When thinking about making a good swing on the tee of a narrow hole, you shouldn’t be thinking about making any changes to your swing – you should just be trying to execute your normal swing to the best of your ability. This is one of the great challenges in golf, as many golfers get swept up in trying to make changes once they get out on the course. One of the keys to playing your best is to avoid this temptation. You should be swinging exactly the same on the course as you swing on the range, if at all possible.
Below, we have listed three tips to help you maintain the mechanics of your swing, even when trying to hit a tight fairway. If you can trust these tips, you should be able to find the short grass more often, even when the design of the course is trying to scare you into a mistake.
Make a great practice swing. This seems like a simple tip, but it is powerful nonetheless. If you want to make a quality swing when facing a narrow fairway, be sure to make a quality practice swing before you step up to the ball. Making a solid practice swing is going to remind your body of what the swing should feel like, and it will be much easier to repeat that action when you’re ready to actually hit the shot. Of course, making a bunch of practice swings is a sure way to annoy the other players in your group, so do your best to limit yourself to just a single practice swing.
Get very specific with your target. If you just look down the fairway and hope to hit the ball somewhere in the short grass, you probably won’t be very successful. On the other hand, if you narrow your focus on a specific target, you will have a goal in mind when you step over the ball. Players who just think about hitting any part of the fairway are usually players who wind up trying to steer their shots through impact. As is always the case in golf, you should have a very specific target in mind before you begin your takeaway and make your swing.
Use visualization to your advantage. When you feel particularly nervous about a given tee shot, it is a good idea to stand back on the tee and visualize the path that you would like to see the ball take down the fairway. Sometimes, on a narrow hole, it can feel like there is no path that will lead you to the short grass – which is obviously not the case. By visualizing your shot with as much detail as possible, you can get over this issue and ‘see’ that you do have an opportunity to split the fairway.
It is going to help to keep your pre-shot routine as consistent as possible when facing this type of tee shot. If you are trying to hit a narrow fairway, you’ll need to focus on the same swing keys as you normally use for any other shot, and you will need to put the pressure of the shot out of your mind. With practice, you should get more and more comfortable at dealing with these kinds of shots successfully.
