Great golf comes from working both sides of your brain.

In a future video I’ll deal more extensively with this but it’s important to use both the creative (right) side of your brain as well as the logical (left) side.

So if Tuesday’s “clockface” video is pure logical left side of the brain (and it is!) then today is designed to appeal to the right side. Today is for those creative folk out there. At heart I’m a creative golfer. I don’t and won’t get into precise leg, wrist, hip or shoulder angles as a rule but I am aware of them so I try to embrace both styles of learning and this is a crucial skill for rapid progress.

But people learn in different ways and one of the key things I discovered during the year was how to really tap into how I learned to get better. Subsequently through my “normal” training and consultancy business and extensive further study of golf I’ve developed techniques that help people to learn and improve in a much faster and more effective way than is normally put forward by classic instruction.

I will deal with a lot more of this later but I wanted to set the context for how you can try and improve in your own golf. It is likely that you fall somewhere between the two camps too. But… you probably err slightly to one side or the other like most of us. i.e. you’re either naturally either more logical than creative or vice versa. If you can give that five minutes thought it can help you enormously in any quest for improvement.

So today we’re dealing with hitting clubs different distances. This requires much more creative “feel” than simply dialling in a swing to 9.00 o’clock. It also provides great benefits when you are playing in the wind or on classic links courses where the clockface routine won’t work as well.

The key is to be aware of both these styles of learning and not to automatically recoil from one or the other. Don’t, either consciously or sub-consciously, pigeon-hole yourself. Initially this type of practice made far more sense to me than really logical stuff like the clockface routine. But when I managed to metaphorically “uncross my arms” and embrace that technique it made a tremendous improvement to my game.

What this technique teaches you is a much more flexible way to play golf. It teaches you how to hit shots at different heights, it teaches you about gripping down the club and altering distances, it teaches you about punch shots.

But best of all - it does it in a fun way. All learning is scientifically proven to work better when we learn in a fun way. For far too long I slogged away in a relentlessly disciplined fashion with absolutely NO FUN. That is a mistake.

So get out there and try hitting the same distance with different clubs.

And as ever if you don’t want to trust me then trust one of the “big gurus” - in this months Golf Digest Jim Flick recommends hitting 14 clubs to 100 yards! And he developed the tip from Johnny Miller who was one of the most natural and creative golfers we’ve ever seen.

Some things to be aware of:

1. I will deal with the “clear key” later that I discuss in the video. If you read the Todays Golfer article you’ll have learned a little about it. It’s a big subject though and isn’t the point of this video.

2. The video is a little scrappy. If you’re worried about how fast I talk or the sound quality may I suggest you read all my previous responses. Also if you can’t view the video because you are watching on an IBM PC from 1986 I’m afraid again there is little I can do about it.

3. If you can’t watch it at all then it shows me hitting to a green 150 yards away with a variety of clubs. I’m trying to alter the way I hit each club in a creative way to make sure I can manufacture different shots out on the course.

4. As ever don’t concentrate too much on my technique - instead try the concept out. This works for any swing and can produce big benefits for any handicap level.

Let me know how you get on.

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Video One

Video Two

A bold claim certainly but one that I would totally stand over.

This principle was yet another of my “Eureka moments” during the year and with one days work I transformed my ability to get close to the flag from 40 to 120 yards. The great thing is that this works with any swing, any strength level and at any age.

So download the 7 page PDF from this link.

Video One is on the first hole on the par three course at Blackwood. We are exactly 67 yards from the hole and this is my 9.00 o’clock sand wedge distance. To make it exactly 67 yards I have moved the ball back a couple of yards. I then simply dial in my 9.00 swing and the ball, although a little left, lands almost pin high.

Video Two is 93 yards from the pin on the first hole at Blackwood. This could be struck with two clubs

1. My pitching wedge at 9.00 which takes me 95 yards
2. My sand wedge at 10.30 which takes me 92 yards (ignore the video where I say my gap wedge)

I’m more comfortable with the 9.00 shot so go for this. Annoyingly we stopped the video after this which would have helped to prove the concept but if you’re prepared to trust Andy and myself that there was no video trickery you can see that the ball lies almost exactly 2 yards past the hole. In other words I hit it exactly 95 yards which is what my chart says (in the PDF).

This level of confidence and accuracy can transform your game and it works for all ages and strengths - you simply need to take a little bit of effort and work these distances out.

Try it out and let me know how you get on.

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You can never say I don’t love you. I’ve just spent all Sunday pulling together all your queries and questions and putting them into four Youtube videos. As ever apologies for talking at 150 mph but hopefully my umms and ahhhs are reduced this time and I don’t look quite so much like a lobster as I did when wearing my purple shirt.

In the first one I deal with three issues.

1. The quality of the videos. Hopefully this explains why they’re a little bit “guerilla” and not very “Scorsese”

3. Specific answers to Lyall Davison’s questions.

Secondly I put together a video with all your questions answered from the putting thread. This is actually very important and even if you didn’t have a query I would advise you watch this. This is a cut down version of the article that Carlos mentions.

Click here for crucial putting information

The third video deals with your questions from the “what clubs to break par” post.

And finally I deal with the questions that arose from the “Q & A” post.

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This video contains a number of key lessons:

Number One, and possibly the most important of all, is the fact that I refused to change my clubs until I had broken 80. i.e. I didn’t even think about the concept of all the new technology and “buying a better game” until I had a really sound swing grooved in and a proper understanding of how to play the game. I shot a 78 with a ten year old Big Bertha, a 20 year old Mizuno three wood, A set of hand-me-down Mizuno irons (that were at least 20 years old) and a horrible old Wilson putter that was found lying around the store at the golf centre.

So the lesson is - don’t put the cart before the horse. Don’t expect great clubs to make you a great golfer.

Number Two is to make use of the wedges. But again don’t start jumping into the whole lob wedge thing before you can really play well round the green. The lob wedge is a great tool but don’t expect to improve your scoring and keep it well out of your bag when you’re out on the course until you are really comfortable with it around a practice green.

After you are comfortable with it then get yourself four, equally spaced (I use 46/52/56/60) wedges and get out there and work out exact distances with each club (much more on this in a later video and downloadable PDF).

Number Three - Get a putter you love - you must really love the feel of a putter or it simply won’t work for you. It almost doesn’t matter what it looks like - as long as you can fall in love with it then it can work for you. I used (cue: golfing madness alert) to sit twiddling my putter while watching TV in an effort to get really comfortable with its weight and feel - I advise you to do the same but be aware that, yet again, this stuff doesn’t exactly make you popular with your partner. I did exactly the same thing with my Ping 56* SW since that became my round the green “go to” club.

Number Four - get the easiest to hit irons you can find. Don’t worry about what they look like and be swayed by the looks of super-sexy slim blades. The name of the game (unless you’re already a single figure handicapper) is to find great game improvement irons. I used Mizuno MX-17s during the challenge and as a present to myself after I completed the challenge traded them in for beautiful forged MP-30s which, if I’m honest, I doubt that I hit as well as the much cheaper Mx-17s. So remove the ego and get inexpensive cavity back game-improvement irons.

Number Five - use hybrid clubs. The average high handicapper really shouldn’t be using a 3 or even a 4 iron these days. Hybrids make the job vastly easier. I have a Mizuno 2 iron MP-37 blade which I use at the range to teach myself certain practice techniques (more later) but it goes nowhere near my bag on the course and I don’t even have a 3 iron. So again ignore the ego, ignore your mates who call them “girl’s clubs” and buy at least one hybrid.

Number Five - get a decent driver that suits your swing. I spent a clean fortune on drivers during the year and that was ultimately a mistake. But it’s a mistake a huge amount of golfers make. We’re forced, through the power of huge advertising budgets, to think that the newest driver on the block will transform our game. The key is to get one decent driver that suits your game and stick with it.

Number Six - buy last year’s models. Irons, drivers, hybrids etc. should all be bought one year out of date. The industry moves at a ferocious pace and most of the time you can buy a brand new club for as low as half the original price just because it isn’t fashionable any more! Avoid the hype and keep a rational mind (even though I know, more than anyone, how tough that can be with golf)

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After yesterday’s avalanche of videos today we have a nice simple little three minute tip on putting.

Putting - the horror, the horror. For much of my year it would be fair to say I was like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now…

Putting, for me, was pure “horror” and I know I’m not alone in this. Most people hate putting practice because it’s so tedious - and it hurts your back!

But when I started to dig a bit deeper into the murky world of putting I found some very interesting stuff - particularly interesting since it didn’t involve me spending hours bent over on the putting green. This little tip is a tip that I got from a variety of sources but which is often discussed by Seve and Tiger - two of the greatest putters the world has ever seen.

Basically it’s about removing the consequences of the putt. You go through your routine and then simply (in my case anyway) just focus on one tiny spot on that back of the ball and commit to striking that spot perfectly in the way you have just visualised.

So that’s your goal - just to strike the ball perfectly and exactly as you planned in your practice swing. The goal is not, and I know this sounds ludicrous, to get it in the hole. Seve Ballesteros famously four putted at the Masters years ago and when quizzed later about it at the press conference he simply shrugged and said:

“I hit the ball - I miss,
I hit the ball - I miss,
I hit the ball - I miss,
I hit the ball - it goes in”

In other words he was happy that he did the very best he could with each putt. Even though he didn’t get it in, he had done his best. If you can commit to do the best putt you can and remove the consequences it greatly improves your confidence as you stand over the putt.

Likewise Tiger, at this years US Open, was faced with an extremely tricky putt at the end of the second or third round. It was a putt with great consequences and effectively kept him in the game. But the goal for him was again to remove the consequences and concentrate on committing to the putt. Afterwards he said he was saying the following to himself:

“Make sure you stay committed to it - make a pure stroke. If it plinkles in and plinkles out it doesn’t matter as long as I make a pure stroke.”

Notice the “it doesn’t matter“. If you don’t trust me - trust Tiger - this is really profound.

This technique made an enormous difference to my putting from six feet in and makes me feel invincible at the two to three feet range that causes so many people to panic.

Please try it the next time you’re in a pressure situation. And, as ever, let me know how you get on.

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I’ve tried to respond to most of the comments by text but felt it might be more efficient if I did this gradually by video too. I’m mindful of all those folk out there on dial-up so have, at vast personal expense ;), bought a little Flip video that is great for linking direct to Youtube and the videos shouldn’t (I hope) be too huge.

So below are my first two video responses to all your specific questions.

Once again I’d like to thank you all for watching, reading and commenting. We had a staggering 15,000 views of the John Daly tip in 24 hours!

Video one deals with some pointless introductory waffle, a ludicrous explanation of why I have the video pointed down on me (not to be repeated - sorry), a small piece on the weather (since we’re weather obsessed here in Northern Ireland) and finally responses to your questions on the first video and about half of the John Daly responses:

Video two has thankfully less waffle but still has the ludicrous “stop me looking like a fat-faced fool” camera angle. It deals with more John Daly comments and comments on the books, videos and DVDs video.

Apologies for the “ummms” and “ahhhs” too - I wasn’t properly prepared and a fraction too keen to get try out the new toy and get my answers up. I’ll be better prepared for the next ones and hopefully they’ll be easier to follow.

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There are two cliches in golf that we all know but generally infuriate most of us.

1. Drive for show and putt for dough
2. Focus your attention on your short game

The annoying thing is that, regardless of how much we know this to be true, practicing both the short game and your putting is generally no fun and it’s usually far more entertaining to bash balls as far as you can on the range and possibly give yourself a back injury in the process.

During the early part of the challenge I fell into the trap of not practicing either my short game or putting and it was only after a very severe talking to by a +1 handicapper friend of mine that I finally saw the light.

This video highlights four of the key factors that I used to help me improve my short game and to help me make it fun. Making practice fun an absolutely crucial factor in any form of golf improvement but it must also be effective practice. “Practice make perfect” is simply not true - “effective practice makes perfect” and effective practice generally takes a lot less time than normal practice.

For those of you with slow connections who can’t see the video:

1. Secret one to short game success is - get creative with where you practice.

My local course had no practice area so I had to sneak onto an old discarded tee to do most of my practice. I also used to practice at home in the garden and even in my living room. Needless to say practicing my chipping on the carpet made me extraordinarily unpopular at home and quickly had to stop so that I wouldn’t break my self-imposed “do not get divorced during the challenge” rule.

I also used to get up early and sneak onto the local council owned pitch and putt course which is quite near my home. Like a naughty teenager I used to “scarper” whenever the council van would arrive to open up the facility. But this was a great way to get in some practice without annoying either my wife or business partners since everyone else was still asleep!

So don’t make excuses about why you can’t practice your short game - get creative and find places to do it.

2. Secret two to short game success is - “Play”.

Have fun, “muck about”, do silly shots. I spent most of my time challenging myself with all sorts of daft wee games like hitting perfect lobs shots with my 6 iron or using my lob wedge as a chipping club. I’d try to do huge high lobs that I could then run underneath and catch the ball. I’d have competitions to see how many balls in a row I could chip into my ball bag or if I could play billiards with the balls that were lying on the grass in front of me. I’d challenge myself to hit balls out of divots or on rock hard lies - anything to test myself and remove the standard monotony of standard practice.

When I played like this it taught me a huge level of creativity which stood me in great stead when I went back out onto the course. It also dramatically increased my confidence when I was faced with a tricky lie or an awkward stance and really needed to get an “up and down”.

But best of all it made practice a fun and enjoyable thing to do. Try it!

3. Secret three to short game success is - remove the variables.

This is another area where my advice goes against the general theories. The general theory of chipping is to vary the clubs you use so that you get the ball a metre or so onto the green and let it roll to the pin. But one of my key concepts during the year was NOT to overcomplicate the game. For that reason I never devoted any time to trying to learn to draw or fade the ball - I just wanted to be able to hit the thing straight and hitting the ball straight will, in anyone’s book, help you shoot a par round. Likewise I wanted to have one club that I would use for chipping. That club for me was a 9 iron. That meant I could practice until I was blue in the face and learn exactly how much roll to expect from that club in different situations. So I’d removed variables and kept it simple.

Additionally, although I’m a huge fan of the four wedge system (see video to come) for distances of 40 to 120 yards I see them purely as a complicating factor inside 40 yards. That meant I just used three clubs in and around the green 99% of the time. My 56* SW for classic pitching shots, my 60* lob wedge for getting over difficult obstacles with a short landing area and my 9 iron for chipping. The 52* Gap Wedge and standard Pitching wedge stayed firmly in the bag and all practice revolved around those three clubs. They became my best freinds

4. Secret four to short game success is - keep score and get realistic.

Much of my golf success centred around all sorts of slightly daft mind control techniques, visualisation and weird NLP concepts like modelling and anchoring but I always left this creative side behind at the end of a session and took score. You must, must, must keep track of your progress and have proper empirical evidence as to what is actually working for you and what isn’t. You can read all the golf literature you want, watch all the videos and even kid yourself that certain things are working for you but unless you have the figures to back it up very often this is just self-delusion. And golf is filled with self-delusion so make it a rule to avoid it and you’ll be doing yourself a huge favour.

For me that meant lots of hard evidence as to exactly how well I was progressing and exactly what type of club or shot would get me closer to the hole. Most pros would always advise that you “chip” the ball with a low lofted club and a straight arm technique when you are close to the hole. It’s easy to take what these guys say as gospel but for me that is wrong. Dead wrong. And I have the evidence to prove it in my little black practice books. I will consistently get the ball closer to the hole pitching with my Sand Wedge.

So keep score and make sure you don’t take anything that anyone else says about your game as the truth until you have accurately tested it. And obviously that includes my advice too!

Many thanks for watching/reading again and tune in tomorrow for my next tips.

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When I started this challenge there was no blueprint - nobody had done what I was attempting to do and even worse wherever I looked I was surrounded by people who said it wasn’t possible. Sam Torrance famously told me to “Dream On” when he heard about the challenge and Darren Clarke said that three years would be a realistic minimum and not the one year I planned.

But I wasn’t deterred. Somewhere deep down in me I knew it was possible. I knew that I had it in me but I also knew I was going to have to dig pretty deep and not just take the accepted route of weekly lessons and classic practice strategies. I knew I was going to have to really sit down and study every book and DVD on golf that I could lay my hands on if I was going to find a few glimmers of hope and help me to ignore the naysayers that were saying it wasn’t possible.

I’ve always been a “reader” so I spent at least 200 hours during the year reading all sorts of books about golf and challenges. But only about 40 of those books were actually about golf. I looked at all sorts of other sporting achievements in an effort to help bolster my belief when it waned and dug deep into classic sports and even business psychology to find methods and techniques to help with my mindset and practice routines.

I also watched dozens of old and out of date videos from past masters such as Hogan, Ray Floyd, Ballesteros, Sam Snead, Arnie and Jack and even discovered classic instructional manuals from the turn of the century. I bought dozens of ebooks on the internet all promising that final cure for the slice or to provide me with an instant “30 yards”!

But among all this mass of imformation I managed to find some real gems. The John Daly video, as you’ve already seen, was an tremendous inspiration and gradually I was able to put together a simple blueprint for how the average golfer could make huge improvements. So in effect I read the books and spent literally thousands of pounds on this information so you don’t have to!

As ever leave me a comment and I’ll try to answer any specific queries. And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow where I’ll reveal some more short game secrets and the techniques I used to make practice entertaining for me.

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John Daly is famous for a lot of things…

• Huge booming drives
• Playing golf without his shirt
• Playing golf with girls who have no shirt on!
• Heavy drinking
• Trashing hotel rooms
• Arguing with the PGA
• Singing Country and Western

… but what he perhaps isn’t all that famous for is his almost supernatural touch around the greens. Not since Seve Ballesteros has there been someone who, when the chips were down, could produce such magic with a wedge.

During my challenge I bought endless old videos and DVDs on Ebay and rarely did they cost me more than a pound or two. Some of them were rubbish, some of them were mildy entertaining, a few had some really great ideas and one or two had a concept, buried deep among the fluff, that totally transformed my game - one of my “Eureka” moments.

“A Round with John Daly” was one such inspirational video and I cannot emphasise just how much this little tip helped me.

So watch the video and grab, with your left hand, a wedge and get out to the practice ground or even your garden and start playing around.

It’s important not to underestimate this tip just because it’s so simple. Bear in mind that by this stage in the challenge I had already watched dozens of “classic” instructional videos, read lots of well-meaning but very dry books and spent countless tedious hours trying to improve my short game in more conventional ways. This tip made a very big difference to my game in a very short period of time and if you’ll just try it out I guarantee it can do the same for yours.

Let me know how you get on and once again if you’re not fully clear on how to use the tip then leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

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Additional notes:

There have been some queries about “pitching vs chipping” - I’ll deal with this further in another video but please do not get hung up on the fact that I’m basically “pitching” in this video. The left handed practice technique is about getting feel and smoothness into all your shortgame - whether that be pitching, chipping or putting. I could just as easily have been using a classic stiff arm chip technique in the video. The only point I would say is that I have measured and tested my ability to get close to the hole with a pitching technique like this using my 56* SW versus a classic chipping technique and for me the pitching wins. But that’s me - you need to use the technique that works best for you and more importantly accurately test the results. Then you can groove a replicable and consistent swing action with the left handed technique. I will deal with this in more detail in a couple of days in a follow up video though.

For those on dial up or slow connections

The video shows a technique that I picked up from an old out-of-print John Daly DVD that I bought on ebay for a pound! It involves practicing your short game with one arm only - the left arm. This helps to control and steady the backswing and forces a very clean smooth motion. It stops the whole “stabbing” aspect of pitching and chipping that high handicappers very often produce because you have no option but to keep it smooth and measured due to the fact that you have less strength in just the one arm.

It will feel awkward at first because for right handers we have a natural sense of weakness and lack of control with our left arm but once you get over this you’ll notice a big change. A minimum of 30% of all my short game practice in the latter stages of the challenge involved using just my left arm and it was a major breakthrough.

As I say above though don’t get hung up on the actual action - just try it out on your pitching, chipping and, like Tiger, your putting and be amazed at how much your action will smooth and how much more feel you generate when you pur two hands on again.

In the video I hit about four shots with my left hand and then, when I place my right hand back on, hit one more which stops a couple of inches from the hole.

Hi and welcome to the Break Par Blueprint blog.

Over the next two weeks we’re going to be releasing one video a day to help you understand exactly how I broke par within a year and took 33 strokes off my game.

I’ll be dealing with a lot of the mental challenges I faced and giving you clear and concise secrets that I learned which can immediately help you improve your scoring. As you’ll see I read a huge quantity of books and watched literally dozens of instructional videos but I want to try and emphasise that this isn’t necessary. By the end of the fortnight with a little bit of practice on your part you should already be able to see a reduction in your scoring.

This blog is to help you get better at the game of golf so please make sure you leave a comment if you are unsure of anything that I’m talking about and let me know your progress!

In this first video Andy and I discuss exactly what it is I was trying to do in this challenge.

The rules, as you’ll see, were fairly simple.

• Shoot level par or better
• There must be a witness present
• The course must be par 70 or more
• The course must be at least 6000 yards
• Don’t get divorced
• Don’t go bankrupt or lose my business (only just scraped this one!).

Also below are a couple of the times I was on television after the challenge was completed. The first video is a BBC program called Season Ticket where I play a hole with Stephen Watson and the second is an ITV news item.

So, like I said above, please leave a comment if you have any further questions.

Tomorrow we’ll be launching into some specifics though. Andy has been struggling a bit with his short game so I gave him a tip that I found on an obscure John daly video which totally revolutionised my short game and stopped me slogging away for hours on the practice range - you really won’t want to miss this one!

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Thanks for watching.

John Richardson