Patrick Cantlay has become one the top players in the world in recent years, accumulating 8 PGA Tour wins in seven seasons. With a consistent game that is strong across all the major statistical categories, his swing is a text book example of great technique and control... so, what can we learn?
In this article, World No.8 Patrick Cantlay shares his eight favorite tips in order to help you play better golf...
1. Beating A Slice
Strengthening your grip a little is one obvious way to improve things a bit. Beyond that, it’s important to complete your swing so try to really think about following through to a full finish, rather than thinking too much about just impact. That could really help get your club travelling on a better line through the ball.
2. Reading Greens
If you’ve got time, then always read putts from the other side of the hole too. It’s hard to always see it from 30ft away, but going round to the other side, where you can get a good look from perhaps ten feet, can really help you see what happens in that critical final six feet, and help you work out where the ball is going to be dropping into the hole from.
3. Match Play
Think of each hole as an individual match – it’s very different to stroke play. The key thing is to not give trivial holes away. You’ve got to make them win holes rather than giving holes to them.
4. Holing Out From Three Feet
The first thing is just hours and hours of practice. Other than that, really narrow your target down from just the hole to something much smaller – perhaps a blade of grass or a blemish at the back of the hole. In terms of a target on those short putts, the narrower your focus, the better.
5. Increasing Power
Tension is a real power killer. I see a lot of golfers really tensing everything up when they’re trying to hit further, when actually just the opposite is much more likely to help. Lots of golfers could hit it further by relaxing a little more at address and getting rid of all the tension they mistakenly believe they need to hit it a long way.
6. Bunker Play
Set-up is the big thing – a lot of golfers set up to bunker shots in too similar a way to normal full shots. For bunker shots, I would recommend flexing your legs a little more and getting more weight on to your lead leg. That will get you bringing the club back into the ball a little steeper.
7. Creating More Wedge Spin
You’ve got to get the ball first and one way to improve your chances of doing that would be to move it back a little in the stance. Not too far, but just far enough to improve your chances of getting ball rather than ground or turf first.
8. How To Practise
You can improve just by ‘being there’ in terms of concentration on the range. Twenty minutes where you focus on every shot is far better than standing there for two hours and hitting ball after ball without really focusing.
Every shot counts on the course. You’re practising to improve, so you should really think in terms of every shot counting on the range as well.
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