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Five Recovery Skills You Need in Your Game

January 12, 2010 By 10 Comments
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You’ve probably heard it a thousand times.  Golf is a game of misses.  If you think about it, you only make 18 shots per round.  Every other shot misses to some degree.  As we all know, some of them miss by an extremely high degree.  Unfortunately, they tend to build golf courses so that the worse you miss, the more harshly you’re punished. Golf courses are filled with trees, water, sand, rough and so on that are just waiting to dole out some punishment.  It’s critical, if we want to score, that we learn basic recovery skills so that these trouble situations have a minimal impact. Following are five recovery skills you need in your golf game. Learning to Say ‘No’ That’s right, one of the most important recovery skill is a mental one. We’ve all been there.  Off the tee, your drive was off target and you end up in the rough.  It’s fairly thick, but you can see the ball.  You have 200 yards to the green with a creek guarding the front,

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Hitting From Deep Rough

February 12, 2009 By 5 Comments

Many of us amateurs don’t have to worry about hitting from the kind of rough we might see on the PGA Tour from week to week, but I know in my case, the rough at my course can be pretty daunting.  The primary rough is only a few inches deep, but it’s thick and healthy and a ball can really settle down.  In the out of the way places, it’s left to grow all year and gets knee-deep. There are a few things to know when hitting out of the rough, but not understanding that the thick stuff is intended to be punishing and trying unnecessary heroics are likely going to compound the damage.  Don’t be afraid to concentrate on simply advancing the ball down the fairway if the situation is really bad.  No one wants to accept a bogey, but I promise you, when you’re writing down double bogey or worse on your scorecard, you’ll wish you had that bogey back. With some simple adjustments and awareness of a few things, you’ll be able

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Splash It Out Of The Rough

May 15, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I saw a great tip on an recent episode of Playing Lessons With the Pros on the Golf Channel. I want to say it was the Craig Stadler episode, but don’t hold me to that. It was a great technique for getting out of thick green-side rough. Often, if you try to make a normal pitch or chip shot in that situation, the club head can get hung up and any number of things can happen, including the possibility of hitting it fat or thin, skulling it, or flubbing it a few yards. The rough will tend to grab the hosel and turn the face closed causing problems with shot trajectory, direction, and distance. What you can do in that situation is use a sand wedge and open the face and play it sort of like a little splash shot out of the sand. When you lay the face open a bit, the bounce of the club gets the leading edge moving through the grass better with less chance of the rough grabbing the hosel

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How Often Do You Practice Recovery?

April 13, 2007 By Leave a Comment

One thing that struck me as I watched the 2007 Masters was how professionals of that caliber can spray the ball all over the place off the tee and still manage to score. It seems obvious, but how many of us work on recovery in our practice sessions? More often than not, we’re hitting full shots or some kind of short game shot. One of the ways I spruce up my practice time and give myself a little recovery practice is to work on a 100 yard 5-iron. I normally hit my 5-iron close to 200 yards. To cut the distance in half it takes some finesse and a little setup adjustment. Typically, I’ll play most full shots off my front foot (more on that in a future post), so for this shot I’ll put the ball back near the center of my stance or even a little behind center. I’ll take a short back swing, and keep my hands low during the follow through. Keeping a nice even tempo is important, and making sure

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