This instruction will improve your scoring, guaranteed. Understand and apply the Target Principle and your will be a better golfer forever period. This is one of the few secrets of golf.

Last week we discussed making a plan for each hole and every shot. Now we add a more finite piece to the puzzle, your target. Every shot requires a specific, small target.

Target, Target, Target

In real estate there are three things that are important: location, location, location. Golf also has three things that are important: target, target, target. It's not the swing and all the other processes that are all important; it's simply the target. Many, if not most, golfers see the ball as their target. Do away with that notion. Its important to all golfers to know the truth -- the truth that the ball is only the object that is to be delivered to the target. Your target is the spot where you want the ball to end up or to land in order to end up on a predetermined spot.

Higher handicap golfers have the ball

as the target and the swing as the focus

If your target is the ball you will develop a swing that will do little more than hit at the ball and create short, miss-hit and crooked shots. Higher handicap golfers have the ball as the target and the swing as the focus, with some vague, general idea of where they want the ball to go. With the ball as the target you build a wall just beyond the ball, a wall that hides the real target. Your system functions based on the goal you feed it. Your swing will be one that hits AT the ball, with no follow-through because your swing has achieved its goal: hitting the ball.

You will have a swing that will deliver the ball to the target if your target is a place in the distance where you want the ball to end up. If fear of missing the ball dominates your thinking, your only objective is to hit the ball (or in reality, to not miss the ball). That becomes your total focus. We are goal-oriented beings. You will always have a goal, so it is important that you have one that really benefits you. Once we agree that the ball is not the target, the target becomes one of the most important aspects of the game of golf.

The best golfers always have a very specific distant target in mind for every shot, during every swing. If your target is where you want the ball to go, you will develop a swing that will deliver the object (the ball) to the target rather than simply delivering the club head to the ball.

I was talking with PGA Senior Tour Player Bruce Fleisher in the fall of 1999. During our conversation, I mentioned the importance of the target and he commented that since he started playing golf as a child all he really tried to do was hit the ball to the target. "Target, target, target, that's all I saw was the target," Bruce told me.

Bruce was saying that good golfers actually "see" the target while they are swinging. Golf doesn't allow you to look at the target while swinging, so you need to memorize exactly where the target is and keep that picture in your mind's eye while swinging. It's a golfers way of looking at the catchers glove, the basketball hoop, or the horseshoe pole. Our "system" makes the body function correctly to accomplish the desired goal. So choose your goal well.

The athlete always has an awareness of the ball and its exact location. To the observer it may appear that the golf professional is looking at the ball part of the time. That is not actually true. We look with our eyes, but we see with our minds. Thats why the caption of the picture on the previous page is Looking at the ball (so it seems) but seeing the target.

If you keep the picture of the goal (the target) in mind, your system will respond to that picture and will make every attempt to deliver the ball to your target. Your system will micromanage your body to create the motion necessary to get the job done. Isn't it nice that you no longer have to do the micromanaging? That's the way your system is set up, and you should let it work to your advantage. With no distant target, your system gets lost and the ball becomes the target. Your swing breaks down and your shot is not what you want.

It is important to comment on the Nicklaus aiming technique. This technique is to pick out a small, noticeable bit of something on the ground twelve inches in front of the ball, in line with the distant target. The idea is to square up the club face to the bit of something and thus have the club face correctly aimed at the distant target.

Ive seen golfers employ this technique, many times to their disadvantage. They have become so enamored with aiming at the twelve-inch spot that the spot has become their target. Once they have determined their distant target, they spend the remaining pre-swing time aiming the club at the spot on the ground. They never look at the distant target again! The real target no longer exists to them. This is almost the same as having the ball as their target. They have built the wall, not at the ball, but twelve inches in front of the ball.

The distant target must be the clear picture and the focus of your mind. You can certainly use the Nicklaus technique for aiming the club, but be careful that the spot on the ground does not become your target.

Young people don't need swing instruction. They just need a club, some balls and a pine cone or some other small target to hit the ball to. They will develop the correct swing with no instruction. As if we needed another good reason to never grow up.... Seeing the target is an important point and it needs to be stated another way. Blind people play golf. Imagine yourself as a blind golfer hitting a shot to a green. Your caddie has helped you address the ball. Now he describes your target in detail: the distance, the size of the green, the undulations of the ground, the position of the pin, uphill or downhill, the location of the bunkers and water, etc. As a blind golfer, what will you focus on as you make your swing? It will certainly be the target area, not the ball. Should the process be any different because you can see?

If you go away with only

one thing from this book,

make it the target concept.

Let's take the target concept from the general to the specific so that you can incorporate it into your game. Standing on the tee trying to hit a 50 yard-wide fairway is really tough because it's too wide; there is no defined target. You'll miss the fairway most of the time. Narrow the target to a tree trunk and you'll still miss the tree trunk most of the time, but you'll easily be in the chosen side of the fairway.

As you stand on the tee I ask you about your plan and your target. The plan is important; the target is a key component of the plan. It makes the plan possible. The whole concept of target is very important in golf, just as it is in other sports.

As you stand on the tee and decide on a plan for playing the hole under today's conditions, you need to select a target that makes sense. This target cannot be a broad, vague area. It must be a very specific, narrow target. If your target is a distant tree, hit to the trunk rather than the whole bushy tree. The smaller your target, the more likely you are to hit it.

Aim small, miss small.

I was working with a student and asked him to hit a set of stairs that led to another practice tee with a 30-yard wedge shot. The stairs were three-feet wide and five-steps high. He kept trying to hit the whole set of stairs and missed every time. Then I asked him to pick out one step, and then pick out the right or left side of that step. You could see the enormous disbelief on his face when I made him get that specific. Within a few shots he had hit that step. The smaller the target, the more likely you will hit it. Aim small, miss small.

As you assume your address position, address the target rather than the ball. Get into your address position, looking more often at the target than the ball. Most golfers address the ball, look at the ball and take a quick glance at the target to see if it has moved. Now, reverse that; set up looking at the target, then glance at the ball. Spend a lot of time looking at the target, then a quick glance at the ball, then swing.

Concept Golf students are trained to think this way from the moment training begins on the putting green. In order to help them get a feel for the distance, I ask them to look at the hole while they make ten-foot putts. At first they look like they have just lost their best friend. After they give it a try, they can't wait to take it on the course; some are still putting that way after several years. It works! With the full swing it is not physically reasonable to look at the target during the backswing. The neck is not flexible enough to allow us to look at the target and make a full backswing. So it is necessary to memorize exactly where the target is and visualize it during the swing.

However, I encourage my students to look up (to look at the target) as soon as they begin the forward-swing. They dont miss the ball. Instead, they actually deliver the ball to the target. Their swing flows naturally to a full finish because their intent is to deliver the ball to the target rather than try to hit the ball.

I had this target discussion with a left-handed female student who was brand new to the game. When we went to the range to hit balls she really zeroed in on the target and NEVER looked at the ball. She teed up a ball, set her club behind the ball and looked at the target and never looked back at the ball. She never missed the ball and hit many good shots right at her target.