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Hot Shots
Add oomph to your arsenal with golf-pro-tested moves
Fall is the season when golfers begin to analyze their year to date and contemplate improvement in the coming campaign. For most of us, an honest assessment includes the realization we lack a few arrows in our quiver - we're only too happy to practice shots we're already good at but shy away from the time, effort, and patience (never mind knowledge) that it takes to master new ones.
In short, come autumn the old dog of our golf game needs new tricks. It may or may not require one step backward to go two steps forward. What's certain is that new shots won't just eventually help you produce lower scores, they will also keep you excited about the game. We enlisted four top teaching pros from around the country to suggest the shots you need to help shrink your handicap ASAP.
1. BUMP-AND-RUNS
Treesdale Golf & Country Club in Gibsonia, Pa., has a 27-hole Arnold Palmer Signature design that encourages short-game variety. Treesdale's director of golf, Joe Boros, does likewise, teaching students (including Mike Van Sickle, a 2009 PING All-America First Team at Marquette University) new options when missing greens rather than mindlessly attempting a lofted wedge shot - especially off of tightly mowed turf.
Joe's Advice: Chipping from fairways and runoff areas is the bane of many golfers' existence. It requires a level of precision that's hard for weekend players with limited practice time to develop. There is a more forgiving workaround: using a fairway wood or hybrid instead of a wedge. It's an easy shot to learn that can produce no fewer good results and far fewer bad ones - no more bladed or chunked shots.
Set up to the ball as if putting. If you putt cross-handed, grip the fairway wood or hybrid that way. Get as close to the ball as you can without the grip touching your torso. Next, lean into your front leg, moving about 80 percent of your weight to your forward side. This yields a steeper clubhead path, limiting the grass that gets between the clubface and ball for greater control. Then use your normal putting stroke for the shot.
It sounds easy, and in many ways it is. The biggest issue may be knowing when not to use this shot - when the ground is dewy, the grass too high, or the ball so far from the green that the swing gets too big to control.
Experiment with different clubs to determine which works best for you, practicing the shot just as you do your putting. When you can hit three of five shots from off the green to within two paces of the cup, you're getting the hang of it.
2.THE GO-TO DRIVER FADE
As the instructor to many top players, including Anthony Kim and Morgan Pressel, Adam Schriber knows the importance of a repeatable go-to shot that finds the fairway under pressure. It's how pros win tournaments and amateurs win their weekend matches. Schriber, the lead teaching professional and director of junior development at Crystal Mountain Resort in Thompsonville, Mich., believes a "baby cut" with a driver is an Old Faithful well worth developing.
Adam's advice: To create the proper angle of attack and the extra compression needed to produce a slight fade - often dubbed a "baby cut" and not to be confused with a weak fade or controlled slice - you need to tee the ball a bit lower than normal. The goal is to keep the shot in play rather than create maximum power, so you'll take a little less-than-full backswing. This helps keep the swing synchronized.
Maybe the most important key is to retain your spine angle as the body rotates through the shot. If you lose your posture and stand up out of the shot, you're more likely to have active hands - the opposite of the "quiet" hands we want here - and hit an unwanted draw or hook. A "baby cut" is all about quiet hands and lots of body rotation around a stable spine.
The second key is to swing the club handle left through impact while keeping the hands low. This produces the slight left-to-right spin we want and prevents the dreaded "double-cross" (i.e., an accidental hook that starts left and goes farther left).
The first thing you should check is that the ball starts online - a touch left of the final target. If you're doing that, you're delivering the club to the ball from the proper angle and you're on the way to developing a dependable tee ball on tight holes and under pressure.
3.THE PARTIAL WEDGE
There is perhaps no faster way to save pars on par-4s and make birdies on par-5s than by improving your partial wedge play. Emphasizing this aspect of the game helped Cody Barden coach Jeff Klauk to the 2009 PGA Tour and a successful rookie campaign. As the director of instruction at White Columns Country Club in Milton, Ga., Barden has seen firsthand the inability of most amateurs to develop a systematic, constant approach to these niggling, crucial shots.
Cody's advice: Consistency is perhaps the biggest key to playing good golf - a recurring routine and a repeatable swing are essential. Yet when it comes to partial wedge shots from between 50 to 85 yards, most players have to reinvent the wheel each time.
Here's how to own this most useful shot:
First, take a slightly narrower-than-normal stance with your hands and weight favoring the front foot. This setup position establishes a forward lean of the club's shaft with the leading edge of the clubface striking the ball first, as opposed to the trailing edge of the club's sole (also known as the flange) bouncing off the ground and as a result hitting the shot thin.
Next, relax the grip pressure. This encourages wrist hinge both on the backswing and the through-swing - and it's the wrist action that will produce height on the shot and help the ball stop on the green.
The final point: Keep your swing speed consistent, controlling the distance of the shot with the length of the swing. Don't speed up for longer distances and slow down for shorter ones, which will lead to all sorts of inconsistencies.
For increased distance control, picture the hands of a clock represented by your arm swing and establish a benchmark with your favorite wedge. With practice, you'll establish that your 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock swing with a 56-degree sand wedge will go, say, 65 yards, and a 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock swing with the same club will go 80 yards. That precision is guaranteed to come in handy.
4. THE KNOCKDOWN
Innumerable golf trips to Scotland and Ireland have been blighted by players' inability to flight the ball down out of the often-strong wind. Ben Bridgers, head golf professional at Nags Head Golf Links in North Carolina's Outer Banks, where the gusts often reach 20-to-30 mph, helps members develop lower shots to shoot lower scores.
Ben's advice: Too many golfers are unable to control their ball on windy days. There's no reason for this: Knockdown shots don't require rocket science, only a few adjustments. Start by taking one or two more clubs than normal (e.g., a 4- or 5-iron instead of a 6-iron). That's because you'll be making only a 3/4-length backswing to minimize wrist-cock, something that adds clubhead speed and in turn the elevation-producing spin we want to reduce.
Choke down an inch or two on the grip and position your weight favoring the front side. Make sure your hands are slightly ahead of the ball, which should be a touch back of middle in your stance. If your hands are behind the ball, the club will contact the ground first, producing fat or thin shots. Now just take a smooth, balanced swing - 3/4 back to 3/4 through. Resist the urge to swing fast to compensate for the shorter motion (remember, you're using a longer club), as that will produce pulls. If instead you find you're pushing shots, the likely culprit is your upper body leaning toward the target on the downswing.
Practice the knockdown on the range using a wedge. If you can keep higher-lofted clubs from flying too high, it will be that much easier with low- and mid-irons. More good news: Knockdown shots help your iron game in general, because they require the solid balance, smooth tempo, and downward strike that always prove beneficial, wind or no wind.
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