01 Where strokes actually go
Before choosing what to work on, it helps to know how the scoring gap is distributed. The strokes gained framework developed by Mark Broadie, a Columbia Business School professor, compares every shot with the average number of strokes taken from the same distance and lie. Applied to the gap between tour professionals and amateur golfers, his published analysis attributes roughly forty per cent of the difference to approach shots, about twenty-eight per cent to driving, and the remainder, a little over thirty per cent in total, to the short game and putting combined.
Two things follow. The long game matters more than the old saying about driving for show suggests, because approach play and driving together account for around two thirds of the gap. And putting, while it will never be the largest share, is the cheapest place to stop bleeding: a three-putt is a whole stroke lost inside twenty yards, and it is a distance problem, not a stroke mechanics problem.
02 Full swing
One chapter, and it is the foundation for the rest of the section. Read it before any lesson, because it gives you the vocabulary to describe what your ball is doing instead of guessing at what your body did.
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Ball flight laws: face angle, club path and why the ball curves
The two measurements that decide every shot, the nine flight patterns they produce, what an off-centre strike adds through gear effect, and how to diagnose your own slice from the ball alone.
- 11 min
- Diagram and flight table
- Glossary of six terms
03 Around the green
Inside fifty yards the design of the club sole does most of the work, and the single decision that matters is where the ball lands, not where it finishes. This chapter treats chipping, pitching and bunker play as one family of shots with one setup and three different amounts of loft.
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Chipping, pitching and bunkers: bounce, landing spot, low point
What the bounce angle on a wedge actually is, when high and low bounce help, carry and roll ratios by club, and why the club never touches the ball from sand.
- 10 min
- Carry and roll table
- Three drills
04 On the green
Speed governs break, so a putt read perfectly and struck at the wrong pace misses on the wrong side. This chapter starts from green speed, explains what a Stimpmeter measures, and gives make rates by distance so you know which putts are genuinely makeable and which ones are a two-putt exercise.
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Putting: distance control first, line second
Green speed and what it does to break, published make rates by distance, the last three feet of a putt, and two drills that work on a carpet when the course is shut.
- 9 min
- Make rate table
- Indoor drills
05 Practice
The fourth chapter is the one that decides whether the first three ever reach a scorecard. It deals with how a session is arranged rather than what is in it, which turns out to matter more than most golfers expect.
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Practice that transfers: how to structure a range session
Why blocked repetition flatters you, what the research on contextual interference actually found, a session built in three blocks, how much feedback to take, and three games that measure whether any of it is reaching the course.
- 9 min
- Three block session
- Scored practice games
06 A practice week in three hours
Three sessions, an hour each, spread across a week. The order matters: strike first, because everything else is built on it, then the short game, then speed on the greens.
- Session one, strike and start line. Twenty minutes of half swings with a seven iron, checking that the divot starts in front of the ball. Then thirty balls through a gate of two tees set just wider than the club head, watching only where the ball starts.
- Session two, the fifty yards in. Ten chips with a pitching wedge to a landing spot marked with a towel, then ten with a sand wedge to the same spot. Finish with ten bunker shots aiming to take the same sized divot of sand every time.
- Session three, speed. Three balls from thirty feet, then forty, then fifty, with the only goal being to finish past the hole but inside a club length. Count how many finish short: that number is your real putting problem.
Caddie note
Practice that looks worse than usual while you are doing it is often the practice that transfers. Hitting the same club to the same target thirty times in a row feels productive and rarely survives contact with a golf course, where you never get the same shot twice. The reasoning behind that, and the evidence for it, is set out in the chapter on practice.