Playing is one of the biggest challenges of golf. We’ve found the green, but that’s only half the job done. A good position can make a big hole, and save us from disaster with a rescue strike. Bad posture has the opposite effect. The potential parity or bird turns into a ghost and the bad hole gets really awful. Too often, bad tee play spills over onto the tee on the next hole, when filled with negative thoughts we’re riding the short stick foul on the big stick foul.
For those of you keen enough to keep playing this time of year, congratulations on your strong spirits! But if we want to play, we may try to play as best we can. And at this time of year one of the biggest challenges is playing because it requires different skills than when we play in the height of summer.
Winters in the UK and Ireland are no different from seeing pros in California or the Middle East digging them up in super-soft greens. So here at AMERICAN GOLF, we’ve put together some tips and tricks to make sure you’re on the right track hang around In winter it stays hot when the air is cold.
How do you lay in the winter?
Create the portal:
Chances are if we’re playing in the winter we’ll be putting up very soft or even temporary regular greens that are basically extended sections of fairway. To put it nicely, our strokes should work. This means hitting the ball directly from the center of the racket.
As a simple exercise on putting the green, put one point in the ground, somewhere about five to eight feet from the hole. Place the clubhead just behind the tee, square to the hole. Then place the second tee at the back of the club, but with a finger-width distance between the tee and the club. This creates the portal.
Now we should be able to practice going through the gate. The challenge is not to hit either tee with our bat at any point during our stroke. If we focus hard, our strokes should come out from the center of the racquet face. This is critical to getting the right “hit” for your wintering. We don’t want putts to get off the heel or toe because they will slow down quickly on the soft, slow greens.
worth weight:
Sometimes, when we buy a racket, they come with different weights that can be added to make them heavier. Now this isn’t really necessary when we put in nice conditions in the summer. But winter is the perfect time to dig in those weights and put them on our rackets, especially if our rackets feel very light in our hands.
When the winter greens are soft and wet, we need a good, steady putt to make sure the ball travels the right distance to the hole. A heavier clubhead gives us a better chance of achieving this.
Move the ball forward:
One of our toughest challenges in the winter is generating enough power when we’re on the greens. How many times have we come out on our winter golf days and said, “I couldn’t get the ball to the hole.” Instead of bemoaning our luck and seeing it happen to us over and over again, let’s do something about it.
A simple modification is to move the ball forward in our stance. If the ball is in the middle of our position for summer play, move it more towards our front foot for our winter position. This is an easy way to generate more speed because the new position naturally creates topspin. This allows the ball to run better over damp, wet surfaces. The ball rolls better and you’re less likely to bounce, wobble, or do things that cost vital distance. This is especially important when we are faced with long periods where we are happy to fall in two.
Set our eye line:
We now know that greens are slower in winter. They play differently than they do in the summer, but if we don’t make any adjustments to what we do, how can we expect to hit well?
One of the biggest mistakes a moderate to high handicap golfer makes in the winter is trying to adjust his putting from the same setting. If we put ourselves through the winter as we usually do the summer, we might still get out of the hole. But if we try to generate more force from the same position, we can develop inconsistencies in direction, strike, and even distance control.
Therefore, we have to change something. One way to do this is to modify the line of the eye, by moving it inside the ball. This simple switch will give our arms more room to move and generate the force needed on our strokes without sacrificing control.
Play for less rest:
We’ve all watched The Masters countless times over the years with those sloppy greens and treacherous crushing putts. First of all, very few of us will ever hit greens like the one in Augusta. The other key thing to remember is that speed increases borrowing power. So it is easy for the ball to move almost at right angles on a very bright green.
To spend the winter, let us forget the notion that we are in Augusta. Woolen and waterproof hats should do it for us anyway and we need to forget that mentality when we’re on the greens, too.
No matter how much borrowing we think is at a disadvantage this time of year, play with less. We have to keep in mind that greens are likely to have longer grass and more surface moisture. We have to weave that in when we’re deciding how to hit our shots. If we think our putt has three feet, play no more than two feet away. Or, if the break is two feet, aim just one foot outside the hole. For a winter start, speed is more important than the amount of interval.
Winter hero mode!
Now we know this blog is all about wintering in winter conditions, but there’s also a way to work on our preparedness when better weather hits. I’m sure we can find a space in our house when the kids go to sleep or when our partners are in another room watching TV, to put out our fire extinguishers.
My old trick was to take old mugs out of the cupboard and put them on the rug. We may be on the inside, but the same principles apply. We need a good hit and a good measure of the required distance. But one of the keys is to keep moving the cup (the hole) around the room, so that we can practice different stroke lengths, just as if we were on the court. We could even do this with a game of golf on TV starting with the warmer weather in the background to provide our inspiration!
By doing so, we hope to be razor-sharp by the time the real greens are dry and we can start with our friends and family when the summer contests roll around!
About the author
Adam Lanegan – Golf Writer
Adam is a freelance news and sports journalist who has written for the BBC, The Sunday Post, The Eye, The Times, The Telegraph and more. He has been writing about golf for nearly two decades and has covered 13 Open Championships and two Ryder Cups. Not only does Adam cover golf, he has been playing golf for as long as he can. He was a member of Northenden Golf Club for about 25 years until his children arrived and his last official handicap was 11, although on any given day his form fluctuated between eight and 18.