‘BREAKING 100 HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH YOUR SWING’
It won’t surprise regular readers to know I’m someone who takes their golf journey very seriously, and by “very seriously” I mean “way too seriously”. This year was meant to be the unveiling of #Projectsinglefigures. However, every so often life gets in the way, and throws up things where even golf cannot find a space.
We’ve all had periods when work commitments, family and injury give us an unexpected hiatus from our hobby/raison d’etre. I’m sorry to say I haven’t raised a club in anger in more than a month. Thank God then, for Beef ’s Golf Club, my podcast with Beef Johnston, a place where, whatever life throws at me, I get to spend time in a virtual golf club once a week.
A topic that really got my juices flowing recently was an entire episode on my favourite subject: Breaking 100. I love talking about it, as this goal first ignited my passion for golf. Also, I’ve found it’s one of the rare occasions where coaches and Youtube senseis aren’t the best people to advise. After all, when was the last time your local pro was struggling to double bogey most holes? No, we need a legion of bad golfers and formerly bad golfers to tell you how it’s done!
First, the good news: breaking 100 is nothing to do with swing mechanics. Lessons and practise will always help you improve, but once you can regularly get the ball airborne, the changes that will slash your score are in mindset and decision-making. Obsessing about your swing only brings big numbers, so leave those thoughts on the range.
In his superb book The Elements of Scoring, Raymond Floyd lists the 10 mistakes amateurs most often make – and only one has anything to do with how you swing the club.
I went from a 21-handicap to 12.1 in just under a year not because
I had any kind of natural talent, or spent thousands of hours practising, but because I made better decisions. A lot of them were made before the first tee.
Have I warmed up effectively? Have I hit 25 balls on the range in a constructive way? Some have an innate ability to flush their opening tee shot with only a bacon sandwich to prepare. I am not one of them!
The next decision is the most important. STOP TRYING TO PLAY THE COURSE TO PAR. Struggling to break 100? Then that’s where you’re losing most shots. Take the scorecard, cross out the par scores, add two shots to stroke index 1-9 and one shot to stroke index 10-18. You now have a par of 99 or below. This is your real par.
What this means is you can map out holes in a completely different way. You can take your favourite club off the tee and you can ‘play comfortable’. You no longer need to go for long par fours in two, the course is designed to punish wayward approach shots, so make yours from 80 yards, not 200 yards. Playing your second shot unencumbered is probably the most important part of breaking 100. We’re not trying to make birdies, we’re trying to avoid catastrophes.
And when making your shorter approaches and chips from 50 yards and under, try to avoid playing high lofted clubs. The pros hit delicate 60° wedges from 20 yards, but statistically, the lower the handicap, the more frequently a player uses irons to chip and to bump and run. Be clever about guaranteeing you’re somewhere, anywhere on the green. Forget about the flag and just GET IT ON THE GREEN. The best advice I got when I was struggling was to only use loft when there’s something to get over, and to play all my chips with one club – pitching wedge or gap wedge was perfect.
Also, take the range out of your mind. You’re never going to play a shot on the course from the lie you have on the range. Learn how lie and slope affect your shot. Uphill, downhill, ball above and ball below, these are the four horsemen of the scorepocalypse! But they are easily defeated: club up, club down, aim right, aim left.
My biggest breakthrough came when I realised I could not swing angry. Shouting and swearing at myself, the ball and my clubs had to go, but following the above advice also meant I wasn’t in positions where I would get angry. The next time you stand over the ball, do a little experiment. Address it in a relaxed stance, then tense your shoulders and arms and grip hard. The club will rise about an inch off the ground.
One final thought: I broke 90 six months after breaking 100. And it was with all the same advice floating around in my head. Change your mindset, not your swing.