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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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So you're a good golfer but you're struggling to put together some scores. Well this could be the
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video for you. Now Jed what's the first point of call when it comes to this? So commonly known
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really is your golf IQ. It's just strategic mental mistakes, poor choices, trying to hit a shot
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that you shouldn't really be trying to hit and all those little things just add up to extra shots
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and when you add up to extra shots you look at the end of the day and the score and it's just like
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maybe, I don't know, some people can be anything between 6 and 12 shots difference
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So it's all about strategy, really, golf course strategy. Definitely. And we're here on a tee box, and you're going to talk to us about the importance of teeing up the golf ball the right way, is that correct
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Yeah, I mean, so we're here on the 17th of Sandy Way, but a lot of people don't pay attention to the shape of shot that they hit
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And what I mean by that is, all the time, people have just come right into the middle
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of the tee box and they'll tee it up. And then they'll take their set up, aim in right down the middle of the fairway, yet
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they slice the ball 40, 50 yards. Well, if we look at what's 40, 50 yards to our right, it's just a dead zone
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You just cannot hit the golf ball there if you want to score
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So what you have to do is you have to think about the shape of shot you hit and then look
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at the position that you need to tee the ball up so if we keep that shape of shot that 40 50 yard
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slice well if i was then to say right if i teed the golf ball up over here then that's going to
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open up the target for me and what i mean by that would be if you were to imagine a funnel
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from where your golf ball is and the target line if i move that to the left hand side i've now got
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a massive space to hit the golf ball into rather than teeing the golf ball up in the middle and only
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having less maybe than half of that space so i could hit my 40 50 yard slice and i can just set
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up at the trees just on the left side of the fairway and now i have all of that open space
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for the golf ball to land in and i guess that works vice versa if you were to place first from here
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Yeah, if you're hitting the ball with a hook or you're hitting it with a draw, then down this side
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out towards where the sandy way tree is there, and you've got all that space on the left hand side
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It's playing the shape of shot that you have is the important bit. It's making sure that you give
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yourself the biggest amount of space to hit the golf ball in an area which is going to enable you
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to hit the next shot where you need to. Absolutely. So there we go. Don't just walk onto a tee box
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and plonk your tee and your ball into the middle. Find the space that suits your game for that day
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and hopefully you can find the fairway. So Jed, you found yourself in a fairway bunker here
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Explain to us what we're going to do from this position. You've got two balls, two very different positions
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two very different outcomes possibly. Yeah, the biggest thing is assessing your lie
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more than anything else. It's not so much about how far do I have to cover
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in terms of being able to hit the green get up around the green it's about whether i can advance the ball out from the lie that i've got
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so if we take this front one here well there's not a lot of room between the golf ball and this lip
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now if i was to say hit seven iron which i've got here well depending on strike that might not get
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up quick enough so there no point in me hitting the lip but burying it in the front catching the lip and it just sort of bobbling out forward i might as well get pitching wedge and advance it 100 yards and that the key to it whereas when you got a little bit more room that you might
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have here well i've got a bigger distance now to that lip so a seven iron is plenty loft to be able
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to to get out and cover more of the ground so the first thing you need to do is assess your lie
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and then choose your golf club rather than just thinking it's 150 yards I need me seven iron and
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off I go after that the approach is just like you would be in the fairway apart from a few little
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tweaks that I'd like to see and settle yeah it's just like we'd normally be in the bunkers I'm
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going to approach it with ball position exactly the same as I would do for a normal shot you can
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mean these bunkers are great because they're quite firm if the sand is really soft a little but not a
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lot of of wriggle of the feet in just to secure yourself on the the soft the foot in that sand is
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and then to just encourage a hair more of a steeper angle of attack we just want to feel
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a little bit more weight into this lead side so i would be here around about 70 pushing down into
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my left foot i'm not leaning loads this way i'm just pushing down through the floor a little bit
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more and then i'm just going to go a fraction as you can see it's not a lot down the grip there i
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haven't gone all the way down i'd normally be here i've just gone down i don't know maybe half to
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three quarters of an inch and then i'm just thinking about making the the normal swing that
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i normally would do making sure that i keep the pressure of the body moving forward so i'm finishing
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tall and forward on that left hand side so hitting this shot should look a little bit like this
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so I've advanced it down there you know probably got maybe around 50 yards left somewhere around
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there give or take and that's a much better place to be than being in there playing the
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shot in the same way with seven iron from there and you've got your chance then hitting the green
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Right, we found ourselves in a pretty tricky situation here, Jed Offer Tee. It's not bad
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It's not looking too bad. I think you and I are both looking at this gap. We've had a discussion
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That is probably the play. But let's talk sensible here. How can we save a shot here and not cost us any penalties
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Probably the way I look at it is, I mean, everybody looks down there and they look at that and think, oh, I can get it through there
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They've all forgot that they've just missed the 50-yard fairway. Question number one
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So I can't hit the 50 yard fairway, but I can get through that sort of, what's that
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We've probably got about what, six, seven feet maybe to get through, something like that if we're lucky
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So a couple of things that we need to do is one, we need to be sensible. We don't, you know, we want to take six and seven out of play
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That's the first thing we want to do. So we assess the lie. We choose the right option, which is going to help us make the next shot easier
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Ultimately, that's it. so from here I mean we've got a nice space just to nudge it back nice and simply out onto the
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fairway when you nudge it out onto the fairway from this position in there it's probably less
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than I don't know 140 yards maybe 130 yards in for your next shot anyway take all the danger out
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of play take the six and the seven out of play and just nudge it back into the fairway just making
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sure that you choose the right club for it I mean I've got eight iron in my hands here It's sitting down a little bit, but it's not a bad lie
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I haven't got any real overhanging branches or anything that I need to avoid
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So it would literally just be playing a little bump shot feet together a little bit of pressure forward and we just going to nudge it back into play
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and we just take our medicine move on and then hopefully well i've got a chance of getting up
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and down but if if i make five then i make five and not six or seven so jed we're back on the t
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box here and I just happened to catch your first tee shot there and you sailed it right
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into the trees. I'm not sure we'll be able to find it. It wasn't great. It wasn't a good first shot
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but now I've noticed you've not changed your golf club. A lot of people will be thinking provisional
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I'm going to get my hybrid or an iron out so I can hit the fairway make sure I'm in play
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but not you. No it's an option but it's one that I would sort of use as a last resort
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i think everybody needs to have what i would call a second serve with the driver so if we put that
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into golf terms well the second serve with the driver is i need a go-to shot that i can hit which
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is going to hit the fairway now it might not always hit the fairway but it's going to be in
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play it's not going to be offline by loads now for the majority of people i would say a second
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serve would be tee it down give yourself the the biggest amount of club face to hit and look at
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trying to see the ball move generally a little bit from left to right so if you've got a tight fairway
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where you might have trouble on the left out of bounds on the right i know a few holes where there's
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out of bounds both sides you need a second serve because so many cards get absolutely destroyed
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by hitting one two three out of bounds so my advice for that would be you know we're thinking
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about that little bit of a faded shot i want to go a little bit more onto the the right hand side
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for me as a right-handed golfer of the tee box to open up the funnel a little bit more so i can aim
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it a little bit more down the left hand side and just get it moving nice and smoothly into play
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let's have a look then let's see it second ball there and if we think well that would be
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be teeing it up normally where you can probably see around about half of the golf ball sitting
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above the club head there right I'm going to tee this down so step one would be to tee it down
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that's step one so from that point of view there now maybe there's a little tiny bit at the top of
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the head button over the top of the head but not a lot and from that point of view there it's all
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about getting it a nice controlled swing it's not your flat out speed but it's not super slow I
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want you to take loads of speed out of it just want you to think more about control tempo and just
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letting it go and play let's have a look so i'm going to be sort of aiming a little bit more down
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towards the gap in the trees on the left hand side so you've got the big tree on the left and then
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the little line of trees in towards that gap there so my ball position isn't going to change it's
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going to be just a fraction inside of my left heel and then it's just going to be sort of nice and
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smooth, get it in play and move on for the next shot
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Excellent, well that's far better than the first tee shot that sailed right in that place
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I think we might have to climb the fence to get the fence. So there you go, if you're struggling off the tee, second serve, tee it low, nice and
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easy and you'll find the fairway and hopefully save that par. Jed, this looks quite interesting here
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To me, the untrained eye, you're putting to nothing. What are you trying to achieve from this drill right here Speed control So there two big key areas really where golfers can save shots on a putting green number one is being able to hole out from sort of
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three feet and inside um and number two is being able to control speed of the putts from distance
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the biggest reason that they three put is because they don't control the speed it's not because they
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don't get the line because the line is determined by what speed you're going to hit it if i'm going
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to hit it really really hard it's not going to break much if i'm going to hit it soft it's going to break more if there's any break on it so speed is the most important thing but nobody practices
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it everybody just hits puts two holes they might hit them to a hole over there in a distance and
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think they're practicing speed but really you need to practice being able to control the speed at a
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specific length so if you can get the ball to finish within i don't know six seven inches of
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of each other then you're going to be able to control your speed much better so from here this
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drill's great just put into the fringe so all I want to do is hit these four puts and I want to
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try and get them as close to the fringe as possible. And I imagine this is something you would do for
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any course you turn up to before you're round and it's a good idea to get the pace of that green
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Find out what the speed is there's loads of golfers you go out and they'll come in afterwards
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they'll be in the bar and they'll say I couldn't get the speed of the greens all day well if you've
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practice this drill, you walk onto the first green, you'll know instantly if the speed of the
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putting green is the same as the speed of the greens outside on the golf course, and if it's
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not, it's only one hole that it takes to adjust. Amazing, all right, so there you have it. Come out
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onto the putting green before your round, give this little putt to the fringe drill a go, so you can
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nail the speed of the greens, so you can go out and shoot your lowest score yet
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all right Jed this looks uh this looks very interesting mate what we got going on here
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so little practice drill really call it around the world it simply just covers holding out from
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all different angles so you're not just hitting the same putt over and over you're covering it
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from you might have a bit of right to left a bit of left to right a bit up slope down slope
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rather than just picking a nice flat straight one and just getting good at rolling that one in and
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get on the golf course and you've got two feet with a little bit of right to left and panic station setting and how is this going to help us lower our scores out on the golf course
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too many people don't like hitting short putts from like i mean these are one pace away from the
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hole um yeah people tap them don't quite give it enough speed some then give it too much speed and
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then they get caught in between and miss far too many than you should it really should hold about
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95% of them give or take across all sections so it doesn't matter what your slope is about 95
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that you should hold so then you're not going to three put a lot if you can put it into this space
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so as long as you've got good speed control and you get it into here if you're practicing this bit
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you're going to save shots. All right amazing so I'm guessing it's called around the world for a
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reason your idea is to make yourself go all the way around without missing so don't let me slow
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you down okay let's uh see you finish this off then yeah so it's just making sure you go through
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your routine that you would normally as if you were on the golf course put yourself into that
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situation and then just set yourself in and just have a nice positive stroke
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probably so a little bit of putting practice outside off the golf course
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can help lower your scores on the golf course some great advice there from jed definitely some tips
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I will be implementing into my game. That's all from us here at Sandy Way Golf Club in Cheshire
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We look forward to seeing you next time
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