It's time for a new episode of faith in fairways with the founder Brad Thorberg, who after more than 16,000 lessons taught to over 2000 golfers, has discovered the most forgotten and overlooked parts of your golf game that is keeping you from playing your most consistent and confident golf ever. Now here's your host, Brad Thorberg.
00:24 What is up birdie crew members and fellow golfers, it’s Brad, who’s your host of another episode of faith and fairways today. Why your golf ball keeps going where you don't want it to go. How does that keep happening? You know, we've all been there, you know, you're sitting there, you have a good round going and you get to, you know I think of a country called, I used to belong to ptarmigan country club up in Northern Colorado and you know, you'd typically, you'd have a good round going and I would get to a, yeah, we've always called the term and getting, but it'd be a par five par three par five and hold 14 right? I've taught them or get in there. I would get to that tee box and it was a tough tee shot where you didn't have to hit driver. Basically it was a landing area and you had water all along the left hand side.
01:08 The whole length of your, your tee shot in along the right side, the whole length of the entire hole is out of bounds, you know, and you can be aggressive and you could hit driver out there towards the end, right up to the edge of the water. But if you kept it under about 320 yards, you'd be right there and you could, you know, have a six or five iron to the green over two things of water. Or you could just simply play a five iron, eight iron pitching wedge, you know, going from one landing area to the other. And I would often play the aggressive cause I'd be playing good, but I'd find myself for where it would sneak into my mind, where I'd get there and I'm having a good round going. Cause the front nine there is pretty easy. So typically by that point I'm, I'm close to even par or one under just one over on a reachable par five and I'd grab the driver, you know, and I should be just thinking, all right, I want this thing to start, you know, here over this divot or blade of grass, take off to the left corner of the fairway and just cut gently back into the middle.
02:08 Might always take that line cause then if I pulled it, you know I get a drop up there with the water hazard verse going out of bounds. Gearbox box tend to be closer to out of bounds and the water on the left so it just made sense to tee up on the right side of the tee box aimed down the left, cut the ball back in. And if I hit it straight, I took a line that that would keep me in play. And if I simply was confident and kept that thought of, you know, starts here, ends here. Worst case scenario, I'll pull it a little bit and it doesn't quite reach the water if I take a good line. But as we've all been there, it'll creep into my mind of, Oh gosh, don't, you know, don't go out of bounds right before you swing it.
02:43 And, and why does that happen is because it's what your mind is focused on. You know, it's hand eye coordination. It's [inaudible] seen a ball come through on your hand up and catching it. So when you look that way, when you see the out-of-bounds, when you see the houses and the windows, or when you peak and go, man, don't pull this left like I did three days ago, or like I did four holes ago. And you think that right before you pull the trigger, that is what your mind is focused on. Even though you're telling yourself not to, it's what you're thinking about. So what are you going to naturally do here? Your body's going to naturally hit the ball in that direction. It's called hand-eye coordination. It's amazing thing. Think of it this way. Think of how many times you know, you step up and just see the ball on the putting green.
03:26 Just slap at it and it goes in versus when you overthink it. Yeah, you're just reacting while your mind is reacting. When you get on that tee box and you start saying, don't go over there. When that thought creeps into your mind, right before you swing, here's what happens. You started focusing on us or your minds. Eyes is seeing that problem area that out of bounds, that water, if we're looking at hole 14 there, it sees that in the brain and then you tense up. You're going to do one or two things. You're either going to hit it directly there or you're going to over-correct aggressively and hit this thing a long ways in the opposite direction. Yeah, so if you're playing a little fade or maybe some of you are playing a slice still, which we can totally help fix them, but if you're still playing a slice, you know and you're, you're aiming, you know, down the left side towards the water trying to protect from going out of bounds, right?
04:15 And then the last thing you think is, gosh, please don't go out of bounds. Again, what's going to happen is you're going to get quick, you're going to speed up your tempo, which is going to throw your timing off and you're going to slap that face shot and you're going to tend to pull that things so far left that you're out in the middle of the pond war. You're going to tense up so bad that you just hang the face open and slice it even worse. But that's typically what happens in this because you let the thought of something bad happening into your brain. You focused on it and the ball went there or I went in the complete opposite direction, which in this scenario is not a good thing, but that's what happens because that was the last thing you thought of. So you gotta build a consistent routine that breeds confidence that you're, no, you're going to start a ball here and it's going to end there.
05:03 And like last week we talked about practice. You have to have a plan when you practice. And we talked about how 70% of time on your full swing should be spent on hitting golf shots and working on this very routine. So what should this routine look like? Well, this routine starts by having a plan because without a plan we're gonna lack confidence. If you don't have a game plan, if you don't go into, you know, the football game or the basketball game or the soccer match, if you don't go into a game, you know, if the coach just says, Hey, go out and get them, no plan, no plan of who's playing, who, who's covering who. Well we're going to do what plays we're going to start with. If there's no plan, it is utter chaos and there's no confidence, zero confidence. And most of you don't have a plan.
05:47 When you get on the tee box, most of you are playing, you know amateur golf, where you are, where you get to the tee box and you're looking at the hole from the tee box to the green. We're better players look at the whole backwards. They look at the hole from the green to the T box. So you get up there and you just simply grab your driver cause it's a long hole and you're trying to protect from a slice and you're thinking, man, I can't go left or right here and you're just trying to force a good swing and you're just so tense staring down the water and the outer bounds that there's no chance of hitting a good shot like one in 10 more than likely we're ending up with Peerless strokes. So we got to start building a plan of attack. The moment we get on a tee box and that plan, you have to speak it through your mind to create a sense of calmness and relaxation.
06:31 So like when I get to that tea box on 14 I get up there and if I'm playing the back tees, I know you know it's a driver and I know what shot shape I'm going to play. I go, Hey, my miss here is I cut. You know and it ends up on the, you know, cuts a little too much and end up on the right side of the fairway, a little controlled, cut them right down the heart of it. Stop. And just before the water, worst cases, I tug it a little bit. So I'm going to take a line. So I'm picking out right side of the T box aiming down the left hand side like I talked about cause that's part of my plan. I'm talking this through in my mind because it helps relax me cause it says Hey am I miss left is going to be okay and if I over cut it I have, I'm going to be okay. I'm making the fairway wider by playing these angles and it helps me relax because I have this plan.
07:15 Even though Brad has cracked the code to consistently breaking 90 there are still three major mistakes he's found from working with over 2000 clients that will sabotage your round before you get to the first tee. Head to www.mygolfcode.com now to receive your free guide where he outlines all three polls and provides you with some easy action steps to start playing more consistent golf today.
07:37 I'm sitting there on a tee box with a plan saying, Hey, my mist is here, here. This gives me the best chance to keep it on the golf course and out of harm's way. Then I set up and I pick my start point and my end point. I go, all right, I'm starting over this old divot. It's going to take off towards the corner towards that red stake in the left corner of the fairway and it's going to cut back ever so softly to the middle towards that other red stake. Starts here, ends there. Big, deep breath. Exhale, 80% effort, middle of the face. That's what I say every time I just swing before I can think of anything bad. When you talk that through and you talk the plan out in your head of where you want this ball to start, where you want it to end, why you're aiming, where you're aiming and you're telling yourself that gives you the best chance to keep it in play.
08:24 That gives you the best chance to not make double or triple bogey. That gives you the best chance to keep it on the golf course. Know when you talk that through and you, you come up with the plan, you're more relaxed, you're more confident cause you know what you're doing. You know where your misses might go and you're protecting against them. You're not sitting on the tee box going, well let me try this. I mean sure it might be a great article in a magazine. It might be awesome. Might've worked three weeks ago. It might've worked two hours ago. [inaudible] The driving range, standing on tee box saying, let me try this. Mechanical thought in your swing is creating no sense of confidence because you have no idea what's about to happen. You don't have a clue what's about to happen. So now you're, you're less confident.
09:07 Plus you're thinking about how to swing. So you're not even focused on the target. You haven't created a plan of where you want the ball to to start or end or what side of the whole year protecting from. You're not creating any of that. You're just thinking of your swing saying please dear Lord, please don't go out of bounds. Rider in the water left. Let me try this. Let me try to no strengthen my grip or let me try to turn a little bit more and it's just going to end up being a disaster because you're thinking of how and not where and you have no confidence cause you have no plan for the whole. So why does your golf ball keep going where you don't want it to go? Number one, you have no confidence cause you have no plan. Number two, you have a horrible pre-shot routine because your appreciate routines all about just grabbing the longest club in the bag and trying to think of something in your swing to make it go straight on that one particular swing, which is highly unlikely.
10:02 So what, you know, what should this appreciate routine be? You know, and, and I've shared with you what mine is, but it should be solely focused on, all right. Looking at the whole backwards are looking at worried this ball needs to land. So I always look at the green backwards, you know, on a par five, like this particular hole can I get there? And two, what are the chances with my ability level? Yeah. If they're not great. So for a lot of you, well if you're just trying to break 90 consistently, consistently be in the mid eighties I'm hitting drivers a low percentage shot on this particular hole. You're much better off saying, all right. Yeah. If I look at the whole backwards and I realize it's 520 yards and there's two landing areas that I'm just going to simply go, right? If I go five iron off the tee, that gives me an eight iron across the water.
10:48 Which thing gives me a pitching wedge to the green over the Creek. Yeah. And you're positioning yourself with shorter clubs over the biggest amounts of trouble. So now you're looking at the whole backwards going, all right, I want to have a pitching wedge over the Creek to the green, but that gives me what from here to here. So that would give me an eight iron from that pitching wedge distance back across the pond. So I need to hit at least a five iron or four iron, but I don't need to hit anything more than that. So now you could grab a four or five iron and say, all right, just relax. Don't need to crush it. Just a smooth swing. You know, I'm fighting a slice. I'm going to aim down the left center five, pull it 10 15 yards left. It's still not in the water, but I would have to slice a four iron, no 50 yards, right to be out of bounds.
11:36 So that takes, you know, the penalty pretty much out of playing your, you're talking this through your head. You got to talk this through your head because it helps your mind relax going, Hey, it's highly unlikely I end up in trouble here because I'm creating a plan aiming away from trouble, giving me the best chance of, I'm playing a shorter club off the tee, but that still gives me a, you know, a short to mid iron and then a pitching [inaudible] and a chance at birdie. So you've played this hole in your mind backwards. You've given yourself the best chance of success versus just stepping up, grabbing driver, thinking about something to do in your swing and hopes that it makes the ball go straight. You're more than likely then to hit the ball exactly where you didn't want it to go because that's what you were only thinking about is, I don't want it to go here, so let me try this in my swing.
12:22 You're not thinking about where you want it to start or end. You're not thinking relaxed. You have no plan for the whole, you have no idea. You're just trying to hit it as far as you can go and go from there, which is the worst thing you can do because you, you're now not playing golf. You're playing golf swing and hit it as hard as you can, which is not going to help you score very well. So we got to create that pre-shot routine where we come up with the plan. You plan that out in your mind going, this gives me the best chance to keep the ball on the golf course. This is the, you know, the shortest club I can hit here to still give me short clubs into the green. It's a great chance at birdie or par or worst-case bogey and we move on.
13:04 So that should be what your routine looks like. Very, very simple. Now the mind is powerful because even even to this day, I mean, how many years have I been playing golf? So I've been playing golf for over 32 years, started playing. I was three and love this game. But even to this day, I'm a professional. I've taught 16,000 lessons. I studied the slang, I study the mind, I studied the [inaudible], the body when it comes to fitness and nutrition and even to this day I will still have mental lapses. That's what separates the guys you see on TV on Saturday, Sunday versus everybody else is just the mental fortitude. So this isn't going to be easy. This takes practice. So you got to go back to last week's episode of, of you know how to practice properly and implement this routine implements, seeing the golf hole, you know, playing a few of the hardest holes you play, playing them on the driving range, grab a couple scorecards, go.
13:57 I really struggle with this whole five. So I'm going to aim here and you know I'm going to hit this club off the tee. It's gonna put me here, which is going to leave me this club to the green and you're just going to simply apply your way around the golf course that way one step at a time. So you got to practice that and that's part of that. What 70% of your full swing practice should be is going through that routine. Then relaxing and saying it's going to start here in here, playing with your [inaudible] typical shape, not the one you want to have with the one you do have. The one you want to have will come over time as you keep putting in practice on the mechanics. But right now you got to play with the one you do have. So it's gonna start here and here.
14:35 Step up, relax. If it's wiggle the fingers, exhale, 80% effort, middle of the face go and you'll be shocked as to how much better you hit the ball, how more solid you hit the ball, how much more you keep the ball in playing, give yourself chances at par, which is all we're trying to do here. So hopefully that helps you guys. Helps you understand why the golf ball keeps going where you don't want it to. No, it truly, it comes down to appreciate routine and having a plan for the whole. So talking more about having a plan for your round of golf. You want to tune in next week on how to stand on the first tee. Just simply oozing confidence. We're going to talk about how creating a game plan before you even get to the first tee. We're going to talk about that next week on how to warm up properly before your round to give you that kind of confidence heading into the first tee so you can start playing your most confident in golf yet. So staying in tune next, stay tuned for next week's episode. Until then, remember to swing easy. Take care. We'll talk to y'all soon.
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