To shave strokes from your golf handicap, you must learn to make adjustments to your swing and your game during a round. While making adjustments is the key to playing a good, solid round of golf, it’s more critical to adjust to some than others, such as those involving the different lies you face. Unfortunately, not all lies are equal. Some are good. Some are bad. And some are downright ugly. That means you need to adjust to some lies more than others.

Take a good lie. Most times, you’ll make only minor adjustments to your swing at most with a good lie. Since the ball sits up nicely, you can stick to the basic iron fundamentals. Just remember to hit down on the ball and to avoid the most common mistake we see in our golf lessons, swinging too hard. It throws your rhythm and tempo off. Instead, swing at about 80 percent, but gradually accelerate so you reach maximum club speed at impact.
Below we discuss three common, but “bad” lies and provide golf tips on how to play them.

Deep Rough

Deep rough is tricky. You want to get the ball out of the rough and in play. The key, as we tell students in our golf instruction sessions, is to stand a little closer to the ball than normal. This forces you to swing on a more upright plane. Also, your head and hands should be higher than normal in the backswing. You should swing almost as though the shaft was going through your neck not your right bicep.

In addition to swinging upright, hinge your wrists earlier in the swing. Hinging early helps you avoid hitting too much grass behind the ball. Also, grip the club more firmly than normal to offset the grass, use a club with more loft than normal if you have to, and shorten your swing to stay balanced. It’s hard to hit down on the ball in deep rough. So expect your ball to come out more on a line.

Flier Lies

With this lie, the ball sits up in the grass, but still has some grass behind it. This means the ball will launch higher and with little spin. It will probably fly farther than normal as well. You find flier lies in intermediate rough cuts or in thick, fluffy grass. Flier lies encourage you to hit more of a draw, so adjust your aim accordingly. You may also want to use less club, since the ball will roll when it lands.

The key with flier lies, we tell players in our golf lessons, is to move away from the ball a little. This helps you sweep the ball off the ground. Since this is somewhat of an easier lie to hit from, you can get lazy rotating through impact. Make sure you rotate fully. Also, choke down about two inches on the club. Choking down prevents you from hitting un-derneath the ball. It also quiets your hands. Finish with your belt buckle facing the target and your weight on your front leg.

Ball Above Feet

It’s easier to hit a ball above your feet than below your feet. But it’s still tricky. Flatter swings work better with balls above your feet. The key is to stand slightly taller, which lets you swing with a more rounded, flatter motion. Standing taller means you’ll also have a slightly more erect spine angle, so make sure you retain some of your knee flex. (With a ball below your feet, you want to squat lower to the ground.)

With the ball above your feet, envision swinging the clubhead around your body and fi-nishing with your turn and release in a lateral position. You also want to finish with an extended right arm, a sign that you didn’t try to hold the clubface open through the swing. Shorten your swing a bit, and focus on making solid contact. Be careful not to hit the club’s toe on the ground.

These golf tips should help you hit more solid irons. Hitting the green is not as much of a priority with bad lies as with good lies. With bad lies, it’s safer—and better— sometimes just to get it close to the green. From there, a chip and a putt will earn you a par. Make more pars with solid irons shots and you’ll cut your golf handicap.

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How To Break 80 Newsletter

January 5, 2012

"The Web's Most Popular Golf Improvement Newsletter"
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In this issue we'll discuss...

1) Tip: Regaining Your Form
2) Tip: Chipping With A Wood
3) Question: Sticking a Greenside Bunker Shot
4) Article: Five Must Read Instruction Books
5) Article: Five Simple Steps For Great Driving

Jack's Note: Happy 2012 everyone! Promising to be a spectacular year for golf and I hope the same holds true for you as well. Remember, it's important to keep those "golf muscles" working during your off season so even if it's just holding a club while you watch television at night, it'll keep your grip in check.

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1) Regaining Your Form
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Has this ever happened to you? You’re sailing along during a round and hitting the ball well. Plus, everything is going your way. Drives are finding the fairway. Approach shots are sticking. And your putts are all dropping. Then, you hit a bad shot…and the wheels come off. You can’t drive anymore. You can’t stick your irons anymore. And you can’t hit full wedge shots anymore. You’ve let your anger get to you, which has thrown your swing completely out of sync. How do you regain your rhythm?

Here are five steps to regaining rhythm:

1. Rehearse your takeaway
2. Take a deep breath before you swing
3. Make a slow, smooth takeaway
4. Make a fluid transition at the top
5. Let the club drop naturally into the downswing

First, compose yourself. Instead of getting angry and upset, calm yourself down and fo-cus on regaining your rhythm. One reason your swing is off is because you’re snatching the club back during the takeaway. That throws destroys your rhythm and tempo, throw-ing your swing out of whack.

Instead, address the ball as you usually do and take a deep relaxing breath. Now, start back smoothly with your arms and hands. Focus on making a slow one-piece takeaway. Making a good takeaway is the key to getting your swing back on track.

Another danger zone is at the top of your swing. A quick, jerky transition almost guaran-tees a poor swing. Instead, make an unhurried and fluid transition and gradually accele-rate during your downswing. A smooth transition inspires rhythm.

Don’t let one bad shot spoil your day. Instead, compose yourself down by taking a nice deep breath, make an unhurried one-piece takeaway, and accelerate during your down-swing. Slowing yourself down often works wonders. Before long, you’ll have regained your rhythm and tempo.

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2) Chipping With A Wood
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Occasionally, golfers find themselves with unusual lies. Sometimes these lies can be downright strange, like inside the trunk of a hollowed out tree or lodged between the branches of a tree. Unfortunately, you can’t always hit the ball with these lies. But when you can you often must get creative to advance the ball forward. That’s when its good to know some non-traditional shots, like chipping with a wood.

Below are six keys to this shot:

1. Choose the right club
2. Stand close to the ball
3. Set the wood on its toe
4. Bow your wrists
5. Use your normal swing
6. Make a descending blow

The wood chip is great in heavy rough. But it also works in light rough. A wood’s smaller head separates and slides through the grass, unlike the heads on irons, which often get caught up in the grass. Use the 5-wood or the 7-wood for long grass and the 3-wood or the 4-wood for lighter grass.

Start by taking your normal chipping stance, with the ball positioned even with or just behind your back foot. Shift your weight on your front foot and place your hands just in front of your back thigh.

Now move close to the ball. Set the wood on its toe. This move is key. It minimizes the clubface’s exposure to grass. Use a normal chipping swing and a descending blow, but bow your wrists as you deliver the blow.

If your practice swing isn’t descending sharply enough, choke down on the club more. But don’t try to scoop the all. The club’s loft will start the shot up and out. The ball comes out without backspin, so it can run like mad.

Strange lies can come out of nowhere. So practice some non-traditional shots, like chip-ping with a wood, for times when you need to get creative. You want to have the feel of the shot when you need it.

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3) Question: Sticking a Greenside Bunker Shot
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Q.

Hi Jack,

A very enjoyable issue as usual!

I was wondering if you had any tips for very short bunker shots—the ones where you have to pop the ball up to a pin that’s only a few meters away. I played the other day, and although I was hitting nearly everything very well, I got hurt three times with these shots, which ruined my round. Would you change your technique for this shot if the sand is wet/dry/soft/hard?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Nick McKimm

A.

Yes, Nick. You do have to change technique depending on the lie. Failing to do so is gets weekend golfers in trouble. Below are some keys to a greenside bunker shot:

Make sure you hold the clubface open through impact. This enables the club to slide under the ball, throwing it up and out of the sand. If you don’t open the clubface, you'll probably mis-hit the shot, costing you strokes.

Also make sure you swing the club on an outside-to-in path along your stance line. That’s critical. And don't stop when you hit the sand. Keep accelerating through the swing to a full finish. Deceleration is among the most common errors in greenside bunkers. To pop the ball up, play the ball forward a couple of inches from the middle.

With a buried lie, use a more descending blow. Gripping down on the club helps you make more of a descending blow. With a partially buried lie, open your clubface a little more. With wet sand, set up as a normal sand shot, but make a shorter and shallower back swing. Play hardpan bunker shots like a normal bunker shot, but enter the sand a little closer to the ball than normally. Use your SW or LW, but make sure you open the face wide.

Dave Peltz, the short game guru, explains of how to escape a bunker in his book, Dave Peltz’s Short Game Bible. It’s a great read.

If you've got a golf question you'd like answered, send an email to us at questions@howtobreak80.com
and we'll review it. I can't guarantee that we'll use it but if we do,
we'll make sure to include your name and where you're from.

If you’re serious about improving, you must assess your game periodically to determine your strengths and weakness. December is a great time to do it. It’s also a great time to plan how to strengthen your weaknesses. Ideally, you should work on these with help from a local golf pro or an experienced golf instructor. He or she can see what you’re doing wrong and suggest changes. Unfortunately, not everyone has the means or time to take golf lessons.

If you can’t take lessons or you don’t want to, don’t despair. You can still improve your game with help from the game’s greatest players and teachers through golf instruction books. Dozens of well-written instruction books crafted by professional teachers and Tour players are available. Packed with golf tips, these books will help you master the game and cut your golf handicap. Below are five you might want to add to your reading list in 2012.

1. The Mental Art of Putting by Patrick Cohn and Robert Winters

Fifth on Amazon’s list of the 10 best selling books on golf in 2011, this book is an excel-lent aid for “the putting impaired.” It teaches golfers to use their most important asset in putting—their minds. Using self-evaluation, step-by-step instruction, and practice exer-cises, the book offers tons of golf tips on putting. If you can master the golf lessons con-tained in this book, you’ll not only become a great putter, you’ll also shrink your golf handicap.

2. Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals On Golf by Ben Hogan

This book is a classic. It’s also among the most popular instruction books on golf ever. Hogan believed that even people with average athletic ability can learn to break 80, if they apply themselves. Thus, Five Lessons is designed to help the average person master the full golf swing quickly and correctly. Each chapter contains a tested "fundamental" explained and demonstrated with amazing detail and clarity. It’s a must read for every golfer.

3. Golf My Way: The Instruction Classic by Jack Nicklaus

This is another classic golf book written by one of the game’s greatest players. Newly revised and updated, it covers the whole game, presenting an all-inclusive A-to-Z expla-nation of how Nicklaus thinks about and plays the game. Packed with golf tips and golf lessons, the new edition contains:

• A new introduction and endpiece, plus additional illustrations
• Brand-new chapters discussing the changes in Nicklaus's outlook and techniques
• Reflections on the differences in tournament golf today compared with when Nicklaus joined the PGA tour in 1962
• Advice on the mental elements of improved playing not directly related to ball-striking or shotmaking

Golf My Way will help reduce your golf handicap whether you’re new to the game or a veteran of 20 years.

4. The Natural Golf Swing by George Knudson and Lorne Rubenstein

If your game is plagued by inconsistency and poor performance, you could be going against your “natural” swing. The book’s authors believe that the golf swing is governed by laws of nature and is subject to logical, physical fundamentals that golfers all too often ignore. With help from the book’s written golf instruction sessions, you’ll learn to gen-erate a more powerful, accurate swing that can help you cut strokes from you scores and gain control of your swing. Extensive illustrations and golf drills make this book’s golf lessons memorable.

5. Dave Peltz’s Short Game Bible by Dave Peltz

This book is among the game’s best books on the short game. Peltz explains the golf les-sons in this book in great detail. His lessons are backed by years of research and teaching. A scientist by profession, Pelz provides photos, illustrations, charts, and plenty of sage advice on pitching, chipping, sand play, putting, equipment, execution, mechanics, tech-nique, practice, and attitude. While he mainly addresses better players and serious golfers, his basics are appropriate for players at any skill level of the game.

These five instruction books will help you improve in 2012. Each provides dozens of fruitful golf instruction sessions. Each is designed to slice strokes from your scores and golf handicap. And each is well written, so you’ll not only learn a lot, you’ll also enjoy reading them. Have fun.

One key to slashing your golf handicap is your driving. Conventional wisdom encourag-es golfers to hit accurate drives then go for distance. This approach holds that 220-yard drives in the fairway trump 250-yard drives in deep rough. But some Tour players, in-cluding veteran pro golfer Nick Price, favor a different approach. They say learn to hit the ball as far as possible first, address control later. Regardless of what side of the argument you favor, mastering the five golf tips below, will help make you a great driver.

• Hit A Draw

Some players like to hit power fades off the tee. Jack Nicklaus did. That might not work for you. Tour players fade the ball differently than a weekend golfer. They use a draw type swing, with the clubhead approaching from inside the line of play instead of swiping across it. This approach increases control, but is difficult to learn. If your fade is costing you yardage, you might be better off hitting a draw. It adds distance to your drives be-cause the clubhead comes into the ball on a shallow, head-on angle, compressing the ball more efficiently. Draws also tend to run when they hit, lengthening out the drive.

• Catch It On The Upswing

One key to hitting great drives, we tell golfers in our golf lessons, is catching the ball on the upswing. This adds both carry and distance to the drive. To increase your chances of hitting on the upswing, tee the ball a little higher than normally and position the ball an inch or two farther forward. The ball should be directly below your left pectoral muscle. Another golf tip is to increase your backswing turn. You need a full turn to hit great drives.

• Increase Loft

Many of the weekend golfers attending our golf instruction sessions tend to hit their drives more on a line than Tour players. The ball shoots up like a line drive, hangs up at the peak of its trajectory, and then flutters down. This type of ball flight costs you yar-dage. Instead, try hitting the ball higher. Balls hit with more height continue to fly for-ward rather than fluttering down. Watch your ball flight next time you go to the driving range. If you see your ball falling abruptly from its peak, find a driver with more loft than your current club, say one with 12 to 15 degrees of loft.

• Get A Good Lie

Another tendency we see in our golf instructions sessions is failing to find a good lie in the tee box. Tee boxes aren’t perfect. They may slope in one direction or the other or have a hollow or two. To hit great drives, you must find a level area to hit from. If you tee your ball up in a place where your feet are even a half-inch higher or lower than the ball, you’re asking for trouble because you’re hitting off a side hill lie. Instead, tee up near a ball marker or move back a club length-or two. The flatter the spot you hit from, the better.

• Play Safe When You Need To

Some golfers in our golf lessons can ramp up their swings on command. But many can’t. It just messes up their swings. Our advice: Avoid trying to carry a bunker or other trouble spot if you can’t carry it with your normal swing. If you have to swing even a little harder than you normally do, then lay-up. If you gamble and lose, you’ll cost yourself a stroke or more. It may also put you into a bad frame of mind for the rest of the round. Also, never aim for a bunker, a water hazard, or other trouble. If the ball goes straight, it costs you. Don’t get penalized for hitting the ball straight.

Mastering these five golf tips helps generate more distance off the tee. Longer drives that hit the fairway mean shorter and easier shots into the green, which increases your chances of hitting more greens in regulation (GIR). Hit more GIRs and you increase your chances of carding more birdies and pars. More birdies and pars slash scores and golf handicaps.