Instructions

As a player who has missed his fair share of fairways during his career, Tiger Woods has often had to rely on his unparalleled ability to pull off escape shots from trouble. Given Woods’ capacity to draw or fade normal shots at will, it should come as no surprise that he’s a master of the

Monte Scheinblum knows firsthand what happens to big hitters as they age. A former long-drive champ, he watched in slow-motion horror as his clubhead speed shrank from 130 miles per hour into the 110s during a two-year period. “Getting old hurts a strong player more,” says Scheinblum, 53, who teaches his power techniques at RebellionGolf.com.

An underrated part of playing out of the rough is knowing the type of grass you’re dealing with. A ball coming out of a buried lie in Bermuda grass will react differently than one in Kentucky Bluegrass, or fescue, or any of the other varieties. The same is true for the flier lie. Simply put,

Pros often wow us with their ability to hit high, soft-landing shots out of the rough. But sometimes they’re faced with a lie so brutal that there’s simply no way to get the ball to the green, no matter how strong their forearms or how much clubhead speed they can generate. “With a lie like

Most amateurs struggle with fairway-bunker shots, and one of the big reasons is, they don’t get to practice them. The vast majority of practice ranges don’t include a fairway-bunker area, so for most golfers, there just isn’t a way to put in the work needed to improve at one of golf’s most difficult shots. Tour

You’re just finishing up a triumphant summer of golf. Perhaps your handicap is down, you shot your best score in years, and now you’re bummed the leaves are changing. How do you preserve the skills you developed as you begin to prepare for winter “hibernation?” “It goes without saying you need to be preserving the

Fairway-bunker shots are often the toughest shots for most amateurs. It’s easy to catch the ball a bit heavy, leaving you short of the green and putting you in scramble mode. And it’s just as easy to catch it thin, which can lead to real disaster if the ball stays in the bunker, setting up

There seems to be a consensus among some amateurs that higher shots mean better shots. Higher shots land softer, after all, and it takes plenty of speed to launch something way up there. Most amateurs would love to carry their drives farther and hit their 7-irons into the stratosphere. Tiger Woods, of course, has no

Sergio’s never been one to speak technically about his swing, but we’ve managed to compile some tips from him over the years. Here are what we deem the six most valuable. Check them out and see if you can apply them to your game: When you’re putting, don’t overthink it. As evidenced by his unorthodox

One of the (many) ways PGA Tour players are different is the employment of a team of specialists to help them with their minds, bodies and swings. It isn’t uncommon to see a swing coach, short game specialist, mental coach and trainer all working during tournament week to help a player extract the most out

Tiger Woods’ willingness and ability to shape approach shots has been unparalleled throughout his 20-plus-year career. Hardly any two iron shots look the same—Woods is always trying to achieve a specific ball flight that best fits the shot at hand. And it’s not just draws and fades; Woods constantly varies trajectory, too, which he says

For all the daunting super-narrow tee shot corridors, forced carries and rough, something as subtle as grain could well be a PGA Tour player’s kryptonite. It’s a relatable struggle for average players—even if it’s a low-pressure money match with friends, just a hint of pressure can cause us all to mis-hit the touch shot with

When it comes to nagging lower-back pain, stretching is a great start, but you need more than flexibility to have a healthy back. Warning: Back pain can indicate a serious problem that requires a doctor’s care, but for minor discomfort related to golf, adding strength training for the back into your routine can help. And

When you beat Winged Foot into submission with 375-yard tee shots like Bryson DeChambeau did, it’s easy to overlook some of the more subtle skills he brings to the table, like putting. DeChambeau ranked 18th in strokes gained/putting for the week, and in the recently completed 2019-‘20 season, DeChambeau ranked 10th on tour in that

The putting surfaces at Winged Foot this week are a little different than the greens most of us are used to playing regularly. These lightning fast, undulating greens have led to pros taking insane lines over massive swales and dips in these genius Tillinghast surfaces. While these putts take finesse and skill, with a little

Your game might be decidedly less “outlierish,” but yes, you can actually still steal some elements of his swing and approach. “With all the drastic changes to his body and game over the last two years, it’s the change in Bryson’s swing cadence that is the most amazing thing for a tour player to do,”

You could go weeks without seeing a 7-wood on the PGA Tour, where players like Dustin Johnson carry a 4-iron 240 yards. But at Winged Foot, the combination of 500-yard par 4s and shin-high rough means many players are using 7-woods as mega-utility clubs. Yep, even World No. 1 Dustin Johnson. The fairway-wood option is

Golf has become increasingly numbers-oriented. With the ubiquity of launch monitors and force plates and advanced statistics, pros have more hard data than ever at their disposal. But for Tiger Woods, it’s never just about the numbers. In Episode 4 of My Game: Tiger Woods—Shotmaking Secrets, presented by Geico, he gives insight into his unique

It won’t take long for the “What would you shoot at Winged Foot?” takes to start rolling in once we get a closer look at what kind of diabolical tortures the USGA has planned. As you speculate about whether or not you could break 150, we asked three top teachers who work at exceptionally hard

Tour pros take in a great deal of information before hitting a shot into a par 3. What’s the raw yardage to the flag, the front of the green, and the back? Is it playing uphill or downhill, and how much? How much room do I have between the pin and the edge of the

We’ve all done it. You get to the top of your backswing and feel the club in a wonky position, so you do your best to change your swing in real-time. The results are, more often than not, disastrous. Such a rash mid-move adjustment goes against every old adage about staying committed to the shot,

The 2020 FedEx Cup champion doesn’t have what would seem to be the most copyable swing. Dustin Johnson used it to go low at East Lake and win by three over Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele. But even if you can’t get your left wrist into Johnson’s signature position at the top, you can pick

When you stand on the tee of a par 5, you should see opportunity. I certainly do. This season, I’m ranked second in par-5 scoring average on the PGA Tour, averaging 4.48 strokes per hole. But the desire to birdie these “gettable” holes means nothing if you don’t have a plan. And that plan probably

Hitting a fairway wood off the ground has always been one of the harder asks in golf. The conventional wisdom—what’s been taught for decades—is that a player should “sweep” the ball off the turf rather than compressing it, like you would with an iron. If we translate that old adage to the current era of

The concept for Golf Digest Schools, a video-on-demand instruction program, is to bring together the best experts in the game to create comprehensive how-to video series and to make it all available to golfers anytime, anywhere. The content ranges from short clips on playing specific shots to step-by-step videos on improving a skill, like driving

Rahm’s birdie putt was not only impressive because of the distance, but also because of the slope and speed. When asked about his approach to the putt, Rahm said that he focused solely on speed to give himself a good shot. Instead of overthinking the putt, he simplified his approach, and it’s what helped him

If the PGA Tour was doing crowds this summer, you would have been able to hear the murmurs when Tiger Woods took Frank (his driver headcover) off in the 7th fairway at TPC Boston during the Northern Trust. He was preparing to hit the dreaded driver off the deck—an always challenging shot made even more

Tiger Woods has won golf tournaments all around the world, in all types of conditions, on all sorts of courses. But there’s one style of golf that he prefers more than any other. “If Tiger could, he’d play most tournaments like he’s playing at St. Andrews all the time.” That checks out—Woods has won two

These days on tour, hitting up on the ball is all the rage. In an effort to optimize launch conditions and increase carry distances, players are teeing the ball up higher than ever and sending balls soaring to 150-plus-foot apexes. Tiger Woods prefers to go about it a different way with his self-titled “slap slice.”

Golf is not a game of perfect. This is not new information. For decades, the world’s best players and instructors have preached the same mantra: that golf is all about minimizing the damage from your bad shots, not relying on your good ones. Tiger Woods subscribes to this approach. Perhaps the greatest player in history,