Target Your Way To Lower Scores

This is a dogleg left par 5 that makes a 45 degree bend to the left at 260 yards off the tee.  From the tee it seems that there is a wide landing area.  There is a fairway bunker on the right side that would seem out of play.  The problem;  there is out of bounds on the left side of the hole all the way to the green.  The out of bounds characteristic of this hole tends to force you to the right, however, the right hazard pinches in at the landing area so accuracy is paramount.

If we frame the hole with safe margins based upon what we know now, this is what we should consider as a safe landing area (green).  We want to stay left of the right margin (red) and right of the left margin (white).

The key to playing great golf is to play using pictures.  You must learn how to create a sense of feel and a design for the intended shape of the ball flight to hit your best golf shots.  Great players call it visualization.

The brain responds better to pictures than words.  Picking targets is critical to giving the brain a sense of what needs to be accomplished.  If you were standing on this tee box and thought to yourself, "I’ll aim at the fairway in the direction of the apartments", you are defining an area that is far too large.

The smaller the target the better.  Small targets are much more specific.  You give the brain a very exact area that we are hitting the golf ball to.  Typically if you aim at a small target you will have a very good picture of what the shape of the ball flight will be; left to right, right to left, straight, high, or low.

Depending upon the intended ball flight we would pick one of these targets.  If we intended to hit a draw we could aim at the corner of the apartment.  Unless we don’t have a choice we would prefer to aim at targets that are close to the ideal landing area.  In this case if we intend to hit a draw and the ball goes straight we will still be in or close to the landing area.

If our preferred ball flight is left to right, the corner of the red roof in the distance would be a good selection.  A good straight shot target would be the tree top in the distance.

Occasionally you will hear a pro on TV say that he was not committed which led to a bad shot.  In many cases it’s because the target and shape of the shot were not pictured.