In this video, Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Ged Walters explains the 6 essential skills every golfer needs to shoot lower scores. The best golfers often also have the highest golf IQs, this means they make the right decisions at crucial moments that help them avoid the big numbers on the scorecard - something mid and high handicap golfers really struggle with.
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00:00So you're a good golfer but you're struggling to put together some scores, well this could
00:04be the video for you.
00:05Now Jed, what's the first point of call when it comes to this?
00:08So commonly known really is your golf IQ.
00:13It's just strategic mental mistakes, poor choices, trying to hit a shot that you shouldn't
00:21really be trying to hit and all those little things just add up to extra shots and when
00:25you add up to extra shots you look at the end of the day and the score and it's just
00:29like maybe, I don't know, some people can beat anything between 6 and 12 shots difference.
00:34So it's all about strategy really, golf course strategy and we're here on a tee box and you're
00:40going to talk to us about the importance of teeing up the golf ball the right way, is
00:44that correct?
00:45Yeah, so we're here on the 17th of Sandy Way but a lot of people don't pay attention to
00:50the shape of shot that they hit and what I mean by that is all the time people will just
00:56come right into the middle of the tee box and they'll tee it up and then they'll take
01:01their set up, aim in right down the middle of the fairway, yet they slice the ball 40-50 yards.
01:09Well if we look at what's 40-50 yards to our right it's just a dead zone, you just cannot
01:14hit the golf ball there if you want to score.
01:17So what you have to do is you have to think about the shape of shot you hit and then look
01:21at the position that you need to tee the ball up.
01:24So if we keep that shape of shot, that 40-50 yard slice, well if I was then to say, right
01:29if I teed the golf ball up over here, then that's going to open up the target for me.
01:36What I mean by that would be if you were to imagine a funnel from where your golf ball
01:43is and the target line, if I move that to the left hand side, I've now got a massive
01:50space to hit the golf ball into rather than teeing the golf ball up in the middle and
01:55only having less maybe than half of that space.
01:59So I could hit me 40-50 yard slice and I can just set up at the trees just on the left
02:05side of the fairway and now I have all of that open space for the golf ball to land in.
02:11And I guess that works vice versa if you were to tee up on the other side of the tee box.
02:14Vice versa from here, yeah, if you're hitting the ball with a hook or you're hitting it
02:17with a draw, then down this side out towards where the sandy way tree is there and you've
02:24got all that space on the left hand side.
02:27It's playing the shape of shot that you have is the important bit.
02:32It's making sure that you give yourself the biggest amount of space to hit the golf ball
02:37in an area which is going to enable you to hit the next shot where you need to.
02:41Absolutely.
02:42So there we go.
02:43Don't just walk onto a tee box and plonk your tee and your ball into the middle.
02:47Find the space that suits your game for that day and hopefully you can find the fairway.
02:52So Jed, you've found yourself in a fairway bunker here, explain to us what we're going
02:56to do from this position.
02:57You've got two balls, two very different positions, two very different outcomes possibly.
03:02Yeah, the biggest thing is assessing your lie more than anything else.
03:08It's not so much about how far do I have to cover in terms of being able to hit the green
03:14or get up around the green.
03:16It's about whether I can advance the ball out from the lie that I've got.
03:20So if we take this front one here, well there's not a lot of room between the golf ball and
03:27this lip.
03:28Now if I was to say hit 7-iron, which I've got here, well depending on strike that might
03:38not get up quick enough.
03:40So there's no point in me hitting the lip or burying it in the front, catching the lip
03:43and it just sort of bobbling out forward.
03:46I might as well get a pitching wedge and advance it 100 yards and that's the key to it, whereas
03:50when you've got a little bit more room that you might have here, well I've got a bigger
03:55distance now to that lip, so a 7-iron is plenty loft to be able to get out and cover more
04:01of the ground.
04:02So the first thing you need to do is assess your lie and then choose your golf club rather
04:07than just thinking it's 150 yards, I need my 7-iron and off I go.
04:12After that, the approach is just like you would be in the fairway, apart from a few
04:17little tweaks that I'd like to see and settle, it's just like we'd normally be in the bunkers.
04:23I'm going to approach it with ball position exactly the same as I would do for a normal
04:27shot.
04:28You can see these bunkers are great because they're quite firm.
04:32If the sand is really soft, a little but not a lot of wriggle of the feet in just to secure
04:38yourself on the softer footing that sand is.
04:43And then to just encourage a hair more of a steeper angle of attack, we just want to
04:49feel a little bit more weight into this lead side.
04:53So I would be here around about 70% pushing down into my left foot, I'm not leaning loads
05:00this way, I'm just pushing down through the floor a little bit more and then I'm just
05:04going to go a fraction, as you can see it's not a lot down.
05:08The grip there, I haven't gone all the way down, I'd normally be here, I've just gone
05:11down, I don't know, maybe half to three quarters of an inch and then I'm just thinking about
05:16making the normal swing that I normally would do, making sure that I keep the pressure of
05:21the body moving forward so I'm finishing tall and forward on that left hand side.
05:27So hitting this shot should look a little bit like this.
05:36So I've advanced it down there, so I've probably got maybe around 50 yards left, somewhere
05:42around there, give or take, and that's a much better place to be than being in there, playing
05:48the shot in the same way, with a 7 iron from there and you've got your chance of hitting
05:52the green.
05:53We've found ourselves in a pretty tricky situation here Jed, and it's not looking too bad.
05:59I think you and I are both looking at this gap, we've had a discussion, that is probably
06:03the play, but let's talk sensible here.
06:06How can we save a shot here and not cost us any penalties?
06:10Probably the way I look at it is, I mean, everybody looks down there and they look at
06:13that and think, oh I can get it through there, they've all forgot that they've just missed
06:17the 50 yard fairway, question number one, so I can't hit the 50 yard fairway but I can
06:23get through that, what's that?
06:25We've probably got about what, 6-7 feet maybe to get through, something like that if we're
06:30lucky.
06:31So a couple of things that we need to do, is one we need to be sensible, we want to
06:35take 6 and 7 out of play, that's the first thing we want to do.
06:39So we assess the lie, we choose the right option which is going to help us make the
06:44next shot easier, ultimately that's it.
06:47So from here, I mean we've got a nice space, just to nudge it back nice and simply out
06:52onto the fairway.
06:54When you nudge it out onto the fairway from this position in there, it's probably less
06:59than 140 yards, maybe 130 yards in for your next shot anyway, take all the danger out
07:04of play, take the 6 and the 7 out of play and just nudge it back into the fairway.
07:09Just making sure that you choose the right club for it, I mean I've got 8-iron in my
07:12hands here, it's sitting down a little bit but it's not a bad lie, I haven't got any
07:18real overhanging branches or anything that I need to avoid, so it would literally just
07:23be playing a little bumped shot, feet together, a little bit of pressure forward and we're
07:29just going to nudge it back into play and we just take our medicine, move on and then
07:37hopefully, well I've got a chance of getting up and down, but if I make 5, then I make
07:445 and not 6 or 7.
07:46So Jed, we're back on the tee box here and I just happened to catch your first tee shot
07:51there and you sailed it right into the trees, I'm not sure we'll be able to find it.
07:55It wasn't great.
07:56It wasn't a good first shot.
07:57It wasn't great.
07:58Now, I've noticed you've not changed your golf club, a lot of people will be thinking
08:01provisional, I'm going to get my hybrid or an iron out so I can hit the fairway and make
08:06sure I'm in play, but not you.
08:09Well, it's an option, but it's one that I would sort of use as a last resort.
08:16I think everybody needs to have what I would call a second serve with the driver.
08:22So if we put that into golf terms, well the second serve with the driver is I need a go
08:27to shot that I can hit which is going to hit the fairway.
08:31Now it might not always hit the fairway, but it's going to be in play, it's not going to
08:34be off line by loads.
08:37Now for the majority of people, I would say a second serve would be tear it down, give
08:43yourself the biggest amount of club face to hit and look at trying to see the ball move
08:49generally a little bit from left to right.
08:53So if you've got a tight fairway where you might have trouble on the left, out of bounds
08:58on the right, I know a few holes where there's out of bounds both sides, you need a second
09:02serve because so many cards get absolutely destroyed by hitting one, two, three out of
09:09bounds.
09:10So my advice for that would be, you know, we're thinking about that little bit of a
09:13faded shot.
09:14I want to go a little bit more onto the right-hand side for me as a right-handed golfer of the
09:19tee box to open up the funnel a little bit more so I can aim it a little bit more down
09:24the left-hand side and just get it moving nice and smoothly into play.
09:29Let's have a look there.
09:30Let's see it.
09:31Second ball.
09:32So we're going to tee up there and if we think, well, that would be teeing it up normally
09:36where you can probably see around about half of the golf ball sitting above the club head
09:39there.
09:40Right.
09:41I'm going to tee this down.
09:43So step one would be to tee it down.
09:45That's step one for the second serve.
09:46So from that point of view there now, maybe there's a little tiny bit at the top of the
09:50head, but over the top of the head, but not a lot.
09:54From that point of view there, it's all about getting it a nice controlled swing.
09:59It's not your flat out speed, but it's not super slow.
10:02I don't want you to take loads of speed out of it.
10:04Just want you to think more about controlled tempo and just letting it go in play.
10:10Let's have a look.
10:11So I'm going to be sort of aiming a little bit more down towards the gap in the trees
10:15on the left-hand side.
10:16So we've got the big tree on the left and then the little line of trees in towards that
10:20gap there.
10:24So my ball position isn't going to change.
10:25It's going to be just a fraction inside of my left heel.
10:30And then it's just going to be sort of nice and smooth, get it in play and move on for
10:35the next shot.
10:36Excellent.
10:37Well, that's far better than the first tee shot that sailed right.
10:44I think we might have to climb the fence to get there.
10:47So there you go.
10:48If you're struggling off the tee, second serve, tee it low, nice and easy, and you'll find
10:53the fairway and hopefully save that par.
10:58Jed, this looks quite interesting here.
11:03To me, the untrained eye, you're putting to nothing.
11:07What are you trying to achieve from this drill right here?
11:09Speed control.
11:11So there's two big key areas really where golfers can save shots on the putting green.
11:18Number one is being able to hole out from sort of three feet and inside, and number
11:24two is being able to control speed of the putts from distance.
11:29The biggest reason that they three putt is because they don't control the speed.
11:33It's not because they don't get the line, because the line is determined by what speed
11:36you're going to hit it.
11:37If I'm going to hit it really, really hard, it's not going to break much.
11:38If I'm going to hit it soft, it's going to break more if there's any break on it.
11:41So speed is the most important thing, but nobody practices it.
11:44Everybody just hits putts to holes.
11:46You might hit them to a hole over there in a distance and think they're practicing speed,
11:50but really you need to practice being able to control the speed at a specific length.
11:54So if you can get the ball to finish within, I don't know, six, seven inches of each other,
12:00then you're going to be able to control your speed much better.
12:02So from here, this drill's great, just putt into the fringe.
12:05So all I want to do is hit these four putts, and I want to try and get them as close to
12:09the fringe as possible.
12:10And I imagine this is something you would do for any course you turn up to before your
12:14round.
12:15It's a good idea to get the pace of that green.
12:18Find out what the speed is.
12:19There's loads of golfers, you go out and they'll come in afterwards and they'll be in the bar
12:22and they'll say, I couldn't get the speed of the greens all day.
12:25Well, if you've practiced this drill, you walk onto the first green, you'll know instantly
12:30if the speed of the putting green is the same as the speed of the greens outside on the
12:33golf course.
12:35And if it's not, it's only one hole that it takes to adjust.
12:37Amazing.
12:38All right.
12:39So there you have it.
12:40Come out onto the putting green before your round, give this little putt to the fringe
12:43drill a go so you can nail the speed of the greens so you can go out and shoot your lowest
12:47score yet.
12:49All right, Jed, this looks very interesting, mate.
12:56What have we got going on here?
12:58So a little practice drill really, call it round the world.
13:01It simply just covers holing out from all different angles so you're not just hitting
13:05the same putt over and over.
13:07You're covering it from, you might have a bit of right to left, a bit of left to right,
13:10a bit upslope, downslope, rather than just picking a nice flat straight one and just
13:15getting good at rolling that one in and you get on the golf course and you've got two
13:18feet with a little bit of right to left and panic station setting.
13:22And how is this going to help us lower our scores out on the golf course?
13:26Too many people don't like hitting short putts from like, I mean, these are one pace away
13:31from the hole.
13:32Yeah, people tap them, don't quite give it enough speed, some then give it too much speed
13:39and then they get caught in between and miss far too many than you should.
13:43They really should hold about 95% of them, give or take across all sections.
13:48So it doesn't matter what your slope is, about 95% you should hold.
13:53So then you're not going to three putt a lot if you can put it into this space.
13:57So as long as you've got good speed control and you get it into here, if you're practising
14:00this bit, you're going to save shots.
14:02All right, amazing.
14:03So I'm guessing it's called around the world for a reason.
14:05Your idea is to make yourself go all the way around without missing.
14:08So don't let me slow you down.
14:10Let's see you finish this off then.
14:13Yeah, so it's just making sure you go through your routine that you would normally.
14:16As if you were on the golf course, put yourself into that situation and then just set yourself
14:21in and just have a nice positive stroke.
14:25Lovely.
14:28So a little bit of putting practice outside off the golf course can help lower your scores
14:33on the golf course.
14:35Some great advice there from Jed.
14:37Definitely some tips I'll be implementing into my game.
14:41That's all from us here at Sandy Way Golf Club in Cheshire.
14:44We look forward to seeing you next time.