Are you looking for an extreme way to improve shooting? A great coach has a bold move
Scottie Scheffler watches his ball approach the water during the 2021 WGC-Match Play.
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Don't play with fire, Jack Nicklaus told Nick Faldo a few years ago on national television.
Stay out of trouble, the 16-time major winner argued.
The conversation started with Billy Horschel on the 186-yard, par-3 16th at Muirfield Village. His pin that day, during the third round of the 2022 Memorial, was cut 12 feet from the left fairway (and 39 feet from the front), and the remaining few feet of the hole was a lake. The question is whether Horschel, who is right-handed, has to flirt with the water to try to get his ball closer. Or play away with a drink.
Jack?
“I will be playing in the middle of the green,” said Nicklaus, the tournament manager and founder of the course. “I was going to let the ball swing a little to the left. But I don't think you should play left to right there.”
“Why don't you hide it there, Jack?” asked Faldo, a former CBS analyst. “I would have thought that was a stoppage. one yard.”
“I never put the ball in trouble,” said Nicklaus. “Time.”
“Don't try to direct the ball into trouble,” said Faldo.
“Don't ever direct the ball into trouble,” said Nicklaus. “Don't try to direct the ball out of bounds. Do not direct the ball into the pool. You always aim away from it. And if you have to play towards it, make sure you can't connect it enough to get there or make sure you can't fade enough to get there.”
But what about focusing on the problem – improving the composition of the gun?
The thought came up during a lesson recently between my friend Josh, who was on the verge of giving up golf due to various swing ailments, and Kelan McDonagh, director of instruction at Metedeconk National Golf Club in Jackson Township, NJ. – and the guide I had enlisted to try to help Josh. At one point, as part of a drill, McDonagh made Josh walk on purpose, and that led to this back-and-forth between the coach and a curious golf reporter (my thoughts are in italics):
“Perhaps this is because golf is a strange sport – [but] why is it easier to say, okay, I'm going to hook this ball on purpose, I'm going to go with this ball on purpose — instead of, I'm going to go straight for this ball on purpose? Why is that? Is that just because it's a bad game and we should all be playing another game?”
“Yeah,” said McDonagh, “it's probably just the way the human brain works.”
“That's right, that's right.”
“Since we're standing in the hole where the right cutoff is,” McDonagh continued, “chances are if you tell yourself you're going to hit it there, you're probably going to hit it there.” Although if you stand in a hole where there is no problem left or right, you probably go down the middle.”
Through the exercises he learned as a child, McDonagh then told me how he refined his game.
He headed for trouble, then shot back to safety.
“But it's funny,” said McDonagh, “growing up in Ireland, I was in the Irish team for a number of years and we were coached by Neil Manchip, who looks after Shane Lowry, and Neil was unbelievable and he's still doing it. this day is obvious because he found Shane to be one of the best players in the world in terms of psychology. So we'd like to go down different holes in tournaments or practice or away weekends or whatever, and he can match, aim and hit it out of bounds – but not out of bounds. So you had to head over there and swing at it, but you weren't allowed to hit it there.
“So your brain will find a way to put the ball back in play without saying, 'It's out of bounds down the left, don't hit it there.' You're like, go ahead and direct your body, but don't hit it there. So you made us move the ball left to right, right to left, up, down. In those days, we weren't allowed to play with anything less than a 5-iron, 3-iron, 3-wood, driver, and we had to go play nine holes and see how we hit. Different ways to trick your mind when you're trying to find out – because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how it gets there, you're trying to get it in the hole.
“It's not just hitting it straight. I don't teach people to hit it straight. I want them to get some sort of repetitive, consistent ball flight. Now rare times it ends up straightening out a bit, but for me, it's been fading; for my brother, it's a drag. It's different for everyone. It's just kind of owning that, to be honest, kind of what your body wants and taking it from there.”
The desperate golfer was ready to give up. We set out to save him
Nick Piastowski
Of course, to start McDonagh's drill, one must bring a few extra golf balls.
We'll wrap things up here by going back to targeting problems in real time – and the mindset of doing it. A GOLF.com piece, written shortly after the Nicklaus-Faldo interview, states:
One of the men Faldo mentioned in his interview was the famous Ben Hogan, who would use the ball in trouble. So, if it was out of bounds to the left and the safety to the right of it, Hogan would point right at it and hit a fade back to the safety. In his mind this will help him commit to hitting – after all if you need to hit the ball to the right, you will probably hit the ball to the right. And even if you intend to fade and hit a big slice, you're still safe.
But while experts often rely on conventional advice, many end up using a hybrid model. They work for the ball in trouble, but they will often choose to do the opposite for two reasons.
The first is perhaps the most common: It depends on what the wind is doing. If, using the example of Muirfield's 16th hole above, the wind is blowing strongly from right to left towards the water, hitting the drive can have the effect of riding the wind and sailing out of control into the lake. The pros, in this case, will often choose to hit the cut and return to it, so their ball fights the wind and ends up flying straight.
Another reason that experts may ignore a book about this is what Faldo was referring to: When the image that that convention suggests, simply, it doesn't match their eye. The best recent example came in 6th hole on [2022] The PGA Championship where Rory McIlroyamong other things, he aimed out of bounds and hit a superb dogleg-left par-5.
“I'm more comfortable hitting driver left to right at that moment,” Rory said of the 6th hole. “I feel like my body is working better; I can be aggressive about my body. The body does not stand still and the arms move. Some of that right-to-left wind today off the tee was fun because I was able to direct the driver up the middle of the fairway, hit it like I was holding the wind.
This approach is becoming more and more common on Tour these days, and you'll often see it where players have one favorite shot that they try to hit whenever possible. For example, Hogan was a famous golfer, so it makes sense that he felt comfortable focusing on the problem and hitting his signature finish and taking his ball away from it.
As for what you should use? Only you can answer that. But think about what your favorite shooting situation is, think about what you missed – do your small fades often turn into pieces or pulls? – and the element in the air. Once you've done that, it's time to stop thinking, and start swinging. No matter which method you choose, the key is to swing with confidence. After all, even the 'right' gun is wrong if you don't believe in it.
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