Should I Commit To My Golf Shots When Im Playing Safe? (Video) - by Pete Styles
Should I Commit To My Golf Shots When Im Playing Safe? (Video) - by Pete Styles

Should you commit to your golf shots when you’re playing safe? The easy answer it’s that obvious absolutely yes. Just because you’ve decided that you’re not going to play the hero and you’re not going to play the really aggressive shot. Don’t switch off from this shot. You see it so many times, guide yourself, well I’m just going to knock it down there and lay up and then I’m going to hit the next one on to the green rather than going straight over the pond in one go. So this might be the safe play, play it safe knock it on. But they don’t line up the shot as they normally do, they don’t take the right club, they rush. So they say, ‘Well, I’ll just play it safe’ and they line up to it here and they just top it, and they’ve just topped it stone cold.

And the problem with that is they have now got the same decision to make on the next shot because they haven’t made life any easier for themselves. So when you’re playing this layup shot, I don’t want you just to aim somewhere down there for the general part of the fairway or somewhere over there for that big part of the green. I want you to be very specific about where you’re aiming for. So even though there’s dirty great big fairway out there to aim for, I’m going to pick a very specific part of that fairway, maybe a patch of grass, maybe in line with the tree. I’m going to stand behind the ball as I would do for my normal shots. I’m going to pick out that spot exactly. I’m going to line up really carefully exactly at that spot on the fairway, then really commit to hitting a solid shot right down that point. And even if I don’t hit exactly that point, I will hit the area around it more regularly therefore being a safe and well executed lay up shot to make my next shot better and easier. So don’t just sort of think that the simplest shots are going to be the simplest shots. Your simple shots still have to be executed with a high level of commitment to get them into the right play to then make the next shot easier. So don’t switch off just because you think you’ve got an easier lay up. 2014-08-14

Should you commit to your golf shots when you’re playing safe? The easy answer it’s that obvious absolutely yes. Just because you’ve decided that you’re not going to play the hero and you’re not going to play the really aggressive shot. Don’t switch off from this shot. You see it so many times, guide yourself, well I’m just going to knock it down there and lay up and then I’m going to hit the next one on to the green rather than going straight over the pond in one go. So this might be the safe play, play it safe knock it on. But they don’t line up the shot as they normally do, they don’t take the right club, they rush. So they say, ‘Well, I’ll just play it safe’ and they line up to it here and they just top it, and they’ve just topped it stone cold.

And the problem with that is they have now got the same decision to make on the next shot because they haven’t made life any easier for themselves. So when you’re playing this layup shot, I don’t want you just to aim somewhere down there for the general part of the fairway or somewhere over there for that big part of the green. I want you to be very specific about where you’re aiming for. So even though there’s dirty great big fairway out there to aim for, I’m going to pick a very specific part of that fairway, maybe a patch of grass, maybe in line with the tree. I’m going to stand behind the ball as I would do for my normal shots. I’m going to pick out that spot exactly. I’m going to line up really carefully exactly at that spot on the fairway, then really commit to hitting a solid shot right down that point. And even if I don’t hit exactly that point, I will hit the area around it more regularly therefore being a safe and well executed lay up shot to make my next shot better and easier. So don’t just sort of think that the simplest shots are going to be the simplest shots. Your simple shots still have to be executed with a high level of commitment to get them into the right play to then make the next shot easier. So don’t switch off just because you think you’ve got an easier lay up.