Any single digit Handys willing to share.....

[gwlee7]

Short game and not following bad shots with worse ones. Take your medicine if you have hit a bad shot. Make sure that your recovery shot is one that you can actually pull off.

Just for giggles, I often play practice rounds without any woods or hybrids in my bag. That means I am hitting 4 iron off the tee on every par four and five. When you can still often break 80 doing this, you will be a single digit handicap golfer. You don't have to be long off the tee to score. You have to be in play and have an excellent short game.

 

[Jules150]

play to your strengths, alot of people tell you to hit three wood. Bogus if your more comfterable with the driver. I am more comfterable with my driver 80% of the time than my 3 wood off tee. the only time i will hit a 3 wood is if i will be in a hazard with a driver.

dont force anything to happen, let it happen.

 

[cypressperch]

David, your question is really too difficult to

answer. The last reply I read said "play to your strengths," and that is great advice. But we do not know what those strengths are. Some have said to work on the short game and putting, but those might be your strengths. So I would add "practice on your weaknesses" to "play to your strengths."

One said that if you are scoring around 80 that your ball striking is good enough to score 72. That may or may not be true. If your short game and putting are saving you a lot of strokes, your ball striking might be bad enough that that would be the area to work on, keeping in mind that you must constantly devote time to the short game so that it does not falter once your ball striking comes around. We have come to what is really one of the aspects of golf that makes it such a challenge. When our time is limited, we may not have enough time to keep everything going 100%. If you practice enough to keep all things under control, you are not on the course enough, and I think we all know that hitting good shots in practice does not always carry over to the course. So a good portion of our golf time needs to be on the course for reasons other than it is simply more fun than practice which is more like "pleasant work."

I have spoken often of a book by John Jacobs entitled THE GOLF SWING SIMPLIFIED. Two things in that book which can possibly be "break through ideas" are in that book. A sound understanding of the "geometry of golf" can be acquired from that book. With that understanding, the "flight of the ball" tells you almost everything you need to know to figure out mistakes you might be making, and this will make your practice time involving ball striking more productive. A second concept concerns the idea of "standing to a properly positioned club." When a club is resting naturally on the sole behind the ball and square to the target line, that club is in the correct position, the position the club was designed to be in. Provided your clubs truly fit you, all you have to do is stand to the club that is so positioned with your feet, hips, shoulders, etc. parallel to the target line and your arms hanging just about straight down from the shoulders. Do this and your posture is correct or nearly correct. So is the position of your hands in relation to the ball. The position of the ball in your stance is taken care of. This is where the discriptive word "simplified" comes from. Develop a pre-shot routine where alinement is based on "standing to a correctly placed club", and your game is simplified quite a bit. (Personally, I know the game of golf is complicated beyond being truly simplified, so that making the game "less complicated" is what is actually going on. True, the terms do mean the same.)

Might add quickly here that it is extremely important to find an INTERMEDIATE TARGET a foot or two in front of the ball on the target line. Line your clubface square to that target (blade of grass, two inches to the left of that broken tee, etc, etc) when getting your club to be correctly positioned.

From your post, it is obvious that you would like to have lower scores. Do not laugh, but in a sense, you should stop thinking that way. The reason is that experts on the mental aspect of the game tell us that the thinking of outcomes (low score after a round is over) gets us overly tense. Tension kills our swing and it also kills our concentration because you cannot concentrate every minute of every round. You burn out first, and that is when our errors of judgement happen that result in the bad holes that are most likely the reason for our scores being those four or five strokes we want desparately to get rid of. At practice, concentrate fully on every shot, but give yourself occasional breaks. On the course, try to get yourself in a state of "relaxed focus." In that state, you will be neither too tense to play well or too laid back so that you become careless in your decision making. Do not think about your round during the down time between shots. As you approach a shot, go into your state of "relaxed focus" , do your pre-shot routine which includes visualization of the shot you have decided on, then execute the shot quickly enough to avoid tension to build up. When this gets to be truly routine, you will be doing all the necessary thinking before every shot which will help avoid dumb stuff, and confidence will build. CONFIDENCE is what will bring the scores a golfer wants. Confident golfers play without tension.

Worse attribute one can have if they want to ge a good golfer is that of being a PERFECTIONIST. Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus, Tiger--these and no doubt others have said that they only hit a few really good shots in each round. Many golfers rant and rave and even have heart attacks when each and every shot falls below their ridiculously high standards which are actually perfection in their eyes. You will never be perfect. Therefore, if you have perfection as your goal, you have doomed yourself to failure and can therefore never develop the CONFIDENCE that will allow us to play the good golf that is our goal. Avoid perfectionism like the plague!!!!

I know, I have done it again. Too much stuff. If I had kept the same idea I had when I first started, I would. . . . . . . . . But I got carried away again anyway. The very best of luck with your golf. Sincerely, Cypressperch

 

[emc]

I would say the best thing I've done to my game is stop making stupid mistakes. The guys before me have touched on everything you need to do but the fact of the matter is between 82 and 78 is stupid mistakes. These would be like taking driver on a short par 4 looking for a birdie or being too cute on a chip shot etc. play it smart and you'll score better

 

[LyleG]

Another thing I think worth mentioning is to stop and think before you hit every shot. I know I have many times asked myself "wtf was I thinking doing that" after hitting a shot.
So whith that thought a few more suggestions

-Pay attention to your lie, it will dictate how presice a shot you can attempt. Your lie imo is very, very important in choosing the shot to hit.
-Look at where the trouble is, and make a plan to avoid it.
-When chipping, study the area 4 feet around the hole. Think about where you want your chip to finish and where you dont. Ensure you leave yourself the easier putt.
- pay attention to elevation changes as even subtle changes can affect the distance of your shot.
- give the wind the respect it deserves, in all directions.
- on the green, pay attention to how mounds flow into the green, the slope of the entire green and how soft the green feels under your feet. On long putts especially pay close attention to elevation. Also remeber that long putts will break the most as they lose speed and get closer to the hole.

 

[Eracer]

The big difference for me was simply using my head.

- I dont hit driver on ever hole any more.
- I hit a lot of hybrids off the tee.
- On par 5's I dont always swing for the green on my second shot. I base my second shot on the lie and the trouble ahead of me. Any doubts at all and I lay up to what I feel is a comfy yardage.
- Unless the hole is in a GREEN LIGHT area of the green, I play to safest part of the green.
- I ensure I have enough club for the shot. It means I may be long on occasion, but I am seldom short.
- I am realistic about my abilities. This means if I have any doubt that I can pull it off I dont hit it. This means pitching out at times, and sometimes means accepting a bogey, because always remember a bogey beats a double.
- I am aggressive on putts inside 15 feet, and more conservative on putts outside 15 feet.
- 75% of my practice is short game
- I developed a pre-shot routine
- I think positive 100% of the time

I love it.

I've been practicing every single one of these tips for a while now, and I still can't break 90...

I still believe, though. I still believe...

 

[emc]

Lyle, you should be my coach with all those tips. If I stuck to them I'd be down to scratch in no time!

 

[JEFF4i]

I started plotting out and finding what was dragging me...up,

Take record of your greens, putts, fairways, ups and downs.

How did I get below? Honestly, it just happened. I left at about a 9 handicap, broke my collar bone, returned two years later and was playing at 9 and dropping.