⌚9 Minute Read
Introduction
Well, this is a tough one to write as I’ve only broken 70 a handful of times. If you are a recreational player that doesn’t get to practice much because of other obligations on your time, it's really hard to break 70. It is always going to come down to consistency for us normal players. We’ve got to know where the ball is going to go and know how to score. You have to hit your shots, be patient, and make your putts. The short game also needs to be top-notch, gotta get up and down when you do miss your shots, and be ready to hit the hard shots. If you are at the point you are breaking par and want to move to breaking 70 more often, you are probably already pretty skilled. I won’t give a ton of small drills. Instead, these are mostly transfer practice drills there to help you score better.
Consistency
By now you all should know what I am going to say here. Do yourself a favor and go ahead and buy a CTRL Swing Master training aid so you can get way more consistent. With your CTRL Swing Master Training aid, you can set your baseline as strict as you want so that you can work on consistently hitting your best shot every single time. As I said earlier, you have to hit your shots, so being consistent is the best thing you can do for your game.
Driver
To go low, you have to hit your fairways. Hitting the fairway gives you the most control with your wedges and the most flat easy shots to hit into the green. It is really hard to hit the ball close out of the rough, no matter how light it is; it just brings a lot of guesswork into golf. It brings luck way too much into the equation. Instead of knowing the ball will fly X far, you have to guess if you will catch a flyer, how much it will roll out, and if the rough is going to grab the heel and force the face closed. There are a lot of things you have to worry about. I am having issues with the driver right now myself, I went out and built a new model with the driver, and I am going to use my CTRL Swing Master training aid to create a more consistent driver swing so that I know where the ball is going to go every single time.
Wedges
Wedges are your scoring clubs, you have to have control over your wedges. You need to know your yardages, and you need to be able to hit them. I recommend setting up a wedge matrix. Hit 10 shots with each wedge from half swing, 3-quarter swing, and full swing and get an average distance and get a feel for how far you hit each wedge. This can be difficult to do on a normal range, I recommend going to an indoor golf facility and messing around on their simulator to learn how far exactly you hit each of those shots. The other thing you can do to work on scoring is play random yardages. Hannah Gregg has a fantastic video about this, she sets up a random number generator and has her launch monitor at the range with her, and she goes ahead and hits the number generator and tries to hit a wedge shot exactly that far with each wedge. You can do a cheaper version of this by buying a ton of small cones and setting them every 5 yards from 30 yards to 100 yards on the range, and hitting the cones You should be able to dial in distances pretty well by doing this!
Chipping
The best chipping drill you can do, in my opinion, is the up-and-down drill. Take 1 ball, and try to get up and down from all over the green. This is a pretty fun drill and can be as challenging as you make it. The best way to get the most out of this drill is to segment it out with different wedges. Use your lob wedge for shots you would use it for on the course. Same with the sand wedge, your 52 or 50 degrees, and with your pitching wedge. In my opinion, this is hands down the best way to get your chipping into good shape. You can also use your irons and hybrids if you chip with those.
Putting
Putting is the most important part of scoring. It doesn’t matter if you hit a wedge to 10 feet if you miss the putt. The best drills you can do for putting have been mostly detailed in previous posts, so let's talk about the scoring putting drills that you can do. The first one is the under-par drill. Set a tee for your par putts 4 ft above and below the hole. Then set your birdie putts 12 feet to the right and left of the hole. This means you get a downhill par putt, an uphill par putt, a right-to-left birdie putt, and a left-to-right birdie putt, so you get to work on a little bit of everything. The goal is to go around the tees hitting putts and trying to get to 10 under. Stop after 30 minutes as you will start to lose focus, and then you are only hurting yourself. The next putting drill is just 18 hole putting game. You are trying to lag putt it close, and then make the putt. 2 putts is a par, and 1 putt is a birdie. Give yourself several birdie putts and several hard lag putts. A great way to do this is to set up a random number generator from 8 to 60, shorter if your putting green isn’t that long. Hit the generator, and go ahead and putt it from that distance out for 18 holes. The goal is, of course, to be under par. If you are over par, you failed that drill. This will get you really good at lag putting and eliminate those terrible 3 putts.
Conclusion
Breaking 70 is hard, and you won’t ever do it every single time you go out. If you get your scoring average under 70, you are a pretty elite player and should probably be playing in some amateur tournaments and challenging yourself even more. Scoring that low takes a lot of work and upkeep for your game. You can’t just practice here and there. You have to work on your game every week. Most importantly, let CTRL help you to get there!
