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.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
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
00:11really 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 extra shots and
00:25when you add up to extra shots you look at the end of the day and the score and it's just like
00:29maybe i don't know some people can be anything between 6 and 12 shots difference so it's all
00:34about strategy really golf course strategy definitely and we're here on a tee box and
00:40you're going to talk to us about the importance of teeing up the golf ball the right way is that
00:44correct yeah i mean so we're here on the 17th the sandy way but a lot of people don't pay attention
00:50to the shape of shot that they hit and what i mean by that is all the time people have just 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 40 50
01:10yards to our right it's just a dead zone you just cannot hit the golf ball there if you want to score
01:17so what you have to do is you have to think about the shape of shot you hit and then look at the
01:22position that you need to tee the ball up so if we keep that shape of shot that 40 50 yard slice well
01:27if i was then to say right if i teed the golf ball up over here then that's going to open up the target
01:35for me and what i mean by that would be if you were to imagine a funnel from where your golf ball is and
01:44the target line if i move that to the left hand side i've now got a massive space to hit the golf
01:51ball into rather than teeing the golf ball up in the middle and only having less maybe than half of
01:57that space so i could hit me 40 50 yard slice and i can just set up at the trees just on the left side
02:05of the fairway and now i have all of that open space for the golf ball to land in and i guess that's
02:12works vice versa if you were to vice versa from here yeah you know if you're hitting the ball
02:16with a hook or you're hitting it with a draw then you know down this side out towards where the sandy
02:23way tree is there and you've got all that space on the left hand side it's playing the shape of shot
02:30that you have is the important bit it's making sure that you give yourself the biggest amount of space
02:35to hit the golf ball in an area which is going to enable you to hit the next shot where you need to
02:41absolutely so there we go don't just walk onto a tee box and plonk your tee and your ball into the
02:46middle find the space that suits your game for that day and hopefully you can find the fairway
02:52so jed you found yourself in a fairway bunker here explain to us what we're going to do from this
02:57position you've got two balls two very different positions two very different outcomes possibly yeah
03:03the biggest thing is assessing your life more than anything else
03:08it's not so much about how far do i have to cover in terms of being able to hit the green or get up
03:14around the green it's about whether i can advance the ball out from the lie that i've got so if we
03:20take this front one here well there's not a lot of room between the golf ball and this lip now
03:28if i was to say hit seven iron which i've got here well depending on strike that might not get up quick
03:39enough so there's no point in me hitting the lip but bury it in the foot catching the lip and it just
03:43sort of bobbling out forward i might as well get pitching wedge and advance it 100 yards and that's
03:49the key to it whereas when you've got a little bit more room that you might have here well i've got a bigger
03:55distance now to that lip so seven iron there's plenty loft to be able to to get out and cover
04:00more of the ground so the first thing you need to do is assess your lie and then choose your golf club
04:07rather than just thinking it's 150 yards i need me seven iron and off i go after that the approach is
04:14just like you would be in the fairway apart from a few little tweaks that i'd like to see and settle
04:19yeah it's just like we'd normally be in the bunkers um i'm going to approach it with ball position
04:24exactly the same as i would do for a normal shot um you can see i mean these bunkers are great because
04:29they're they're quite firm if the sand is really soft a little but not a lot of of wriggle of the
04:37feet in just to secure yourself on the the soft the foot in that sand is um and then to just encourage a
04:45hair more of a of a steeper angle of attack we just want to feel a little bit more weight into this lead
04:51side so i would be here around about 70 pushing down into my left foot i'm not leaning loads this way i'm
05:00just pushing down through the floor a little bit more and then i'm just going to go a fraction as
05:06you can see it's not a lot down the grip there i haven't gone all the way down i'd normally be here
05:11i've just gone down i don't know maybe half to three quarters of an inch and then i'm just thinking
05:16about making the the normal swing that i normally would do making sure that i keep the pressure of
05:21the body moving forward so i'm finishing tall and forward on that left hand side so hitting this shot
05:28should look a little bit like this
05:36so i've advanced it down there you know probably got maybe around 50 yards left somewhere around
05:42there um give or take and that's a much better place to be than being in there playing the shot
05:48in the same way with seven iron from there and you've got your chance then hitting the green right
05:53we found ourselves in a pretty tricky situation here jed off the tee and uh it's not too it's not
05:58looking too 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 any
06:08penalties probably the way i look at it is i mean everybody looks down there and they look at that and
06:14think oh i can get it through there they've all forgot that they've just missed the 50 yard fairway
06:18yes question number one so i can't hit the 50 yard fairway but i can get through that sort of what's
06:24that we've probably got about what six seven feet maybe to get through something like that if we're
06:29lucky um so a couple of things that we need to do is one we need to be sensible we don't you know we
06:35want to take six and seven out of play that's the first thing we want to do um so we assess the lie
06:41we choose the right option which is going to help us make the next shot easier ultimately that's it
06:47um so from here i mean we've got a nice space just to nudge it back nice and simply out onto the
06:53fairway when you nudge it out of the fairway from this position in there it's probably less than i
06:59don't know 140 yards maybe 130 yards in for your next shot anyway take all the danger out of play
07:04take the six and the seven out of play and just nudge it back into the fairway just making sure that
07:10you choose the right club for it i mean i've got eight iron in my hands here it's sitting down a little
07:14bit but it's not a bad lie um i haven't got any real overhanging branches or anything that i need
07:21to avoid so it would literally just be playing a little bump shot feet together a little bit of
07:27pressure forward and we're just going to nudge it back into play and we just take our medicine move on
07:37and then hopefully well i've got a chance of getting up and down but if if i make five then i
07:43make five and not six or seven so jed we're back on the tee box here and i just happened to catch your
07:50first tee shot there and you sailed it right into the trees i'm not sure we'll be able to find it
07:55it wasn't great it wasn't a good good first shot but now i've noticed you've not changed your golf club
08:00a lot of people will be thinking provisional i'm going to get my hybrid or an iron out so i can hit the
08:05fairway make sure i'm in play but not you no um it's an option um but it's one that i would sort
08:14of use as a last resort um i think everybody needs to have what i would call a second serve with the
08:21driver so if we put that into golf terms well the second serve with the driver is i need a go-to shot
08:28that i can hit which is going to hit the fairway now it might not always hit the fairway but it's going
08:33to be in play it's not going to be offline by loads now for the majority of people i would say
08:40a second serve would be tee it down give yourself the the biggest amount of clubface to hit and look
08:47at trying to see the ball move generally a little bit from left to right so if you've got a tight fairway
08:55where you might have trouble on the left out of bounds on the right i know a few holes where there's
08:59out of bounds both sides you need a second serve because so many cards get absolutely destroyed
09:06by hitting one two three out of bounds so my advice for that would be you know we're thinking about
09:12that little bit of a faded shot i want to go a little bit more onto the the right hand side for
09:18me as a right-handed golfer of the tee box to open up the funnel a little bit more so i can aim it a little
09:23bit more down the left hand side and just get it moving nice and smoothly into play let's have a
09:29look jed let's see it second ball there and if we think well that would be teeing it up normally
09:36where you can probably see around about half of the golf ball sitting above the club head there
09:40right i'm going to tee this down so step one would be to tee it down that's step so from that point
09:46of view there now maybe this is a little tiny bit at the top of the head button over the top of the head
09:52but not a lot um and from that point of view there it's all about getting it a nice controlled swing
09:59it's not your flat out speed but it's not super slow i don't want you to take loads of speed out
10:03of it just want you to think more about control tempo and just letting it go and play let's have a
10:10look so i'm going to be sort of aiming a little bit more down towards the gap in the trees on the
10:16left hand side so you've got the big tree on the left and then the little line of trees in towards
10:19that gap there so my ball position isn't going to change it's going to be just a fraction inside
10:27of my left heel and then it's just going to be sort of nice and smooth get it in play and move on for
10:35the next shot excellent well that's far better than the first tee shot that sailed right i don't i
10:44think we might have to climb the fence again so there you go if you're struggling off the tee
10:50second serve tee it low nice and easy and you'll find the fairway and hopefully save that par
10:56now jed 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
11:13areas 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 and number two is being able to control speed of the putts from
11:27distance the biggest reason that they three put is because they don't control the speed it's not
11:33because they don't get the line um because the line is determined by what speed you're going to hit it
11:36if i'm going to hit it really really hard it's not going to break much if i'm going to hit 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 and
11:49think 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 of each
11:58other um then you're going to be able to control your speed much better so from here this drill's
12:03great just put into the fringe um so all i want to do is hit these four puts and i want to try and get
12:08them as close to the fringe as possible and i imagine this is something you would do for any course you
12:13turn up to before your round it's a good idea to get the pace of that green yeah find out what the
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
12:31the same as the speed of the greens outside on the golf course and if it's not it's only one hole that
12:36it takes 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 so you
12:46can go out and shoot your lowest score yet all right jed this looks uh this looks very interesting
12:55mate what we got going on here so little practice drill really call it round 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 a bit up slope
13:11down slope um rather than just picking a nice flat straight one and just getting good at rolling
13:16that one in and you get on the golf course and you've got two feet with a little bit of right to
13:19left and panic 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
13:32um yeah people tap them don't quite give it enough speed some then give it too much speed and then
13:40you get caught in between and miss far too many than you should it really should hold about 95%
13:45of them give or take across all sections so it doesn't matter what your slope is about 95% then
13:51you should hold 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 you've got good speed control and you get it into here if you're practicing this bit
14:01you're going to save shots all right amazing so i'm guessing it's called around the world for a reason
14:05your your idea is to make yourself go all the way around without missing so don't let me slow you
14:09down okay let's uh see you finish this off then yeah so it's just making sure you go through your
14:15routine that you would normally as if you were on the golf course put yourself into that situation
14:20and then just set yourself in and just have a nice positive stroke
14:27probably so a little bit of putting practice outside off the golf course
14:31can help lower your scores on the golf course some great advice there from jed definitely some tips
14:38i'll be implementing into my game that's all from us here at sandyway golf club in cheshire
14:44we look forward to seeing you next time