The Fairway

Your first challenge is getting the ball in play off of the tee box. There are so many things that can go wrong with the tee shot that can cost you valuable strokes.

It is important to capture this information so you can get more of your tee shots in the fairway or in play. Right or left of the fairway may cause you to have appoach shots that are not as accurate into the green.

The courses are designed to cause you to loose strokes on your tee shots. Look out for the hazzards along the left and right of the fairways. Also pay attention to the fairway bunkers. All of these are traps to take away your valuable stokes.

Now that you have an idea where to hit the ball to not loose any strokes and to position yourself for a good approach shot you are ready to swing.

There are many websites and videos to help with hitting your driver. I would advice you to review those to improve your drives and get your ball in play off the tee more.

The Appoach

The appoach shot is basicly your second shot on a par 4 or your third shot on a par 5. Depending on your drive it could be any club from a 3 wood to a wedge.

This is where it is very important to know how far you can hit each of your clubs. Most of the average golfers get this distance wrong. Say if you hit your seven iron 150 yards with a nice shot. Now when you are 150 out you reach for your seven iron and come up 20 yards short of the green. What went wrong? As golfers we measure ourselfs by our best shots not our average shots. In reality we only hit 1 out of 5 seven iron shots to 150 yards. The average would most likely be around 160 and 120 - 140 on the bad shots. Adjust for 10 yards less distance and you will find more greens.

Learn more about appoach shots and strategies around the green in the websites and videos section.

The Putt

You heard the saying, Drive for Show, Putt for Dough!

Putting can cost you many strokes during a round very quickly if you can't control your distance and speed of your putts.

Your goal is to two putt or less on every hole. In order to do this you must work on your putting distance, speed and accuracy. The way to get better at this is to practice 3 to 5 foot puts with various breaks. Once you can get most of those then you want to work on your distance and speed control. The best way to do this is to work on long putts from all over the green at different distances with the goal of getting 3 to 5 feet from the hole. Once you can do that you will be getting a lot more 1 and 2 putts.

There are also many putting drills listed on websites and videos section.