“A perfectly straight shot with a big club is a fluke.” - Jack Nicklaus
By Ian Hardie
In the post ‘When you should and shouldn’t – hit your driver’ I talked you through my decision process (these days) if I was standing on the tee of a short
But not reachable in one shot – par 4
As I went through the plusses and minuses of the possible options
It would have become pretty clear to you as to which one
Allows for trouble free, consistently good scoring
Which is what most golfers experience when they play well
And golfers who aren’t playing so well
Really want to do
Yet one of the most common things I see golfers do without thinking
Is tee off every par 4 and par 5 they play with a driver
Irrespective of how early it is in their game
Or whether they are warmed up or not
Which when for most golfers
The driver is the club that invites the most trouble into their game
Is not the most effective way to use it
In fact in that first post my personal point of view was that
‘I need to make better decisions off the tee.’
Which in that context was about leaving a shot into the green
‘That had a very low chance of being messed up.’
Golfers who hit their driver off the first tee
Without being properly warmed up
Invite the possibility
Of messing up right from the start of their game
And invariably
If the first drive of the day isn’t good
Then neither is the second
Or the third
Which can start to create a ‘downward spiral’
That sometimes continues for the whole game
Which can keep going from game to game
Until eventually the golfer considers themselves
‘To be a poor driver’
And their game suffers accordingly
The good news is that there is something you can do
So that situation never eventuates
Like most everything else I suggest
It’s simple enough to do
All you need to do is create a personal framework
That you think through before each game
A set of ‘personal rules’ if you like
A set of rules that remind you things like;
‘I don’t hit my driver until my body and action are fully warmed up’
And more importantly
‘I don’t hit my driver until I am feeling like I am in the groove’
You could say to yourself
‘No driver if I am not feeling 100% confident’
As well as
‘I don’t hit driver if I am playing with any sort of injuries’
The path towards trouble free, consistently good scoring
Is simpler when you use a fairway wood, hybrid or long iron
In conjunction with the above personal framework
On at least the first six holes of your round
If not later
After all, most poor rounds are the result of poor shots
And subsequent poor decisions
In the first six holes of a golfers round
Now you might be reading this thinking
‘Hang on Ian, all the tour pros on television start their rounds hitting driver off the tees’
Which is generally true
But they have normally done at least 2 hours warm-up and physical preparation
Finishing with at least 10 drives before they get onto the first tee
So if you are able to do a tour length warm up before you tee off the first
Then by all means – bomb it down there with a driver!
But if you aren’t able to do that before your rounds
Create and use your own personal framework
A framework you can use to figure out the best way
To start each round on the path towards trouble free, consistently good scoring
Play well
Related Posts
When you should and shouldn’t – hit your driver
A quick tip for hitting great tee shots
