Playing good golf to start the season is a goal for everyone. Even if you’re trying to figure out your swing, you can play better golf immediately by improving your strategy and approach on every hole.
In last week’s column, we discussed taking more club to hit into the green. It’s springtime, courses are soft and your swing isn’t warmed up yet. If you add 10 yards to the yardage and pick a club for that yardage, you improve your overall chances of getting the ball near the hole. A good shot may go a touch long, but a poor shot will still be on or near the green.
This week, let’s talk about our tee shots and how to improve our odds of hitting the fairway.
Most golfers look out to the fairway, assess the trouble on both sides of the hole and pick the center as an aiming point. Makes sense; hitting the center of the fairway is a reasonable goal. However, you must account for the shape of your ball flight and the direction of a misfired shot.
If you’re a right-handed golfer and your most common ball flight is a slice, or left to right, and you aim for the center of the fairway, you are essentially reducing the size of the fairway by not accounting for the shape of your ball flight. A ball that begins its flight toward the center of the fairway and then curves away only has half the fairway to land on. You are not making it easy on yourself.
Improve your odds of hitting the fairway by accounting for the shape of your ball flight and your most common miss with your driver. If the fairway is framed by a bunker on each side, then aim for the one of the left and let the natural shape of your ball flight take you to the center. This will allow some wiggle room in case you were to miss big and hit the ball farther right than normal by leaving some room for your ball to land.
Also, where you set the ball up on the tee box will help support your natural ball flight and improve the odds of hitting the center of the fairway.
Golfers who hit the ball with a left-to-right shape will benefit from teeing the ball on the right side of the teeing ground on some holes. Conversely, golfers who hit the ball with a right-to-left flight will benefit from teeing the ball on the left side of the teeing ground.
Along the same lines, always hit away from the trouble. If there is trouble on the right side of a hole, a player who hits the ball left to right will need to use the right side of the tee marker and aim left to allow for the curvature back to the middle of the fairway.
By teeing your ball on the side of the marker that will best support your ball flight, it will open up the line of flight for you to aim correctly as well as give you more room to start the ball on the line of flight you need to then allow for your curvature.
While you may not be hitting the ball in the midseason form yet, there’s no reason you can’t be thinking and setting strategy like a pro. Think better, aim better, play better.
Peter Harris is the director of Golf at the Fore-U Golf Center in West Lebanon. His column appears weekly in the Recreation page during the golf season.