The 5 Shots Every Average Golfer Needs
Kit Alexander is joined by top 50 coach Adam Harnett to show you how to play the 5 shots every golfer needs if they want to shoot lower scores
Video Transcript
We all want to save shots on our scores, but what's the best way and the most efficient way of doing it?
Well, the good news is Shot Scope have done all the hard work for us because they've identified the five key areas where you will reap the most rewards with your incremental improvements.
We've come down to Blackmore Golf Club to reveal them and show you just how you can do it, and we've got top 50 coach Adam Hartnett to help us along the way.
When it comes to shaving those strokes off your score, the first port of call is right here on the tee box.
Hitting the fairway is gonna set you up for the rest of the hole, and statistically, it's massively important.
If you find a fairway bunker as opposed to the fairway, that's half a shot gone, and if you're hitting it into hazards or into the thick rough and chipping out sideways, well, you're looking at even more than that.
So it's absolutely vital we've got a tee shot with driver we can rely on, and Adam, you can tell us how to hit that fairway finder.
Absolutely.
So we're gonna make a couple of changes here, first of all in our address position.
Number one, I'm gonna tee the ball down lower.
I would normally have the ball teed up with about half the ball above the top of the club.
Mm-hmm.
And for this shot, I'm gonna put the ball down a little bit lower, so maybe now the, the top of the ball is in line with the top of the club.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
From there, I'm gonna narrow my stance in a little bit just to reduce the length of swing naturally, and grip down the club a little bit just to gain a little bit more control, maybe take a little bit of speed out of the swing.
Mm-hmm.
From there, it's really 75%.
I'm not trying to hit this with too much speed.
We're going for control on this shot and not trying to maximize distance.
Is there a shape and a ball flight that you're looking to create with that?
Naturally, because the ball is teed down lower, naturally we might see a little bit more of a fade.
Generally, we might hit a little bit lower on the club face.
Ball flight might come down because of that.
Mm-hmm.
Not a bad thing.
If we can get the ball out of the air onto the fairway and, and, and running nice and early, I guess it keeps it in play.
Absolutely.
Well, a little fade is exactly what is called for on this beautiful hole, so let's see it in action.
So I knocked it down.
Nice, smooth swing.
Little bit of a fade there.
We're in action, and we can attack with our second shot.
A simple and self-evident truth is if you hit more greens in regulation, your scores will come down.
A great example, for a 15 handicapper, you will hit the green 15% of the time between 150 and 200 yards.
You drop down to a five handicapper, and that doubles to 30%.
And obviously, in this longer sort of range that we are here, 175 yards to 200 yards, that discrepancy is even greater.
So Adam, why are amateur golfers struggling to hit good shots and hit the green from this kind of distance?
Well, traditionally, you know, longer irons are hard to hit, right?
The flatter the club, the harder it is generally to use.
And I see a lot of golfers trying to help the ball up in the air because they look down at a flat face, particularly with a, a long iron.
And so I've got a nice drill here to get us moving forward and striking the ball better.
So in short, weight back, not good.
You wanna get your weight forward through it, and this will help you do it.
Correct.
We wanna strike ball turf, you know?
M- most golfers understand we wanna hit the ball first and, and the, the ground after.
Yeah.
So this is a great drill.
So what we're gonna do is get a feel for shifting our weight back and through.
So I'm, when I swing to the right, I'm gonna shift across.
Swing to the left, I'm gonna move across.
This is a really exaggerated version- Mm-hmm just to get us moving in the right way.
Then to progress on from there, we're just gonna lift our front foot as we swing back and then lift our back foot as we swing back.
As we swing through, sorry.
So we're trying to always move our weight through the ball.
And then to progress on from there, we're now just gonna feel the pressure.
So we're not stepping.
We're not lifting.
We're gonna feel the pressure to the right, and then once my club goes out of view, I'm then gonna start moving back to the left to get through the ball.
And I think if you get to a nice full finish at the end as well, that obviously shows that you've transferred that weight nicely.
So really get to that finish and hold it.
Correct.
I tell this to my son, you know ?
Get to that finish position and hold it.
You know, get the weight into the left foot.
And if you're still struggling, obviously long irons aren't easy to hit, but there's plenty of technology out there that can help.
What do you think about getting a hybrid or some fairway woods into the bag?
I mean, you s- we see it on tour now, don't we?
Even some of the guys are out there with seven woods, even nine woods.
Anything to make the game easier.
I love having a, a seven wood or a nine wood in the bag for most golfers.
Manufacturers aren't selling three and four irons so much, and I think that tells the story.
There you go.
A bit of weight transfer, and you can get a club that will help you as well.
You don't need any help.
You've got a long iron in hand.
Come on, let's see it.
Let's give it a go.
I'm gonna make sure we make a good movement through the ball.
Finish on the left side.
Oh, the sound of that.
Just gonna creep onto the right edge, so just about a green found.
So there you go.
Get that weight through to the left-hand side.
And if you do need a little bit more help, get a hybrid or a fairway wood in the bag as well.
Pitching is an area where you can also see really big improvements to your score.
The reality is the difference between a good and a bad pitch can often be two or more shots very easily.
And for your average 20 handicapper, even from this kind of range, 50 to 75 yards, they're only hitting the putting surface 49% of the time.
So especially if you're a mid to higher handicapper, sometimes just hitting the green from here can be a big achievement and can help your scoring.
Now, Adam, why are players missing the green from these kind of shots?
Ultimately, you know, they're not missing because they're going too left or right.
Okay?
Usually, it's a poor strike, they're coming up short, or they're thinning it through the back.
So I like to have a little bit of a system for my golfers to help them with their distance control and their strike.
So let's talk about a standard setup position for a pitch.
Now, I would want the ball to be relatively central in my stance, and my stance to be relatively narrow.
Handle can be slightly forward, and that's pretty much about as simple as I would want it to be- Mm-hmm for this pitch.
Now, if I want to change the length of these shots or ch- change the trajectory, first of all, a higher shot, I play the ball a little bit further forward.
Mm-hmm.
A lower shot, I play the ball a little bit further back.
And as I want to hit the ball further each time, I would simply step my stance out by maybe an inch or so- Yep each time.
And that's gonna allow me to make a slightly bigger swing for the shot I need to make.
And you like to just do a bit of a ladder drill to build that feel and get used to what kind of length of swing delivers what kind of distance of shot.
Absolutely.
That's a really simple way to practice this on your short game area, even on the range.
Start with your feet very close together.
As I say, it really reduces the length of your swing.
Feet close together with a small swing, that might go, say, 20 yards.
Mm-hmm.
Slightly wider with a slightly bigger swing, that might go 30, and so on, and we're gonna build up to our 50, 60 yards.
Brilliant.
Well, you're well calibrated already, so- All right, let's go let's see you knock this one on.
Bit of a tucked left pin there as well.
It is a bit, yeah.
Well, I'm not gonna be I'm gonna try and play, relatively sensibly here, a little bit to the right of the flag if I can.
Nicely played.
There we go.
There we go.
A calibrated feel for the distance.
Simple technique and a sensible line, and Adam is putting with his next shot.
Reducing three-putts is a great way to shave shots off of your scores.
The average 25 handicapper is having 5.8 three-putts in a round.
When you come down to a 15 handicapper, 3.5, and down to a 5 handicapper, it's just one and a half.
So you can see how that really influences your scores.
And of course, one of the big keys is lag putting and getting your distance control right on these long putts to start with.
So how do we build that feel and do that?
Yeah.
Speed is just so crucial when putting.
So what we're looking to do here is to try and keep a nice constant swinging club head.
That's how we control speed.
Mm-hmm.
The last thing we want is a club that's accelerating through the ball.
A lot of golfers, the faults that I see are sh- swings that are too short and then accelerating- Mm-hmm or swings that are too long and then slowing down.
So we're looking to try and keep it nice and constant.
Right.
You've got a good drill that's gonna help build that feel as you ha- start hit- hitting the ball further, haven't you?
Yep.
So the leapfrog drill, I call it.
So in this instance here, we're going to hit three putts.
One putt a third of the way, one putt half the way, and then finally to the hole.
And we're gonna do that by keeping the same tempo and just changing the length of stroke.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Let's see it in action.
So about one third.
Mm-hmm.
Bit further.
And then finally, let's see if we can get one to the hole.
You hit the ball.
I know that would've ended up close to the hole.
I could see you were hitting all of them out of the center as well.
How important is a center strike, something that often doesn't get spoken about or get the attention it deserves in putting?
Really key.
As we make a longer swing, it's harder to return the putter back to the ball in the same place, right?
So a nice drill for that is a Tiger Woods drill.
I mean, who better?
So we put down some tee pegs.
There's an extra ball for you.
Thank you.
About a putter head width apart, maybe slightly more.
Let's give ourself a little bit of room.
And the aim here, quite simply, is to putt through this gate.
And if we can putt through the gate, we're gonna hit the middle of the club almost every time.
Brilliant stuff.
Great little drill there to make sure you're finding the center of the putter face when you hit the ball, and that ladder drill to help you build the feel when you do that.
That will stop you from three-putting too often.
Holing out is another essential skill.
And when you get to this sort of range, you really want this to be your last shot on any given hole.
But that's not always the case.
In this three to six foot sort of range, a 20 handicapper's only holing 55%, a 10 handicapper 65%, and for a scratch player, that jumps to 76%.
So you're not gonna hole absolutely all of them, but you should be holing more than your fair share, Adam.
What great tip have you got for us on holing out, especially in this three to six foot zone?
Yeah.
So, so this is super simple.
And it's all about alignment.
As we get closer to the hole, alignment becomes more important, okay?
Speed is still key, but as we're closer, alignment becomes really, really important.
I took my son recently to the BMW PGA Championship, and, he managed to get some balls from the players.
Every single ball he had had lines on So I think that tells us something.
It, you know, if it's good enough for those guys, it's good enough for us.
Yeah, the best players in the world are doing it, but they're giving it complete care and attention, aren't they?
If you're going to do this with a line, you've got to commit to doing it right.
Yeah.
I mean, the idea of the line is to aim where we want our ball to start.
We don't want our ball to be aiming at the hole if we're trying to start the ball left or right.
So having real detail when you do this is super, super key.
It's all about getting the putter head aligned to where you want your ball to start.
You can get some good feedback with this as well, because as well, the line is going to tell you if you've hit a square putt by if it's wobbling or if it's going end over end.
And also, you'll get feedback on your reads because if you tell you've hit the ball on line and it doesn't go in, well, you've misread it, so you can learn from that.
Absolutely, yeah.
I mean, if we hit a putt how we want to, and we're happy with the line, and we're happy with the stroke, really, you know, there's not much more we can ask.
Right.
Well, I'm gonna ask one more thing of you, Adam, and that is to knock this one in, our final shot.
Never in any doubt.
So there you go.
The closer you get to the hole, that start line is vitally important, and you can plop a line on the ball like the best players in the world do to help.
So those are the five areas of the game that will help you shave those shots off of your scores.
Remember, get the fairway finder to get it in play.
Improve your approaches and hit more greens in regulation, especially from that vital 175 to 200-yard range.
Sharpen up your pitching, and on the greens, eliminate the three-putts and make sure you're holing everything you can inside five feet.
Those scores will tumble.
Hope you've enjoyed the video and found it helpful.
Our thanks again to Shot Scope for providing all of the fantastic information and insights, to Blackmore Golf Club for hosting us, and to top 50 coach Adam Hartnett for all of his words of wisdom.
We'll see you next time.
