Tips to Sharpen your Game (#8, Tips 26 -27)

This is the eighth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”.]

26/ Know Your Cover Number: There are lots of numbers that come into a pro golfer’s consideration whenever they set their sights on the green. But there’s one above all else that reigns supreme: It’s the yardage to the front of the green, which pros call the “cover number.” “The COVER is a number players know they absolutely need to hit their shot,” says GOLF Top 100 Teacher Boyd Summerhays, who teaches Tony Finau. “It’s really important.” When your COVER NUMBER is paired with the distance to the back edge, it illustrates the size of your target zone.

You should know the distance that each of your clubs will cover when you execute a great shot. Unfortunately your perfect shots occur less than 50% of the time. Why not up your club and hit with 80% of your power to ensure that you reach the green or roll out to the center of the green.

27/ Improve Your Green Reading: Is it better to over-read putts or under-read them? Mark Sweeney, the inventor of the groundbreaking green-reading system Aimpoint, found that it is better to err on the side of over-reading putts. Putts rolling downhill keep rolling and take longer to lose their speed. In the example below a putt that has been over-read (above the hole) by 12 inches will trickle down to about six inches above the hole. A putt of the same speed that has been under-read by 12 inches will take more of the slope and keep rolling all the way out to 36 inches.

When putting across the slope of a green, you will end up closer to the hole if you over-read your putt on the high side of the hole. Putts rolling downhill will roll a lot further than putts rolling across the slope of the hill.

Golf is a game of perfection, but you will never improve your scores if you don’t apply the basic swing to improve the consistency of your hits. Practice with GOLFSTR+ for all of your swings to limit wrist and elbow bends where you should not be bending. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com