Ball First, Ground Second

To hit a decent golf shot, you need to make contact on the center of the clubface with the clubface square to the target, and the clubhead moving toward the target. Do that and you can play decent golf. If you want to play outstanding golf, there's one more thing. Hit the ball first, the ground second.

If your handicap is in double digits, the chances are great that you hit the ground first, and the ball second most of the time. When that happens, clubhead speed is diminished before the ball is struck, causing you to lose distance. The clubhead can get twisted, affecting accuracy. The most effective strike is to hit the ball before the clubhead reaches the bottom of its arc. This drill teaches you how to do that.

Know the Rules: Nearest Point of Relief

Perhaps the primary rule of golf is to play the ball as it lies. There are several circumstances, however, under which a player may lift the ball and drop it elsewhere to get relief from certain conditions.

Relief is often based on finding a reference point called the nearest point of relief, which is defined in the Definitions section. It is the spot nearest to where the ball lies, and not nearer to the hole, from where a player can make the stroke the player would have made from the original position had the interference from which relief is being sought not been present.

In finding this point, the player must simulate the address position and stroke, with the same club, and swing in the same direction, as if the interference from which the player is taking relief were not present. For example, if a player would have made a right-handed stroke with a 4-iron toward the green were the condition not there, that is the stroke he must simulate to find the nearest point of relief. The nearest point of relief from a particular spot might be different for a right- and left-handed golfer.

Wartime Rules of Golf

Think you play on a tough course? You ain't seen nothing like this, from the Richmond Golf Club in Surrey, England, promulgated in 1941:

1. Players are asked to collect bomb and shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.

2. In competitions, during gunfire or while bombs are falling, players may take shelter without penalty for ceasing play.

3. The position of known delayed action bombs are marked by red flags at a reasonable, but not guaranteed, safe distance therefrom.

The Opening Tee Shot

Maybe not the hardest shot in golf, but certainly the most unnerving, is the opening tee shot. No matter how well you warmed up, you can’t help but wonder what's going to happen today. There's a host of doubts that could be running through your head, but if there are, it comes down to this. You warmed up your swing but you forgot to warm up your mind.

Isn't that the point of your warmup, to get ready to play? If all you do is hit balls to remember your swing and smooth out any loose shots that appear, the exercise is all you got. The warmup is meant to accomplish three things: establish clean contact again, establish your swing tempo, and get your mind into playing mode. That last one is the most important.

Know the Rules: The Teeing Ground

This post is the beginning of a weekly review of the rules of golf. Every Friday I will go over one rule in detail so you know, really know, what that rule is and how it affects the way you play the game. The rules do three things for us. They make the game fair, they hold us accountable for our mistakes, and they make golf easier to play. Knowing them is part of being a golfer.

I will discuss only the most obvious and common occurrences. If an unusual situation warrants it, I will mention a Deep Rule - something that hardly ever occurs but can be confusing or has serious consequences if not handled properly.

Today's rule is Rule 11 - Teeing Ground.

The teeing ground is the designated place from where you start play on a hole, but it is not the entire prepared area. That's commonly called the tee box. The teeing ground is a rectangle defined by a line connecting the tee markers, and going back from there a distance of two club-lengths. You can measure with any club.

A Controlled Putting Stroke

When I write these posts I like to keep two rules in mind. First, write only about things that a reader can learn from reading the post. If something is experiential, too open to interpretation, I won't write about it, because I don't want a misinterpretation to send anybody off in the wrong direction. Second, keep my own game out of it. What applies to me may not apply to you and may even be detrimental to your game. I try to write about golf's universals--things that anybody can put into their game and become a better golfer.

This post breaks both of those rules, but I want to mention it for whatever it's worth to you. If it makes you think about putting a bit differently and encourages you to make explorations on your own, even if they don't end up where I am now, that's fine with me.

Since my back surgery seven weeks ago, I have been putting. Nothing but putting. You can imagine that with nothing else about golf to distract me, I am getting to be a better putter than I was before. One problem I have been trying to solve for many years is how to take the putter back smoothly from the ball and in such a way that the putterface doesn't open so that it can't get square again when it gets back to the ball. That sound like two things, but it's all of the same piece.

Understanding Your Golf Course

I would bet that a touring pro could play one round at your course and know it better than you do. It’s their business to get familiar with a course as fast as they can so they know the most efficient way to move the ball from tee to green on every hole. These are some things you should know about your course, or any course you play.

After you have played a course one time, you should know which club you will tee off with on every hole and where you want to put the tee shot. The first time around, write down on the scorecard the club you used if that is the one you would use next time, otherwise the club you should have used.

When you get to a point in the fairway where you would like to have your tee shot end up, take a look back to the tee and then ahead on that line to find something in the distance you can use as an aiming marker from the tee. It might be a certain tree, or a neighboring building. On one course I play, the architect did a good job of hiding the fairway, so having a good idea of where to aim your tee shot is the only secure way of hitting it.

Is the High Side of the Hole Really the Pro Side?

One of the first pearls of wisdom that every new golfer acquires is that on the putting green there is a "pro" side of the hole and an "amateur" side. Professional golfers always miss the hole on the uphill side, so the wisdom goes, and amateurs continually miss on the downhill side. So to have at least something in their game that looks like they've been around the block, these golfers will start trying to miss putts on the high side, and every now and then accomplish it.

The reason for preferring the high-side miss is not hard to understand. A putt that approaches the hole from above might curl in or catch the lip on the way past and fall in. At least there's a chance, which is not the case with putts that pass by on the downhill side. The only way the ball would then go in the hole would be to stop and head back uphill. I've never seen that happen and I doubt I ever will.

Miss on the high side, not the low side. Case closed. Or is it?

Nine Ways You Give Away Golf Strokes

I would bet you give away at least two strokes per side because you don’t play the game very well. Here are a few ways you can start lowering your handicap tomorrow, and it doesn’t take any practice time to do it. These are nine good ways to get back those wasted strokes.

1. Hitting recovery shots off the tee shot. - if your course has heavy rough or lots of trees, you can use up several shots every round just chipping the ball back into the fairway. On a course like this, leave your driver home.

2. Playing over water. - Bad things happen when you play over water if you don’t have to. Figure the longest club in your bag that you’re sure you can get in the air. If you have to hit a longer club than that to clear the water, go around or lay up.

3. Not seeing the golf course (until it’s too late). - For example chipping into slopes or soggy ground that you hadn’t noticed, ignoring pronounced slope around the cup, little things that are right there that you don’t see until after you hit the shot.

How To Relax On the Golf Course

Many times when you hit a bad shot it's no surprise. You knew it was likely to happen because of the anxiety you were feeling before you even stepped up to the ball. Maybe you were looking at a tee shot into a tight landing area. Maybe it was a downhill slider on the putting green. For some reason the shot intimidated you. When that happens you get nervous and there is little chance of hitting your best shot or something close to it. What to do?

You could do what the mental game gurus say to do, like get a pre-shot routine and follow it, as if that would distract you from your worries. Or you could do a short breathing exercise before you step up to the ball. There are all sorts of looney things in the mental game literature that don't get to the heart of the issue, which is, you care too much about something you shouldn't care about at all.

Look at this. You're out on the golf course for some recreation, the company of your playing companions, and getting some exercise. Golf is a vehicle for all of that, and there's no need to make any more of it. Yet, for some reason, we do. That is where the problem lies. The solution to the problem is to play like being out there is enough and let the rest of it be what it may.

How to Avoid the Blow-Up Hole

More than a few times you have a good day at the course, but because of a few bad holes you still don't turn in a score that reflects your good play. "If only I hadn't fallen apart on these three holes," you say, but there is no "If only" in golf. You own bad holes as well as good ones, and you own the reason why you have bad holes. Sometimes a bad shot puts you in a place that is hard to recover from, but how you think from there makes all the difference.

If a bad shot makes you lose a stroke, accept the penalty and don't try to get the stroke back on your next shot. Instead, think only this one thought: "Since I can't play into the green from here, what shot can I hit now that will give me a clear shot into the green with the one after it?" Too often what I see is golfers thinking: "How can I still get my par?" While a par is still possible, you won't get one by pursuing it. You will get one by hitting one sensible shot after another. That might lead to a par, or it might lead to a bogey or a double. It won't lead to the triple or the quad, however.

Three Shots That Polish Your Golf Swing

Short and sweet today. Modern golf clubs let you get away with a faulty swing and still hit playable shots. Not great shots, but ones that will do. If you want to play better golf than that, learn to hit these three shots:

1. Drives with a persimmon/laminated maple-head driver. You have to hit this club dead center to get anything out of it. The secret to distance and accuracy is to hit the driver on the center of the clubface. Modern drivers do not encourage you to learn this. A wooden driver does.

2. 2-iron. If you can hit a 2-iron as well as you hit your 2-hybrid or 5-wood, you have a swing that is doing a lot of things right.

The Golf Swing -- Elbows, Left Arm, Right Leg

My most popular video on YouTube concerns what to do with your elbows, your left arm, and your right leg during the golf swing. None of it is that difficult, and they each make a big difference. Take a look:

These three basics can be built into anyone’s golf swing. If you build them into yours, you’ll have a tighter swing and hit better shots.

MILESTONE: Yesterday this blog recorded its 20,000th page view. From what you read, it takes some blogs only a week to get that much traffic, not two and a half years, but I'm happy anyway. Thank you all for reading.

Left-handed version of this post.

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