Essential Skills Golfers Needs To Lower Scores

So you're a good golfer but you're struggling to put together some scores well this could be the

video for you now Jed what's the first point of call when it comes to this? So commonly known

really is your golf IQ it's just strategic mental mistakes poor choices trying to hit a shot

but you shouldn't really be trying to hit and all those little things just add up to extra shots and

when you add up to extra shots you look at the end of the day and the score and it's just like

maybe, I don't know, some people can beat anything between 6 and 12 shots difference

So it's all about strategy, really, golf course strategy. 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

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

And what I mean by that is, all the time, people have just come right into the middle

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

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

You just cannot hit the golf ball there if you want to score

So what you have to do is you have to think about the shape of shot you hit and then look

at the position that you need to tee the ball up. So if we keep that shape of shot, that 40

50-yard slice, well, if I was then to say, right, if I teed the golf ball up over here

then that's going to open up the target for me. And what I mean by that would be

if you were to imagine a funnel from where your golf ball is and the target line

if I move that to the left-hand side, I've now got a massive space to hit the golf ball into

rather than teeing the golf ball up in the middle and only having less maybe than half of that space

So I could hit me 40, 50 yard slice and I can just set up at the trees just on the left side of the fairway

and now I have all of that open space for the golf ball to land in

And I guess that works vice versa if you were to tee up on the other side of the tee box. Vice versa from here, yeah, you know, if you're hitting the ball with a hook or you're hitting it with a draw

then you know down this side out towards where the sandy way tree is there and you've got all

that space on the left hand side it's playing the shape of shot that you have is the important bit

it's making sure that you give yourself the biggest amount of space to hit the golf ball

in an area which is going to enable you to hit the next shot where you need to absolutely so

there we go don't just walk onto a tee box and plonk your tee and your ball into the middle

find the space that suits your game for that day and hopefully you can find the fairway

So Jed, you found yourself in a fairway bunker here. Explain to us what we're going to do from this position

You've got two balls, two very different positions, two very different outcomes possibly

Yeah, the biggest thing is assessing your line more than anything else

It's not so much about how far do I have to cover in terms of being able to hit the green or get up around the green

it's about whether I can advance the ball out from the lie that I've got so if we take this

front one here well there's not a lot of room between the golf ball and this lip now if I was

to say hit seven iron which I got here well depending on strike that might not get 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 have here

well i've got a bigger distance now to that lip so a seven iron is plenty loft to be able to

to get out and cover more of the ground so the first thing you need to do is assess your lie

and then choose your golf club rather than just thinking with 250 yards I need me seven iron and

off I go after that the approach is just like you would be in the fairway apart from a few little

tweaks that I'd like to see and settle yeah it's just like we'd normally be in the bunkers I'm

going to approach it with ball position exactly the same as I would do for a normal shot you can

i mean these bunkers are great because they're quite firm if the sand is really soft a little

but not a lot of of wriggle of the feet in just to secure yourself on the the soft the foot in that

sand is um and then to just encourage a hair more of a of a steeper angle of attack we just want to

feel a little bit more weight into this lead side so i would be here around about 70 pushing down

into my left foot I'm not leaning loads this way I'm just pushing down through the floor a little

bit 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 haven't gone all the way down I'd normally be here I've just gone down I don't know maybe

half to three quarters of an inch and then I'm just thinking about making the normal swing that

I normally would do making sure that I keep the pressure of the body moving forward so I'm

finishing tall and forward on that left hand side so hitting this shot should look a little bit like

this so i've advanced it down there so i've probably got maybe around 50 yards left somewhere

around there um give or take and that's a much better place to be than being in there playing

the shot in the same way with a seven iron from there and you've got your chance then to hit the

green right we found ourselves in a pretty tricky situation here Jed Off The Tee and it's not too

it's not looking too bad I think you and I are both looking at this gap we've had a discussion

that is probably the play but let's let's talk sensible here what how can we save a shot here

and not cost us any penalties 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 they've all forgot that they've just

missed the 50 yard fairway question number one so i can't hit the 50 yard fairway but i can get

through that sort of what's that we've probably got about what six seven feet maybe to get through

something like that if we're lucky um 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 that's the first thing we want

to do um so we assess the lie we choose the right option which is going to help us make the next

shot easier ultimately that's it um so from here i mean we've got a nice space just to nudge it back

nice and simply out onto the fairway when you nudge it out into fairway from this position in there

it's probably less than i don't know 140 yards maybe 130 yards in for your next shot anyway

take all the danger out of play take the six and the seven out of play and just nudge it back into

the fairway just making sure that you choose the right club for it i mean i've got eight iron in

in my hands here. It's sitting down a little bit but it's not a bad lie. I haven't got any

real overhanging branches or anything that I need to avoid 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

And we just take our medicine, move on, and then hopefully, well, I've got a chance of getting up and down

but if I make five, then I make five and not six or seven

So, Jed, we're back on the tee box here, and I just happened to catch your first tee shot there

and you sailed it right into the trees. I'm not sure we'll be able to find it

It wasn't great, was it? It wasn't a good first shot. But now I've noticed you've not changed your golf club

A lot of people will be thinking provisional, I'm gonna get my hybrid or an iron out

so I can hit the fairway and make sure I'm in play. But not you

No, it's an option, but it's one that I would sort of use as a last resort

I think everybody needs to have what I would call second serve with the driver so if we put that into golf terms well the second serve with the

driver is i need a go-to shot that i can hit which is going to hit the fairway now it might not always

hit the fairway but it's going to be in play it's not going to be offline by loans now for the

majority of people i would say a second serve would be teed down give yourself the the biggest amount

a club face to hit and look at trying to see the ball move generally a little bit from left to right

so if you've got a tight fairway where you might have trouble on the left out of bounds on the right

i know a few holes where there's out of bounds both sides you need a second serve because so

many cards get absolutely destroyed by hitting one two three out of bounds so my advice for that

would be you know we're thinking about that little bit of a faded shot i want to go a little bit more

onto the the right hand side for me as a right-handed golfer of the tee box to open up the

funnel that little bit more so i can aim it a little bit more down the left hand side and just

get it moving nice and smoothly into play let's have a look then let's see it second ball there

and if we think well that would be teeing it up normally where you can probably see around about

half of the golf ball sitting above the club head there right i'm going to tee this down

so step one would be to tee it down that's step so from that point of view there now

maybe there's a little tiny bit of the top of the head button over the top of the head but not a lot

and from that point of view there it's all about getting it a nice controlled swing it's not your

flat out speed but it's not super slow i don't want you to take loads of speed out of it just

Just want you to think more about control tempo and just letting it go in place

Let's have a look, Jeff. So I'm going to be sort of aiming a little bit more down towards the gap in the trees on the left hand side

So you've got the big tree on the left and then the little line of trees in towards that gap there

So my ball position isn't going to change. It's going to be just a fraction inside of my left heel

And then it's just going to be nice and smooth. get it in play and move on for the next shot

Excellent, well that's far better than the first tee shot that sailed right

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 easy, and you'll find the fairway and hopefully save that par

Jed this looks quite interesting here to me the untrained eye you're putting to

nothing what are you trying to achieve from this drill right here Speed control and 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 three feet and inside

And number two is being able to control speed of the putts from distance

The biggest reason that they three putt is because they don't control the speed

It's not because they don't get the line because the line is determined by what speed you're going to hit it

If I'm going 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 it. Everybody just hits, puts two holes

They might hit them to a hole over there in a distance and think they're practicing speed

But really, you need to practice being able to control the speed at a specific length

So if you can get the ball to finish within, I don't know, six, seven inches of each other

then you're going to be able to control your speed much better. So from here, this drill's great

Just put it into the fringe. so all I want to do is hit these four putts and I want to try and get them as close to the fringe

as possible. And I imagine this is something you would do for any course you turn up to before

your round and it's a good idea to get the pace of that green. Yeah find out what the speed is

there's loads of golfers you go out and they'll come in afterwards 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 practiced this drill you

walk onto the first green you'll know instantly if the speed of the putting green is the same as

the speed of the greens outside on the golf course and if it's not it's only one hole that it takes

to adjust. Amazing all right so there you have it come out onto the putt and green before your round

give this little putt to the fringe drill a go so you can nail the speed of the greens so you can go

out and shoot your lowest score yet. All right Jed this looks uh this looks very interesting mate

what have we got going on here? So little practice drill really call it round the world

it simply just covers holding out from all different angles so you're not just hitting the same putt over and over

you're covering it from you might have a bit of right to left, a bit of left to right

a bit of upslope, downslope rather than just picking a nice flat straight one

and just getting good at rolling that one in and you get on the golf course and you've got two feet

with a little bit of right to left and panic station setting How is this going to help us lower our scores

out on the golf course? Too many people don't like hitting short putts

from like, I mean, there's one pace away from the hole. Yeah, people tap them, don't quite give it enough speed

Some then give it too much speed and then they get caught in between and miss far too many than you should

It really should hold about 95% of them, give or take across all sections

So it doesn't matter what your slope is, about 95% of them you should hold

So then you're not going to three-put a lot if you can put it into this space

so as long as you've got good speed control and you get it into here if you're practicing this bit

you're going to save shots all right amazing so i'm guessing it's called around the world for a

reason your idea is to make yourself go all the way around without missing so don't let me slow

you down okay let's uh see you finish this off then yeah so it's just making sure you go through

your routine that you would normally as if you were on the golf course put yourself into that

situation and then just set yourself in and just have a nice positive stroke

probably so a little bit of putting practice outside off the golf course

can help lower your scores on the golf course some great advice there from jed definitely

some tips i'll be implementing into my game that's all from us here at sandy way golf club

in cheshire we look forward to seeing you next time Thank you