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The Golf Fix: U.S. Open Special (45:34)

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Michael Breed offers up a special, full web-exclusive show to honor the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club.

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-It's our US Open special. Tonight we're gonna be talking about...

-It's our US Open special. Tonight we're gonna be talking about...accuracy with the driver, then we're gonna talk a little...accuracy with the iron, and we're gonna talk about some...accuracy with the short game. We're talking accuracy, let's do this. -The Golf Fix, with Michael Breed. Brought to you by SkyCaddie. -It's that time of the year again. It's that time of the year again. It's the US Open. What a fantastic week we've got coming up here. I'd let you know, you can reach us, very simple, thegolffix@golfchannel.com. Our telephone number is 800-842-9987. Twitter and Facebook, we're over 23,000 with Facebook, we're headed to 30,000. That's the goal, and then video, send those videos to us and then we'd love getting those videos. We love being able to look at your swing and see what we can do to help you play better golf. Let's look at what we've got coming up on tonight's show. We talked about it in the beginning, accuracy. This is all about accuracy. You play the US Open, you better drive it in the fairway and believe me, it's very difficult. Lot of pressure, thin fairways, and if you miss it, you're in thick rough. Then we're gonna deal with short game accuracy, because you are gonna miss the fairways and what are you gonna do? How are you gonna be able to negotiate save par? Well, you have to do it with short game accuracy, and then putting. A lot of times, you're gonna be putting-- or playing away from the hole so you have to understand the distance control, 'cause a lot of times when those greens get very firm, your shots into those greens, you're gonna play away from the flags and that's gonna leave some 40, 50-foot putts, particularly over there at Congressional, there's a lot of undulation in those greens and you have to be able to control your distance so we're talking about that, we're talking accuracy and it's all night long. I can remember one of the most important events that occurred in my life, playing golf that is, was I had a chance to play in the Greater Hartford Open. This was back in 1994 and I remember standing on that first tee being so nervous and not sure where that-- that fairway had kinda shrunk up, it was so narrow, and I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do to get this ball in the fairway other than a couple of prayers and some good fortune, and you know what, I focused on these things that I'm gonna share with you to assist with getting that ball on the fairway and, yep, I got it into the fairway and actually birdied my first hole, but the rest of the round didn't go quite so well, but the other one did. Anyway, all right, so... hitting the ball into the fairway a little accurate, there's a couple of things that we wanna pay attention to. In fact, I'm gonna give you three things that I want you to pay attention to. The first one that I want you to do is I want you to grip down on this club, so if you normally hold the club say in that position right there, what I want you to do is I just want you to go down about an inch right there so you've got a little bit more space between your hand and that club, and the reason why I want you to do that is as follows: First, as you shorten up this club, it gets closer to being almost like an iron swing. I mean, obviously it's not but it creates a more steep upright angle of attack and that's gonna help you kinda get to this next point that we're gonna talk to. The other thing-- and the other reason why gripping down on this club is-- is so much better is it lightens the shaft, all right? As that lightens that shaft, it doesn't feel so heavy when you're swinging. It's also gonna invite some body movement in this, so there's a lot of reasons why gripping down on this club is such a good idea, but the primary reason is this: When we grip down on anything, basically what we're saying in our mind without saying it, what we're saying in our mind is we're going to make a better swing here and not worry about the distance, so when I grip down on this club right here, what I'm doing is is I've eliminated a distance thought. Once I've eliminated that distance thought, I'm not so concerned with how far it's going, now I'm concerned with how straight it's gonna go, so what I want you to do is I want you to get in there, you're gonna make a practice swing, feel that feel of that club being gripped down there and then just a smooth swing. Make that swing go that way. Now, what you're gonna find is I'm not gonna have a tremendous amount of distance on this shot. We know that already, but I want that ball to be in the fairway so you could see it's between the two-- the two dots there but it's not up to the 250 thing 'cause all I was doing is just making a smooth swing there and getting that ball into the fairway, all right? So that's the first thing that we wanna do. The second thing that we wanna do is we wanna have a centeredness of hit. We wanna make sure that we get the ball in the center of the clubface. If we hit it out on the toe or in the heel, that ball is gonna take a variety of paths, so what we wanna do is we wanna set up that little channel and we've talked about this before. We set up this channel. Now I'm gonna put that ball back here for a second and hang on to it, but what we're gonna do is we're gonna set up that channel. Remember, I'm gripping down on this so you're gonna see me grip down this whole segment, so what we're doing is all-- all I wanna do is I just wanna swing this club through this channel, and get this feeling of what that feels like, what does my body feel like it's doing in order to get this to go through that channel. After I've done that drill a couple of times, then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get this tee. Tee that ball up right there. Now I've got-- and you can see this, a nice job there, Elizabeth, so what you can see is I've got that tee on an angle right there and that's on that angle because that's the angle of the club shaft that I've got going through there so I wanna make sure that that shaft can go through it very easily. So, now we're going here like this. Remember, we're gripping down on that club and now all I'm focusing on doing is making sure that that goes through that channel, okay, so right through the channel. So I'm through that channel right there and, again, this is not about distance, this is about getting this into the fairway and so if I can get them in between those-- those numbers out there, then I've done a nice job, and the final thing and the most important part of this is balance, okay? So many of you, when you get nervous or when you get to where you're-- you've got that that driver in your hand and you're gonna experience this, by the way, when you're on the first tee of, say, your member-guest or even on the first tee on the weekend and some other people are standing around, there's that thought of, "I've gotta make the perfect golf swing right now," and you start putting all this pressure on yourself, all right? And if you hit that shot poorly, a lot of times, the day goes that way and if you hit it in the center of the fairway, a lot of times, it goes successfully, so this tee shot is a critical tee shot for you, but balance is so critical and so important, and when you start talking balance, you gotta start at address. So many times I see people get in here and as they start getting this pressure and they start feeling this I've gotta get this in the fairway, they start leaning out over their toes like this and all of a sudden the swing has no movement or freedom to it, so what I want you to do is I want you to be aware of what's going on with your balance. When you get set up, I want you to feel like you've got that balance in the arches of the feet. I don't want you out on the toes of the feet, and I don't want you on the heels. What I want is I want it right in the arches right there, and you may feel like you're a little bit taller. A very common thing when we get a little nervous or we're afraid or we have to steer this ball, we tend to bend over too much and we start going like this, getting too close to the ground, so as you get your weight in the arches, what you're gonna feel or what you may feel is that you're a little bit taller here, and then as you start to swing, what I want you to do is I want you to make sure that you stay in balance. So when you come through here, can you hold your balance? Are you falling after you make a swing? Are you staying with that weight on that forward leg right there so that it's on the outside of the foot but also in the arches right there, all right, so as we make that motion couple times, we feel that balance and our body is in a proper position, that club is gonna tend to come through the ball and hit it in the center of the clubface and as we've gripped down on it, now we've got a chance to get this into the center of the fairway, or more importantly, hit our target. So, our three thoughts. One, we're gonna grip down on it. Two, we wanna make sure we hit this in the center of the clubface so we're almost imagining those two tees there, that gate, and then the third thing is that balance, so...gonna make a practice swing and feel that balance. Got my balance. Now I'm imagining...those two tees...and now I'm gonna run it through there with some good balance. And there we go, and so what you're doing is this, pay attention to this 'cause this is important. We wanna make sure that we grip down on that club...maintain that balance and get the club to go through that channel right there, you hit it in the center of the clubface, and the ball's got a much better chance of finding the center of the fairway or you hitting your target. Now we got a lot of stuff coming up tonight. We're gonna talk a little accuracy on iron play. We're gonna talk about accuracy with the putting. We're gonna talk some mental stuff here. It's all about the US Open and it's gonna be a great show. Don't go anywhere. You're watching the Golf Fix. -The Golf Fix, brought to you by...the new SkyCaddie SGX, more than the next generation range finder. Golf Pride, number one grip on Tour. -We're gonna do-- we're gonna do the iron accuracy, get it right there. Iron accuracy, and then...we're gonna talk about some short game. Welcome back to the Golf Fix. All right, we told you, we're gonna be talking some accuracy and we still got a couple segments of accuracy. This one is gonna be about-- about iron accuracy, and this is critical, 'cause what these players are gonna be faced with is not just getting the ball on to the green but getting it into the right portions of the green, or making sure that they play away from the flag. If they have driven it into the fairway and they don't have a good angle at the flag because the greens are so firm and so fast that if you miss your approach shot into that-- into that flag, well, you're gonna be faced with an incredibly challenging up and down, so what we wanna make sure is that we play away from the flag, so iron accuracy is critical and then to that end, you have to fly the ball a specific distance, because as those greens get firm, the ball's not gonna land and stop the way it does, say, normally in a normal event out on Tour. What happens is is that that ball will hit and it will release a fair amount and so you have to be able to control the flight of your golf ball, the trajectory of your golf ball, so that it lands exactly where you want it to land because it's gonna release maybe 10, 12, 15, maybe even 25 feet, so you have to be able to be prepared for that and that's where iron accuracy is critical right here. So I wanna talk to you about some things that are essential with proper iron control, all right? And that's gonna be first setting up to the golf ball the proper way. This is all gonna be in camera 2 here. When we get set up to hit the ball, what we're looking for is the following: First, I want the shaft of the club to enter the body. If this line were to continue or if there was a flashlight here and this light was coming out of that, it would hit me right in the belt line right here, so this shaft continues this way. I don't wanna get my hands so low like this that the shaft will be hitting in my thigh, and I don't wanna be up here like this so that it would be hitting me up in the shoulders. What I want is I wanna get this right in the belt line right here. The other thing is I don't-- as I mentioned in the first segment, I don't wanna be out here over my toes like this so that my weight is out on the toes. That's gonna greatly inhibit the amount of motion that we can create in this swing, so what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that our weight is in the arches of the feet. We'll-- when it gets there, then we have to reach to the ball. I don't want you out here reaching so that you're creating a forearm stretch that creates tension in the tops of your forearms. What I want is I want you to be close enough so that that shaft is in the belt line, arms are nice and relaxed, and the balance is right there in the-- in the arches of the feet, all right? And then when we go into this-- into this position here, I wanna make sure that we've got just a little bit of a reverse K going on where-- where our lead shoulder is a little bit higher than the trail shoulder so that's really what we're doing here in the setup position. I know ball position is gonna vary with each different club so we're not getting into that. We're just talking about getting yourself balanced properly 'cause remember in the last segment, balance is critical, and it is critical at address you gotta be set up properly, all right? Now, what we need to do is we need to make sure that the bottom of the arc is happening in a consistent place, and this is a very simple thing for you to do. My favorite thing, these pool devices are great so you're gonna get yourself your little floatie and you're gonna create just a little triangle here with this floatie. You can see how that-- that is just a little triangle and you're gonna set it down just like that, okay? Now, what I wanna do when I hit this ball, or when I hit this floatie rather, is I want this-- the shaft angle to be parallel to that floatie right there, so I want the shaft and the clubhead to hit this floatie. Let me get this over here so you can get that close-up right there. Can you see that there? All right. So what we wanna do is we wanna hit that at the same time. Let the shaft and the clubhead hit the floatie at the same time. If I'm getting into this and I'm hitting the head without the club shaft hitting that, then I've got a real problem. I'm gonna bottom out too soon, I'm gonna be lifting that up into the air, and what happens is I'm gonna be inconsistent with my impact, so I have to make sure that my impact position is correct so I'm gonna hit this like this, all right, so that's gonna-- just like that, so that's gonna be what we're feeling. Finally, what we have to do is we have to have proper body rotation and that's two things. First, the body has to rotate properly in the backswing, and second it has to keep rotating in the through swing so that I have face stability through the shot. I don't want a lot of twisting in that face. That twisting in the face is gonna create curve and it's also gonna create changes in trajectory which affects where the ball is gonna land, so what we wanna do first is we're gonna put that club shaft right in the stomach, and feel this turning just like this. I don't want this to go this way where the clubhead is no longer in front of my body. What I want is I want the body to rotate this way, so the club is gonna do this, so this is a great little drill for you to do when you're out in the fairway, just make this little drill, what it's gonna do is it's gonna allow you to make sure that your body is moving at the same rate as the clubhead, so we get in here like this and just feel that initial couple of feet when it goes this way, the body is moving and the clubhead is staying in front of it, and you're just going like that, and then, finally, to create that face stability, what I want is I want the left hip-- or the lead hip, lead shoulder to rotate out of the way here so that my body is carrying the clubface and that's gonna quiet that clubface down. So, here, there's my motion. And then we go. All right, so, let's just go over what we talked about. First, I need to make sure I have the proper balance in my setup position here, okay? The next thing that we wanna try to do, is we wanna make sure with this floatie that we set it up in a little bit of an angle right here so that I impact that with the shaft before the head hits it, okay? So just getting that image in our mind of what that feels like. That's gonna help us with that impact position, and then, take the club back with that shaft in front of our body here, create that impact by the body carrying the club and then going through that way so that the face of the club is very stable through the hit so I've got a consistent bottom of the arc and I have a consistent face motion and what ends up happening is I get some accuracy with my iron play, all right? All right, we gotta head to a break here, remind you about what we got coming up in the show. We're still talking about tempo, the importance of tempo. We're gonna talk about short game, a little short game accuracy. We've got some putting for you, so there's a bunch of stuff to take care of, but before we do that, it's time now to Manage Your Game presented by the SkyCaddie SGX. We found the fairway here and my trusty caddie, Mark Long, is gonna help me. Mark, you've spent a lot of time caddying for Freddie Funk and he finds the fairway a lot, right? Like 80. It works on your tan a little bit, right? You gotta make sure you got that sunblock on. -I'm always in the sun with Fred-- -Yeah-- -we never get any shade. -Yeah, exactly. All right, so, we're back in the same situation. We've got it in the fairway here and, you know, so many times we're playing courses and the people at home are playing courses where the flags have red, white, and blue indicating red in the front, white in the middle, blue in the back. This situation here, we've got a red flag, certainly looks like the bottom of the flag is kinda tucked. Don't really know how close that is to the front edge. This is where your talents take over. -Right. On Tour, we get a pin-- what we call a pin sheet that shows us the precise locations of the holes and we've got a pinpoint feature in the SkyCaddie that we're able to locate the pin so we know that this pin's only 5 steps on the front of the green. From right here, it's 132 to the front and 137 to the hole, so now we can start working strategy around that hole location. Right on the front edge, it looks like we've got a grass bunker short of the green. We got plenty of room behind it so if you're feeling real good about the number like Fred might, this is a perfect 9-iron for Fred, just a nice full swing, hits it 136, it's perfect. -Right. -He's gonna go right at it, be real aggressive. Depending on your level of play, how you're feeling, what the wind's doing, et cetera, you got a lot of green behind that pin, you might play a little safer, take an extra club-- -And I think for the viewer here, it's probably a smart idea to look at that red flag and go, "Okay, I've got only 5 yards between the front edge and that flag but I've got another 20 maybe behind it-- -Right-- -and that's gonna allow me to hit at least one club, maybe another club more." -Right. -So I might be thinking even if this is 137, I might be thinking 145 to 150, right? -Right. You might get a different number in your head-- -Okay, I'm gonna go for the-- I'm gonna for the 9. -Perfect. -Yeah, I kinda like-- I like perfect. Perfect's good. All right, anything else? Again, now-- what would just-- you wanna take it right at that-- at that limb in that tree there, right? -Just right at it. -We're gonna go right at it. -Right at it. -All right, I like the way you're thinking. Stay aggressive. All right. That one's not gonna hurt my feelings. -Gotta sit down. -Okay, right on the back edge there, so playing that smart shot to the back part of that green, I never brought the danger of the front side in play. -Right. -Always listen to your caddie. -We're back on the Golf Fix. Here's your host, Michael Breed. -It's our US Open special. We're almost at the putting green just yet. We've talked about accuracy with the driver and accuracy with the irons. Now we're gonna talk a little accuracy with the short game and how to become better with the short game and, again, what's important to understand is is that this is what the players are gonna need to do in order to walk through that door and do what Graeme McDowell did last year, win the US Open. But how it can help you with your game because a lot of the stuff they're facing will be things that you're gonna face when you go out to go play your games of golf and to improve your game of golf. Now, talking about short game and short game accuracy. We're gonna throw a little Power of 3 at you here and give you three things that are gonna assist you with becoming better with the short game. The first thing that we have to do and when we talk short game, by the way, we're talking about little pitches, chips, anything around the green. You need to be consistent with how you're impacting that golf ball, and you cannot be helping this ball up into the air. Once you start trying to help this ball up into the air, you're affecting trajectory if you hit it solidly but a lot of you, when you come through and you try to help this in the air, you bottom out the club too soon, you might hit this shot fat or hit it thin and that ball does things that you have no interest in it doing 'cause it's not getting close to the hole. What you're gonna see with these players is during this week, you're gonna see their short games, they're gonna be landing the ball in specific places with specific trajectory, and the way that you do that is by not helping the ball up into the air, so the first thing in our Power of 3 is making sure that we contact this ball without helping it into the air. It's a very simple drill. You've seen me do it a number of times and it's a great-- it's a fun drill. I do this actually a lot up at Sunningdale where I'm the head golf professional helping people to improve their impact position and making sure they're consistent with how that club moves through the ball. You take two golf balls and you separate it by just one clubhead. You're gonna play that ball basically these two golf balls are in the middle of your stance. I want you to hit both at the same time. If you come down on this too steep, or you start helping this up into the air, you're not gonna be able to get that front ball. What we want is we wanna-- we wanna be able to hit both balls and both of those golf balls are gonna go up into the air. Now, the way that that happens is that that club is moving along the ground, not into the ground, so we have to make sure that the club is moving along the ground. The other thing that's going on is our weight isn't moving around, so we have to, in our second Power of 3, we have to make sure that our weight is stable through the shot. It's not moving around, so when we start the shot, depending on whether it's a chip or a pitch and I don't know exactly which shot we're gonna be dealing with when you go out there to go practice, but I want it to be consistent so if you're 60% of your weight on the left side, then I want you to stay there. For the-- for the chip shot, you might be 80% on that-- on that lead leg, but I want it to stay there. It's a single pivot point. In other words, the weight's here and the shot pivots around that spot right there. I don't want you to be moving this way, I don't want the body to be shifting, I don't want anything other than that weight to stay there and then pivot around that right there, all right? So, got a couple little drills for you. The first one is...you set up like this and you're gonna have your front toe just in front of the golf ball and you're gonna take your back foot and you're just gonna put it on the toe just like this. That's gonna force you to stay on that forward leg. This is putting about 90% of my weight on my forward leg, and then what I'm doing here is I'm just making a swing and swinging from there. What you're gonna find out is, first of all, you're gonna start to feel your balance. You're gonna feel the weight moving within your feet, but second of all, what you're gonna notice is the bottom of the arc is happening right around where your foot is. What we wanna do is we wanna catch the ball before the bottom of the arc, so when we hit the shot, the club is...right like that and you can hear the ball get hit before the club gets into the ground, and that's because I kept my weight in the same spot. Even though I'm rotating, it stays in the same place and the reason why it stays in the same place is because I've removed the back foot which means I've created a single pivot place, all right? Now, the second thing that you can do...is you just get another ball here. I'm gonna actually move up into this-- into this rough right here and I'm gonna put a ball underneath my lead foot and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get the sense that I'm compressing that foot into the ground so I've got my heel pushing down on that a little bit more. Now what I'm getting to do is I'm getting to hit a shot with both feet on the ground and if I start to sway, my foot's gonna roll right off that golf ball. That ball will shoot out from underneath my foot here, so what we're gonna do is stay right there and, again, very, very smooth with that motion right there so I don't have my body moving all over the place, so those two little drills are gonna assist you with making sure that your-- your weight is consistently in the same spot throughout the motion. Now, the final thing that happens here and the most important part of this shot is making sure that you're hitting this with your body. Even though it's a short shot, so many of you get in here with these short shots and you don't move anything here, you go this way and it's all arms and hands. Or, when you are trying to lift it up into the air, you go this way and then your body weight falls back into your trail foot and you start trying to scoop this up into the air and your finish position looks like this where you've broken your wrist, the club's up in the air and your chest is facing the ball or where the ball was and your body weight's back on your trail foot. What we wanna make sure of is that we're hitting it with the body, okay? So, my chest is gonna rotate just a little bit back and then my chest is gonna rotate through, so I'm feeling the shot rotate and rotate and if you get nervous, I want you to make sure you're focusing on making sure to turn and turn. Make sure your body is moving 'cause as your body moves, as I turn my body, turn my chest, the club's gonna move. If I don't turn my chest, this club's not going anywhere. When I turn my chest this way and this way, the club's gonna move, so all I have to do is hit it with this and all this is gonna move, so I make a little practice here and there, and then my body moves through that shot just like that, all right? So we're gonna make sure we've got some body motion. That's our Power of 3, that's our short game accuracy and that's gonna help you. We've got a lot more to talk about. We're still talking about some putting. We're still gonna discuss some tempo. I've got a final swing thought here that's gonna talk to the mind. There's a lot of stuff to do. Before we go to break here, I wanna remind you all this week on Golf Channel, it's Live From the US Open. The action begins Tuesday at noon with news conferences and when the tournament begins, Golf Channel has you covered with highlights and analysis before and after tournament cup. It's US Open Week on Golf Channel. We'll be back. Welcome back to the Golf Fix. Our halfway house and, you know, we've talked about some driving accuracy, we talked about some iron accuracy, and we've talked about some short game accuracy and now it's time to talk a little tempo, because tempo and what you're gonna find when you-- when you listen to these players talk, they're gonna talk, particularly after a great round, "Boy, the tempo was really on," and when they had a bad one, "You know, my tempo was a little bit off," so I wanna give you some ideas on tempo because, you know, when you go out to go play, you're out on the golf course, you can do some things out there to help you with your tempo. The first thing that you can do out on the golf course, grab a second club. Come on over here and swing this club. Now, this is-- this is gonna be a full swing tempo. What we wanna do is we wanna swing this club-- these clubs, rather, so that they're moving at the same rate of speed. The way it happens is by my body moving properly and as you do this drill, what you're gonna find is that the balance in your feet and we've talked about balance, the balance in your feet is gonna change. If my tempo is off like this, what you're gonna find is is that as we go, my balance in my feet is gonna be off, my body isn't gonna move that much. If my body's not moving, what you're gonna find is that your dominant arm is gonna take over, it's gonna move faster than your other arm, so me being a right-handed player, I'm gonna feel my right arm being a little bit more dominant. I wanna make sure my body is working so that that-- those clubs are moving together. What you're also gonna find as you do this is that there's a rhythm that happens with your chest movement. That's gonna dominate what happens and that's gonna allow you to make a rhythmical swing, so after you've done that, now, again, you can't do this on the golf course but when you're on the practice tee, do that drill, and get the sense the two clubs are moving at the same time, 'cause as you do that, now both of your arms are working together. Feel that? Now all of a sudden I've got some good rhythm, I've got a pretty straight shot going on right here. Come on, hang on with me, Monty. Oh! Welcome home! All right, so, that's the first drill that you can do. Now, the second drill that you can do and, again, this is a practice drill. I'm gonna put this other club back here so that this golf ball doesn't go rolling far away, but what happens is this: So many of you are losing your tempo because when you're initially starting the swing, you're moving too fast, so this swing starts with speed right here, and what I want you to do is I want you to have this move slowly. So, gonna need another golf ball in here. Sorry about that. So what you're gonna do is this, you're gonna just start with those golf balls just opened a little bit, enough room so that you can put the club in there. Now, what I wanna have happen is this: I want the ball and the club to stay connected for as long as possible. What I don't want you to do is put the club in here and flick this away like that. That's gonna go flying away from you. What I want it to do is I want it-- I want the ball and the club to stay connected, so when I take this back, if I'm moving this at the same rate of speed so that the ball and the club are connected all the way back there, what happens is is that my body is working properly and my arms are working with my body. So many times, I can't even tell you how many times I'm seeing this, I go to do a clinic or I-- I do a little pro-am and I go out there and I play with players or watch players hit and this club is moving so fast right from the start that they never get a chance to let the body get involved, so the club just goes like this, and all of a sudden this hasn't moved at all. What we need to have happen is we need the body to move, and the body's gotta control the arms and the clubhead and what happens when you get nervous is you freeze this because you don't wanna leave that ball, where if I leave that ball, bad things are gonna happen so you're gonna stay focused on that, you're like this and all of a sudden that swing looks like that. We need to get the body to move. Well, in order for that to happen, the club's gotta move slowly so that the body has some involvement, so we go like this, we roll this back, let that go like that, let it keep going, and then we're gonna come back through. All right? And it's-- just show you one more time. Put those golf balls just a little bit apart, just enough room to move that in there. Get set up, move this slowly. They stay connected, then you go, and then you go, and what you're gonna find is that that's gonna take a little bit of time for you to get comfortable with. That other golf ball is gonna be very close to you, not so far away, all right? All right, we gotta take a little break here. We come back, we got a little putting for you, we got maybe some green reading, there's a lot of stuff left. My final swing thought, even. Don't go anywhere. It's our US Open special. -Time now for this week in golf history. In 1960, Arnold Palmer overcomes a 7-stroke final round deficit to hold off 20-year-old amateur Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan to win the US Open. In 1970, happy birthday Phil Mickelson. The 4-time major champion and 5-time US Open runner up turns 41 this week. And in 1973, Johnny Miller shoots 63 on Sunday in the US Open at Oakmont, the lowest final round by a winner in major championship history. -Gotta 180 yards. Is that-- that's 6-iron. Oh, looks like a [unk]. Welcome back to the Golf Fix. Our US Open special, and now it's time to talk about putting, and we're gonna get to later in the show, we're still gonna get to some of the things that the players are gonna face when they get to the US Open and those little 5, 10-foot putts and maybe just as controlled. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit, but right now what I wanna talk to you about is the importance of reading greens and understanding how to read greens, because truth be told, you can make the best putting stroke with the best distance control and if you don't know where to aim, it's not gonna find the cup, there's a news flash for you. So, rather than us kind of going into a flat surface area where we got here, I wanna just kinda do a little drawing here. Thank you very much for pulling that up for me. So, here's what I wanna do. We're gonna just give you a couple of different ideas, and forgive my drawing. The first thing that you're gonna pay attention to is where the clubhouse is, so here's my clubhouse, all right? And if the property is like a normal place like at Sunningdale Country Club, our clubhouse is on a very high piece of property and then the whole land falls away from it, and the reason why they build clubhouses on the highest part of the property is because that's where the best view and that's also the best drainage, so, yeah, it's kind of a cute house there, let's put a little chimney on there, too, by the way. All right, so, what we end up getting is if you are aware of where the clubhouse is, you're gonna understand what's going on with the overall piece of property, and it's a very important thing to do. It doesn't necessarily mean that every single putt on that green is gonna break away from the clubhouse, but what it does mean is that the majority of them will break away from the clubhouse and if you have an understanding of where that clubhouse is, you're gonna have a better chance of making the putt, okay? So, understand the terrain and what you see. Now, the biggest thing that you can do is to understand what's going on beneath your feet. When you look at something, you might see something but you're gonna feel it more when it's beneath your feet, so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna make a little bit of a drawing here like this, and what you're gonna find is a couple of things when you're going. First is, is that when you're walking in a downhill direction, it's going to be easier for you walk, so if you just go out onto the green and you just walk the green, what you're gonna find is is that it's gonna be easier to go downhill than it is to go uphill. Now, that's not something that ought to capture you by surprise, but it is something that if you think about when you're out there walking around, you're gonna understand what's happening, all right? So, is it easier to walk this way or is it easier to walk this way? When we're standing on a line here, what you're gonna find is is that you're always gonna lean up the hill. So, if you feel like you're standing and you've got more weight on your right leg than on your left, you're leaning into the hill. That means that it's uphill to your right and you pay attention to that. So, as you walk or as you stand, what you're gonna start to notice and I'm not talking about-- even if you've got like a terrain that's kind of moving like this and you're walking down and up and down and up, you're gonna feel your weight go-- you're gonna feel it get easier, get difficult, it's level. You're gonna feel all that so you gotta pay attention to that. The final thing that I want you to do, I'm gonna draw a green right here, okay? And let's make the flag right there, and let's say that there's a ball right here and let's say your ball is right here, all right? So, you are not farther from the hole than your-- than your opponent, all right? And what you-- what I want you to do is I want you to pay attention to what the golf ball of your opponent does, so if that golf ball breaks right to left, it breaks towards you, that means that you have an uphill putt because what happens is is that as that turns down this way, you're going up in this direction, that means that you're gonna have an uphill putt. If you're standing here, let me draw another green here real quickly, so we've got a green like this and you got a flag here like this and you're gonna say you putt like this, and your opponent is putting from this direction here, and when your opponent putts, if his ball goes flying past the hole but it doesn't look like he hit it very hard, then likely what happened is he's putting downhill, and if he's putting downhill, then it's probable, because everything's gonna break down the hill, that your ball is gonna break like that, so it's gonna go down the hill, so when you pay attention to what your opponent is doing or the person in your group what's going on on the green, what you're gonna find is that all those golf balls are gonna give you some information as to what your ball is gonna do. So, when we're doing television coverage and you hear somebody that's gonna go to school on this, that's a conversation that you've got putts on similar lines. Well, what I want you to do is I want you to train your eye to pay attention to every single putt that's hit on the green, because what you're gonna find is that you're gonna get information from every single putt. You have to make sure that you're playing a competitor there has hit the ball solidly so you wanna pay attention to that, but you also wanna look at what's going on. You're gonna learn much more what's going on with break than the downhill-uphill because so much of it depends on their centeredness of hit, but pay attention to what's going on. That is sort of my monarch notes to reading greens there, and I know that's gonna help you out. All right, when we come back, we're still talking a little bit of putting. We're gonna talk about those 5 and 10-footers and we're gonna talk about distance control, how to hit it the right distance from 40 feet and then my final swing thought. So much more, it's our US Open special. Stick around. You're watching the Fix. Welcome back to the Golf Fix, our US Open special. So last segment we talked about reading greens, now we're gonna get a chance to talk about putting, and some of the things that the players are gonna face, you're gonna face the same thing. One, distance control and then, two, those 5- to 10-foot putts and there are gonna be a lot of 5- to 10-foot putts. I think Graeme McDowell was in the top 5 in almost every single putting statistic last year for the US Open, certainly that led to his win. His Saturday round was unbelievable with the putts that he made and, by the way, the number of three-putts that he avoided. I think he was in maybe third, second or third in the least number of three-putts during that round which obviously is very important when you play in the US Open. So all of us have these alignment rods that we use when we're out on the practice tee maybe hitting some golf balls. I wanna show you how you can use these when you're putting. What you're gonna do is you're gonna lay down these two rods and you're gonna create like a line here with a little gap in here. That's where we're gonna get the golf ball to stop around. Now, in order to become a very good putter, the most important thing that you can do is control speed. That's essential. Speed control. Ninety-two percent of all first putts that you have, that I have, that the PGA Tour players have, 92% of those first putts have some degree of break in them and once there's break in a putt, then you have to control speed. If I'm hitting a dead straight putt, speed is really not that important. I can hit it a little bit harder and if it's going dead straight, that's gonna be okay, but when I have to control-- when I have a putt that's breaking, I have to control speed so this little drill here is gonna help you out. What you're gonna do is you're gonna start with about a 4- or 5-footer and what I want you to do is I want you to hit these putts so that this ball stops right around this line. Okay? So that was a pretty good one. What I also want you to do, by the way, is I want you to take a practice stroke on every single one. I want-- I want you to get the sensation that it's just like you're on the golf course, so you're here, I'm taking my putting stroke with the prediction of how hard I'm gonna hit this so that it stops around that line, and then I'm gonna hit that putt and you can see my distance control is really pretty good, so one more practice putting stroke, and then I'm gonna hit this over here. I hit that a little harder than I wanted to but not bad. All right, now once I've done that at 5 feet and you can-- I'm not gonna do all this, you're gonna do that with 5 golf balls from 5 feet, then you're gonna move back and you're gonna move back and you keep going, until you get back to about 10 or 12 feet here, then what you're gonna do is you're gonna do the exact same thing. You're gonna take your practice putting stroke with the idea that you're gonna hit it that far and then you're gonna get in here and you're gonna hit it that far. Now that one wasn't quite as good as I'd like to do so I have a little bit of practice to do and that's what you're gonna do. When you get out on to the-- the practice putting green, what I want you to do is I want you to do that on a regular basis because even though your home course, green speeds are gonna change day to day and they're gonna change from morning to afternoon so you have to be in control of that speed. Once you're in control of that speed, now you can go ahead and you can attack making these 5- to 10-foot putts, so I'm gonna move this out of the way, and I wanna give you two little drills that I want you to work on when you're putting. The first one is with the alignment rods, what you're gonna do is you're gonna set these down just like that so they're right in that line right there and then we're gonna put a golf ball right here. Now what I wanna do is I wanna be able to hit this ball down these alignment rods...and into the hole right there. And make sure that the exact same distance...you don't wanna make them-- yeah, they gotta look like a railroad track so we're gonna spend some time...feeling this...set up... get this to go down this line right here. This is gonna help you-- I almost hit that-- that channel. That's gonna help you with your alignment and then the other drill that I want you to do and this is another very challenging drill but very important. What you're gonna do is...you're gonna create two tees with a little channel. You're gonna...puncture the ground like that...puncture the ground like that... and this is gonna be where we're starting the golf ball. I wanna get that golf ball to go right through that gap. Now, this is really hard to do and you need to take some time and work on making sure that you're getting that ball to go through that gap. Okay, so I got it to go through that gap. Now what happens is this. As you get the ball to start on the line that you're trying to get it to start on, what's gonna happen is you're gonna be much more accurate in what's going on down the line there, all right? So those are some drills that you're gonna-- that you're gonna practice, that's gonna help you with your putting and help you make those 5- to 10-foot putts. All right, final swing thought when we return, but before we leave you here, I wanna remind you that all this week on Golf Channel, it's Live From the US Open. The action begins Tuesday at noon with news conferences and when the tournament begins, Golf Channel has you covered with highlights and analysis before and after tournament coverage. It's US Open week on Golf Channel. We'll be back. -The Golf Fix, brought to you by... SkyCaddie, save strokes and money, too. Visit skycaddie.com today. The new Titleist 910 drivers, total performance, precision fit. -It's all about-- it's all about antioxidants. You have to eat juice, blueberries and tomatoes. If you're not eating blueberries and tomatoes, you're not doing right. Welcome back to the Golf Fix. My final swing thought. You know, this week, the players are gonna face maybe the biggest challenge of the year, the US Open, the rough is the thickest, the greens are very firm and very fast. The pressure is very intense, and they're not gonna be used to the scores that they're gonna shoot because typically what will go-- what will happen on a PGA Tour event is that players are gonna go out there and they are going to shoot 18, maybe 20 under par in a week-long event. Well, you know what, that's not gonna happen in the US Open. The winning score may be 3, 4, 5 under par, something low like that, and they may shoot a 74 which in a normal week may take them out of the event but during the US Open, may have them right in the middle of the pack, and what has to happen is they've gotta change their mindset. They've gotta get used to the idea that they're not making so many birdies, but nobody's making a lot of birdies. Now, how can this assist you? The way this helps you and the way that you can improve your game by watching what's going on is you can see how these players stick to what they're trying to do. They're focused on one shot at a time, trying to shoot the lowest score that they possibly can. Not looking at what they did yesterday or what they're thinking about tomorrow, but they're right here in the present and focusing on how they're gonna be able to shoot the lowest score. Maybe they're playing away from the flag so that they can give themselves a little bit of an easier opportunity to save a bogey instead of trying to force a shot in there to try to save a par. And so, what you can learn is, stick to what you're doing. Don't let your mind race ahead of you. If you're way over par, stick to what you're doing on this hole right here. If you're way under par, stick to what you're doing on that hole right there. Stay right in the present every single time and shoot the lowest score you can on each hole and hit the best shots you can on each shot and that's what you're gonna learn this week at the US Open, that's what you can take away from it. I'm Michael Breed, thanks so much for watching the Golf Fix and go see a PGA professional.
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Graeme McDowell
US Open
Phil Mickelson
PGA Tour
Ben Hogan
golf course
Arnold Palmer
Jack Nicklaus
Johnny Miller
golf swing

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