This summer I had the opportunity to caddie for one of my juniors who was trying to qualify for the United States Junior Championship. I was impressed with her ability to stay in the present. She was able to focus on every individual shot and not get ahead of herself or worry about mistakes on past holes. 

When we finished the round, I put the flag stick back in the hole and shook hands with her playing partners. I then went over to hug my player and she asked me: "Do you know what I shot?" A huge smile came on my face. Not because she had shot 1 over on a tricky course, but because she truly had no idea. She was not thinking about her score. She was simply treating golf as a series of individual shots and then adding them up at the end. Those individual shots added up to a medalist finish and a trip to the United States Junior Championship. 

Let's say you are on a par 5 and can't quite get to the green in two. Should you lay up to your favorite yardage or should you try to get it as close as possible to the hole? Your choice should be the latter and the statistics prove it. Statistics show that the closer you get to a hole, the fewer shots it takes to get it in. You can read more about this in Mark Broadie's book, Every Shot Counts. 

Of course this strategy changes if there is a hazard or the flag is in a particular placement that is not as accessible if you lay up too close. But as a general rule, get it as close as you can!

Before the advent of video, Trackman, and other amazing new technologies, golfers used to change their swings by hitting different shots. Sam Snead used to say that if he was hooking it on the course, he would come back to the range and slice it for a while until he neutralized his ball flight. Ben Hogan's swing is one of the most often copied and he did not use video to make changes. He experimented with feels and hit balls to prove himself right or wrong. 

I think technology is amazing and makes diagnosing swing much faster and easier but lets look at this from the player's point of view. You are out there all by yourself when you are playing. Their is no coach, video camera, or indoor instruction studio. It's just you and your ball flight. You need to understand how to hit different shots. I call it playing tic, tack, toe. There are 9 ball flights. There is a hook, a straight ball, and a slice. There is a low, medium, and high trajectory version of each of the aforementioned. The cool thing is that you can use different shots to neutralize you ball flight. For example, if you are hitting high hooks, you should hit some low fades. During this process, you are going to find the center square. Now you have learned the feel for a medium trajectory straight ball.

Let's stick with the theme that simpler is better. My friend, and out of the box thinker,  Chuck Hogan once told me that golf is just a dot to dot game. There is a dot on the sweet spot, a dot on the back of the ball and the third dot is the target. Now lets play dot to dot! Forget about angles, planes, lag and ground reaction forces for a second. (Let me worry about that) Just connect the dots! Sometimes I will use a dry erase pen to put a mark on the ball. I then have the student hit the ball and see if he can mark the sweet spot. We can then see where on the clubface he is striking the ball. It's amazing how the brain can self correct with this simple piece of information. Enjoy the mental break!