The Strategy Mistake Amateur Golfers Always Make | Golf IQ Podcast | Golf Digest

all right so read the name of this video podcast series is golf IQ and that's exactly what we're going to talk about today is that how to raise your golf IQ before the meet of the season [Music] I think something that the rest of us don't really think enough about I mean sometimes I think a lot of golfers will say well I'm not really good enough to be thinking my way around the course or to be focusing on my course management when really it's like the opposite like pros Pros could go out there and fire at every pin and they're so good that they could get away with it more than the rest of us yeah they think about course management and stuff more than we do it's quite hilarious like the higher skilled players will be almost if you got inside their mind you'd be amazed at how conservative they're being you know Ricky Fowler did this whole article about how he like 95 of the time like aims at the center of the green and so if you got into the you know the headspace of the highest skilled players on Earth they're taking extremely conservative lines they're they're thinking about their shot variants and then you have like the lowest skilled players that have massive shot variances and like they're literally taking the most aggressive line every single time and obviously that's why you know professional golfers are able to have much more consistent scores and uh you know why High handicap players you know go nuts with this golf game absolutely so one thing that Pros talk about a lot along these lines is their misses they're like obsessed with them and for good reasons right like they're trying to make sure that they understand that one miss that's going to pop up every now and again which could cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in the wrong situation and I think that's a lesson the rest of us can learn too that you're not going to be able to eliminate all these misses from your games but you need to know like what your big mess is right especially off the tee the second thing they want to say is as you're coming into the season and you know you haven't played for four or five months your body is different than you were in the season if you were that guy that was playing five times a week every single week throughout the entire summer you don't start out right where you were so don't expect to have the same misses and don't expect to be able to pull off the same shots you want to be playing the golf course with what you realistically think you're capable of that day in that moment and uh and and then it will be an evolution as you start to practice more as you start to you know sharpen up up coming into the season then you can start to be maybe be a little bit less conservative fired a few more pins hit a few more drivers that sort of thing well I think in practice what this means is that when you're on the Range before your round just try to get a handle on what the golf ball is doing that day and it may sound weird but some days you could be riding with a with a 20-yard kind of slice other times you could be riding with like a straighter shot or a draw it's probably going to change around like from day to day if you're sort of just like an average or amateur golfer like the rest of us but like that's okay in some ways you just need to have some get a handle on something that's predictable and just try to figure out how can I play this from tea to Green around the course right yeah and you know I worked with this golf coach Todd Anderson who's one of the best golf coaches ever I worked with him for years and he gave me this really amazing piece of advice that you know there's essentially two golf swings you kind of have what he would consider like your Eggos swing you go in there and let's say you're hitting your nice little high draw and you go shoot 64 great there's no problems but he's like a lot of times there are problems and for whatever reason your golf swing isn't working the way that it normally would work you need to have a shot that you can move to so you know if you're an amateur let's say you normally hit a nice little fade and it's not really working but when you kind of like hit like a little trap draw it's working go with what works in that moment when you're on the golf course you can work it out later on the Range but when you're in that mode go with conservative plays and what works because that will get you through the golf course you know in the least amount of Strokes yeah todansen great Golf Digest teacher teaches Billy horschel and tons of others and you know FedEx Cup winners exactly and you know this is something that again Pros think a lot about but in practice is something we can do too like you need to find like a second serve golf swing exactly one that you think you have a higher percentage chance of pulling off if you're not feeling right so what does that look like one thing that always works for me I know I'm not a pro golfer by any means but you know when I'm struggling a bit that day I'll just tee the ball like a little lower this is something Pros do a lot too just puts a little more spin on the golf ball it won't go as far but it gives me something a little more that can control right like that absolutely I would say probably for everybody that swing tends to be a little bit less aggressive probably slower speed um you're probably not going to hit it as high you know that maybe for higher level golfers you know they would go ahead and like flight the ball down like you said you'd lower it um I you know I know that for me it was making sure that my arms didn't get too long and I would just kind of hit a trapped little draw rather than kind of like more of a straight ball or a thing I've heard some golfers say that you know just putting the ball a little further back in their stance with their irons kind of is like somewhere between a knock down and a normal shot that can help them sometimes on the days they're struggling I'd also say that you know really what we're talking about is finding a go-to shot that you can rely on and that's true on the greens too you know something high percentage that's not going to really fail you may not set the world alike but it's not gonna light your game on fire and that's kind of a perfect example this is kind of a random scenario but if you have like not the greatest lie and you really need to hit a flop shot to be able to get it next to the hole right you need to really get elevation on it but you see the LIE is not that great and you're worried that you're going to end up chunking it don't hit the Flop shot like hit the bump and run just get it on the green because if you if you do you know chunk it trying to hit this like Miracle flop shot you're gonna end up in the bunker and then you're gonna end up making a double where you could have just kind of put in the back your stance hit the ball first get it to 30 feet two Putt and then never think about this hole again if we say that those are kind of the tenants of like a nice golf IQ upgrade this whole season understanding your big misses that's the big one having some kind of go-to shot in order to combat them doesn't matter what it looks like just matters that you have one then I would also say that melding like your general strategy G around this which oftentimes means playing a little safer than you may think you need it is so vital to be able to strategically plot around the course properly you really need to know your distances yeah like you really need to know your distances and it might be a little bit of a pain get into a simulator or go ahead and when you're playing on your own late in the afternoon one time you know laser those flags find out how far your iron shots are carrying because if you don't know your carry outages you're not going to know whether you can carry the bunker or whether or not you can carry the water and it will absolutely bite you time and time again if you do not know how far you're flying these iron shots if it's 168 to carry that bunker and you're saying well I'm not feeling that good all right well then you're going to pick a club that can carry 176 or 178. it's it's very important it's such an easy upgrade to make to your game for sure and like I think you mentioned it there too that once you start getting a better handle on your yardages then start you know understand understanding how to plot your way around the golf course and often what you'll find is that you should be trying to chase the middle of greens a whole lot more than you should be trying to aim at pens and if nothing else you should be trying to chase the spots around the greens that won't leave you short-sighted that's a really important key and then you would think that we would tell you uh that you should go ahead and like hit irons off the tee but that's not actually always the case distance absolutely helps you play better golf but what we will say is if you have some semblance of control of your driver just aim away from the trouble like you'd be you know if you go ahead and hit a foreign 190 yards down there and then you hit your driver 250 yards but it goes in the rough you're better off hitting the driver yeah right um you know that's been proven but the only time you're going to get in trouble is if that driver is going OB so I would rather you hit you know a driver but just not aim at the Fairway literally aim left of the Fairway away from the OB if the OB is lining down the right and that will actually lead to lower scores so I'm not saying that you're not going to be strategic off the tee but don't necessarily think okay you know being strategic off the team means I'm going to hit you know less Club off the tee that's not always the case really it comes down to being able to by hook or by keep your driver in the ballpark right that's where you'll go to that's where your go-to swing is going to come in handy whether it's teeing the ball a little lower or whatever it is aiming away from away playing that bigger bigger cut that you may be riding with that day totally fine when it comes to approaching the greens aiming away from the pin more towards the middle clubbing up you know these are basic tenants that if you start implementing them it will just make your life so much easier and your school's probably a little lower too it doesn't take much at all it takes one bad swing to just lose two shots and so you know valuing these strategic moves it makes all the difference yeah it reminds me of something that Mark gleishman once told me in an interview I asked him what's the you know what I always ask Chris like what's the best way to break 80. and he said just by not being a hero it's just by keeping your balls somewhere in the semblance of the Fairway and somewhere in the semblance of the greens that's how you're going to break 80. yeah and it's it's the the it starts unraveling when you do the opposite when you start trying to be a hero I think that's kind of perfect aiming at the center of the green might might not be flashy but uh but you you'll be making a lot more birdies and pars

Channel: Golf Digest

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Keywords: 2023 golf, golf, european golf tour, digest, golf digest, golf digest 2023, golf digest highlights, golf digest podcast, golf digest interview, The Strategy Mistake Amateur Golfers Always Make Golf IQ Podcast Golf Digest, Golf IQ Podcast golf digest, Golf IQ Podcast first episode, Mistakes Amateur Golfers Always Make Golf IQ Podcast, golf IQ podcast, Golf Digest Play Editor Luke Kerr-Dinee, TPI certified co-host Reed Howard, Luke Kerr-Dinee and Reed Howard golf IQ podcast

Id: LVbuRWCu1Hc

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023