- 4 minutes ago
In this video, Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Ged Walters explains the 6 essential skills every golfer needs to shoot lower scores. The best golfers often also have the highest golf IQs, this means they make the right decisions at crucial moments that help them avoid the big numbers on the scorecard - something mid and high handicap golfers really struggle with.
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00:00so you're a good golfer but you're struggling to put together some scores well this could be the
00:04video for you now jed what's the first point of call when it comes to this so commonly known
00:10really is your golf iq it's just strategic mental mistakes poor choices trying to hit a shot
00:20but you shouldn't really be trying to hit and all those little things just add up to
00:24extra shots and when you add up to extra shots you look at the end of the day and the
00:28score and
00:28it's just like maybe i don't know some people can be anything between six and 12 shots difference
00:34so it's all about strategy really golf course strategy definitely and we're here on a tee box
00:39and you're going to talk to us about the importance of teeing up the golf ball the right way is
00:44that
00:44correct yeah i mean so we're here on the 17th the sandy way but a lot of people don't pay
00:49attention
00:49to the shape of shot that they hit and what i mean by that is all the time people have
00:56just come right
00:56into the middle of the tee box and they'll tee it up and then they'll take their setup aiming right
01:03down the middle of the fairway yet they slice the ball 40 50 yards well if we look at what's
01:1040 50 yards
01:10to our right it's just a dead zone you just cannot hit the golf ball there if you want to
01:15score
01:16um so what you have to do is you have to think about the shape of shot you hit
01:20and then look at the position that you need to tee the ball up so if we keep that shape
01:25of shot that
01:2540 50 yard slice well if i was then to say right if i teed the golf ball up over
01:30here
01:32then that's going to open up the target for me and what i mean by that would be if you
01:38were to imagine
01:39a funnel from where your golf ball is and the target line if i move that to the left hand
01:47side i've now got a
01:49massive space to hit the golf ball into rather than teeing the golf ball up in the middle and only
01:55having less maybe than half of that space so i could hit me 40 50 yard slice and i can
02:02just set up at
02:03the trees just on the left side of the fairway and now i have all of that open space for
02:10the golf ball to
02:10land in and i guess that's works vice versa if you were to vice versa from here yeah you know
02:15if you're
02:15hitting the ball with a hook or you're hitting it with a draw then you know down this side out
02:22towards
02:22where the sandy way tree is there and you've got all that space on the left hand side it's playing
02:29the shape of shot that you have is the important bit it's making sure that you give yourself
02:34the biggest amount of space to hit the golf ball in an area which is going to enable you to
02:39hit the next
02:40shot where you need to absolutely so there we go don't just walk onto a tee box and plonk your
02:45tee
02:45and your ball into the middle find the space that suits your game for that day and hopefully you can
02:50find the fairway so jed you found yourself in a fairway bunker here explain to us what we're going
02:56to do from this position you've got two balls two very different positions two very different outcomes
03:01possibly yeah the the biggest thing is assessing your lie more than anything else it's not so much
03:08about how far do i have to cover in terms of being able to hit the green or get up
03:14around the green
03:15it's about whether i can advance the ball out from the lie that i've got so if we take this
03:21front one
03:21here well there's not a lot of room between the golf ball and this lip now if i was to
03:31say hit seven
03:32iron which i've got here well depending on strike that might not get up quick enough so there's no
03:40point in me hitting the lip but burying in the foot catching the lip and it just sort of bobbling
03:44out
03:44forward i might as well get pitching wedge and advance it 100 yards and that's the key to it whereas
03:50when you've got a little bit more room that you might have here well i've got a bigger distance
03:55now to that lip so a seven iron is plenty loft to be able to to get out and cover
04:00more of the ground
04:01so the first thing you need to do is assess your lie and then choose your golf club rather than
04:07just
04:07thinking it's 150 yards i need me seven iron and off i go after that the approach is just like
04:14you would
04:14be in the fairway apart from a few little tweaks that i'd like to see and settle yeah it's
04:20just like we'd normally be in the bunkers um i'm going to approach it with ball position exactly the
04:25same as i would do for a normal shot um you can see i mean these bunkers are great because
04:30they're
04:30they're quite firm if the sand is really soft a little but not a lot of of wriggle of the
04:37feet in
04:37just to secure yourself on the the soft the foot in that sand is um and then to just encourage
04:45a
04:45hair more of a of a steeper angle of attack we just want to feel a little bit more weight
04:50into this
04:51lead side so i would be here around about 70 pushing down into my left foot i'm not leaning
05:00loads this way i'm just pushing down through the floor a little bit more and then i'm just going to
05:04go a fraction as you can see it's not a lot down the grip there i haven't gone all the
05:09way down i'd
05:10normally be here i've just gone down i don't know maybe half to three quarters of an inch and then
05:15i'm just thinking about making the the normal swing that i normally would do making sure that i keep
05:20the pressure of the body moving forward so i'm finishing tall and forward on that left hand side
05:26so hitting this shot should look a little bit like this
05:36so i've advanced it down there so i've probably got maybe around 50 yards left somewhere around there
05:43give or take and that's a much better place to be than being in there playing the shot in the
05:48same
05:49way with a seven iron from there and you've got your chance then hitting the green right we found
05:53ourselves in a pretty tricky situation here jed off the tee and uh it's not too it's not looking
05:58too bad i think you and i are both looking at this gap we've had a discussion that is probably
06:03the play but let's let's talk sensible here what how can we save a shot here and not cost us
06:08any
06:08penalties probably the way i look at it is i mean everybody looks down there and they look at
06:13that and think oh i can get it through there they've all forgot that they've just missed the 50
06:17yard fairway question number one so i can't hit the 50 yard fairway but i can get through that
06:23sort of what's that we've probably got about what six seven feet maybe to get through something like
06:29that if we're lucky um so a couple of things that we need to do is one we need to
06:33be sensible we don't
06:34you know we want to take six and seven out of play that's the first thing we want to do
06:38um so we
06:40assess the lie we choose the right option which is going to help us make the next shot easier
06:46ultimately that's it um so from here i mean we've got a nice space just to nudge it back nice
06:51and
06:51simply out onto the fairway when you nudge it out of the fairway from this position in there
06:57it's probably less than i don't know 140 yards maybe 130 yards in for your next shot anyway
07:03take all the danger out of play take the six and the seven out of play and just nudge it
07:08back into
07:08the fairway just making sure that you choose the right club for it i mean i've got eight iron in
07:12my hands here it's sitting down a little bit but it's not a bad lie um i haven't got any
07:18real overhanging
07:19branches or anything that i need to avoid so it would literally just be playing a little bump shot
07:25feet together a little bit of pressure forward and we're just going to nudge it back into play
07:34and we just take our medicine move on and then hopefully well i've got a chance of getting up and
07:40down but if if i make five then i make five and not six or seven so jed we're back
07:47on the tee box here and
07:48i just happened to catch your first tee shot there and you sailed it right into the trees i'm not
07:54sure we'll be able to find it it wasn't great it wasn't a good good first shot but now i've
07:59noticed
07:59you've not changed your golf club a lot of people will be thinking provisional i'm going to get my
08:03hybrid or an iron out so i can hit the fairway make sure i'm in play but not you no
08:09um it's an option
08:11um but it's one that i would sort of use as a last resort um i think everybody needs to
08:18have what i
08:19would call a second serve with the driver so if we put that into golf terms well the second serve
08:25with the driver is i need a go-to shot that i can hit which is going to hit the
08:30fairway now it might
08:32not always hit the fairway but it's going to be in play it's not going to be offline by loans
08:36now for the majority of people i would say a second serve would be teared down give yourself the the
08:44biggest amount of club face to hit and look at trying to see the ball move generally a little bit
08:50from left to right so if you've got a tight fairway where you might have trouble on the left out
08:57of
08:57bounds on the right i know a few holes where there's out of bounds both sides you need a second
09:02serve
09:02because so many cards get absolutely destroyed by hitting one two three out of bounds so my advice
09:10for that would be you know we're thinking about that little bit of a faded shot i want to go
09:14a little
09:15bit more onto the the right hand side for me as a right-handed golfer of the tee box to
09:20open up the
09:21funnel that little bit more so i can aim it a little bit more down the left hand side and
09:25just get it
09:25moving nice and smoothly into play let's have a look jed let's see it second ball there and if we
09:32think well that would be teeing it up normally where you can probably see around about half of
09:38the golf ball sitting above the club head there right i'm going to tee this down
09:43so step one would be to tee it down that's step so from that point of view there now
09:48maybe there's a little tiny bit at the top of the head button over the top of the head but
09:52not a lot
09:53and from that point of view there it's all about getting it a nice controlled swing it's not your
10:00flat out speed but it's not super slow i don't want you to take loads of speed out of it
10:04i just want
10:04you to think more about control tempo and just letting it go and play let's have a look so i'm
10:12going to be sort of aiming a little bit more down towards the gap in the trees on the left
10:16hand side so
10:17we've got the big tree on the left and then the little line of trees in towards that gap there
10:23so my ball position isn't going to change it's going to be just a fraction inside of my left heel
10:30and then it's just going to be sort of nice and smooth get it in play and move on for
10:35the next shot
10:40excellent well that's far better than the first tee shot that sailed right i don't i think we might
10:45have to climb the fence to get the fence so there you go if you're struggling off the tee second
10:50serve
10:50tee it low nice and easy and you'll find the fairway and hopefully save that par
11:00jed this looks quite interesting here to to me the untrained eye you're putting to nothing
11:06what are you trying to achieve from this drill right here speed control um so there's two big key
11:14areas really where golfers can save shots on a putting green number one is being able to hole out
11:20from sort of three feet and inside um and number two is being able to control speed of the putts
11:27from distance the biggest reason that they three put is because they don't control the speed it's
11:33not because they don't get the line um because the line is determined by what speed you're going to hit
11:36it if i'm going to hit it really really hard it's not going to break much if i'm going to
11:39hit it soft
11:39it's going to break more if there's any break on it so speed is the most important thing but nobody
11:43practices it everybody just hits puts two holes they might hit them to a hole over there in a distance
11:49and think they're practicing speed but really you need to practice being able to control the speed
11:53at a specific length so if you can get the ball to finish within i don't know six seven inches
11:58of each
11:58other then you're going to be able to control your speed much better so from here this drill's great
12:03just put into the fringe um so all i want to do is hit these four puts and i want
12:08to try and get them
12:08as close to the fringe as possible and i imagine this is something you would do for any course you
12:13turn
12:13up to before your round it's a good idea to get the pace of that green yeah find out what
12:18the
12:18speed is there's loads of golfers you go out and they'll come in afterwards they'll be in the bar
12:22and they'll say i couldn't get the speed of the greens all day um well if you've practiced this
12:26drill you walk onto the first green you'll know instantly if the speed of the putting green is the
12:32same as the speed of the greens outside on the golf course and if it's not it's only one hole
12:36that it
12:36takes to adjust amazing all right so there you have it come out onto the putting green before your
12:41round give this little putt to the fringe drill a go so you can nail the speed of the greens
12:45so you can go
12:46out and shoot your lowest score yet all right jed this looks uh this looks very interesting mate
12:56what have we got going on here so little practice drill really call it around the world it simply
13:01just covers holding out from all different angles so you're not just hitting the same putt over and
13:06over you're covering it from you might have a bit of right to left a bit of left to right
13:10a bit up
13:11slope down slope um rather than just picking a nice flat straight one and just getting good at rolling that
13:16one in and you get on the golf course and you've got two feet with a little bit of right
13:19to left and
13:20panic station setting and how is this going to help us lower our scores out on the golf course
13:26too many people don't like hitting short putts from like i mean these are one pace away from the hole
13:31um yeah people tap them don't quite give it enough speed some then give it too much speed and then
13:40they
13:40get caught in between and miss far too many than you should it really should hold about 95 of them
13:45give or take across all sections so it doesn't matter what your slope is about 95 and you should
13:52hold um so then you're not going to three put a lot if you can put it into this space
13:57so as long as
13:58you've got good speed control and you get it into here if you're practicing this bit you're going to
14:01save shots all right amazing so i'm guessing it's called around the world for a reason your idea is to
14:06make yourself go all the way around without missing so don't let me slow you down okay let's uh see
14:11you finish this off then yeah so it's just making sure you go through your routine that you would
14:15normally as if you were on the golf course put yourself into that situation and then just set
14:21yourself in and just have a nice positive stroke
14:27lovely so a little bit of putting practice outside off the golf course can help lower your scores on the
14:33golf course some great advice there from jed definitely some tips i'll be implementing into
14:39my game that's all from us here at sandyway golf club in cheshire we look forward to seeing you next
14:45time
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