We made it to the home stretch. This is day four of total game improvement week. Each day for a week, I’ll be posting a series of tips, drills, advice, and information designed to help every aspect of your game.

Don’t forget to e-mail me your favorite tips and drills from any of the different categories for inclusion in the post on day-six.

Putting

Recently, I’ve touted the pure in line square (pils) putting stroke which is one of the core fundamentals of Dave Pelz’s teaching. The basic idea is that creating a perfectly vertical pendulum motion with your hands directly below your shoulders will help keep the putter face square, eliminating inconsistency coming from trying to square the face at just the right time.

So how do you work on grooving the pils putting stroke? A good training aid is your best option. There are a few alternatives:

• Dave Pelz has designed a training aid called the Putting Track, to help groove the pils stroke. I’ve considered trying it, but unfortunately it’s a bit pricey at $99.95.

The other possibilities will require you to get a little creative:

• One option is to use a wall. Set up with the end up your putter right next to a wall and practice your stroke there. Make sure the putter doesn’t get any closer or further from the wall during the stroke.
• Another option is to use a couple of straight pieces of wood to make a “track” of your own to putt in. Put them just far enough apart so your putter can move freely during the stroke. Make sure they have uniform edges and that they are perfectly parallel to each other. When you practice your stroke, ensure that neither the heel nor toe of the putter touches the wood any time during the stroke.

Short Game

In general, when you make finesse wedge shots (from within 100 yards), you want to make sure your upper and lower body are synchronized. That is, they turn back and through together. There is no firing the hips or unwinding of anything. Those are power moves. You want finesse, not power.

A good drill to help feel the connection during your finesse swing is to place a towel across your chest, under each armpit. Take some half-wedge swings (9:00 swings on the Pelz clock, or left arm parallel to the ground and club shaft vertical for non-Pelz followers). As you turn back and through, keep the arms by the body to make sure the towel stays in place. Take note of the feeling of connectedness of your legs, hips, torso, and shoulders.

This will help you make more crisp, consistent wedge shots.

Recovery

Have you ever ended up in a spot on the course where your backswing is restricted? Where if you take a normal practice swing, you’ll hit a tree or bush or some other kind of non-obstruction?

In his Short Game Bible, Dave Pelz shares a technique he calls “cock-it-first” to handle these situations.

From a normal setup, without moving any other part of your body, just cock your wrists. That should bring the club up in front of you. From there, just turn like you normally would for the swing and the hands will move around in their normal backswing position. Then, simply hit the shot.

This works because a normal backswing requires a wider arc. Cocking the wrists first eliminates that. On the downswing, your wrists stay cocked until right around the strike, so you can clear the obstacle.

You’ll want to practice it a few times first and it’s not something you’re going to use every round, but when you need it, you’ll be glad it’s in your arsenal.

Course Management

As someone who worked in golf course maintenance for four seasons, I can tell you that the term “sucker pin” is no exaggeration. Pins tucked in corners on greens close to bunkers or hazards or even just near the edge of the green are just that: for suckers.

During tournaments, they’re placed there to make players take unnecessary risks and to expose players with poor course management skills. During normal play, they’re mostly for the amusement of the maintenance staff (at least in the crew I was on).

I can tell you from personal experience that I would actually place sucker pins and go out when I was done for the day and observe people playing to them. Maybe a little twisted, but man it was a riot.

Unless you absolutely, positively need to make up ground in a tournament, then leave those sucker pins alone. Hit for the fat part of the green and get down in two putts and get out of there. It’s the only way to beat the devious maintenance crew.

Driving/Iron Play

I wanted to put driving and iron play together today to address probably the biggest problem in golf: the slice.

I forget the exact number, but I read somewhere once that something like 80% of amateurs slice the ball. Maybe it was counting high handicappers, but either way, that’s still a lot of people.

Back in July, I spent several days covering the slice and how to beat it. If you have trouble slicing, have a look at the series. It’ll take a while to get through, but if you can stop slicing, it will be well worth it. There are some external resources in there as well, so there should be plenty of information to help you understand what causes slices and what can cure them.

The “cure your slice” week posts:

• Banish Your Slice
• Causes For the “Over the Top” Move
• Other Factors That Lead to Slicing
• Combat Your Slice

Sand Play

I see people who have way to much tension and anxiety when playing from the sand. I think part of the problem is that playing the shot like you’d play it from the fairway isn’t going to work and the shot you should use might not be well understood.

On the PGA Tour, the top sand save percentages for 2007 so far are a little over 60%, with most of the players coming in over 50%. That means that an average PGA Tour player gets up and down from the sand 50% of the time, or better. Another way to look at it is, on the whole, sand is a little over half a stroke penalty assuming it doesn’t take them more than two putts to get down (certainly it does occasionally, but probably not enough to skew the basic point).

That includes all sorts of lies and stances in bunkers. I’m willing to bet that for a good lie in the bunker, when a good stance is possible, and the pin is reasonably accessible, that percentage is much higher.

The bottom line is, don’t be afraid of the sand. Learn the technique, practice it some, and you’ll realize that it’s easier than you think. Also understand that if Tour players are losing half a stroke from the sand, we can’t beat up on ourselves for not elevating our play to that level. Understand the shot and lose the tension and fear.

The basic sand shot requires some minor setup adjustments. Once you’re in a proper setup, the technique is simple. Back in May, I covered the basic sand shot as part of “Beach Week”, a series of sand-centric posts.

Mental Game

One of my favorite mental game tips comes from Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. This is a practice tip, not so much an on-course thing but its real purpose is mental development.

He would have his students practice around the greens with a single ball. I’ve been doing this for years, and I recommend it. I rarely use more than one ball. Only for special drills like the 100-putt drill and others where reusing the same ball would take a long time.

The reasoning is that on the course, you play a single ball that you’re tasked with getting down from where ever you hit it last. You’re not going to have the opportunity to duff a chip and rake over another ball and try again. You’re not going to be able to lag up a putt ten feet short and drop another one.

You’ll be training your mind to take each one seriously and to make each one count. I guarantee that I can make a 12-foot putt after a few tries in a row. On the course, I get exactly one try.

Another component of this idea is to make sure to get that single ball in the hole every time. If you chip on, then make the putt. On the course, you’re not going to pick up and go to the next hole. You’re going to have to make a one footer, or three footer, or even a ten footer.

This idea might seem like a waste of time, but realize that the point of practice is to prepare you to play. The closer you can mentally match the conditions you’ll face on the course, the better prepared you’ll be. Sure, maybe you can hit 500 rapid-fire chips in a practice session, but hitting 50 and making every single one count might provide more benefit.

Fitness

There are so many aspects to proper fitness: cardio health, nutrition, strength, etc. All these are important for golf and for life.

Targeting the golf swing specifically can get complex with standard strength training and flexibility workouts. This tip also comes from Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: swing a weighted club to build golf strength and flexibility. It’s not a replacement for standard fitness programs, but it’s the best way to target the golf swing.

This is a great way to add length to your swing and to strengthen the arms and core muscles that control the club during the swing. There are many commercial variants of the weighted club out there to choose from.

Here are some variations of the Momentus swing trainer at TGW.com, and here are a couple of weighted clubs from Golf-Trainer.com.

Take smooth, controlled swings with the weighted club and you’ll start building up the strength and length needed to help your golf swing.

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Further Reading:

Pure in Line Square (pils) Putting Stroke (Life in the Rough)
Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book (Amazon.com)

Series on curing your slice: (Life in the Rough)

• Banish Your Slice
• Causes For the “Over the Top” Move
• Other Factors That Lead to Slicing
• Combat Your Slice

The Basic Sand Shot (Life in the Rough)
Momentus Swing Trainers (TGW.com)
Weighted Clubs (Golf-Trainer.com)
Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible Review (Life in the Rough)

Previous Installments:

Total Golf Game Improvement Week, Day 1 (Life in the Rough)
Total Golf Game Improvement Week, Day 2 (Life in the Rough)
Total Golf Game Improvement Week, Day 3 (Life in the Rough)

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