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The post This common golf advice is killing your driving accuracy appeared first on Golf.

If you’ve ever had to hit a crucial shot under pressure, you’ve likely heard the popular golf adage: aim small, miss small.

In a game where fractions of an inch can be the difference between birdie and bogey, it sounds like sage advice. But just because it sounds good doesn’t mean it’s true.

Does aiming at a smaller target actually guarantee a better miss? That’s the question Eric Alpenfels, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher, and Dr. Bob Christina of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro set out to answer in a 2018 study.

To determine how target size affects performance on the course, they conducted studies across various shots: tee shots (driver, 3-wood), irons (9- and 6-iron) and short game (pitching, chipping and putting). 

While all of the studies revealed surprising conclusions, the results from the driving portion might be the most unexpected of all — and their findings could even help you hit more fairways.

Conclusion: Aim big to hit more fairways

Contrary to the “aim small, miss small” belief, Alpenfels and Christina’s study proved that aiming at a larger target led to improved performance in driving accuracy and distance off the tee.

How they got there

To reach this conclusion, Alpenfels and Christina monitored 32 right-handed male golfers, with an average age of 65. Players were split into two skill levels: low- and high-handicap golfers. The USGA indexes ranged from 1 to 11.8 for the low-handicap group and 13.4 to 30 for the high-handicap group.

A pre-study questionnaire revealed that, like many of us, most of the players in the test preferred aiming at small targets off the tee and typically chose driver over a 3-wood when given a choice. 

Instruction

To determine if small or large targets were more effective, each player hit 12 tee shots — six with driver and six with 3-wood — using their own clubs and the same ball for consistency. For each club, they hit three shots using a small target (roughly 0.30-yards wide) and three aimed at a large target (about 30-yards wide). Performance was measured by three data points: distance from the center of the fairway, fairways hit and total distance.

After analyzing the data, Alpenfels and Christina found that players performed better overall when aiming at a large target.

Average driving error (distance from the center of the fairway) was smaller when players focused on the larger target (~13 yards) than when using a small target (~14 yards). The number of fairways hit was also significantly higher when using a large target (64 fairways hit) when compared to using a small target (48 fairways hit).

Players also saw a small spike in driving distance — roughly 5 yards — when using a large target off the tee. The average driving distance when using a large target was ~220 yards, while players average driving distance with a small target was about ~225 yards. 

With the data from this study, Alpenfels and Christina demonstrated that the old phrase “aim small, miss small” doesn’t hold up. In fact, they proved that “aiming big” might just be the key to unlocking more accuracy and distance off the tee.

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Few things are worse in golf than looking up moments after feeling contact and seeing the ball sail off in an unintended direction. All we want is to hit the ball straight. That’s our goal, after all, when we set up to the golf ball. To hit the ball where we want to.

But how do we do it?

Strange as it sounds, it could be that practicing intentionally hitting your ball sideways could actually help you hit it straighter.

Instruction

As GOLF Teacher to Watch and Director of Instruction at Chevy Chase Club Sarah Stone explains in this interesting video below (you can and should follow Sarah on Instagram right here, by the way), it’s a concept called “Intentional Directional Awareness.” In simple terms, it’s teaching how to do something — even if it’s something you may not want to do — as a way of learning how not to do it. Think of it like driving a car: If you know how to turn left, and you know how to turn right, you now how not to do those things, too.

The same is true in golf. That’s why Sarah says she has her students practicing hitting the ball left, right, and then straight.

“What this is going to do it’s going to build awareness so that when you do hit the ball left, you can say: ‘wow, when I did that, I felt a lot of forearms, or wrist, or flip, or whatever,” she says. “That way, when you get out on the course and you’re missing it right, you can think back.”

Practicing it is as easy at it sounds: Try hitting a ball left, then right, then straight, then start again. Take careful note of what you’re feeling as you’re doing it, and disregard the notion that you’re not good enough to try — this is how you get better.

And aside from hitting the ball in different directions, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Mark Durland says you can practice this kind of awareness across the clubface, too. Try hitting a shot off the toe, then off the heel, then try hitting one out of the center.

“By giving your brain multiple reference points to think about, you force it to work harder — so you can learn faster,” he writes.

A simple piece of advice, and one that may help us all intentionally hit more drives down the middle.

Want to overhaul your bag for 2022? Find a fitting location near you at GOLF’s affiliate company True Spec Golf.

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The post The 2-step formula Jim Furyk uses to troubleshoot his homegrown golf swing appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Play Smart, a game-improvement column that drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Director of Game Improvement content Luke Kerr-Dineen to help you play smarter, better golf.

Golfers seem to have a soft spot for so-called “homegrown” golf swings, untainted by the kind of burdensome swing thoughts that the rest of us know all too well.

Except the truth is, even the homegrown swings get worked on. Get tweaked. Get changed. Things get off and move around. For a player that’s been left to figure out the golf swing for themselves — and done it so well that they’ve ended up on the PGA Tour — the solutions they arrive at are often the most useful of them all.

Why? Because they’re dead-set on solving the essential, central problem in golf: Making the ball fly straight.

When it comes to homegrown swings that make the ball fly straight, you can’t do much better than Jim Furyk. The former U.S. Open champ has been one of the most accurate players in golf history, all with a golf swing that’s the furthest thing from “textbook.”

But even for Furyk, things get off. But over the course of his career, he’s figured out a simple way of getting them back on track.

Furyk’s formula

As Furyk explains in the old Golf Channel video at the bottom of the page, when things get off he places two rulers down onto the ground.

The first (the ruler closer to his toes) is for alignment. He wants to make sure it’s parallel to his target line.

“That helps me take one variable out,” he says.

The second ruler is closer to the ball, and it’s pointing directly at his target.

“That helps me figure some stuff out,” Furyk says.

Understanding the 9 laws

Once Furyk is all set up in his troubleshooting drill, he makes sure his feet are aligned correctly and hits balls, paying attention only to what the ball is doing.

If the ball starts to the right of the second ruler, Furyk says he knows he’s swinging too much from in-to-out.

If it starts to the left, he knows he’s coming over-the-top. If the ball curves to the right, his face is open; if it does the opposite and curves to the left, he knows the face is closed.

It comes back to the nine laws of ball flight that every golfer — homegrown or not — should have a good handle on.

As that happens, Furyk is simply trying to feel his way back to a straighter ball flight. He doesn’t care how his swing looks, he cares about how the ball looks. The ruler helps give him a baseline, the rest is finding a feel that works for him. Try it yourself, and you’ll find one that works for you, too.

Watch the full clip below:

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I’m a recent putt-with-a-line-on-my-golf-ball convert. I went back and forth for years, but I committed last season and am glad I did. I feel like it gives me feedback on whether I make a good stroke or not (if the line wobbles, no good!) and by having the line on there to begin with, I have one less thing to think about.

In fact, I like using the line so much I’m thinking of amping it up a notch and using it off the tee.

Instruction

After all, why not? Putting and driving are the two most important parts of the game, and those are the only two areas on the course where you’re able to pick up your ball and align it how you want. Taking advantage of that on the greens has become commonplace, so why not take advantage of it off the tee, too?

It’s become increasingly common on the PGA Tour. Bryson DeChambeau does it, as does Maverick McNealy, who talked to GOLF.com about it recently: “I use the line on the tee to make sure my eye line is square and my alignment is good,” he said. “A lot of tee boxes aren’t always aligned. Some are aimed left; some are aimed right; if your body alignment is off, that’s a big miss.”

Once you have a better handle on where the target line is, you’ll have a better sense of your swing direction and, hopefully, find more fairways along the way.

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The post Justin Thomas is struggling for consistency with his driver. Here’s how he’s fixing it appeared first on Golf.

It’s always annoying when fans and media panic at any whiff of a good player changing anything about their swing. Just as it would be stupid to never get the oil checked in your car, pros are constantly changing their swings and tweaking things — it’s all pretty routine maintenance.

It’s still early in the season, but Justin Thomas’ SG: Driving stats have taken a bit of a dive, so that’s the area Thomas has been focusing on coming into the Players Championship. It’s a pretty relatable problem — who among us hasn’t struggled off the tee? -— which is why it was interesting to hear JT explain how he’s going about solving it. Take note, amateurs. We may be able to learn a thing or two from his approach.

1. Keep it simple

When recreational golfers begin struggling in one area of their game or another, things starts getting really complicated, really quickly. A million swing thoughts arise, you ask for the opinions of everybody around you, and your panicked self-diagnosis begins.

JT does the opposite. When he started struggling, he started trying to make things simpler. Cutting out the excess thoughts, and focusing more instead on the stuff that matters.

“I’m just trying to keep it as simple as possible,” he said. “I haven’t been trying to tweak too much or look for things. It’s easy to search for too much or think that I need to find something when I maybe don’t.”

2. Nail the top of your backswing

But simplifying your thoughts doesn’t mean eliminating all of your thoughts. Rather than focusing on lots of little things, JT says he’s been working with his dad — who doubles as his longtime coach — to focus on one big thing: getting into a good position at the top of the backswing. That means making sure the club isn’t laid off or across the line, and the clubface isn’t too open or shut.

“I want the club in a place that we feel is going to generate more consistent shots,” he said.

3. Practice your problem areas MORE, not less

A funny-but-real quirk of struggling in golf is that when we notice an area of our game suffering, golfers tend to avoid it — which is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. JT’s been struggling with his driver, which is scary and annoying. It’d be pretty easy to just ignore it, but that’s the opposite of what JT is doing, and for good reason. As the saying goes, you have to get back on the horse that threw you. In JT’s case, that means working through the problem, not avoiding it.

“I’ve hit more drivers and 3-woods the last month or so than I have in a while,” he says.

‘Trust The Science’

Science has always been a big part of Bryson DeChambeau’s game, but adding some brawn to those brains has taken it to a whole ‘nother level.

$28 from breakingt.com

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We do a lot of game improvement content here at GOLF.com and GOLF Magazine, and we’re proud of all of it. It’s our bread and butter, the thing we’re most proud of. Golf is a fun, but endlessly difficult and complicated game. If we can make your lives a little better by making the game simple — and easier — we’re happy.

Our bigger Game Improvement packages usually start in the pages of our magazine, and we had a lot of them this year, from our 60 essential tips every golfer will always need package, to our stats-fueled smart-players guide to dropping 10 shots. But there was one that caught like wildfire when it hit GOLF.com: Shaun Webb and Mike Granato take on what they consider the 10 biggest golf swing killers in golf, which you can read about in full right here.

Webb and Granato run Athletic Motion Golf, and use their GEARs technology to analyze the common traits of some of the best players in the world. Not all teachers will agree with their conclusions, but even the harshest skeptics would admit it acts as a good starting point for golfers troubleshooting their golf swing.

I’d suggest reading all of them, but one that I found especially interesting was the “trail arm collapse” — a common fault among recreational golfers that costs them power and consistency.

Nearly all the pros Webb and Granato studied measured between 55 and 85 degrees of right-arm bend at the top of the backswing. By comparison, most of the amateurs they’ve captured fall between 95 and 125 degrees. That’s a big power leak. Your right arm is a major acceleration source at the start of the downswing, and the straighter you keep it on the way back, the more likely you’ll increase your shoulder turn (another power source). Webb and Granato report that students who worked on keeping their trail arm straighter picked up an additional 30 degrees of shoulder rotation — even those aged 65 and older!

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The post Here’s a clever trick to use the next time you’re struggling to hit the fairway appeared first on Golf.

We’ve all had those days off the tee when you can’t hit a fairway to save your life. It may only start with one poor drive, but then it kicks off a sequence of events that ends with you standing over the tee, looking at a wide-open fairway, with absolutely no idea where your ball is going go.

All of which is to say that I enjoyed this tip from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Terry Rowles a lot.

You don’t have to do anything different with your swing. You don’t even need to change your mindset. All you need is three things, Rowles says:

Do that, Rowles says, and something rather magical happens: you start hitting the ball off the heel of the club. Ordinarily that’s not a good thing, but in this case, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered: Hitting the ball off the heel will deaden the hit slightly, but will cause the clubhead to twist open, due to the gears effect. As a result, the shot will fly lower with a left-to-right fade shape. It won’t go as far — because you’re intentionally trying to hit it off the sweetspot — but it’ll be controlled. And, crucially, it’ll accomplish your goal of getting your ball in the fairway, and building some momentum.

Watch the full video below:

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The post What is a golf swing ‘governor’? Explaining Bryson DeChambeau’s secret weapon appeared first on Golf.

The post What is a golf swing ‘governor’? Explaining Bryson DeChambeau’s secret weapon appeared first on Golf.

Bryson DeChambeau shot an even-par 70 during the third round of the 2020 U.S. Open, which was quite impressive considering his bogey-bogey start. The second bogey was the product of a drive that sailed alarmingly left off the tee — the kind of shot that, for many golfers, would’ve been the start of the end.

That “overdraw,” as he referred to it later in his round, plagued him all day — he hit just 21 percent of his fairways. After his round he explained the cause of his miss:

“I felt like I was super comfortable, and then one of my governors just kind of broke down and I couldn’t get it back all day,” he said.

Naturally, that Bryson-ism prompted a flurry of questions on social media. What is the “governor” that Bryson is talking about? Its full name is an “anatomical governor,” and above all else, it’s the most important element of Bryson’s golf swing.

Understanding end ranges of motion

Bryson tries to swing fast — we all know that by know — but he’s trying to swing fast within what he calls an “end range of motion protocol.”

Put simply, an end range of motion is the amount a joint in your body can move until it can’t move anymore. Hold your right arm out in front of you, and turn your wrist as far to the right as much as it can. When you feel it stop, that’s your joint reaching its end range of motion. Bryson is obsessed with the end ranges of motion of his joints, and using them to help boost his consistency. He incorporates them everywhere from his putting to his full swing.

Why? Because, as his theory goes, when you put your joints into their end range of motion, it means they can’t move anymore. Them not moving is your body’s “anatomical governor” — a natural physical governor that limits the number of ways it can move.

The most important anatomical governor in Bryson’s swing, according to Bryson, is his left arm. He wants to keep it straight and locked in for as long as possible during his golf swing. When he does that, it prevents the clubface from closing unwantingly.

Jordan Spieth, believe it or not, was his inspiration for the move.

“I started realizing quickly that I couldn’t ever hit it left by going to the max end range of upper and internal rotation,” DeChambeau said. “I may hit it 30, 40 yards right, but I never missed it left.”

Bryson used to hit a fade, but his quest for more distance coincided with him switching his stock shot to a draw — which he told me at the BMW Championship is only possible because of the way his left arm works in the golf swing.

Which brings us back to Saturday at the U.S. Open. When he talks about his “governor” breaking down, that’s what he means: His left arm, which wasn’t staying locked in place and therefore allowing the clubface to close, hence him missing a handful of shots to the left. Rest assured, he put in some hard work after his round (he might still be there, to be honest) to make sure his golf swing was back in a place where he wants it, ready for U.S. Open Sunday.

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Welcome to Play Smart, a new game-improvement column that drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Instruction Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen to help you play smarter, better golf.

The BMW Championship was marked by tough conditions and brilliant putting down the stretch. So brilliant, in fact, that it’s worth giving them a quick re-watch.

Experts pegged the chances of a making a putt like this at about 3% (at best), with a nearly 30 percent chance of three-putting.

Yet DJ made one to force a playoff…

Then Rahm made one to win the playoff…

But all the brilliant putting aside, one of my favorite clips from the event was this super slow motion close-up video of Tiger’s clubhead moving through impact.

It wasn’t the best shot in the world, but you can learn a lot from it. Here’s why.

1. What causes a ‘dropkick’?

First, let’s start with the negative: There’s a tuft of grass just in front of the ball, and you can see Tiger’s driver skim it on its way before crashing into the ball — a phenomenon otherwise known as a “dropkick.”

A drop-kicked drive, in case you’re unfamiliar, is when your driver head hits the ground before hitting the ball. It takes a lot of power off the subsequent drive, and will often lead to directional issues, too. It’s caused, usually, by not knowing where the low-point of your golf swing is, which can be the result of a ball position that’s too far forward in your stance (among other things).

Tiger hits a little dropkick here — proof it happens even to the best of us — but as you can imagine, it’s a dropkick that most people would dream of.

2. High on the face (that’s good!)

But once Tiger hits the ball, you can see that his ball contacts the top of his driver face. He hits the ball “high on the face,” and that’s good!

The way driver clubheads are designed, much of the driver’s weight is pushed to the back of the clubhead, and towards the ground. By hitting the ball high on the face, you’re taking advantage of the way the club is designed, and sending the ball into the air more powerfully. So take notes!

3. Club swings from low to high

Finally, notice how Tiger’s driver moves from low to high in the above sequence.

It’s true that some PGA Tour players hit down on the ball even with their driver, but for the rest of us who don’t boast the same levels of swing speed, teachers generally recommend that we hit more “up” on the ball. Why? Because it allows you to hit the ball higher with less spin, which helps you hit the ball longer without swinging faster (through the power of “optimal launch conditions”)

A simple way to help you do this is putting a small object, like a water bottle or a rolled up towel, on the ground and practice swinging over it. It’ll give you the feeling of swinging from low-to-high, and hopefully help you hit longer drives when you hit the course.

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The post This is how Bryson DeChambeau practices to improve his accuracy appeared first on Golf.

NORTON, Mass. — Bryson DeChambeau swings hard and hits the ball really far. He’s done some truly astonishing work on that front, gaining upwards of 40 lbs in the gym and propelling himself to the top of PGA Tour’s driving distance rankings.

But golf is a game that requires more than distance. It’s about controlled distance. Hitting the ball longer can potentially make golf easier, sure, but if you don’t know where it’s going, it can become a lot more difficult in a hurry.

Bryson’s game was already in good shape — he clocked a T-4 finish at the PGA Championship in his last start, his career-best in a major — but looking to improve his game even more, he spent his week off not increasing distance, but honing his accuracy.

“My game feels really good,” he said. ” I think I figured something out in the golf swing that will hopefully help me hit it a little straighter.”

He went on to give some fascinating insight when I asked him about how he practices hitting the ball straighter.

Take notes, because it could come in handy for your own game:

1. Find a swing thought

The first step to hitting it straighter is to find a swing thought that works for you. We’d highly suggest finding a coach for this step. It doesn’t need to be a big change, but it needs to be a specific thought or feeling designed to improve your technique.

It’s just a process of elimination going, ‘No, that didn’t help; that didn’t help,’ and then finding a little nugget every once in a while.

2. Start with driver

Once you’ve got your swing thought, put it to work. Bryson says he usually starts with his driver, but you need to make sure your swing thought is one you helps you hit better shots with every club in your bag.

“If it doesn’t work with one club or a couple clubs, it usually won’t work with the rest of them,” he says. “I try and make sure it works throughout the whole entire bag.”

3. Work your way down with *every* club

Knowing you need your new swing thought to work with every club in your bag, now is the time to get to work. Once your driver feels good, try a new club. Once that feels good, it’s time for the next one. You don’t need to hit a ton of balls with each, but as Bryson says, you need to make sure it works with all your clubs.

“I’ll practice every single club. I’ll go down the bag, 3-wood, 4-iron, 7-iron, pitching wedge,” he says. “Once I get down to 4-iron from the driver, if it doesn’t work with 4-iron, I know it’s not going to work with the rest of the irons.”

4. If it stops working, return to step 1

And what happens when you make your way down the bag and your swing thought that worked so well on your driver stops resulting in good shots with your 7-iron? Then Bryson says it’s time to start again.

“Once I get to a spot where I feel like it’s not working, I completely stop it and I try something new,” he says. “It’s just a process of elimination going, ‘No, that didn’t help.’”

It may sound tedious, but it works. It’s a process of elimination, and when you do find something that works, you’ll know it’ll be with you on every swing.

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