Scottie Scheffler watches his ball approach the water during the 2021 WGC-Match.
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Don’t play with fire, Jack Nicklaus told Nick Faldo a few years ago on national television.
Aim away from trouble, argued the 16-time major winner.
Conversation started with Billy Horschel atop the 186-yard, par-3 16th at Muirfield Village. His tee shot that day, during the third round of the 2022 Memorial, clipped 12 feet left of the green (and 39 feet from the front), and a few feet from the hole was a lake. Basically, the question was whether Horschel, who is right-handed, should flirt with the water to try to get the ball close. Or play away the drink.
Jack?
“I was going to play right down the middle of the green,” said Nicklaus, the tournament’s host and course founder. “I would let the ball go a little left. But I don’t think you should play from left to right there.”
“Why won’t you fade it there, Jack?” asked Faldo, then an analyst at CBS. “I would think that is the obstacle. fade a yard.”
“I never drive the ball into trouble,” Nicklaus said. “Period.”
“Never run the ball into foul trouble,” Faldo said.
“Never drive the ball into trouble,” Nicklaus said. “Never drive the ball out of bounds. Never direct the ball into a lake. You always aim away from it. And if you have to play back to him, make sure you can’t connect enough to get there or make sure you can’t fade enough to get to him.
But what about aiming for trouble – to improve your shot shaping?
The idea came about during a recent lesson session between my friend Josh, who had been on the verge of quitting golf due to a series of swing ailments, and Kelan McDonagh, the director of instruction at Metedeconk National Golf Club in Jackson Township, NJ – and the guide I had asked to try help save Josh. At one point, as part of a practice session, McDonagh asked Josh to walk away on purpose, and it led to this back-and-forth between the coach and the curious golf reporter (my thoughts are in italics):
“Maybe it’s because golf is such a weird game — (but) why is it easier to say, OK, I’m going to hit this ball on purpose, I’m going to go with this ball on purpose — instead of, “I’m going straight with this ball? Why is that? Is it just because it’s an unusual game and we all have to play a different sport?”
“Yeah,” said McDonagh, “that’s probably how the human brain works.”
“Right, right.”
“For example, we’re standing on a hole that’s out of bounds to the right,” continued McDonagh, “chances are if you tell yourself you’re going to hit it there, you’re probably going to hit it there. Whereas when you’re standing on a hole where there’s no problem left or right, you probably land in the middle.”
Through an exercise he learned when he was younger, McDonagh told me how he refined his game.
He aimed for trouble, then worked in sure shots.
“But it’s funny,” McDonagh said, “growing up in Ireland, I was in the Irish team for a couple of years and we were coached by Neil Manchip, who looks after Shane Lowryand Neil was incredible and continues to be to this day, obviously because he has made Shane one of the best players in the world on the mental side of things. So we’d like to tee off different holes in the tournament or in practice or on the weekend away or whatever, and he’d be like, aim and hit it out of bounds – but don’t hit it out of bounds. So you had to aim there and swing at it, but you weren’t allowed to hit it there.
“So your brain would figure out a way to get the ball back in play other than, ‘It’s out of bounds to the left, don’t hit it there.’ He’s like, go ahead and direct your body, but don’t hit it there. So that he made us move the ball left to right, right to left, up, down. In those days, we weren’t allowed to play anything less than a 5-iron, 3-iron, 3-wood, and we got to go play nine holes and see how we scored. Just different ways to trick your brain if you’re trying to get there – because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you get there, you’re just trying to insert it into the hole.
“It’s not all about hitting it straight. I don’t teach people to hit it straight. I want them to have some kind of consistent, repetitive ball flight. Now the rare cases that ends up being a bit fair, but for me, it’s always been a fade; for my brother it’s a draw. It’s different for everyone. It’s just kind of mastering what, to be honest, your body kind of dictates and you take it from there.”
This desperate golfer was about to give up. We set out to rescue him
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Of course, to start practicing McDonagh’s, you need to bring some extra golf balls.
We’ll wrap things up here by getting back to aiming for real-time trouble—and a thought to do it. Part of GOLF.comwriting shortly after the Nicklaus-Faldo discussion, said this:
One of the people Faldo cited in his discussion was Ben Hogan, who would famously work the ball out of trouble. So if it was out of bounds to the left and the safety to the right, Hogan would aim straight and hit a fade back to the safety. In his mind, that would help him commit to the shot—after all, when you’re supposed to hit the ball to the right, you’re probably going to hit the ball to the right. And even if you aim for a fade and hit a giant chunk, you’re still safe.
But while professionals generally don’t follow conventional advice, most end up adopting a hybrid model. They work the ball into trouble, but often choose to do the opposite for two reasons.
The first is probably the most common: It depends on what the wind is doing. If, using Muirfield’s 16th hole example above, the wind is blowing hard from right to left towards the water, hitting par would have the effect of riding the wind and sailing out of control on the lake. Professionals, in this case, often choose to hit a cut into it, so their ball fights the wind and ends up flying relatively straight.
The other reason pros might ignore the textbook on this is what Faldo was alluding to: When the shot that convention would suggest, it just doesn’t fit their eyes. The best recent example came in 6th hole at the PGA Championship (2022) where Rory McIlroyamong other things, he aimed out of bounds and hit a chip on the par-5 dogleg-left fairway.
“I’m a little more comfortable hitting driver from left to right at the minute,” Rory said of the 6th hole. “I feel like my body is working a little better; I can be more aggressive with my body. The body does not stop and the wings fly away. Some of that right-left wind today off the tee was nice because I could get the driver down the middle of the fairway, hitting it as a nice windbreaker.
This approach is becoming more and more common on Tour these days, and you’ll often see it when players have a favorite shot shape that they try to hit whenever possible. Hogan, for example, was a legendary fader of the golf ball, so it makes sense that he would feel comfortable targeting trouble and hitting his signature fade and taking the ball away from him.
So what should you use? Only you can answer that. But think about what your favorite shot shape is, think about what your mistakes are – do your little fades tend to turn into slices or pulls? – and factor in wind. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to stop thinking and start moving. Whichever path you choose, the key is to move with confidence. After all, even the ‘right’ shot is wrong if you don’t believe in it.
