How To Fix Your Three-Putts And Help Lower Your Scores

Did you know that you probably take an average of eight more putts per round than a Tour golf player! That’s a lot of extra shots with one club!

But the main reason for this is that your first putt is farther away from the hole. From six feet and shorter your actually not that much worse than the Tour Golf player, but, it’s when it’s six feet and over that we really start to struggle. Did you know that you 3 putt on average six times more than the Tour golf players, so you need to concentrate on your lag putts to improve this stat and lower your scores.

For the next two months try this excercise before you practice or before your round. For a minimum of 15 minutes Putt only 40-footers to try and get a feel for round reckers! Once you get a feel for this distance other distances will become easier and the number of three-putts each round will drop quicker than you would have hoped.

Make Your Putting Routine And Watch Your Scores Drop

The use of preshot routines by professional athletes is not new. Look at a tennis player before he/she serves. They do they same routine every time and the reason for this is that it becomes a habit. We are creatures of habit and a good habitual putting routine helps us in two ways. The first is the physical side – holding the grip, taking your stance, making your practice swing etc. The second, and most important component is the mental side – reading the green, deciding on the line, clearing your mind, putting to hole the putt and to accept the outcome come what may.

Short Game Tips And Advice From Golf Geeks

Whether you are playing a bunker shot or trying to hold a vital putt in your monthly medal, we all need some short- game tips and advice when the pressure is on.

Here are a few to remember.

When you hit a flop shot over a bunker, focus your aim on the top of the pin to ensure that you avoid the sand.

Two great drills that give you feel both for your stroke and distance is 1. Putt with your eyes closed and 2. Putt with your eyes fixed on the hole not the ball.

Lastly, if you have been missing putts because you have pushed or pulled them, try and make sure that you are not strangling the club. Make sure that you keep a very light grip pressure. Imagine holding your knife and fork!

The biggest mistake most golfers make when chipping is to spread their weight out 50/50 on each foot… unfortunately this encourages a sweeping swing path which then leads to thinning your shots or even worse miss-hitting the ball.
You must have your weight on your front foot 60/40 to encourage a descending blow into the ball.

This with a mid to back ball position will help impart more backspin and limit the amount of grass between your club and the ball – which will improve your scoring, up and downs and help you make more putts because you are hitting the ball closer to the flag.

Keep looking at our tips section for help with your chipping.

Sloping lies can be hard even for the more experienced player but in your golf swing try to swing with the slope, not into. Understanding some simple keys can help even the most severe hills become easier.

Up-Hill
If executed correctly then this shot will fly higher and will tend to be pulled left.    Take at least one more club and aim a little right. Set your body angle with the slope and as with your normal set up keep the butt end of the grip pointing just in front of the zipper and left hip. Try to avoid leaning into the slope with the shaft too far forward.

Down-Hill
As you would expect this lie will produce a low shot that tends to fade right. Take less club with more loft aim a little left (the less loft the more the curve). Swing down the slope trying not to help the ball in the air. Make sure you move your weight through enough to get the bottom of the swing to the ball.

Ball Above Feet
The angle of the slope tends to make the club too long so you should choke down an inch or so. The shaft will be more horizontal and this will cause the club to swing more around which should promote a right to left shot. So aim further right and allow for a lower ball flight with more roll.

Ball Below Feet
The ground sloping away from you tends to makes the club too short. Bend more over the ball from the hips (not the knees). The shaft will be more upright and the club   will swing up and down which will promote a left to right ball flight. Aim further left and a higher softer landing shot. Make an effort to maintain your posture as much possible.

A lot of golfers forget which way the ball curves on the final two shot so just remember it will curve in the direction of the slope.

In golf the quickest way to lower your score is to sharpen up your short game. There are three trajectories to get the golf ball onto the green; low, medium and high. When I am coaching my students I try to match their skill level to the flight, so the higher the handicap the lower the trajectory we start with.

We would start with a 7 iron and with the ball in the middle of the stance, weight a little forward and the shaft leaning just in front of the ball. Make a small backswing the pivot around with your body trying keep your hands quiet. Depending on the length of your swing, the ball should pop up then bounce and run. Master this, then move on to the medium flight.

To add more height, simply add more loft. Firstly make the same golf swing but try using your wedge.  Then nudge the ball a little forward and when you start your backswing, the wrists begin to hinge as you pivot. I also like to encourage the face of the club to open by letting the left forearm rotate slightly. The downswing should be a pivot. Your body has to move to maintain the correct forward lean of the shaft so pivot on your left leg as your chest turns. Let the club slide under the ball using the clubs loft to get the ball up. The secret to a good short game is to keep your hands stable and the club low through impact.  The wedge should give you medium flight and a little roll.

The high shot or lob is a higher risk and also higher skill shot. Try using more loft up to 64deg, set the face a little open make a bigger swing the longer and languid the swing the higher it will go, if you make good contact.

Short game expert Dave Pelz produced some great research saying that PGA Tour Pros on average leave their putts 2ft 5inches short from a 25ft putt, if they did not hole the putt.

The research also indicates that a golfer with a handicap of 20 is 6ft 5inches short and even more incredible is that the average for a beginner is 9ft short – ouch, those three putts really hurt!

If this sounds like you, then try to work more on the pace of the putt rather than concentrating on the line. (The pace has a big say on just how much break there is any way.)

A great speed drill is to place a shaft 3ft behind a practice hole. Then from 20 to 30 feet try to hole out, but monitor how often your ball finishes short of the hole, and then try to make it finish past the hole but short of the shaft. As your pace improves your line and green reading will become much more consistent.

In golf there are two types of putting strokes that you should be aware of, the ’straight back and through’ and the ‘arc’.

My leased preferred style is a straight back and through putting stroke.
In this type of stroke the putter moves straight back from the ball and the face of the blade tries to stay square to the ball-to-hole line. Then on the downswing the face has to open the same amount. To make this stroke work, the face needs to be manipulated in a shut-to-open fashion. This can produce a roll with a sliced and skid shape

This style of stroke was made very popular by short game guru Dave Pelz. In his book “the putting bible” Pelz promotes a shoulder dominated straight-line motion with no forearm rotation.

My preferred putting style is to let the putter work on a more natural in-to-in shape with the face staying square to the arc. This arcing in-to-in path has a more open to closing face like a swing door. The face should be kept square to the plane of movement – a style similar to the shape to the full swing fundamentals.

Your golf equipment will influence the type of putting style you use. The length and lie angle of the shaft will help to determine which of the styles are most suitable. The more upright lie and shorter / closer you stand to the ball, the more straight the path of the putter will tend to move back and through. Whereas a flatter lie will help to promote a more rounded movement.

The longer the shaft the more the shoulders will move around – although I try to encourage my students to make much more of the stroke with the arms than the shoulders. Rocking your shoulders can also cause a lot of head movement.

One other area that might help is to match your putting style to your putter. It makes sense to me to use a face-balanced putter if you’re a straight-line putter, and a heel toe weighted putter if you’ve more of an arc putting style.

If you want more information on this email me at info@golf-equipment-suppliers.co.uk or ask your PGA Pro for assistance.

I have given hundreds of lessons over the years to every level of player – from the complete beginner to some of the best players on the European tour – and ‘how to fix a slice’ is by far the most common, and therefore is the most popular lesson I give!

A slice is a ball that curves hard to the right for the right-handed golfer. So if you tend to lose most of your long shots right, and miss your short shots left, hit too much of a divot or hit the ball off the top of your club, the following advice will help to fix the curve and put yards on your shots.

I often ask my students, even those that have played for a long time, ‘what causes you to slice?’ And almost without fail they tell me they swing “too steep” or they “come over the top” or “they swing from out to in”. However, I tell them that an ‘out-to-in’ swing never caused a slice and I demonstrate it by taking their club and swinging hard left and we watch the ball fly straight left of the target.

So if you want to fix a slice and hit the ball straighter you have to fix the club face and the arc. The first two tips will help you with your club face and then you can try the arc drills.

1. Strengthen Your Grip
You may think that this means to hold the handle tighter, but you would be wrong. I just want you to rotate both hands clockwise so that the creases formed between the thumbs and forefingers point to the right of your chin maybe all the way to your right shoulder. And try to keep the grip more in the fingers.

2. Don’t Open the Face

When you move the club away from the ball try not to rotate the face open too soon. When the shaft of the club reaches parallel to the ground, the face of the club should look at 10.30 on a clock face and not 12 o clock as some coaches may teach. I like the face to stay square to the arc and not fan open. You should also be aware of the club face mirroring the same position on the downswing.

3. Around – Not Straight Back

The shape of the golf swing should look like a tilted circle. For example, if you take the London Eye and tilted it forty five degrees then that is the image you should use in your golf swing. Golf is a side on game like rounder’s or baseball. I often get students to start to feel this by lifting the club so it is parallel to the ground, then swinging the club on an arc shape around their body (like a baseball player would). Trying to keep that image, I ask them to gradually bend forwards from their hips until they have settled into a good set-up position, with the club resting on the ground, then feel the club work around and up at the same time. The club needs to scribe the same arc on the down swing.

4. Low to High Drill

The first time I saw this drill used was by top coach Rick Smith who used to work with Phil Mickleson. Start the drill by dropping your right foot back 12 inch’s this will help to promote the hips to stay closed, then put the club head back level with your right heel about 4 feet behind the ball. From this position swing forward over the ball letting your forearms rotate to a nice high finish. This shallow to high shape is the opposite that most slicers make.

5. Use the Right Tools

If you’re not willing to change your technique then make sure your driver has enough loft, maybe 13 degrees or more, and a closed face or offset and a softer flex shaft with a lower kick. A combination of the above should help reduce the amount of side-spin on the ball so keep you in play more often.

In golf every single shot is important – the golf swing, the chipping, the putting. But, without a good golf swing to get you started you’re not going to achieve any birdies or bogies, so how do you improve your golf swing to improve the rest of the game?

A common misconception for golfers – especially those that do not get out on the course very often – is that the hands are the most important aspect of a golf game. While the hands are important, golf is similar to building a hotel – no matter how hard you try you can’t start at the top and you can’t miss floors out. You need to build it just one floor at a time.

That means that the foundation – your feet – has everything to do with a quality swing. The upper body portion of a golf swing can be perfect, but if your feet aren’t set, you still don’t know where the heck the ball will go. Here are a couple of backyard tips to get your balance while standing over the ball without swinging at it.

1. Set a ball on a tee in front of you. Measure an impact point with the club in which you attain balance for a good golf swing. For a proper foundation, the knees need to be slightly bent with weight distributed on the balls of the feet. If you are on your toes or your spine is arched, this is NOT a good balance point.
2. Drop the club on the ground, but don’t move your feet in doing so. Keeping proper balance, transfer the weight to your back foot and then through to your front as if you were swinging. Keep doing this repeatedly until it feels like a pendulum motion. If done properly, the motion of your arms go with the motion of your feet from back hip to front hip. This is the beginning of a proper golf swing.
3. Another issue that plagues high handicappers is the overuse of hips to try to compensate for lack of balance. However, with proper balance, the hips become easier to incorporate because it is all just one continuous, fluid motion instead of several individual herky-jerky motions. Here is how to continue a proper golf swing
4. Begin the weight transfer as outlined in Tip #2. If done properly, the arms will flow from hip to hip with the weight transfer. This time, when the arms start in the pendulum motion, continue to increase the motion while maintaining balance.
5. As your motion increases, you will notice that your arms are going back and coming through further, almost to a ¾ swing. If you are keeping proper balance, the weight transfer has shifted through the feet to the hips without you even realising it.

If you can get those four steps down, chances are that you can shave several strokes off your game.

With that completed, the upper body becomes much easier to deal with. The focal points for high-handicappers should be the spine, arms and head. Proper spinal alignment is necessary for any successful swing. If your body is out of balance, the spine will try and compensate mid-swing, thus throwing your swing off.

6. Continuing with tips 1-5, elevate your swing to a full swing now using the pendulum motion. If you feel your back start to tighten, you are moving your upper body while doing so, which is throwing your spine out of alignment.The bottom line is that if your spine moves, your head is going to have to move…they are sort of connected in that sense. It doesn’t matter if it is golf, baseball or hockey, if you move your head, you can’t keep your eye on the ball.

7.  Set the golf ball on the tee with the number in the spot of where the club would meet the ball. Repeat tips 1-6, but this time, focus in on that number at the impact point. If you lose sight of the number, your head is moving.

The arms have already been incorporated into the swing with the pendulum motion, but you still have the task of not trying to overswing, which throws off the balance. Assuming that you keep proper balance, the arm action will be there. The only thing left is to work on wrist action.

8. As you continue tips 1-7, get a rhythm in your head during each swing that pinpoints the time that the club would connect with the ball. It can be a favorite song, a mental melody or a phrase that you say. Correct timing of wrist action will keep your drives solid and straight.

Now, you will not only hear the ping of the impact, but you will feel it in your body. The strokes shaved off your scorecard will also be music to your ears!

You are now laying the foundation for an improved golf game. Check back each week as we will dive into specialized topics on the game, including play around the green and the perfect iron shot.

With these tips and those coming in the next few weeks, screaming ‘fore’ will be replaced with writing ‘fours’ on your scorecard.

Do you have a specific question you’d like answering about your golf swing? Then just ask it by filling in the box below. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer all of them straight away, but I’ll do my best!