Getting Ready For The New Season

PGA Advanced Fellow Professional Ian Clark explains how we can start to dust off the cobwebs after a long winter and hit the ground running for the year ahead.

1) Do something golfy every day

This doesn’t have to be grabbing a club and hitting balls into a net so, while the kettle is boiling, just get into your posture, cross your arms over your chest and just rehearse some backswings and pivots. I always say to people that 1% of your day is 14 minutes so spend 1% of your day working on your golf. If you think about it in those terms, just 14 minutes, you can do it. If you want you can split this into two seven-minute segments. So we all have time to be doing something on our golf swing. If you can get in front of a mirror can you just rehearse some swings. You don’t need a golf club, just do something golfy. 

2) The wall drill

If you position your heels so that they are approximately a clubhead away from the wall, stand up nice and tall and simply bend forward from the hips until your backside taps the wall. That is pretty much enough forward flexion and then add a tiny flex in the knees. Most people bend their knees too much and the backside goes too far behind them. It is really important not to bend your knees and your arms then just sort of hang naturally straight down. By doing that it makes you curl toes up. If you are a player who has historically had your backside too far back and you have been pegged into your heels, when you set up correctly you feel like you will almost topple towards the ball. And then just make practice swings, keeping your toes curled up, and your weight should never go out towards the toes until after impact.

3) Go back to putting basics

An easy one to practise is the gate drill – where you make a gate for the putter with two tees in the ground. They need to provide just enough room to swing the putter head through without clipping the tees. Strike point on putter face is key and, if you have a 10-foot putt, and that putter face is more than one degree out, left or right, it is missing. So if you are hitting it off the toe or the heel, you are getting a little bit of twist on that face and you'll miss the putt. I think that a lot of important putts are missed because the strike is so bad.

Watch Tiger on tiktok here for inspiration

5) Make the most of the range

Most ranges now have got some way of measuring what the ball is doing. Focus on your pitch shots - if an 18-handicapper can hit the green one or two more times with a wedge shot, that will be a big shot saver. A lot of golfers are not very good on these less than full swings because you have to try and control swing length, tempo and the strike. They are your three variables. On the range I would count out five balls and, with the five shots, can you get the launch angle pretty much the same within, say, plus or minus three degrees? And can you get the ball speed the same? That is really important. If the ball speed with one ball comes out at 70mph and the next one comes out at 85mph, then you have got a problem. So focus on your swing length and tempo.

6) Mix things up on the course

A good reintroduction is to play off the front tees. The courses in the UK are all wet and this just gives you a gentler way of playing the course and gives you a lot more shorter irons. Another great game, but for a very different reason, is to play a worst ball Scramble when playing on your own. So, if you really want to test your skills and your mental game then try this. Take two balls and play the worst shot, so like a normal Scramble, but play the worst of your two shots. In his absolute prime Nick Faldo reckoned that he could shoot level par doing this. It is a brilliant game but you might only want to do it for six holes. And it is great for putting. You might hole the first one from 20 feet but the chances are that it's not going to count.

7) The par-3 course

If you are playing on your own a great game is to drop a ball down when you are 70 yards out from the green and basically play another hole within a hole. See how many pars can you make? Try this for nine holes and see if you can play to level par. Most people think that they can but the reality is a good eye-opener for what you need to work on if you do it truly and properly. I even have some students who have got their own little scorecards for this one particular exercise. So they have the normal course scorecard and then they have another just stapled to the card so they can keep count on that one as well.