Padraig Harrington has suggested that most golfers would improve if they played a format while practicing where they can hit up to three shots from the same spot.
Of course, Harrington has made it his mission in recent years to help amateur golfers improve. In fact, he insisted that any player could get down to a single figure handicap if they followed his advice on his YouTube channel.
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And there is good reason to take Harrington’s advice.
Padraig Harrington explains the format that would help most amateur golfers improve
The Irishman won three major championship titles during the peak of his career. And he remains an outstanding performer on PGA Tour Champions, with a further three major wins on the senior circuit.
What makes Harrington such a helpful voice in the game is that many of his tips do not require the kind of equipment that most amateur golfers will have no way of getting their hands on.
In fact, speaking on the Life on Tour podcast, Harrington suggested that most players would get better just by getting out on the course and giving themselves several opportunities to hit the same shot.
“Don’t chase after the bad ones, drop another and hit it down and have fun. And to be honest, for a good player, it’s one of the best ways of getting through a plateau or improving your golf is to play a modified scramble when you go out and play on your own,” he said.
“In golf, it’s called a fig round or a fig jam, where you basically play a three-ball type scramble. It’s not a full scramble, you hit your shot and if you like it, you move on. If you don’t like it, you get to hit it again. If you don’t like it, you get to hit it a third time. But you’re stuck with the third one, you can’t go more than three. I would do that as often as I can.
“When I’m doing it, I generally shoot in the 50s. I’d have no problem if I get a good run of birdieing nine holes in a row. When I go play with one golf ball, I might make four or five birdies in a row before it dawns on me, ‘oh my, this is different’.”
The advice Bryson DeChambeau gave to junior golfers looking to go low
Obviously, amateur golfers need to be able to play out of bunkers or from the trees. But Harrington is not alone in thinking that learning to go extremely low by any means is the best way forward.
Bryson DeChambeau previously encouraged junior golfers to play from the furthest forward tees, as reported by Golf.com.
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DeChambeau’s thinking is that it gives amateurs the experience of posting low scores. With that, it is not anywhere near as daunting when it happens in a competitive setting. There is not as much anxiety once a player has made a couple of birdies in quick succession.
There are so many skills involved in the game of golf. Scoring is clearly one that some professionals feel gets neglected too often.
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