Golf Skills Ranked
This post discusses golf skills and their relative importance to scoring and maximum enjoyment. I leave out technique-related skills to focus on the broad golf skills everyone can work on regardless of your swing or experience level. Allocating time to each specific skill is a great way to practice with purpose and increase consistency.
1) Low Point or Ground Contact
The Low Point is the location relative to the ball where the clubface bottoms out on your swing arc. Trackman measures in inches whether the low point is “B” before the ball or “A” after the ball. You want the low point of your swing to occur in front of the ball. On a well executed iron shot, the clubface hits the ball first, and then the club strikes the ground or mat after the ball on the target side. If your divots start before the ball, your low point was before the strike, and you hit a fat shot. Low point or ground contact is a critical skill for the following reasons. If a significant portion of your swings have a low point in front of the ball, you won’t have a lot of fun playing golf. This is why I rank it the number 1 skill for this post. Not because it’s difficult to master, but it’s a first priority to ensure enjoyment playing golf. Fat shots don’t go very far and they kill confidence. You won’t know how far you hit each club. Also, driving range mats provide help when you hit behind the ball. You can have an OK result hitting the mat before the ball. But actual turf provides no such help. There are many reasons why the low point can be before the ball. Too many for this post. But many drills and devices are available so you can dedicate entire practice sessions to this skill. The classic Divot Board is a great tool that I use during lessons. Other methods include putting a towel, or a couple of tees, a few inches behind the ball. If your low point is before the ball, you will strike the towel or the tees. Another method is to put a tee a couple inches in front of the ball, and concentrate on the low point in front of the ball. When hitting on grass practice tees, you can use powder spray to make a line on the grass perpendicular to the target line, place balls on that line, and hit them. Look to see that your divots start in front of the line.
2) Club Face Control
I ranked low point number 1 because the majority of the world’s golfers are high handicaps who play a few times a year. For this huge mass of golfers eliminating fat shots in favor of ball-first consistency would open up a new world of scoring and fun. But golfers with lower handicaps already have low point licked. Ground contact is an afterthought. For this group, the most important skill is Club Face Control. The metric Club Face is the number of degrees the face of the club is open or closed relative to the target line at impact. If you can square the face at impact consistently, you won’t lose balls, you can count on a shot shape, you will have distance control, and can save you from extreme club paths. Going from a wild club face to a legitimately controlled one can give you the biggest drop in scores you will ever have. Another consideration is, until you control the face, how can you work on skills like club path, aim, speed, trajectory, shot shape, or anything else? One of my favorite practice sessions is to turn on the launch monitor, hit all the clubs in my bag, and for every single swing the only goal is clubface <= 2 degrees. Anything more than 2 degrees open or closed is a fail for that swing. If you don’t have a launch monitor, you can lay down a club or stick in front of the ball down the target line. If you are a righty and the ball flies to the right of the stick, the face was probably open, if it launches to the left of the stick it was closed. An extreme club path can affect this visual somewhat but it works. You can also spend time trying to purposely hit shots with an open, closed, and square face. I have noticed something very encouraging when working on clubface during lessons. Usually, just making someone aware they are consistently opening or closing the face is enough to have them fix it. Pointing out the various causes I see and making those changes helps (obviously), but just letting the player know it’s an issue that needs solving works wonders. No matter what your swing looks like today, you can practice and improve your clubface control.
3) Center Contact
Hitting the ball on the sweet spot of the clubface is an important skill to maximize distance and consistency. It’s true for all clubs but even more important for drivers and fairway metals. If you miss the sweet spot, distance suffers for all clubs. But for drivers and fairway metals, there is something called the Gear Effect that can cause hooks and slices despite what your clubface and club path numbers are for that swing. Because the center of gravity is well behind the club face, the head twists at impact on off-center hits. Long story short, hitting a driver on the toe will produce hook spin, and hitting the heel produces slice spin. When you hit an iron on the toe or the heel you feel each result in your hands. An easy diagnosis. But the driver face is so big and forgiving it can kind of all feel the same. You could be hitting the toe or heel consistently and not realize it. I find it common during lessons that folks line up too close to the ball with a driver, and too far away with irons. Using impact stickers or powder spray verifies this. Adjustments are made, and the next thing you know, iron strikes sound different and are going farther. When necessary adjustments are made with the driver, better center contact results in more distance from the trampoline effect (more ball speed) and the spin rate usually decreases (more carry and more role). It is important to mention that better center contact isn’t just “stand closer or farther” from the ball. The source and cause of off-center hits are many. Spend a practice session working solely on this skill. Understand what your tendencies are for off-center strikes. My tendency for mis-hits is out towards the toe. While practicing center contact remember what all the different strikes feel like in your hands. That way you will know instantly on the course whether the strike was heel, toe, or center. You’ll also know whether the strike was low or high on the face. While the goal is center contact every strike, another outcome is you knowing instantly where the ball stuck the club.
4) Club Path
Club Path is the horizontal direction of the club head at impact relative to the target line. It tells you if the swing was in-to-out or out-to-in. An in-to-out swing approaches the ball from inside the target line then travels outside after impact. With a square clubface, an in-to-out path produces a draw or hook curve to the shot. An out-to-in swing with a square face produces a fade or slice curve to the shot. While most instructors and elite players strive for in-to-out, and I teach true beginners the in-to-out swing, I don’t believe out-to-in swings must be changed. Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus hit fades and they were pretty good. Out-to-in swings are steep and over the top and can go way bad a million ways compared to in-to-out. But steep swingers can compress the ball reliably as low point is moved forward so there are fewer issues with fat shots. For golfers who play 10 - 20 rounds a year, which is the majority of golfers worldwide, maintaining an out-to-in path of 0-3 degrees can be the way to go. Players with extreme in-to-out swings have problems too. The shallowing craze has gotten to the point where I’ve had players show up like… dragging the handle sideways through the hitting zone. haha. Getting stuck and handsy or issues coming down behind it. In my experience, a club path consistently higher than 6 degrees in either direction is too high. You’ll have a lot of mishits and severe curve. This is when we will work during lessons to “quiet” the club path as I call it. Meaning the club path should consistently be low numbers 0-4 degrees. Here’s the good news. It’s a relatively easy thing to change with a high success rate. For example, getting players with a 6-10 degree out-to-in swing to a consistent 0-3 degree swing is accomplished with a selection of drills, sticks, and well-placed objects. Players who seek a complete change to a draw swing usually get it done. Club path changes are doable.
5) Speed
Some golfers might read this and say, “how can speed be last?!” To their point, speed and distance are leading indicators of your scoring potential. However, what good is more speed if you are hitting behind the ball, can’t control the clubface, constantly hit the heel or toe, and have an extreme club path? In these scenarios, more speed leads to more severe mishits. The issues are amplified. Instead of hitting your drive into the hazard, it goes over the trees and onto the highway. Others might read this and think, “when it comes to speed you either have it or you don’t.” That is somewhat true, but more speed is attainable for most players through improvements unrelated to swinging harder or hitting the gym bro. Max speed in the golf swing comes from a combination of factors working in unison. Your hip and shoulder turns, depth and length of the backswing, using ground forces, lead hand grip, wrist hinge and release, weight transfer from trail to lead, lead arm throwing or dragging, and being connected. I’ve had success working with players on these individual factors and the result has been increased iron swing speeds by 5-10 mph. More with a driver. We pick the low-hanging fruit after swing analysis and start there. When all that is optimized then you can start a workout program and get wicked huge for more speed kid. Remember, when working on speed you want to increase your cruising speed. Cruising speed means you end up on balance fully able to hold your finish for a couple of seconds. If you can’t, you are out of control. You can also work to have the same swing speed per iron, which leads to legitimate distance control. You can also work on driver ball speed. Getting the face closer to square, with a “quiet” (low degree) in-to-out club path, with a positive angle of attack, while hitting the center, can increase your driver ball speed the same or more than adopting a fitness and mobility program.
Devoting practice time to each of these skills not only increases consistency and lowers scores, it’s a great way to change up your practice sessions and keep things fun!
