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Overcome your flaws on the golf course with tips from these experts’ playbooks
Professional golfers generally live in a rarefied atmosphere: first-class or private air travel, luxury courtesy cars, pristine range balls in their preferred make and model, top-notch competitors. Throughout the year, though, they see the view from the ground: In the tournament pro-am, the world's best get a close-up look at everyday golfers tackling, or at least fighting to a draw, the game that the pros have come closer than anyone to mastering.
Some pros spend these hours simply tending to their own concerns. But, thankfully, most are kind souls keen to offer expert counsel on improving their playing partners' main issues. We asked four such pros
for helpful hints on how to overcome the most common flaws they see during these 18-hole encounters. Here is what they had to offer.
TODD HAMILTON: PREPARING FOR AN IMPORTANT ROUND
A 16-time winner around the world as a professional, Todd Hamilton captured the 2004 British Open in a playoff with Ernie Els. Hamilton competed on the Asian Tour from 1992 to 2002 before earning a PGA Tour card in his eighth attempt.
I remember playing in a pro-am in the Philippines where one of the amateurs was a 21 handicap. For the first nine holes, the guy had two birdies, six pars, and a bogey. That's gross, not net. The guy was almost beating me. If he hadn't come back to earth on the back nine, he would have been the ultimate sandbagger.
Most amateurs are too anxious to play that well under stress. The thing is, I'm probably more nervous than my amateur partners are. They expect every one of my shots to be perfect. But golf isn't about perfect.
Point being, you need to relax. So many amateurs, whether in pressure situations or not, can't relax on the golf course. Preparation is so important. You always see players rush to the course. They hit as many balls as they have time to cram in on the range. That's a mistake. You should be working on establishing a nice, comfortable tempo for the day. A lot of times you can get more out of hitting 10 balls than you do hitting 50.
LINDSEY WRIGHT: HOLING MORE PUTTS
A sixth-year LPGA Tour pro, Lindsey Wright logged four top-10 finishes in 2009, including second place at the McDonald's LPGA Championship, one of the four majors in women's golf.
Amateurs miss many putts simply through not understanding their stroke or their tendencies. Few of us have Tiger Woods' perfect form. If your stroke is a little outside-in through impact, you'll need to play a little more break on a left-to-right putt to account for the sidespin. On the same putt, a player with a slightly inside-to-out path would need to play a little less break. Pay attention to how the ball reacts to your stroke and over time it will become instinctive.
From my experience, amateurs tend to miss slice putts (left-to-right breakers for right-handers, and vice versa) on the low side and hook putts on the high side. Don't take it too bad - I'm the same way. On the former, we often get nervous and decelerate. On the latter, we're more confident and thus apt to overhit the putt. We obsess about the proper line and forget it has to be paired with the proper speed.
To get a better feel for the pace, copy the pros and read the putt not just from behind the ball. I first like to get between the ball and the hole on the low side. Taken together, these two views make it much easier to visualize the putt, and for my body to react accordingly during the stroke. Yours will, too.
MARK CALCAVECCHIA: FIXING PUSHES AND SLICES
The winner of 13 PGA Tour titles, including the 1989 British Open, Mark Calcavecchia has earned more than $23 million since turning pro in 1981. He set a Tour record with nine straight birdies at the 2009 RBC Canadian Open.
Honestly, with some of the shots I've seen over the years, I think I should have kept a journal. One guy hit a 3-wood and he looked up and asked, "Where did it go?" It went about an inch and a half underground. That's hard to do! I saw a guy make a hole-in-one bouncing it off the curb of a cart path one year at the Bob Hope Classic. If I haven't seen it all, I've seen a lot of it.
The thing about amateur golfers is that they tend to look up so fast. They straighten up through impact. That's the most common cause of that big push or slice - coming up out of the shot too fast, trying to see where the ball is going. It's going to the right is where it's going.
The old saw "keep your head down" is sound advice, within reason. I tell my amateur partners to focus on making a good, complete follow-through. This will naturally bring your head up at the right time. The other key is to keep your spine angle constant - the angle at address should be pretty much the angle at impact. With those two things in mind, you'll hit far fewer pushes and slices.
JEFF KLAUK: STOPPING SHORT-GAME SLOPPINESS
PGA Tour rookie Jeff Klauk topped $1 million in 2009 earnings on the strength of six top-25 finishes. At Florida Southern University, he won more tournaments than fellow alums Lee Janzen and Rocco Mediate combined.
My pro-am playing partners are usually obsessed with driving distance when they should be concerned with the number of strokes they toss away around the greens. That's the area where handicaps can get lowered and weekend matches won. Amateurs turn potential pars into bogeys, doubles, and triples for a few basic, avoidable reasons.
First, they use a sand wedge for every short-game shot, even on long pitches to back pins when a 9-iron bump-and-run is a far easier option. My fellow pros and I probably play a role in this: We put in enough hours to develop the precision to nip a wedge and control short shots with loft and spin. But we also have all our clubs at hand, always. With golf carts, lots of players just mindlessly grab only the sand wedge and walk over to their ball. Take several clubs and you've at least got the option of picking the right shot for the situation you find.
From a technical standpoint, most amateurs use only their hands and arms when chipping or pitching. This leads to bladed and chunked shots. You need to pivot your body, too, just as you do on all other swings. Here's a simple yet difficult drill: Practice hitting longer chips and pitches with the ball by the toe of your lead foot instead of around the middle of your stance, as you should on the course. Everything else stays the same, including keeping the club handle ahead of the clubhead at impact. With the ball this far forward, it's hard to make solid contact without properly turning the body back and through. You'll soon be making a miniature motion of the athletic, sequenced move that every shot demands.
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