Ryder Cup Weekend
Monday, September 25, 2006
What a fun weekend of golf on TV. Got to watch the Americans lose again, see some incredible shots (2 aces) and lie on the couch. Well today I was so excited about golf that I hit three pars in a row : )
Plus I learned that it pays to have a different attitude about things. My goal was to score 4 on every hole. That was my challenge for the day. So two shots to get on and two putts. Breaking things down and having a good game plan helped quite a bit. When I deviated was when I got into trouble.
Reminds of the article below:
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Hit Less Greens In Reg for Better Success!
By: Clive Scarff
Perhaps one of the greatest contributors to poor scoring in golf is the pressure associated with reaching a green in regulation. The shame is for 99% of players it shouldn’t be a pressure at all. We all understand what reaching a green “in regulation” means – hitting par threes in one, par fours in two, and par fives in three. But in teaching and playing with amateurs I have come to the realization that they possess an underlying assumption that all good players - particularly pros – reach virtually all greens in regulation. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet the amateur golfer will constantly shoot himself in the foot by putting far too much pressure on himself to reach the same goal, greens in regulation, even when the odds are stacked against him.
Case in point… with the names changed to protect the innocent: I am playing with Mr. Smith, a 29 handicap who, on a 410 yard par four hits his drive 200 yards. Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. But same Mr. Smith then proceeds to pull out his 3-wood as we walk down the fairway. Trying not to sound pernickety I ask him why he has chosen his 3-wood for this next shot (off a tight lie to boot). “Well,” he says, almost indignant, “I’ve got 210 yards to the pin!” I subtly suggest a 5-iron. “Are you kidding?” retorts Smith. “How am I going to get there with a 5-iron?” And therein lies the problem. A man who regularly shoots in the low 100s, who almost never reaches a green in regulation ever, is making his club selection based on reaching the green in regulation. His entire game, and ability to score, is literally handicapped by the notion that he must hit greens in regulation even when it is virtually a mathematical impossibility.
Here is what I want to say to poor ol’ Mr. Smith (but can’t of course): “Dude, you’re not going to get there with a 3-wood either! You nuked your driver 200 off the tee, do you really expect to hit a 3-wood off the deck 210?”
What I do say: “Mr. Smith, how far do you usually hit your 3-wood?” Reluctantly, he confesses, “Well, usually I don’t hit it too well at all. But if I do hit it well I can hit it 190.” To which I ask how far he hits his 7 iron. “120” is the answer.
“So why not hit your 7 iron?” I ask demurely.
Mr. Smith: “But but but…”
You could see in his face the notion of hitting a 7 iron on his second shot, 210 away from a par four green was not so much abhorrent to him as it was a completely foreign notion. So I explained the logic to him. He was on a par four, lying one. Even if he pured his 3-wood - which he admitted was a rarity - he’d still have to hit a third shot of at least 20 yards. At best reaching the green in 3, but introducing great risk of even more by trying to hit the immensely more difficult 3-wood off the fairway from 210 out. Hitting the 7 on the other hand, which he felt he could comfortably clobber 120 on a regular basis would leave, for him, a 90 yard wedge shot to the green. A distance that he agreed was actually more comfortable than the awkward 20 yard pitch shot. So we did a little experiment, with Smith hitting two balls… one with the 3-wood and the other with the 7 iron. He hit the 7 iron quite well, about 125 actually. The 3-wood he topped. You can do the math on the rest of the experiment. The bottom line was that Mr. Smith was guilty, as many players are, of thinking that each individual shot must go as far as humanly possible, until there is very little or no distance left to the green.
The smart player does a risk/reward assessment prior to teeing off on a particular hole, wherein the hole’s yardage is divided by the number of shots he is likely to reach the green in, not by the number of shots a GIR demands. If our Mr. Smith, who is a reasonably good putter, were to reach every green in one over regulation (which he is easily physically capable of) he would shoot 90 each time he played. He’d see his handicap virtually plummet overnight. All from a change in thought process, and by forgetting the notion that greens were made to be hit in regulation. At the end of the day we must remember that golf is a game… one in which we do keep score, and where the entire point is as little score as possible. The guy who shot 100 rarely hands over money to the guy who shot 90 while exclaiming, “Ya, but I did hit that one good 3-wood”.
Next Issue we discuss the “On or Near” philosophy of better scoring.
Clive Scarff is a veteran teaching professional at Bowen Island Golf Ranch near Vancouver BC, and author of the popular golf instruction CD-Rom “Hit Down Dammit!” . Clive can be reached at www.hitdowndammit.com.
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posted by aforward @ 4:54 PM,
