Every now and again I’ll receive a note from a subscriber along the lines of “I want to get real good at this game, I have some ability and have been playing a while but seem to be stuck where I am, please help”.
Now generally speaking I’m not one to reply to individual emails, I receive too many of them and only paying clients get to correspond with me via email. But sometimes I can’t resist dropping a pearl of wisdom and chopping some strokes off some poor beleaguered soul’s golf game.
So what do I say: it’s simply this.
You have to look at improvement as short term and long term objectives and you have to be able to put a little time into it, I’m talking about an hour or hour and a half a week.
I’ll start with the short term.
Look at your short game.
Next game you play write down all the strokes you took and the score for that hole, so for example it might look like this on the first three holes:
Hole 1 – Driver, seven iron, chip, putt, putt, putt
Hole 2 – Seven Iron, chip, putt, putt
Hole 3 – Driver, five wood, 9 iron, chip, putt, putt.
You get the drift as you carry on for the whole round. Then take your nice little red pen and underline every stroke you took from within 50 yards of the hole.
My bet Is that there is a sea of red on that piece of paper, so to take strokes off your game quickly, you would want to spend your practice time on every shot within 50 yards of the pin. I’m talking about:
- Pitching
- Bunkers
- Long putts
- Chips
- Short putts.
That will get you going on a diet of stoke reduction my fairway finding friend.
Now for the long term.
You need to build a reliable and repeatable golf swing. It’s a simple fact of the matter that the more greens in regulation you hit, the easier the game becomes.
You only hit more greens in regulation by having a better swing technique. So spend a portion of your time in trying to learn how to swing the club better and hit the ball better, it’s where you will make huge strides in your game.
Ideally you would want a coach or a guide or program to work towards, not try and do things on your own bit by bit. The golf swing is just too hard to try and teach yourself.
Now were done with that, how about some more game improvement wisdom?
The “9 Ways to Lower Your Handicap & Shoot Your Best Round Ever” free e-book is available via this website to all and sundry, contained within it’s pages is deep, profound knowledge that if you choose to do something with, can’t help but have a positive effect on your game.
So what are you waiting for, grab a cop whilst the going is good at this link here.
Bob James PGA