Scratch By 50: 5 Drills That Have Helped Me Drop 5 Strokes Off My Handicap

Graham Averill has turned 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now a 7.5. Welcome to his midlife crisis.

If you’ve been following this journey, you know I’ve changed everything about my game from how I grip the club to the ball flight I’m trying to hit. I’m still constantly working on the nuances of my swing and every time I fix one problem, another problem seems to develop. It’s like renovating an old house. You think you’re just going to replace the handles on your kitchen cabinets but you end up tearing the whole house down to the studs. And the renovations never end. You just get to a point where you can live in the chaos. 

My golf game is still very much a work in progress but it’s a livable work in progress. I’ve dropped from a 13 to a 7.5 in six months. I’m playing well when I travel to new courses and I’m putting up decent numbers at my course at home. It’s fun. And I’ve spent a lot of time at the practice range hammering through a variety of drills to address the cornucopia of flaws in my swing and game. Some of those drills have been gems; others have been complete duds. 

Read on for my list of the five most impactful drills I’ve experimented with during the last six months. These are the drills that have helped me get better at golf. Even though the swing is extremely personal, I think they’ll help you get better, too. 

The Stick Drill 

I’m putting this drill first because it shines a light on all sorts of movement flaws throughout the cycle of the swing. Some coaches have called it “The World’s Greatest Golf Drill” for that very reason. Grab an alignment stick and sandwich it on the grip of a short iron so that it extends from the bottom of the club as you address the ball. Take your natural setup to the ball and the stick should rest on the outside of your lead hip. 

Initiate your takeaway, making sure that the alignment stick runs down your lead thigh which ensures you’re not taking the club back too far inside or outside. Pause at the top of your backswing and look where the bottom of the alignment stick is pointing. If it’s pointing at your feet, your wrist angle is too steep. If it’s pointing way above the ball, your wrist angle is too shallow. At the top of your backswing, the alignment stick should be pointing at or just inside of the ball, which will give you a nice, flat wrist and set you up for success on the downswing.

And the downswing is where things get interesting. Start slow, paying close attention to the sequence of movements. If your shoulders rotate first, you’ll hit yourself with the stick. If you flip your wrists as the club approaches the ball, you’ll hit yourself with the stick. If you don’t swing through the ball and finish tall, with your chest pointing at your target, you’ll hit yourself with the stick.

Make a slow practice swing with an abbreviated finish. If you succeed in not hitting yourself with the stick, move on to half speed swings with a real ball. 

Every aspect of this drill is going to feel uncomfortable but that’s how you know it’s working. I came away with bruises from the stick when I first started this drill but now I incorporate it into the beginning of my range sessions to make sure my movement patterns are structurally sound before taking full swings.

Railroad Tracks

This drill was prescribed by my coach after watching me set up to the ball with an extremely closed stance and then pull-hook the ball way left. My alignment was so bad that it was causing fatal swing patterns. 

Set two alignment sticks on the ground, one on the outside of the ball aimed just left of your target, the other running inside your feet pointing further left of the target. Set up to the ball with your toes parallel to that inside stick which will give you an open stance and hit the ball along the line of the outside stick with a square club face. This set up and swing path helps produce a fade. You can reverse the direction of the sticks (pointing them right and further right of your target) and it will help produce a draw. 

Using these alignment sticks to physically point at my target has also helped me realize just how closed my natural stance was. 

This drill has been the key to helping me go from a draw/hook to a fade over the last month. 

The Towel 

Low-point control was one of my biggest issues when I started this process. I chunked the ball a lot. Addressing my myriad swing flaws has helped the low point issues considerably but this is a drill I still bring out occasionally to help reinforce ball-first contact. 

Place a towel on the ground a few inches behind the ball and hit the ball without hitting the towel. That’s it. Don’t hit the towel. 

I hit the crap out of the towel the first time I tried this drill but after a handful of swings, I started clipping the ball beautifully. Progression happens fast with this drill which is encouraging when you’re struggling with something embarrassing like chunked wedges.

Just remember that the secret to getting better at golf is that you never leave your old misses behind. They will creep back into your game if you ignore them so I still bring this drill out on occasion, especially if I’m hitting off mats at the range or in a simulator. 

The Putting Tee 

Confession time: I don’t do a lot of putting drills. I don’t even practice putting as much as I should. It shows. I played nine holes yesterday and lost 1.5 strokes to a scratch golfer on the greens. I finished the round one over. If I sink a couple of more of those six-foot putts, I’m sitting pretty. 

But my putting did get better as soon as my coach helped me address the issues in my setup. I changed my grip and stepped back from the ball. Changing my grip helped initiate my stroke with my shoulders instead of my hands and moving back from the ball helped me see my line better at setup. 

I know I need to work harder at this aspect of my game and this is one drill that I enjoy doing. You can do it at home on a practice green, too. 

Stick a tee in front of a hole so that it closes off a third of the target. Now, sink a three-foot putt without hitting the tee. Do that half a dozen times and move it to the other side of the hole. Do that half a dozen times and then move the tee directly in front of the hole and try to hit that tee square. 

I like this drill because it makes practice harder than the game. Focusing on hitting a tiny target like the tee or just the lower half of a hole makes the standard hole on the course seem so much bigger and easier to hit. 

The Landing Zone 

This drill is for your short game. Place a towel on the green and grab your favorite wedge and a handful of balls. Set up 10-15 yards from the towel and try to land your chips on the target. It doesn’t matter where the ball rolls off to after impact. You’re just focusing on the landing spot of your short chips. 

Make sure you give yourself different lies when you’re practicing this, putting balls in the rough to see how it impacts the ball flight. When you start hitting the towel on a semi-regular basis, try to incorporate three different ball flights with the same wedge—low, medium and high–adjusting the set up and stroke accordingly. 

My approach game is still in flux so I miss a lot of greens by a few yards. Being able to chip a ball to a specific landing zone from just five yards off the green has helped me get up and done and dramatically lowered my scores. 

As for my week of golf? It was fun. I played in a two-man team tournament with my son, competing in a Stableford format on a local course I’ve always wanted to play. I hit the ball well but didn’t score well and I really liked the Stableford format. Team golf is fun. I also played a few nine-hole rounds at my home club, bouncing between the back tees and my normal tees. It’s cool to see how the course changes by moving back 15 yards or so.

I’ve been struggling with a “power fade” (I refuse to call it a slice) which is new for me since my standard miss before all of these swing changes was a draw/hook. So I’ve been working on that issue on the range and trying to trust the ball flight on the course. It’s fascinating to me how the slightest shift in my wrist angle or shoulder turn can cause a ball to go 40 yards offline. 

Put the week together and I dropped my handicap from a 7.6 to a 7.5.

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch by 50 where Graham obsesses over sticking the finish of his golf swing.