. Just think back to some of the rounds that you and your buddies have played. How many times have you seen players sitting pretty in the fairway just off the green, only to watch them chunk their next shot about ten feet and then swear up a storm? It’s easily one of the most frustrating moments in the game, and we’ve all done it. The obvious answer to this dilemma would be for average golfers to
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learn how to hit their wedges from around the green, and we agree— you can start your education by reading sections 8-8 and 8-9, which address some of the common reasons for flubbed short-iron shots. But until you’ve got those shots under your belt and are confident you can pull them off at will, be smart—unless your path to the hole is blocked by a hazard or some other obstacle, roll the ball up there and stop wasting the first two decent shots you made on the hole. Of course, you can also putt the ball from less amenable lies, provided you can get the putterhead on the ball. In these situations, we definitely lean more toward chipping the ball with a short iron or pitching and rolling it with a mid-iron, but if you do decide to putt it from the longer stuff, there are a few things you should do. Stand a little closer to the ball, which will effectively make you taller and lift the sole of the putter off the ground a bit so you’re sure to put overspin on the ball to keep it rolling through the grass. Once you’ve made your setup change, be sure to make a couple of practice swings to ensure that you’re clearing the grass and any other obstacles in front of or behind the ball, and that the putterhead is bottoming out where you want it to—ideally at the equator of the ball. You want putter-to-ball contact only on this shot—the putterhead should not contact any part of the grass. For more ideas on using your putter from off the green, see sections 5-23 and 7-30. FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Ahead of center Shoulders: Square
9-10. When should I chip from off the green? Basically, a ball that is outside the apron of the green should be chipped or pitched (one exception is a ball on the fairway with a clear path to
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the green—this can also be putted). Many amateurs prefer to simply make a putting stroke with a high mid-iron (such as a 7 or an 8), and this is fine if you’re close enough to land a low-trajectory shot on the green so that it runs to the hole. If you’re more than ten or fifteen feet from the green, however, a low-trajectory pitch shot will have to be moving pretty quickly to reach the green on the fly, and your ball may very well run well past the hole. As much as it may pain—or intimidate—you, this is really when you have to break down and break out the sand wedge or the lob wedge. (Of course, if there’s an obstacle between your ball and the hole, such as a bunker, a bush, or a large rock, that’s also when you have to take out your wedge.) This shot doesn’t have to be as difficult as many players seem to believe. In fact, you can use the same putting-style stroke with your wedges that you use to pitch with your mid-irons. Just put the ball a little bit back of center, open your stance slightly, and then make a pendulumlike putting stroke and try to brush the grass behind the ball with the clubhead. The key here is to (1) keep your left wrist solid and ahead of the clubhead through the ball, and (2) continue the stroke after impact by “chasing” the clubhead toward the target with your right hand.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (pitch) Clubface Position: Laid back Ball Position: Left chest Shoulders: Open
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS (chip) Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Back of center Shoulders: Square
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9-11. Should I keep the flagstick in when putting or chipping from off the green? It depends on what kind of approach you have to the pin, but in most cases, the answer is yes. If you’ve got a slick downhill putt or chip, by all means keep the flagstick in, because in these situations, you’re using the pin as a little bit of insurance—that thin fiberglass rod is often the only thing standing between your ball and a fifty-foot comebacker from the other side of the green, or worse. And for your other chips, pitches, and putts from just off the green, keep the pin in, because studies show the flag, even if it’s leaning toward or away from you, helps. But even so, make sure you check the position of the flagstick in the hole—a flag that is tilting toward you so much that there is no room for the ball does more harm than good.
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You Want Me to Aim This Where? 10-1. How do I putt downhill? On severely sloping downhill putts, the key is to just get the ball moving on the proper line. Too many average golfers, however, equate “just getting the ball moving” with making a stabby little tap at the ball. This almost always results in the deceleration of the clubhead into impact, which then produces a bouncing or skidding putt that usually heads right—and on a downhill putt, that means right past the hole and down the hill. Remember: whether you’re fifty feet from the hole or a foot away, or whether you take the putter back three feet or one inch, you have to keep the putterhead moving forward through impact. The ball is going to leave the face when it leaves the face, but if you’re not accelerating, you’re almost certainly stopping at impact, and that’s deadly. But let’s say you’ve got your nondecelerating stroke down pat. Where do you aim on a downhill putt, and how do you gauge the 195
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proper amount of power to impart to the putt? Start by walking over to the side of your line of putt and examining the slope. Is there a big drop at some point in the line, or does the slope change consistently from your ball to the hole? If it’s the former, you want to aim for the top of that first big drop. In other words, if you’ve got a ten-foot downhill putt, and the most severe drop on that slope occurs three feet from your ball, you’ve now essentially got a three-foot putt. Forget the other seven feet—pick your line and then pretend the cup is sitting three feet away, right on the edge of that first drop. On the other hand, if you’re dealing with a consistent slope from your ball to the hole, you can usually get a good idea of how hard to hit your putt by determining the change in elevation between your ball and the hole. To do this, move to the side of your line of putt, bend low, and evaluate how much uphill or downhill slope you’re dealing with. Is the change in elevation between your ball and the hole four inches? Eight inches? A foot? You learn this by observation and experience. First, figure out your aiming point as described in the previous paragraphs, then plan the break as explained in sections 10-5, 10-7, and 10-9. But remember two things. Unless the break is truly severe —there’s a clear left or right sidehill aspect to your line—don’t give the hole away on a downhill putt. In other words, don’t aim more than a ball left or right of your target. And because downhill putts are much faster than uphill putts, you need to play for more break and hit the putt easier, so plan accordingly. When it’s really fast coming downhill, use only the toe-end of the putter to strike the ball. Toe-putting accomplishes two things. First, a ball played off the toe-end of the clubface rolls very slowly. This deadening effect is magnified the farther toward the toe (and the farther away from the sweet spot) the ball is struck. Second, using this technique allows you to accelerate through impact without imparting too much speed to the ball. The result is a very slow-moving putt that starts on line and takes just the right amount of break because the speed is correct.
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10-2. How do I putt uphill? See section 10-9.
10-3. How do I read and stroke a left-to-right putt? The common wisdom is that for right-handed golfers, left-to-right breaking putts are more difficult than right-to-left putts, but there’s not a whole lot of empirical evidence to back this up, and some righthanded golfers (possibly those with a dominant left eye) actually love left-to-right putts. What’s more important to remember is that breaking putts—left-to-right and right-to-left—are difficult because most golfers find it hard to align their shoulders correctly to the arc-shaped path of a breaking putt. What’s the solution? Easy—don’t align your shoulders to an arc. Go to section 10-7, which teaches you how to break down a long putt into straight segments by picking break points. The key to conquering a putt that breaks is to align your shoulders to the first break point and then commit to putting to that point, whether the break point is two inches or ten feet outside the hole. Without this commitment, you’re likely to try and unconsciously guide the ball to the hole by manipulating the putterface (which is also referred to as the face “hunting the hole”), which will almost guarantee that you’ll miss the break point—and, of course, the hole.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
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10-4. How do I read and stroke a right-to-left putt? See section 10-3.
10-5. How do I determine the break on a short putt? Reading the break on putts inside six feet is easier for at least one reason: you pretty much have a bird’s-eye view of the entire length of the putt. A quick, low-to-the-ground read from behind the ball, followed by another from behind the hole, should be enough to give you a good idea of what the green is doing over the short distance between your ball and the hole. Here’s the key to good short putting: unless there’s clearly a sidehill slope on the green between your ball and the hole, don’t give the hole away. Aim for the edge of the cup if you need to, but don’t aim your ball completely outside the circumference of the hole. And then hit it firmly.
10-6. What’s the best way to determine the speed of a short putt? There are ways to get an idea of whether your short putt will roll a little quicker or a little more slowly than you may think at first glance. The grain of the grass is a good place to start, especially when putting on Bermuda greens. As explained in section 9-8, a golf ball will roll more quickly when it’s rolling with the grain than when it has to roll against the grain, and the color of the grass is one way to tell the direction of the grain. If it’s dark green, the grain is against you and will slow your ball down; if it’s a lighter, silvery color, the grain’s going with you and your ball will roll a little more quickly.
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But what if you can’t see a change in color? It’s easy—follow the setting sun. The grass does. If you’re putting into the sun, you’ll generally be putting with the grain, which is also leaning that way. If the setting sun’s at your back, you’ll be putting into the grain, which is leaning toward the sun behind you. So set your speed accordingly. Of course, uphill or downhill short putts add another variable to the speed equation, but if the putt’s pretty straight, you can rely on the old saying about uphill and downhill putts: “Putting up, back of the cup; putting down, front of the round.” It works for us.
10-7. How do I determine the break on a long putt? If you’ve ever taken a long car trip, you know that one of the best ways to make the trip easier is to break it up into legs. You can do the same thing with a long putt. Divide the distance between your ball and the hole into thirds and then make a separate read of the break for each third of the putt. This is also like hitting a three-ball combination shot in pool—you have to first determine what you need to do to get the first ball to the second ball, then the second ball to the third ball, and then the third ball into the pocket. When you break your putt up into thirds, it’s much easier to get a handle on how your ball is going to roll through each third of the putt—in fact, it’s almost like you’re hitting three straight putts instead of a long breaking putt. Simply pick your break points—the spot on the green at which one leg of a putt changes direction to the next leg—and then start the ball rolling over the first one.
10-8. How do I determine the speed of a long putt? On any kind of breaking putt—but especially on medium to long putts—the best side of the hole for your ball to be on as it gets close
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to the cup is the high or “pro” side. That’s the genesis of the saying, “Never up, never in.” What that means, simply, is that if your ball heads down the slope too early, before it reaches the hole, there’s no physical way that it can break up the hill into the hole. So when you’re trying to figure out how hard to hit a putt that breaks substantially on its way to a distant hole, first make your best estimate of the amount of break you’re seeing on the line of putt and pick an aiming point based on that info. But instead of simply setting up and hitting the putt to that point, go one step further. Note the distance between the cup and your aiming point, then take half that distance and move your aiming point that much farther up the slope from the hole. So if your original aiming point was two feet up the slope from the hole, your new aiming point will be three feet up the slope. Now, instead of running your ball at a faster clip down the original “perfect” line, you should hit the putt a little more softly to this new target so that it slows down and dies toward the hole at the end of its roll. This will keep you from rolling your ball ten feet past the hole if your original line isn’t as perfect as you thought it was.
10-9. How do I putt from a lower tier to a higher tier? If the change in elevation in a green is severe enough to create two distinct tiers, then any uphill putt you attempt is probably going to require a lot more muscle than you think. It’s for this reason that no matter where the flag is positioned on the upper tier, you need to forget trying to get the ball to the hole and instead hit it hard enough to get the ball at least a couple of feet beyond the pin—more if the hill is especially severe. Distance on a putt like this is much more important than trying to read the break; if you get cute and try to cozy the ball just up to the top of the hill or even a few feet past the top of the hill, you may
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very easily get to watch the unfolding disaster of your ball rolling back down the hill, and few things in golf are more frustrating than that. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t aim for a spot beyond the pin and still make a decent pass at the hole. Just use the position of the slope relative to both your ball and the hole as your guide. If your ball is straight down the hill from the hole, great—hit the putt as hard as you need to get it three feet past the pin; with luck, you’ll hit the hole. If your ball on the lower tier is to the right of the hole on the top tier—in other words, if you’re going to be putting across the slope from right to left—aim a couple of feet right and a couple of feet beyond the hole. And if your ball on the lower tier is to the left of the hole on the upper tier—that is, if you’re going to be putting across the slope from left to right—do the opposite: aim a couple of feet left and a couple of feet beyond the hole.
10-10. How do I putt from a higher tier to a lower tier? For green-reading purposes, you need to treat long putts that roll from one level to a radically different level as two completely different putts. In this case, start by standing behind the hole and looking up the slope to the higher tier. Treat the front edge of the upper tier as the spot where you’ll be putting from (although your ball may be much farther back on the upper tier) and read the line from the hole to that point first. Then move to the side of this line and look for any extra breaks to the left or right in the slope, keeping in mind that because this will be an especially quick part of the putt, any break will have less of an effect on the ball. When you’re comfortable with your estimates for the speed and break of this section of the putt, move up to the top tier and do the same thing for the first part of the putt. Stand just below the edge of
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the hill, then look up the line toward your ball and estimate the slope and speed for this section of the putt only. Then move to the side of the line of putt and look for any left or right breaks in the line, keeping in mind that this part of the putt will be slower than the downhill part and that any break will thus have a greater effect on your ball. Once you’re comfortable with this read, set up to your ball as you normally would, but simply putt as though the hole is at the edge of the hill—in other words, to the end of the first section and the beginning of the second. Your read of the hill will take care of the rest.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
10-11. My ball is blocked by a dogleg in the green. Let’s put it this way—the greens keeper is not going to be very happy if you take a divot out of his nicely manicured green with your sand wedge. Then again, you didn’t design the green. Having said that, you really have three options in this situation. (1) You can putt the ball on the green or the apron along the edge of the dogleg and try to get it pin high so that you have a reasonable chance for a two-putt; (2) you can chip the ball through the dogleg on a line directly at the pin and hope the ball runs out of the rough and over or down to the hole; or (3) you can take out your sand wedge and try to fly the ball all the way over the dogleg and land it close to the hole. Let’s take a look at all three possibilities. For the average player, flying the ball to the hole with a high wedge shot is probably the least attractive option. That’s because un-
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less you’re really confident in your ability to hit a high, soft shot with a lot of backspin from a tight lie, you’re going to do one of two things: blade the ball across the green or, worse, hit the ball fat and face another shot from basically the same spot. In short, for your own mental health and the health of your scorecard, skip the wedge. The chip shot to the top of the dogleg is probably a higherpercentage shot than flying the ball to the hole, primarily because the shot stays closer to the ground, but also because most people are more comfortable making what basically amounts to a putting stroke with their 7-iron off a tight lie than they are trying to finesse a more precise wedge shot. And unless you’re behind a really severe dogleg, chipping the ball will normally allow you to feed the ball somewhere near the hole. The biggest risk with this shot is that you’ll hit a decelerating chunk behind the ball that leaves the ball short of the dogleg—in other words, in basically the same rotten, stymied position. For this reason, if you choose to try this shot, tread carefully. You’ve probably figured out by this point that we prefer you to take the conservative route and use the putter. It can be an annoying choice, and it won’t necessarily result in you getting down in two putts, but the risk/reward factor makes it pretty much a no-brainer. There’s much less of a chance that you’ll stub the putter into the ground before impact and leave the ball short, and if you’re like most players, your worst putt is better than a mediocre chip. So play this trouble shot the safe way—putt it.
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Putting-Stroke Disasters 11-1. I keep bouncing and skipping my putts. Most putters have a tiny bit of loft—usually 3 or 4 degrees—built into the face of the club. This is designed specifically to get the ball rolling quickly and smoothly toward the hole. If you didn’t have any loft on your putter, you’d press the ball into the turf at impact, and the subsequent rebound off the ground is exactly what causes a putted ball to bounce and skip. But since you do have loft on your putter, why are you still bouncing your putts? Probably because you’re effectively taking that loft off the putter by pressing your hands forward at address just as you start your stroke. The forward press may be a good way to initiate your backswing, but it’s a killer if you keep the club that way at impact, because a delofted clubface is inconsistent. You may manage to manipulate the putterhead into a good position on some of your putts and then jam the 204
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ball into the green on the others. In other words, your putting game will be all over the map, which is probably the worst thing possible for developing any sort of confidence in your putting stroke. To make sure that you’re not pressing your hands forward during the stroke, keep your right thumb (or, if you putt with your left hand low, your left thumb) on top of the grip and make sure that it doesn’t reach impact before the putterface.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
11-2. I keep hitting the ball with the toe of my putter. If you find that you’re consistently hitting the ball off the toe of your putter, chances are you’re doing one of three things incorrectly during your stroke: (1) you’re playing the ball too far forward in your stance, (2) you’re bringing the putterhead to the ball on an outsideto-in path, or (3) your right hand is too active in your putting stroke. If you’re playing the ball too far forward in your stance, the putterface will make contact with the ball after it has started moving back to the inside on its natural path, which will put the contact point closer to the toe than to the center of the putterface. For consistent, solid contact, play the ball an inch or so forward of the center of your stance, which should put the ball at the bottom of your putting arc. From this position, you won’t have to worry about hitting down on the ball to give yourself an optimal roll. An outside-to-in putting path is often the result of misalignment at address. If your shoulders are open at address and you take the putter
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back along your shoulder line, you’re actually taking it back outside the target line. If you bring the putterface back down to the ball on this line, it will cut across the ball and make contact with the toe. To fix this, place a club on the ground outside your ball parallel to the target line, get into what you feel is a square putting stance, and hold your putter across your shoulders. Does the putter that you’re holding across your shoulders look parallel to the club on the ground? If the putter at your shoulders is pointing more than parallel left of the target, you’re unconsciously standing open to the target and then taking the club outside the target line, then down to the ball on an outsideto-in path. Continue to use the club on the ground drill until you’re comfortably settled into a truly square position at address. An overly active right hand is usually the result of an unconscious effort to guide the ball to the hole, rather than keeping the hands passive and allowing the shoulders to rock the club back and through. When the right hand starts to take over the stroke in an effort to guide the ball, it’s very easy for the putterface to open or close through impact, and your misses can be all over the place. To cure an active right hand, concentrate on keeping the triangle formed by your shoulders, arms, and hands intact throughout the stroke. In a triangle stroke, the only things that initiate motion are your shoulders: the left shoulder moves down toward the ball in the backswing, and the right shoulder moves down toward the ball in the downswing, like a seesaw—one moves up while the other moves down. That’s it—the fewer moving parts, the better you’ll putt. If you’re still having trouble keeping your right hand out of your stroke, however, you might consider trying the saw or claw grips, which are described in section 9-2.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
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11-3. I keep hitting the ball with the heel of my putter. This is often the result of a poor stance that misaligns your eyes with the ball at address. Ideally, your eyes should be directly over or just inside (closer to your feet) the ball at address. In this case, your eyes are too far forward and focused on a spot on the ground outside the ball, rather than directly over the ball. Your brain (being both smart and obedient), guides the putterface over the spot you’re actually looking at, and the heel of your putter then ends up making contact with the ball, which usually results in putts that end up short and left. To determine where your eyes actually are, take your address position and dangle your putter down from the bridge of your nose. If you’re positioned correctly, the putterhead will dangle directly over or just inside the ball. If your eyes are outside the ball, however, adjust your stance by standing up very slightly from the waist, just enough to pull your eyes back over the ball. Check a couple of different positions to get the stance that gets your eyes right over the ball and then use the dangling-putter drill each time you putt, at least until you can readily discern the difference between having your eyes over the ball and having them outside the ball.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
11-4. I keep hitting the ball with the bottom edge of the putterface. There are two possibilities here. First, you may simply be placing the ball too far forward in your stance at address. Then, even if you make
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a good stroke, the swing arc of your putterhead will bottom out and begin to come up again before it makes contact with the ball. So, instead of the putterface coming into the ball just below the equator, it comes in high, making contact above the equator or even just clipping the top of the ball with the bottom edge. This then negates the tiny bit of loft built into every putterface, and you end up pinching the ball down into the turf, which causes it to bounce off-line. The fix here is pretty obvious. Move the ball back, ideally to the center of your stance, but at least to a spot that is far enough back so that it’s virtually impossible for your putterhead to bottom out before it makes contact with the ball. Now that you know what to look for, experiment with various ball positions until you find the one that allows the putterface to come into the ball just below the equator, which will give it that telltale quick little hop before it starts rolling smoothly online. (Also make sure that your weight is evenly distributed in your stance—keeping too much weight on your right side can also promote this kind of thin putt.) The other possibility is that you’re literally standing up slightly at impact, which pulls the entire putter up and results in the bottom edge of the putterface making contact with the ball above its equator. A quick way to teach yourself how to stay down all the way through a putt is to change your idea of when the putting stroke is actually finished. One way to do this is to use visual cues, such as not moving your eyes from the point of impact until the putterhead is on its way, or not moving your spine angle until you’ve counted to three after impact—anything that physically forces you to stay in one position until good contact has been made.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center, or slightly back Shoulders: Square
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11-5. I keep hitting the ground behind the ball with my putter. This is almost always due to a setup problem. You may be playing the ball too far forward in your stance, which causes the putterhead to bottom out and hit the ground before it reaches the ball. Ideally, you should play your ball in the center of your stance when putting, but if you prefer to keep it slightly forward in your stance, don’t play it any farther forward than a ball or two ahead of center, and keep your weight centered over your left leg. A more common reason for catching the turf with your putter before you hit the ball is that you’re leaning too far to the right at address, usually in an effort to hunch over behind the ball and look down the target line. There’s nothing wrong with hunching over as you putt (see section 9-3)—after all, Jack Nicklaus made a pretty good career for himself with his famous crouch—but the key is to not bend your neck to the right to get your eyes in a position to look down the line—this will shift too much weight over your right side. This bowing of the neck and body effectively shortens the distance between your hands and the ground, which causes the putterhead to hit the ground before reaching your ball. To avoid this, settle into your address position first, with your weight distributed evenly between your feet, then rotate your head and neck slightly to the right then back to the left without bowing your neck to look down the line. If it helps, you can also move the ball back in your stance an inch or two to ensure that the putter hits the ball first.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center, or slightly back Shoulders: Square
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11-6. I keep missing my breaking putts on the high side. Well, if you’re going to miss a breaking putt, the high or “pro” side of the cup is the place to do it. Why? Because a putt that stays above the hole has at least a theoretical chance to die into the cup. A putt that’s below, or short of, the hole never has a chance to go into the hole (unless a massive earthquake hits during your putt—then you might have a chance). So, we can assume by your high-side miss that you’ve got a pretty good feel for how much break you’re actually seeing on your line, which is not that common among amateur golfers—most weekend players see less break than there really is, which is why they often miss on the low side. Remember: no matter how big the break may be, your job isn’t to get the ball all the way to the hole—it’s to get it to the top of the break, and then let gravity take care of the rest of the putt for you. In other words, if you have a 20-foot putt and your read tells you that the top of the break is 5 feet right of the hole, a correctly struck ball will actually travel a total of about 25 feet before it finally drops into the hole, but you only need to roll it as though it’s a 20-footer—to the top of the break. Gravity will handle the last 5 feet. In short: hit it high, and let it die.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
11-7. I keep missing my breaking putts on the low side. Welcome to the club—most average golfers miss their breaking putts on the low or “amateur” side of the hole. This is because they either
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don’t read enough break into the putt or they read the right amount of break and don’t believe it. It’s pretty easy to eliminate the second problem. If you consistently pick a spot where you believe the ball is going to break and then consistently hedge your read by trying to force the ball to the hole on a slightly lower line—only to miss the putt low every time—you need to start learning to trust your read by putting to the break spot that you’ve chosen and forgetting about the rest of the putt. You’re not cutting your putt left to right or drawing your putt right to left—you’re hitting a straight putt to one point and then gravity is hitting another straight putt to the hole. You can only control the first part—if you correctly read the break, and then correctly roll the ball to the top of the break, the ball will go in. Fixing the first problem—your inability to see the full amount of break in your putt—requires a little more work. The vast majority of golfers do way too cursory a job of trying to figure out where their ball is going to roll on the green. No one wants to hold up play, but simply squatting down behind your ball for five seconds to get an idea of how the putt is going to break is not going to result in more 3’s and 4’s on your scorecard. We live in a three-dimensional world, so you should at least try to get a three-dimensional view of the situation at hand. Get down as low as possible to the ground behind your ball and check out the topography of the green on your line. Try to look at it as though it were a landscape—if there were a river running from your ball to the hole, what kind of path would it take? Then, do the exact same thing from behind the hole, and equally important, from each side of the hole—it’s easier to see rises and dropoffs behind your ball from the sides. You’ll now have a much more comprehensive overview of exactly what the ground is doing around your ball and your line of putt, and you can then pick an aiming point at the top of the break, putt to that, and let gravity do the rest of the work.
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FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Putterface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
11-8. I keep missing my putts long. Overshooting the hole is usually a tempo problem rather than an inability to read distance. You may very well stand over your putts and correctly let your brain (what some people refer to as “feel”) tell your hands how far back to take the putter. But as soon as the putter starts down toward the ball, you start second-guessing your brain: “This backswing can’t be right—I need to slow this thing down!” or “This thing’s never going to reach the hole—speed it up!” You immediately tighten up, and when you do this, your grip tightens up and the big muscles in your arms and shoulders take over and literally muscle the ball through impact. All feel disappears—you might as well be putting the ball with a piece of pipe and a brick. Forget trying to figure out distance—trust your brain. Your job is to provide rhythm and tempo. Whatever size backswing your brain decides to use for a given putt, your job is to make your backswing and your through-swing smooth. One way to do this is to simply mimic your backswing in your follow-through, with the ball as the center of your swing. If your brain decides to take the putter back two feet, your job is to make a four-foot stroke—two feet back and two feet through, with the ball in the exact middle and simply getting in the way of this four-foot stroke. Three-inch backswing? You’ve got a sixinch stroke to make, again with the ball in the middle. Keep your grip as loose as you can, and keep the triangle formed by your chest and arms intact throughout the stroke.
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11-9. I keep leaving my putts short. You’ve either got a deceleration problem—in other words, you unconsciously slow the putterhead down as you approach impact and end up stabbing at the ball—or you’re simply rolling the ball at the hole, rather than through it. You can diagnose a deceleration problem pretty easily—not only will your putts be short, but they’ll also probably miss on the low side of the cup. The good news is that you can fix a deceleration problem pretty easily. The key is to keep the putterhead moving through impact to a predetermined point—and to keep your eyes on that point until your putterhead reaches it. It’s really like any other shot in golf—the ball should only be the halfway point of your swing, not the end. This way, not only will you always move the putterhead smoothly through impact, but you’ll also always know where the putterhead is going to finish. On the other hand, if your stroke is smooth but you consistently come up short of the hole, move the hole! Or at least your conception of the hole. On a flat putt, pick a spot a foot or so past the hole and aim for that—you’ll be amazed at how many more putts you manage to get to the hole or beyond. If you’re faced with an uphill putt, extend the imaginary hole out to a yard or more beyond the actual hole and putt for the imaginary hole. And if you’re putting downhill, simply aim for the front edge of the hole or a spot a foot or so short of the hole, depending on the severity of the slope.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Center Shoulders: Square
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11-10. I keep pushing my putts right. There are two possibilities here: either the face of your putter is open (facing right) at impact, or your shoulder line (the imaginary line across the tips of your shoulders) is closed (pointing right) rather than parallel to the target line. In other words, your putterface may be square, but it’s square to the wrong line—you’re aiming to the right of the proper target line. Ideally, you should get together with an instructor and work on your swing path, your alignment, and your grip so that everything is square at impact. But in the heat of battle, one way to compensate for an open putterface at impact is to alter the position of the ball in your stance. Set up at address so that the ball is an inch farther forward in your stance than usual. This will allow you to make contact with the ball as your putter is moving straight down the target line, rather than when it’s coming from the inside and aiming right in the initial part of the downswing. If you’re confident that your putterface is square at impact, the next step is to pull your left foot back (away from the ball) an inch or so, making sure to square your shoulders. You may now feel as though your stance is open, or pointed left of the target, but the roll of your ball will be the ultimate arbiter: if moving your left foot back stops you from pushing your putts, then you were previously aiming your shoulders right of your target. You’re now set up square to the target line. FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Ahead of center Shoulders: Square
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11-11. I keep pulling my putts left. As with a pushed putt, you have to first sort out exactly what is happening at impact to make your ball head left. Is the face of your putter arriving at the ball in a closed position—in other words, is it pointed to the left? If so, you probably have a swing-path problem. If you’re sure that the face of your putter is square at impact, then you almost certainly have an aiming problem—your stroke is fine, but your shoulder line is pointed left of the target. And it doesn’t have to be pointed far left to cause a problem—even just a half-inch left of square will send your putts off-line, and that tiny amount is very difficult for your eye to pick up at address. If you suspect that your putterface is closed at impact, and there’s no time for a lesson or practice, one quick fix is to change the position of the ball in your stance. Set up at address so that the ball is an inch farther back in your stance than usual. This will allow you to make contact with the ball as your putter is still moving straight down the target line, rather than when it’s closing and aiming left of the target. If your putterface is square at impact but your eyes are telling you that your stance is also square when it’s actually open, move your right foot and right shoulder back at address. You’ll probably now feel as though you’re aimed right of the hole, but chances are you’re actually square—you’ll know for sure by the direction of your putts.
FIVE-FACES SHOT ANALYSIS Clubface Position: Square Ball Position: Back of center Shoulders: Square
Glossary
(Definitions written for right-handed golfers; reverse directionals for left-handed play.) bent grass A finer, straighter strain of grass found on golf courses located in colder climates. Bermuda grass A strain of tough, wiry, heat-resistant grass found on golf courses located in more temperate climates. blade See skull. block A shot that starts right and continues to fly right of the target. bounce The angle formed by the front edge of the club’s sole and the point on the sole that touches the ground at address. bowed The position of your wrist when it is bent forward so that the knuckles are lower than the wrist. chunk See fat. Usually used in reference to chips and pitches. closed clubface The clubface is pointed to the left of the target at address. closed shoulders The shoulder line is pointed to the right of the target and not parallel with the target line. 216
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coil The stored energy created by the rotation or winding of the upper body in the backswing. cupped The position of your wrist when it is bent back so that the knuckles are higher than the wrist. delofting See hooding. draw A ball that gradually moves from right to left during its flight. fade A ball that gradually moves from left to right during its flight. fat A shot in which the clubhead strikes the ground just before it hits the ball, usually resulting in a loss of distance. flange The extra-wide sole found on the bottom of a sand wedge, which is designed to prevent the clubhead from digging into the sand. flier A shot in which a substance such as water or grass is trapped between the clubface and the ball, which causes the ball to fly farther than anticipated. hooding Also known as delofting; when used to refer to the clubface, a position in which the clubshaft is inclined toward the target while the club is sitting on the ground behind the ball. This tips the clubface forward so that it’s pointing more toward the ground with less loft than usual at address. hook A shot that curves sharply to the left after impact. hosel The cylindrical tube of metal that connects the clubshaft to the clubhead. hot spot A desirable point of impact that maximizes carry and distance. inside-to-out A swing path in which the clubhead comes down from the top of your backswing toward the ball from inside the target line (closer to your body) and then moves outside (away from your body) and into impact. laid back When used to refer to the clubface, a position in which the clubshaft is pointed away from the target while the club is sitting on the
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Glossary
ground behind the ball. This position literally lays the club back and turns the clubface more toward the sky than usual, which effectively adds more loft to the club. lie angle The angle formed by the shaft and the bottom of the clubhead (“ground lie”) when the club is soled normally at address. The wider this angle is in degrees, the more upright the shaft appears; the narrower the angle, the flatter the shaft. loft The angle of the clubface, measured in degrees. The lower the number of degrees of loft on a clubface, the more vertical the face appears when the clubhead is sitting flat on the ground. For example, the clubface on a 10-degree driver appears to be almost straight up and down when the clubhead is sitting flat on the ground, while the clubface on a 60-degree wedge is closer to horizontal than to vertical when the clubhead is soled correctly on the ground. neutral A grip position in which your hands face each other on the handle of the club, with the thumb of your left hand positioned slightly to the right of the handle. OB Short for “out-of-bounds,” an area delineated by white stakes that is considered to be off the course. open clubface The clubface is pointed to the right of the target. open shoulders The shoulder line is pointed to the left of the target and not parallel to the target line. outside-to-in A cut-across swing path in which the clubhead comes down from the top of your backswing toward the ball from outside the target line (farther from your body) and then moves back across the target line toward your body. parallax The apparent shift in the location of an object (such as a flagstick) caused by a change in the position of the observer (such as a golfer moving from behind the ball to the side of the ball). pull A ball that flies on a straight path to the left of the target after impact.
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pull-hook A ball that starts on a straight path to the left after impact and then curves even farther left. pull-slice A ball that starts on a straight path to the left after impact and then curves right. push A ball that flies on a straight path to the right after impact. push-hook A ball that starts on a straight path to the right after impact and then curves left. push-slice A ball that starts on a straight path to the right after impact and then curves even farther right. shank A shot in which the hosel of the club strikes the ball instead of the clubface, usually causing the ball to shoot straight to the right. shoulder line An imaginary line that runs across the front of your body over the points of both shoulders. Your shoulder line is said to be square when it’s parallel with the target line; open when it’s pointed left of the target and not parallel to the target line; and closed when it’s pointed right of the target line. skull A shot in which the ball is hit at or above its equator with the leading edge of the clubface, causing it to shoot forward low and run along the ground. slice A shot that curves sharply to the right after impact. slot In the downswing, the club is considered to be “in the slot” when it’s moving down toward the ball on the correct approach path—that is, from slightly inside the target line. square When used to refer to the clubface, a situation in which the clubface is pointed straight at the target. When used to refer to the stance and/or shoulders, a situation in which the shoulder line is parallel with the target line. strong A grip position in which your hands are turned farther to the right on the club than normal, with the thumb of your left hand positioned to the right of the top of the handle.
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Glossary
thin A shot in which the clubhead strikes the ball low on the clubface instead of in the center of the face, causing it to shoot off the clubface on a low trajectory. toe line An imaginary line that runs across the toes. top A shot in which the bottom of the clubhead contacts the top of the ball at impact, causing the ball to shoot forward along the ground. weak A grip position in which your hands are turned farther to the left on the handle of the club than normal, with both thumbs to the left of the top of the handle. yips A physical or psychological condition in which a golfer involuntarily jerks the club off-line before contacting the ball. The yips are most famous for their effect on the putting stroke, but short-iron and driver yips are also a problem.
Index
adjustments, making, 8–9 aiming on par-3, 63–65 tee box and, 31–32 balance of putters, 179–181 when ball rests above feet, 77–79 ball positions, 4, 9–10 balls teeing, 32–34 watching clubface meet, 30–31 bare ground, ball on, 83–84, 129–130 bent and Bermuda grass, 190–191 betting, 37–38 blade putters, 178, 179 blind shots over hills, 102–103 block, correcting, 49–51 bounce, degrees of, 122 bouncing putts, 204–205 branches, low-hanging, 152 break, determining, 198, 199 breathing, 25 bunker sand ball buried in, 91–92, 137–138
ball half-buried in, 138–139, 146 ball in back of, 88–90, 136–137, 145 ball in middle of, 87–88, 134–136, 142–144 ball in wet, 156–157 ball on downhill lie in, 147–148 ball on uphill lie in, 146–147 ball under lip of, 90–91, 139–140 greenside, with little green to work with, 140–141 leaving ball in, on greenside shots, 170–171 skulling ball out of bunkers, 171–172 See also sand shots buried-lie shot, 91, 137–138 cart paths, ball on, 92–93 Casper, Billy, 67 casual water, ball in, 98–99 chip shots hitting ground behind ball on, 166–168 hitting thin, 168–170 from off greens, 192–193 from sand, 172–173 221
222
Index
claw grip, 183 closed clubface position, 16–17 closed shoulder line, 11, 12–14 clubs ball position and type of, 9–10 choosing for windy conditions, 36 downhill par-3 courses and, 65–66 fairway shots and, 71–72 for inside 100 yards, 119–120 scoring and, 118 tweeners, 73–74 uphill par-3 courses and, 66–67 See also five-faces system; gripping; specific clubs coil, 48 “count the flagsticks” method, 66, 67 creativity, and fun, 3 deceleration problem, 213–214 DiMarco, Chris, 183 distance, driver and, 46–49 divots, ball in, 80–81, 126–127 documenting distance hit, 73–74 doglegs in greens, 202–203 downhill par-3 courses, 65–66 downhill slopes ball on, 81–82, 127–128, 147–148 putting and, 195–196 drainage of putting greens, 187–188 draw spin, 20, 32, 36 drivers hitting ground behind balls with, 39–40 power to ball at impact with, 46–49 teeing balls and, 33 tee shots and, 26 duck hooks, correcting, 55–57 80 percent rule, 25 face-balanced putters, 179, 180 faces of golf club. See five-faces system fade spin, 20, 32, 35–36
fairways adjusting for wind on, 75–76 clubs to hit from, 71–72 laying up on, 72–73 parallel, ball on, 100–102 problems on, 70 stance for long shot from, 74–75 fairway woods. See woods, fairway fat, hitting ball, 39–40, 106–107 feet ball resting above, 77–79, 123–124 ball resting below, 79–80, 124–126, 144 50 yards from green ball half-buried in bunker, 146 ball in back of bunker, 145 ball in deep rough, 148–149 ball in middle of bunker, 142–144 five-faces system ball position and, 9–10 closed position, 16–17 hooded position, 18 laid-back position, 19–20 open position, 15–16 overview of, 3–4, 8–9 shoulder position and, 10–14 square position, 14–15 flagsticks, leaving in, 194 flanges, 122 45 degree–balanced putters, 179, 181 free drops, 92, 98 fried-egg lie, 138–139 gambling games, 37–38 gap wedges, 119 golf clubs. See clubs grain of grass, 188, 190–191 greens. See putting greens green speed, 188 gripping clubs for tee shots, 26–29 putters, 182–183
Index
sand wedges to open face, 135 ground behind ball, hitting on chips and pitches, 166–168 with drivers, 39–40 with putters, 209 with short and mid-irons, 158–160 grounders, hitting, 42–43 half-swing drill, 24, 25 handicap, wagering and, 37–38 hands, position on shaft, 26–29, 135 hardpan, balls on, 83–84, 92–93, 129–130 headcover drill, 52–53 heavy rough, ball in 50 yards from green, 148–149 greenside, 130–132 off fairway, 84–85 height of tees, 32–34 high shots over obstacles, 103–104, 154–155 hills ball in rough at base of, 149–150 blind shots over, 102–103 See also downhill slopes; uphill slopes, balls on Hogan, Ben, 8 hooded clubface position, 18 hooks, correcting, 55–57, 58–59, 61–62 hosel of clubs, 162 hot spot, 33 hybrid clubs hitting fat with, 106–107 hitting straight left with, 113–115 hitting straight right with, 112–113 hitting thin with, 108–110 missing balls with, 110–111 teeing balls and, 32–33 versatility of, 71 inside 100 yards, 119–122 inside-to-out swing path, 34–35
223
intermediate target, 24, 31–32 “invisible wall” drill, 111 irons fairways and, 71–72 hitting ground behind balls with, 158–160 hitting thin with, 160–161 pulling full-shot short and mid-, 164–165 pushing full-shot short and mid-, 165–166 shanking, 162–164 teeing balls and, 32–33, 34 wind and, 76 “keep it square” mantra, 8 KISS (Keep It Simple . . . and Square), 29–30 laid-back clubface position, 19–20 Langer, Bernhard, grip, 182 lay back, 10 laying up, 67–68, 72–73 left shots going straight, 52–53, 113–115 tee shots hooking, 55–57 left-handed golfers, 4 left-to-right putting, 197 leverage, 46–47, 48–49 lie angle of putters, 181 light rough, 85–86, 132–133 lob wedges, 94, 119, 142, 149–150, 154 Locke, Bobby, 67 loft, 9–10, 26 loosening up, 23–24 low shots under obstacles, 104–105, 155–156 L-wedges, 140 mallet putters, 178–179 missing balls, 43–44, 110–111
224
Nicklaus, Jack, 181, 185 9-irons, 98–99 objects, ball close to, 95–97 obstacles high shots over, 103–104, 154–155 low shots under, 104–105, 155–156 O’Meara, Mark, 183 100 yards, inside, 119–122 open clubface position, 15–16 open shoulder line, 11, 12, 14 outside-to-in path, 52 overshooting hole, 212 par-3 courses aiming ball on, 63–65 downhill, 65–66 laying up on, 67–68 uphill, 66–67 parallax, 31 parallel fairways, ball on, 100–102 pine needles, beds of, 86–87, 133–134 pitching wedges, 119, 144 pitch shots hitting ground behind ball on, 166–168 hitting thin, 168–170 from off greens, 192–193 planning second shot before hitting first on par-3, 63–65 plumb-bobbing, 189 pop-ups, 33, 45–46 position of ball in stance, 9–10 posture at address, 29–30 pot bunkers, greenside, 141–142 power to ball at impact with drivers, 46–49 practice swings, 24 preparing for tee shots, 23–25 pre-shot routine, 24–25 pull, correcting, 52–53 pull hooks, correcting, 55–57
Index
pulling full-shot short and mid-irons, 164–165 pushing full-shot short and mid-irons, 165–166 putterface, hitting balls with bottom edge of, 207–208 putters choosing, 178–182 gripping, 182–183 hitting ground behind ball with, 209 hitting with heel of, 207 hitting with toe of, 205–206 low shots under obstacles and, 104–105, 152, 155–156 putting beliefs about, 176–177 bouncing and skipping putts, 204–205 break, determining, 198, 199 downhill, 195–196 grasses and, 190–191 from higher to lower tier, 201–202 leaving putts short, 213–214 left-to-right, 197 from lower to higher tier, 200–201 missing putts, 210–212 from off greens, 191–192 plumb-bobbing, 189 pulling putts left, 215 pushing putts right, 214–215 speed of, determining, 198–200 stance for, 183–185 stroke for, 186–187 putting greens, 187–189, 200–203 Rader, Dana, 66 range balls, 73–74 reverse pivot, 45 right shots going straight, 49–51, 112–113 tee shots starting straight then slicing, 57–58 rocks, ball in, 93–94, 150–151
Index
rotating, leaning compared to, 39–40, 44, 46, 47–48 rough ball above feet in, 77–79 ball below feet in, 79–80 at base of steep greenside hills, 149–150 heavy, 84–85, 130–132, 148–149 light, 85–86, 132–133
stance for long shots from fairway, 74–75 position of ball in, 9–10 putting and, 183–185 on tee box, 29–31 “step on it” method, 104, 105 stroking putts, 186–187 swing, as turn or rotation, 39–40, 44 swing path, correcting, 51, 162–164
sand practice, 118 sand shots greenside, 172–173 out of bunkers, 134–136, 171–172 sand wedges, 84, 98, 119, 120–121, 122–123 Sarazen, Gene, 122 saw grip, 183 shaft connection to putterheads, 179 length of, and putters, 181 positioning hands on, 26–29 shanking short and mid-irons, 162–164 short game, overview of, 118 shoulder line, definition of, 11 shoulder positions closed, 11, 12–14 open, 11, 12, 14 options for, 11 overview of, 4, 10–11 square, 11, 12–14 Sindelar, Joey, 71 Singh, Vijay, 185 64-degree wedges, 119 skipping putts, 204–205 skull shots, 126, 171–172 slice, correcting, 53–55, 57–58, 59–61 slot, 60 speed of putts, determining, 198–200 spin/trajectory combinations, 20 square clubface position, 14–15 square shoulder line, 11, 12–14
target line, 10–11, 24 teeing balls, 32–34 tee shots adjusting for wind, 34–37 aiming and, 31–32 clubs for hitting, 26 go “right of right,” 53–55 go straight left, 52–53 go straight right, 49–51 gripping club for, 26–29 hooking left, 55–57 popping up, 45–46 preparing for, 23–25 stance for, 29–31 start left and slice right, 59–61 start right and hook left, 61–62 start straight and hook left, 58–59 start straight and slice right, 57–58 topping, 42–43 whiffing, 43–44 10 percent rule, 38 “Texas Wedge,” 151 thin, hitting ball on chips and pitches, 168–170 correcting, 40–42 with hybrids and fairway woods, 108–110 with short and mid-irons, 160–161 3-iron, 71–72 toe-balanced putters, 179, 180 toe line, 10–11 toe-putting, 196
225
226
Tomasi, T. J., 1–2 topography of putting greens, 187–189 topping, 42–43 trees ball close to, 95–97 low-hanging branches of, 152 stands of, 94–95, 133–134 uphill par-3 courses, 66–67 uphill slopes, ball on, 82–83, 128–129, 146–147 wagering, 37–38 walls, ball close to, 95–97 waste areas, ball in, 153 watching clubface meet ball, 30–31 water, ball in couple inches of, 98–99 wedges, 119. See also specific wedges weeds, ball in, 99–100 weighted club drill, 111
Index
wet sand bunkers, 156–157 whiffing on tees, 43–44 wind, adjusting for shots inside 100 yards, 120–122 shots outside 100 yards, 75–76 tee shots, 34–37 uphill par-3 courses, 66–67 woods, fairway going straight left with, 113–114 going straight right with, 112–113 hitting balls fat with, 106–107 hitting balls thin with, 108–109 missing balls with, 110–111 stance and, 74–75 wind and, 76 Woods, Tiger, 181 wrist position and slicing, 53–55 yips, 181
