10 Mistakes Stopping You Breaking 80 (as a 10-12 handicapper)

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My name is M to the Atti Boom Squared and I play with a lot of 10 handicapped golfers and I see the same things coming up time and time again. These are the 10 reasons that 10 handicappers don’t get into the single figures and one of the first ones is taking on the shot of the low handicap golfer. At a 10 handicap index, we’re playing pretty good golf, but we’re in this limbo. We’re between like break 80 and we’re breaking 90 quite a lot. So, we’re good, but we’re not great. And to get under 80, we can’t take on the shots of the low handicap trying to keep up. I see a lot of 10 handicappers trying to keep up, but you’re going to get slaughtered. Not by hitting the same shots as the low handicap, but by not understanding why they’re hitting those shots. The reason I’m hitting the line I’m hitting is cuz I can clear that dog leg very easily. A 10 handicapper, just shift your focus left. Give yourself a clear shot. Don’t bring the disaster into play cuz the disaster adds those little strokes little bit add up over time to keep you at the 10 handicap. A big reason I see 10 handicappers not breaking 80 is they’re playing to a specific distance. So if the pin is 120 yards here, they’re going 120. But the problem is it’s not always a great strike. We want to know the back edge and front edge distance. So instead of worrying only about 120, we’ve got 109 to 143 yards to play with. What club is going to fit between 109 and 143. That’s a 34 yard distance range. So you must have a club or two that fit inside there. And instead of getting focused on the pin, we can go at that distance range. So I’m going to hit my 48° here from 120. Not necessarily because it’s exactly the number, but it’s going to clear that pin. And if I don’t catch 100%, I’m right next to the pin. A big mistake 10 handicappers make is not playing enough. Now, of course, maybe you can’t get out there that often, and if you’re 10 handicap playing four times a month, you’re a pretty good damn golfer. You could be down in the low single digits. But if you really want to get much better, you have to play more. And not just driving range. I’m talking about on course. And when you don’t play enough, what happens is you don’t remember your club distances or you don’t hit the club distances as consistent. you you need to widen that distance range. You hit those clubs. So from 150, what do you hit? Let’s say six iron. Is that 150 number? Is it 140 to 160 or 135 to 155? Whatever it is, we can play to a distance range instead of just a number because we’re not playing often enough to have that consistent numbers that we’re hitting that club. So from this one, we have 150 pins in the middle. So, we’ve got basically 130 to to the front and like 170 to the back. So, we can fit a club in between 130 and 170. We talked about that with the GPS unit that you can get that right. But knowing the distance ranges is key. And as you play more, you’ll find the distance range will get tighter. So, instead of being a 30 yard distance range between your shortest and your longest shot, maybe you can squeeze that down to 15 yards. And that’s going to be absolutely money to help you get your handicap much lower. But that takes time and it takes a lot of practice on the golf course. [Music] [Music] A very very big thing that 10 handicappers do that prevent them from breaking 80 is looking up swing advice on the internet. This is very very harmful because at 10 handicap you have a pretty damn good swing. I can guarantee it’s going to be decision- making, club selection, and a few targeting things, you know, with your aiming that are holding you back. Looking for swing advice in generic places gets you generic results. You’re going to go backwards. That’s why I’ve been working with swing tweaks for the last 3 years. send them tweaks whenever I need a little touchup and it works infinitely better than finding it on your own because the pro will identify stuff in your swing that you can fix that you never thought of in an easier way you never would have found by yourself. You send a video in as you can see down the line and front on. I’ve sent them quite a few of my own swings. I get the feedback and I implement it and I get infinitely better than getting in my own head trying to make my own, oh, maybe it’s my grip, maybe it’s my stance, maybe I need to open my It just goes backwards. Swing tweaks is absolutely money. A PGA Pro gets back to you within hours with tailor made advice for you. Tailor made so that you can get better quicker. And the feedback from the players is phenomenal. People are dropping their handicaps, getting more confidentiality. If you want to get closer to breaking 80 and drop that 10 handicap, forget generic swing tips. Download swing tweaks now. Use my code intern for 20% off your first tweak money. It’s like a bird’s nest in the zo here. What do you got? N iron from how far? 140 in the rough. Okay. What what’s the what’s the thinking behind the club selection? Yeah, just uh my N iron go 150. Okay, so it’s in the rough. Okay, so I’m thinking like it will pull a little bit like 10 yard. Oh, that’s a tricky lie. It’s a very difficult lie. If I knew it, I would chip it. Okay. Yeah, right. Yeah, there could be a better option to chip out. Another big mistake is the misinterpretation of the lie. I’m actually back here where Taj hit that shot. That’s actually his divot and the ball will sit down in a bird’s nest. And when it’s in a bird nest lie like this, it’s very it’s very difficult to judge what to do. So what Taj does is he went one club more. He assumed 10 yards off because it’s in the rough. It’s not only 10 yards, it’s not just the rough, it’s bird nest. Let me sacrifice this ball. Did that. So we need to get a little steeper to get out of here. So, let me take the same eight iron from 140 and I’m going to go really steep and really firm on it. Maybe cutting across it just a little bit. And you need to have firm, strong wrists and [Music] forearms. And that’s how we have to do it. That’s Oh my goodness. That’s great. When you come in with your standard swing and it hits early, it’s still okay. It’s still above the ground, but that grass is in the way, right? Imagine you’ve got normally your ball here and there’s air here. Now imagine you put velcro there. Now you got to get your club through the velcro to the ball. What he could have done also was just chip out sideways and give himself probably a sand wedge or a 52°ree onto the green because look at 10 handicap level you want to get to single figures. This is a difficult A bogey here has money. Believe me, you’re going to make bogeies. Pick and choose where you make the bogey. You got a shot from the fairway onto the green, two putt, five, maybe one putt for a four. Better than taking a freaking six, seven, or even an eight. Believe that. A big thing when I was a 10 handicap to get over into the 80s and the lower handicap was to forget about the PGA Tour energy. The game of PGA Tour or scratch golf looks entirely different to just breaking 80. At the 10 handicap level, like I say, pretty good, not great yet. But to get great, we have to drop the illusion that we have this magnificent game that we’re going to just suddenly bring to the course from watching the PGA Tour. What we have to do is nip strokes. We have to cut them off a little bit. And that is very easy to do by understanding your game and avoiding the hero shots, playing only the shots you can. When you’re in trouble, chipping out. When you’re on a par five, it’s a three-shoer. When you’re on a long par four, sometimes it’s a bogey hole. The PGA to a delusion of grandeur syndrome makes a 410 yard par4 a two-shotterter for you when sometimes it’s just a three-shotter. And it’s okay because you have to make bogeies to break 80. It’s not the illusion of a PGA tour round. If a five handicap played on a PGA Tour course with the PGA players, the PGA Tour player will finish 16 under, the five handicap will shoot 40 over over four rounds. That’s a 56 shot gap over four rounds. So, it’s not quite the same game. The day we can accept that is the day we shoot in the 80s. Oh man, a life. What a shot. Oh my god. Now I hit a great When I play with 10 handicaps, they like to use their eyes to gauge and feel the distance to the flag. And almost always they are out by 10, 15, even 20 yards sometimes, which while I understand the feel associated with the way it looks, they’re not practicing enough to do that. So this is a 50 yard shot. Sometimes you may think it’s a 70 yard shot or a 40 yard shot or 30 yard shot. It all makes a difference cuz we’re going to go over a bunker. The thing we want to do is land it on the green. Now, if we go at the pin here, there’s a very small amount of green there and it’s downhill. So, if I hit it at the pin and I get the distance correct, it’s still going to roll out. I mean, that one he landed short of the green. If I land it on the green, it’s going to roll out to the back of the green. So, what we can do is to reset this is to get the actual distance to the hole and then look left to see what’s in line with the pin. Is there more green? Look right. Is there no green? Is there more green? Go to the fat side of the green. And if you find that you have a nine o’clock shot in your wedge matrix that’s fits 50 yards, use that. But depends on the lie. So if you’re sitting in the rough here with a ball above your feet, you’re going to have to grip down a bit. So maybe you have to change that. So always look for an option and a club that’s going to get you to the fat part of the green to ensure a putt. That’s going to save you dumping it in the bunker here or have, you know, taking a double bogey instead of making a par or bogey. Now, yes, that’s on the front, but we have a putt. We may three putt it, but it’s better than putting two or three more in the bunker, getting out, and then two putting again. A big issue I see with the 10 handicappers is slope awareness or really unawareness because this is the main reason we’re getting the three stabs. We do not hit the ball close enough to the hole on our lag putts when we’re 10 handicappers. That stops us from the 80s. What do I mean by this, Maddie? Well, look, I’ve just walked up the hill here. I can see that hole is about a foot below me. This is a very steep slope. Then what I see is that beyond the hole, it’s a slight ups slope cuz it’s the opposite direction. I need to get that pace control to stop around here. That’s all good. That’s a tap in. I don’t want to leave it here and I don’t want to blow it freaking 15, 20 ft by, which a lot of golfers will do at 10 handicap level cuz no one’s practicing their putting. And I know this is a fact because most 10 handicappers can play the same as a four or five handicap off the tea, but then the short game screws them. So you get your read, which you’re pretty good at 10 handicap, but we need that slope awareness downhill. So what do I like to do? Okay, I like to imagine a hole short of the real hole on the line it’s taking. Then I look at that and this is another issue I see with 10 handicappers. I’m going to give you many issues. standing and practicing putting strokes like this. What the hell, man? This is like a 30ft putt, 27 foot putt. Let’s envision the real putt. Let’s rehearse the real putt. Give our brain a beautiful image to hit into like a little movie being played. I’m looking at this and I’m giving it a little downhill stroke. Exactly the tempo I want to use for this puttsky by looking at my target. And then when I line up, I must look again. Don’t just go and then putt. Look again. See the movie. And this is what I see. And then that unawareness of the slope paired with a terrible pre-shot routine practicing. Or this. What is this? This is a short putt. This is a three-foot putt. So, let’s envision. Let’s obsess over our our spot short of the hole about 5 ft. And let’s hit it there. And that’s all you need. If you can just do these things, practice your putting, go to a practice screen and just practice that imagination. Downhill, uphill, same thing. You’re going to play real good. And if you do smash it past the hole, if you do smash it past the hole, remember the return is now uphill. You’ve given yourself a blessing. Hit it firm enough to get to the hole. You get freaked when you hit it too far past and then you hit it too soft up the hill, you drop your lipstick, you leave it short. three putt out of nowhere. Believe me, this one thing is going to save you probably three or four shots around. Just understand slope, envision your putt, and do a proper rehearsal by looking at your spot. See the movie being played in your head and get the right tempo. Don’t give it all of this just going through the motions because that’s one of the issue is just going through the motion because that’s what expected of you. If you’re doing that nonsense stuff, I’d rather you just step up to the ball and putt. Much better. Okay, touch 21 yards away with a sand wedge onto a down slope. If he pitches in the right place for the down slope, he’s going to have a beautiful birdie that’s a little too far for my liking. The war bird is going to roll out like crazy. Yes. Yes. Okay, I’m at the place that Taj was chipping from on this par five that he bounded way past the hole after being here for two shots. This is the kind of shot that can make or break a single figure handicap because you might get many of them in a round and you want to get up and down sometimes or at least give yourself the chance to. So when Taj is not aware of the slope and he’s using a stock issue uh from a set a sand wedge, you know that big cavity back, it’s got a graphite shaft, there’s not much feel in that club and there’s not much spin coming off that face. So we have to accept that before the shot. And you can use any product you want. He’s using a hard ball, a stock issue sandwiched from a set of clubs, but he’s hitting onto a down slope from a down slope. So, when we hit from a down slope, it’s going to deloft the club a little bit and it’s going to hit the down slope on the green and the green is below us too, and it’s going to shoot forward. So, everything telling us here hard ball onto a down slope from above the green from a down slope with a stock issue sand wedge is saying move that landing spot closer to us. We cannot land it 60% of the way or even 50% of the way because it’s coming out hot. The club face is hot on that sand wedge. The downhill is hot. It’s going to speed on. So, we have to try to get the ball to land closer to us. Envision that that landing spot instead of your standard flat landing spot. And then let’s make sure we hit it. and then it’s going to shoot forward and with the right speed, it’s going to be right next to the cup. But if we go further than that or we have a standard issue sandwich that’s got that spring off the face, wow, it brings in a lot of variables and reducing the variables is the best way to get lucky at this game. Taji just off the green here using his uh sand wedge from about 24 yards. using a sandwich from the fringe. Sometimes people are more happy to chip. Sometimes people want to putt. He went for the chip. We have to understand that around the green there’s many kind of lies. And to negate the problem with the lie and to negate the problem of judging how far to fly your high lofted wedge, we can just use lower loft. Because when we use the high loft, we’re trying to control the distance. We’re not sure of the spin coming out. And while Taj was able to get up and down on the second attempt, he added a shot there of the duff shot. Getting out of the mindset of 56 or 60° only around the green is very powerful. So with this, we can use a 7 iron. I would probably use a five or six iron even. But let’s get out of that mentality of always using the sand wedge. That’s going to give you a nice shot close to the hole for a par. We can use tow down. That’s going to break in there. That’s tow down chipping because it’s giving us a nice five-footer. And then we can do another one. Let’s just try let’s just see how we do with a slightly fattered one. And even a fattered one. You see there? It’s going to get you on the green. If you do that fat exact same fat, the ball’s over here. Now you got another tough long shot. Let’s get out of the mentality of high lofted all the time and let’s start using the green that we have to roll the ball up. Get ourselves to within four or five feet. make the up and down. 10 handicappers have a deficiency in the bunkers. I see it very often. Number one is there’s no practice. And number two, the technique is all wrong because there’s no practice and they’re playing twice a month, maybe once a week. And I can fix it up real good, real quick. When we get out of a bunker, we are not chipping the ball. We don’t chip. It’s not like that. You’re going to te them. You’re going to keep it in the bunker. You’re going to fat it. We have to enter the sand an inch behind the ball with the sole of the club. We just slap that. You can do it with your right hand. Do use your wrist. That’s all you have to do. Now, if you can do that and forget about the ball and hit one inch behind the ball, you’re getting out of the bunker first time because chipping doesn’t work. Standing square, ball back in your stance and trying to chip the ball out. Not going to work. So, we want to open that stance up a little bit. Put most of your weight on the left side and then get that club face open. Start it open in your grip. Not don’t twist it open. Start it open in your grip and grip the club open. Now we’re going to enter the sand one inch behind the ball, playing the ball off our front foot and putting 80 70 80% of our weight on the left side and then skimming an inch behind the [Music] ball. And while that is not perfect, it’s going to take some practice. That is a lot better than keeping it in the bunker or shanking it out or blowing it over into the other bunker. That’s going to save you shots in a round because inevitably you will go in about maybe two or three bunkers around and you can lose three or four shots just like that. But remember, it’s not a chip, right? You have to skim the bottom of the the blade on on the sand. There we go. That’s the shot. That’s the shot. Now, 10 handicap brothers of the Order of the Stinky Winky. The issue I see is club selection and decision making. You are probably three or four decisions away from breaking that 80 number. And it’s always something like a club selection. It’s always something like not taking into account elevation and wind. And it’s some ego thing. So on a tea, when you got a par five that you may have boob jibbies on and you normally take a double and you’re feeling uncomfortable, why not remove the discomfort and do something different? So there’s nothing wrong with hitting hybrids or irons or fairway woods or par fives. You’ve got the game. We just need to get this ball from I mean it’s saying 580 as the dog leg, but it’s more like 500 to the hole. Can we hit two shots to inside wedge range where you are now going to be practicing a lot of your time? Of course, we can. We don’t have to hit drives because we’re not getting there in two anyway. So, let’s get the ball in play on a par five. And it’s going to serve you very, very well indeed. Lovely. This is where the decision- making makes a big difference is that the commitment to the decision will bring you into the 70s because we would hit a driver OB here. Let’s just for example say we have a problem with OB right here. Let’s eliminate it by staying short of it. Then when we get to our next shot, we accept that we can have slightly longer shot in, but just hit the shots we can hit instead of chasing FOMO and chasing revenge shots because we didn’t hit our drive and we feel like a chicken and our friends making fun of us. We are on track here to make a beautiful par. All par fives are five opportunities. If you make a birdie, it’s purely lucky. So, we said we hit another little hybrid up there. We’ve got the shots. We just want to get this inside nine iron [Music] range and that went way high. If you want to go from a 10 handicap into the 80s, very very simply, it is conservative targets with a cocky swing. That’s what we did here. We took a cocky swing with two shots. We hit a cocky swing with a third shot by being conservative. We’ve given oursel the putt. And as 10 handicappers, you don’t practice putting. This is where the putting practice going to help you get the ball closer to the hole. And then your cleanup putts are going to be money. You’re going to make a lot more pars, a lot more saves, a lot more up and downs to get into the 80s or 70s, sorry. That’s how you do it. I was a 10 handicap a long time ago. This is how you get into the 80s. I see the same mistakes over and over and over. Do what I say. Get into the 70s. Come on. Check this video over here for 10 rules on 10 handicap golf.