Taking Your A+ Game from the Range to the Course with Ken Doherty

Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty three, originally published on July first, twenty fourteen.

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It's not just the clubhead to me, it's their hands. Very often when they're swinging, their hands are stopping at the ball, and that snaps that clubhead ahead. You'll hit behind the ball, that you can hook the ball. There's many unfortunate things that can happen on your handstop. So I want somebody to take their hands as they're hitting the ball and to swing their hands out to the target so that ensures that their hands stay forward. We don't want to hit at the ball, like you said,

And I've also used this opposite effect.

People want to get the ball in the air, so what they do is they try to flip their hands, they stay behind the ball, they fall away. I've told people, I want you to hit this ball as low as possible, drill it five feet off the ground, and they've made perfect golf shots that go exactly the height they're supposed to, and they hit them crisply. When somebody tries to hit the ball low, they instinctively know, Okay, I've got to

That's how you hit a golf ball.

How to take your a game from the range to the course With Ken Doherty.

This is Golf Smarter.

Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Ken. Thank you, it's great to have you back on the show. It's great to have you back on the studio. I appreciate also let people know you and I recently did a video together that's on the golf Smarter YouTube page golf

Yeah, what we did applies to every golf course, every single golf course.

Absolutely. I mean I now since I feel like, okay, this is how you put a rake back in the bunker. You know, some people just throw them there, they're in the bunker, they're sitting on the side. No, we put it down with the handle sticking out.

Well, there are different rules when it comes to that for different clubs. Some like them in, some like them out. So some like the head in with a handle out. That's how we do it, but there are different rules for there. But as far as fixing a ball mark and raking the bunker and things like that, they're pretty standard.

And I still go back to my number one rule that everyone should be following, which is spend more time cleaning up divots on the green than looking for lost balls.

Yeah if only, Yeah, okay, I guess so.

But today I wanted to talk about taking your a game. How do we take our a game from the driving range to the golf course? And you and I were having a conversation about this once and you mentioned that it's a very different type of golf on the range because of the balls, your mindset, things like that, and I thought it was worth pursuing because there's some tidbits in there that someone's gonna be able to walk away with going, Okay, I'm going to be a better player because of that.

Yeah.

I don't even know where to begin. I mean, there's so many variables when it comes to all right, let me let me throw one out on the range. The balls, yeah, well let's start with that. In most cases, they're very different. They're not the quality of the golf ball you use

Out well, I would tend to I don't know if I'm gonna disagree with you on this, but where are you going to learn how far you hit each club? It's really hard to do on the golf course because you need to know. It's one of the things that I'm having with my right now is like he's really complaining he's not very good, and I said, well, learn how far you hit each club? You don't know. You're asking me if I had a five iron here. I don't know how far do you hit a five iron? You know?

Yeah, I think you can do some of that on the range, but to be exact and know exactly how you hit it. I will tell somebody to go out in the late evening when nobody's around, and if you're not quite sure how far your clubs go, or how far your seven iron goes, or whatever the club you're you're looking to find out, take three or four golf balls from certain distances and hit them to the green using you know, your GPS or whatever device you have

That's fine for country clubs.

Yeah, you're right, you're right. It's not an easy task. You're right.

No, So is there a way? Well, should we basically assume that every course is using low compression golf balls on the range? Not necessarily, So how do we find so we need to find that out before we even start hitting balls from them.

Well, it's not just low compression. I don't think a lot of people use the the limited flight golf.

Balls as we do.

Yeah, I meant limited flight.

But there's also range ball differences from from your average golf balls. Some some country clubs use brand new titleists or brand new callaways for their range balls. They might have a stripe around them, but they're actual golf balls. To me, that's realistic. But how many of those practice on the Yeah, if they say practice, you know they're they're they're not the quality of a golf ball you're gonna be playing on the golf course.

So how are we able to compute that? When we're like, Okay, good, I'm hitting these limited range, limited flight balls. I'm hitting at one hundred and fifty yards with my six iron. How do I say, okay, So that means with my pro V one X, my pro V one, my Dixon Earth Dixon wind ball, how much more is that gonna fly? How do we figure that out?

How do we I don't think you can do it exactly. And let's just say you've got a bucket of brand new range balls. Well, then you can have some idea, maybe calculate ten percent or whatever.

You're not going to get exact.

But the problem with with with most ranges is you've got some old golf balls, you've got some new golf balls. They're not going to fly the same. I've hit two shots that I thought that were the same. One falls out of the sky and the other one sails. That's too inconsistent for me to to be concerned about how far that ball's going.

Hmm.

It's a real tough one because that's the first place in the uh in the golf course where you definitely see a difference. Like I was hitting that one a you know, like all day long, I can hit it, so I know that for me, what I'll what I'll tend to do is with a bucket that has mixed balls of old and new, and you eats pretty obvious which they are a lot older and which ones are a lot newer, just by the shining, because they don't really clean them that well, just get the dirt off

Better way to practice, actually because you want to You want to practice how far you hit the golf ball. There's a lot of people that are they look at the flag stick, and then there's others that are very good at chipping and pitching and they pick at location to land the ball. And picking a location to land the ball and having a lamb. There is very important.

Target oriented golf. So let let's talk about that. Okay, Well, I'm glad that I'm doing something right. The thing that's hard to figure out then is how long is it going to roll? You know, depending on But when we talked to Dave Stockton a while ago, he said that it's for him, it's all about is it a low shot or is it a high shot?

And that's how I describe them as well. If I'm teaching that, you know, people get confused with different shots and chip pitch, whatever you call them. It's a high ball or a low ball, and you know, the low ball is the one you want to hit as much as you can, and the green's going to tell you or the surrounding area is going to tell you whether you need to hit a high ball, and I think you should be hitting the high ball only when forced.

Two.

You're a big proponent of keeping the ball on the ground as long as possible.

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, Not only do I believe people are

Yeah, And I've definitely taken to that idea and really worked on do I need to hit a high shot or a low shot here? Okay, there's a you know, there's a sprinkler head there if I just need to get over that, all right, So I'm gonna have to go a little higher, obviously, but I just want to get over it, or there's a bunker in the way, or the pin is close to the side of the green I'm on. Obviously, you don't want the ball to roll a lot. You want to just kind of let it land softly and stop.

There are some people that are one club chip pitchers and they use just their sandwedge or whatever it is, and.

If they're good at it, God bless them. Good good.

But if you know, if you are struggling or you occasionally miss one pretty badly, you probably shouldn't be using that unless you're forced to.

Actually, there's a video that I put on our members site from Tony Manzoni a great tip about keeping it on the ground that when you're on the fringe or just off the fringe on the green. He has this tip and I've been using it and I cannot believe how close I've been getting to the pin with these. I take the eight iron and I use it like a putter, but I stand it on the toe.

Yeah, toe down, absolutely, and just use.

A putting motion.

Now.

Absolutely, people are like, how'd you do that? It's like, it's not that hard. And what's funny to watch when I show people when I learned with this is putting it on the toe. It makes them very uncomfortable. Yeah, people do not like to do that. Yeah, my friends don't at least.

Yeah.

I saw somebody using that method thirty years ago and he was very consistent with it. Now, it's not one where you want to you're going to hit it a long chip. I think that most of the time you're going to use that method, you're fairly close because the ball doesn't come off hot. It comes off kind of dead, which is kind of nice. The ball doesn't get away from you.

Yeah, and it feels like a putter roll. Yeah, once it gets going. And I've never done it where the ball was in the air. And when I say in the air about six inches off the ground, I've never done it where the ball is in the air from more than four maybe.

Five feet exactly.

And I have a friend who likes to use his hybrid to do that and just get over.

But that ball, that's perfect. When you're immediately around the green, around that fringe area, right.

The ball explodes off the face of the hybrid.

Well, that's true.

I mean it's a very different stroke than a putting stroke at that point because it just it goes really fast and I'm really good at going in other directions. So back to the driving range and the difference between. All right, so we started with balls, so there's really no way of knowing you know, what kind of balls they use. You can ask, but you're really not going

I mean, it's going to be less curvature with a ball that doesn't have any dimples. So it's you know, I a lot of times ago it depends on the golf balls. But if they're not very good to me, that's just stretching an exercise more than practice.

So work on your short game with those bat absolutely, yeah, okay, all right, so just no way to know. So and I'm surprised that you took away the yardage things. I would.

Well think about it.

If I've got range balls that are fifteen anywhere from ten to fifteen percent less plus, we're hitting a little uphill.

Right, you're hitting up hills.

You've got somebody who normally hits a seven iron, and I'll just throw a figure out there. One hundred and forty five yards and now they're hitting it one hundred and thirty five yards and coming to me wondering, you know, or they're misjudging when they're going to the golf course and vice versa. It's just it's not a good representation of what they're actually doing. So I don't want to give them any false advertisement and believe it or not.

No one else, really, two people.

That's it really, So it's not that big of an issue. Now, what is the issue that comes back to you? What are the members come back to you with this? I'm having an issue with the driving range.

Well, it's what we're going to talk about today.

Is I hit the ball great on the driving range, but I can't take it to the golf course.

All right, Well, before we get there, how about the difference between hitting off of mats versus hitting off of grass.

Mats are very forgiving, and again it's not a true test of compression, and where you're hitting on the ground, you can hit behind the ball on a mat and get away with it right.

You can hit the ground first exactly and you're going to get a good stroke off against Yeah.

Yeah again, I much prefer as most players probably prefer to be off the grass because there's a true test versus the mats, that's for sure.

And some mats are very different. I mean, you guys have really nice cushiony mats that I mean they don't even the bottom of the bottom of your clubs don't turn green on those.

Well yeah, yeah, And I'll tell you what, if you want to give a lesson and have it be successful, put them on the mats.

Oh that was it. We'll get to the lesson in a minute, all right. So let's let's see how we can take our a game from the course, from the from the range to the course. How do we take our a game when we just leaving the range going oh, I feel great today, and then it just doesn't pan out.

Well. Most people that hit driving range balls don't have a care in the world. They're free, they let it fly, there's no penalty, there's no score. They've got a whole bucket of golf balls to hit, and they swing freely, and I mean mind. And when you go to the golf course, that's a very different scenario there. It's one ball, one hole, one score, and so on. So we tend to get a little bit tighter, we tend to steer

Would you recommend if you feel that tension, if you know well, you know the other thing at the driving range is that you have multiple swings. I mean, you know, it's like, Okay, I just took three swings and one of them was worked. I'm ready to go.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know it's like get three in a row.

You don't get a second serve, do you know?

You know I'm a second swing all American is what we will.

Well, you can go back, we can go right into how many times do you take a second put or second swing and you hit it very well. That's because it doesn't mean anything, So you're relaxed and you let it fly, and that should give you some information about what you should do. On the first one, we do get too tense and swing too tightly and steer it, and we're much freer on the second one when it

And it's is that, like people say, play like a little kid.

Yeah. Absolutely. When you're young, you're fearless and you let it fly. And when we're old, our mind moves a lot more, and different experiences make us think differently as we go on, and it makes a big difference.

Well, a couple of shows back Jim Waldron of Balance Point Golf School, and I hate to be name dropping, but this is my show, so I will. But Jim talked about on putting and this was a huge one for me. He says, the keys to putting are confidence and positive indifference. And I think that's basically what you're saying, the positive indifference.

Like Okay, I'm good, that's interesting, and if.

It doesn't go in, I'm okay, Yeah, I'll let it go, you know, just pull back and let it's okay and stop overthinking it and worrying about something.

But life for life for death on the golf course and it's not at the range around the putting green. It makes a big difference. Tension and what our minds go through makes a big difference. And there's a whole different mindset on that golf course than there is at the rain in practicing.

Stop playing for money.

Or be able to put your mind in the right place while you're playing for money.

Yeah, you know, so you're saying, there's so much. It's such a mental element there is.

And there was a gentleman that came about a year ago at our club and he had a laptop computer, and he hooked me and another member up to this device where he put something on our head and it measured electrodes and all this stuff. And this program he had made a certain sound when you were thinking too much, when you were swinging the club, and it was a it was a tone, a long tone, and then it would change to a different tone if your mind was clear.

I pick a target. So I was on the range.

I picked home at the end of the range, a specific window, and I looked at it, studied it, and I swung at it.

So my mind was free. It was clear.

And you know, there's many ways of you know, there's books out there and so on, but this actually measured something in your head that had your mind scrambled over mechanics or it was clear and let you be free.

And I believe in that.

I really do that if you are too cluttered with mechanics and stress and so on, and all the thoughts are at the front of your mind, I think you're going to struggle.

Then let's talk about the pre shot routine and how that can help you clear your mind.

Yes, well, pre shot routines are very good because it's familiarity. So when you're familiar with your surroundings, you have more confidence. So that's one of the reasons why good players always have a.

Pre shot routine.

So if it's in the masters or hitting range balls, they have a familiarity with every single movement. A lot of the average golfers don't do that. They don't have the same movements every time. Uh, so there's less familiarity. So preshot routines I think are very important because it's a set arrangement and they do not deviate no matter the golf course, right or situation.

Right. A lot of the a lot of the range activity is a lot of sweep and swing and sweep and swing and sweep and swing.

Right, we become machine guns. Yeah right, Yeah, there's no there's not much quality there. It's more what do you learn from that.

I mean, how what where's the takeaway on that that you're feeling looser, that you've gotten your swings in and you're ready to go.

It's exercise, that's you know, that to me is what it is mostly. And you go back to what Jack Jack Nicholas said he never hit a shot even on the range that he didn't make countract a purpose absolutely every single swing. I don't know many people that do that, Yeah, including yours, true, you know, I you know, I get up and just start swinging before you know, you go, whoa slow down, you know, think about this walk away, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. I've also noticed for myself, I've been struggling with three putts lately, and the third putt being inside of five feet and that just kills me that I'm that I'm doing that. But I've recognized that that's because I walk up to it go yeah, I got it, and I just like, if I go it's a good. No, it's not good, but you know you got to put

Yeah, you know dif versus thirty eight. Yeah.

And when you struggle in an area like you might struggle in those short puts, we tend to get more tense, but we tend to rush them too.

Right things get them over quickly.

So by you doing going into your pre shot routine and taking that deep breath and taking your time, I'll guarantee it helped.

And tell me about your pre shot routine. Walk us through it.

Boy, that's why I stink. I don't I don't you know.

I probably have a pre shot routine, but I don't think about it. It's not conscious. I probably do the same thing every single time.

But do you teach a pre shot routine?

Depends on who it is. It depends on who it is.

If I see somebody who's in a big hurry, I will start to tell them, Okay, I want you to go. I want you to back away from the ball. I want you to look at your target. I want you to step into it and try to develop that pre shot routine. But most lessons, no, I don't know of many lessons that are that you teach a pre shot routine.

I think, you know, depends on what your goal is.

If you've got somebody that's you know, later on in life, I think that they've played golf for a long time, and you know, if you want to get to a certain level in golf playing very well and you start out young, I think it's good to start with a pre shat routine.

Of the players that are at the country club that you're at, do you think people mostly go to the range play, go to the range play? Or are there people you see a significant number, a noticeable number of people who go to the range go home? I mean they just come there just to be working on the range or is it always just a warm up to get out there.

Well, the mornings, that's when you see people just coming up to warm up and hit balls to go play. It's the afternoon that you see people will come out just to practice and camp out over that basket of golf balls. That doesn't usually happen in the morning. So there's two different you know, two different times of the day when I see people out on the range in the afternoon, they're out there practicing and they're there for a purpose. When I see people in the morning, they're

When we talked about on the preshot routine, the word that comes up a lot in mechanics and things is tempo. But the pre shot routine has its own tempo, right, has its own rhythm. I guess this is a rhythm versus a tempo, and getting into a solid rhythm, a solid tempo all the way across can really help.

Well.

Yeah, and I think everybody has.

I I'll watch somebody's golf swing and how they are, and I'll and I'll actually be able to tell whether they're a type, a personality or something like that. And I think that if you are, if that blood rushes through your veins very quickly, that's not really conducive to a very smooth tempo in your golf swing. It's going to be very aggressive and very hard, and your pre shot might be might be quick if you probably don't even have a pre shot because you can't wait to

Well, it helps, It definitely does help. So one of the things that you know, I've been doing the show now, I'm in the ninth year of doing it, and I talk to a lot of people, and I've really developed a very strong I feel like I've developed a strong mental game and I understand corese strategy, which has really helped my game lately. But one of the things that I haven't done a lot of over these years is

Your mind was spending when we had that lesson, because it.

Well, I said, I mentioned to you we were doing something else was going on, and I mentioned, I said, I'm really playing the best golf of my life right now, but I'm struggling with my long irons. I'm either chunking the ball or hitting it way right. And he said, come on, let me take a look. And within four or five swings you saw exactly what was going on. And I've been developed that. And so the day after

Good for you, so thank.

You' notly you worked hard at it.

All I did was the range.

I've never gone to the range just to hit balls real since that. But I understood what you were having me do. So when I see the ballflight not doing what I was hoping it, I.

Now I now know why you need to leave in knowing the why. You absolutely need to know if your ball's curving or moving in a certain direction, you've got to know why it's doing that and what it's going to take you physically or mentally to make it change. And a lot of people they don't know that, and then they try. I always say, people tend to reach down in the grab bag and let me try this, let me try that, and very often it's not even

And there's a lot of people that don't know that.

Well, there's so many people on the golf course that just continue to do the same thing over and over and can't.

Figure they they play their mistakes or their faults. If they keep slicing it, they just aim farther left and they play their game.

Yeah. Yeah, they make the adjustments. And there's some people that have a quality game with all these flaws, but they've learned how to work it. So you just kind of step back and keep your mouth shut and going yeah.

And they're so used to playing their game that when you do make a change, like if you know the lesson we gave you, it can be very difficult to make that change because they feel like, hey, I'm playing okay the way I am. But when you make a change, invariably or very often, you can go backwards first.

Yeah, oh yeah, Well look at the tour. I mean, how many names can we give you guys who made swing changes and disappeared for a while. Yeah, hopefully they come back. Very few have ye, not all do, that's correct, and yeah, and then they just disappear and it's kind of scary. But one of the things that I also learned from you, and I think that gets missed is we were talking about when you're on the range, hitting the ball, hitting the ball. Hitting the ball is the goal.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I gave a lesson this morning and that was one of the things we talked about. This person was hitting at the ball. So you do things to have them swing. It's not just the clubhead. To me, it's their hands. Very often when they're swinging, their hands are stopping at the ball, and that snaps that clubhead ahead. You'll hit behind the ball. You can hook the ball. There's many unfortunate things that can happen when your handstop.

To the left. That's how you hit a golf ball.

I mean you want to accentuate that even further in some cases and move the ball back in your stance. And so I had to hit the ball low. But when you tell somebody who's been flipping their hands and falling away to try to hit it low, I can't tell you how many times it's actually had somebody hit the ball properly, and so even come out of a bunker. I'll say, every time you hit a bunker shot, I want you to try to hit it purposely.

Into the bank.

And now this doesn't apply to everybody, but to me, it applies for those that are hanging back or flipping and hitting behind the ball and then their club is rising before it even gets to the golf ball. Those are the people I want to try to hit it into the bank and follow through and that ball comes out every time.

Yeah, there was this last round and there was a couple of shots I had that were and I realized when I started thinking about it, oh, my hands are coming around to the left here, No wonder the ball is doing what it's doing as opposed to going through it and ending up facing the target.

Yeah, you know so.

And I think that one of the things that you you didn't really touch on, but you talk about when you talk to your teacher, and this is a big one that I've just learned. You got to find the right teacher. I've worked with a lot of people, I've talked to hundreds of coaches, but finding somebody who is articulate enough and has you can understand what you're doing and can communicate that with you in a way that

Well, there's some better than others, but clearly there's somebody for everybody. And I think that you know, you can be a very good instructor and just not communicate the way that fits them.

And I think you're right.

Whether it be a doctor or an instructor or whatever it is, Uh, you need to find somebody that you understand and they communicate how you know, how you need them to communicate.

And that you trust, and I means you build that trust and because of it, right now, like I said, I'm playing with more confidence. Yeah, and it's really apparent. That's like really at one point, I was standing behind the ball. I was about to take a shot and my eyes were closed and my friend like, I guess I was closed for a while, and he goes, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, I'm just trying to visualize what it's this swing's going to look like?

Good for you.

I just want to because like I've had a couple of bad swings in a row, and I just I need to know what it's supposed to look like on my body and visualized and went up and nailed it.

So good for you.

So thank you. You're welcome publicly. Thank you. I appreciate I'm having so much fun. So now my goal is to try to have and I've only done the three times this year, but try to get so I more rounds in the seventies than in the nineties.

That good for you.

And I'll tell you going back to the instructor, for all of you out there, you need to find somebody that you believe what they're saying. And I asked this question sometimes after a lesson, are you drinking the kool aid? And for those of us old enough to know what that means, it just means do you believe?

Yeah, it's a.

Terrible situation, but it's do you believe in what I'm saying, because if you don't, you're not going to change. You're not going to make this change that we need to. And so if you're not believing in that change, well then you need to find somebody else, or at least get that person to communicate it differently to see if you do understand and believe.

Well, that was something else that happened to me those first four or five rounds where I just was not doing anything right. But I was committed to making it work because I understood what you were trying to accomplish. And there were so many moments where I was going, you know what, I'm just going back to what I was doing before, I'm not to do this, but I stopped myself and I made right exactly exactly, And then they don't like the teacher, and it's really.

It's their comfort zone. Well, change is difficult. It just is.

Sometimes you can go to somebody and and say something and it it's a quick change and they tend to get it and move on. But then there's others that you know, the change is difficult to make and it's a commitment and it's very difficult. It's much easier to go back to your own swing, even if you know you're going to have those poor outcomes sometimes.

Well, I want to thank you once again for making time to be able to come over and have a conversation with me, because I really enjoy talking to you about this and you you, You and I can go on for a long time and hopefully we'll get these opportunities do so again. Thanks so much for coming.

Back my pleasure. Thank you so much,