Happy Wednesday golfers. I hope you’ve got your pen and paper ready because this is a good one — I think.

A few weeks ago I had a reader reach out and pitch me an idea for a very interesting article.

Here is what he sent:

Hello Tommy! New subscriber and have been binging your articles. Top quality stuff. I think i’ve got a good topic for you. Along the lines of ‘different ways to use AI to improve your game’. I use AI a lot in my work as a data engineer and have tried to incorporate it into my game as much as i can. I’ll compile a few use cases and send them over to you.

So he ended up emailing me a document with various prompts he has tried along with the AI’s response and strategies to obtain the highest quality responses.

Using AI as a personal golf coach and caddie is a brilliant strategy, and one most players have barely begun to scratch the surface of.

Personally, I’ve used AI to break down my launch monitor metrics and scoring data to see how my game stacks up. But data tracking is really just the tip of the iceberg. AI-driven golf coaching is a wide-open frontier. It’s the Wild West of player development, and there are absolutely no rules.

So I decided to do some research and put together a list of the very best AI golf prompts for you. If you’re a premium subscriber, you can access the full list below:

Over time, I plan to add to this list. But for today’s article and for the sake of time, we will look at just a few.

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Use Case 1: Breaking Down Your Round

Let’s start with one of the prompts my reader gave me in his document. This is one I have used in the past, but not with this level of detail.

Here is the prompt:

I am a [X] handicap who shot [SCORE] with the following stats: [X]/18 greens in regulation, [XX] putts, [X]/[X] fairways hit, [X]/[X] up-and-downs, [X] penalty shots. Please compare these stats to other golfers of my skill level, and tell me which areas I’m proficient in, and which areas I need to spend the most time on.

The key with this prompt in my own experience, is to continue using it after every round. The more the AI learns about you as a golfer, the more it can help you improve.

I sent Claude my stats after a few rounds and it immediately clocked me for hitting too many penalty shots. Turns out I was wasting away 1-2 strokes per round off the tee.

I kind of intuitively knew this to be true, but seeing it displayed in text right in front of me made it more real. So I immediately started focusing on hitting clubs off the tee that would ensure I stayed in play, and lo and behold I’ve stayed below 1 penalty shot per round ever since.

Here is a screenshot of what my reader sent me.

Here was his prompt and the AI’s response:

Right away the AI called him out for his putting in relation to his greens hit. Here is what it said:

The biggest red flag is 35 putts with only 7 greens hit. When GIR is low, total putts often drops because you are chipping first, then putting from closer range. So 35 suggests either:

1. your chips/pitches were not finishing close enough,

2. you had several 3-putts, or

3. you were leaving yourself long first putts even on the 7 GIR.

That is extremely valuable information for this golfer. 35 total putts on its own isn’t necessarily a red flag. But when paired with the information that he had only hit 7 GIR, it is a cause for concern.

This just reinforces the importance of feeding every bit of info about your round into the AI. It will spot holes in your game much quicker than most of you can.

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Use Case 2: The Course Caddy

A great strategy for those of you playing a newer course or one that you’re still unfamiliar with.

I’m playing [COURSE NAME] for the first time. I am a [X] handicap and here are my carry distances for each club [INSERT CARRY DISTANCES]. Please research any public information on the course and give me a brief overview of what to expect, followed by a hole-by-hole, shot-by-shot strategy. Highlight holes where I can be aggressive or holes to be careful. Also any local knowledge tips if you have any.

This obviously works better for more popular courses. For example, I live in San Diego, so doing this for Torrey Pines would result in better results than a lesser known course.

I asked Claude to break down a local course I play and here was what it gave me. (I am leaving the name of the course out)

Par 72, with the whites at 6,459 and the blues at 6,869 — at your handicap, play the blues. Course rating 72.4, slope 126 from the tips. It's the hillier, more strategic of the two X courses: elevated tees, more elevation change, and more dynamic holes than the flat South course — including two par 3s perched on rises where a miss over the side wrecks your score. Greens are bent grass with paspalum fairways — recent reports say greens roll medium-quick and can play firm, with approach shots releasing more than expected, and it's a heavily played muni so expect ball marks.

Big picture for your game specifically: your documented leaks are scrambling and tee-shot penalties. This course punishes exactly that — side-hill drop-offs, doglegs, blind shots. The whole round is a discipline test, not a distance test. At 6,869 you'll have mostly mid-to-short iron approaches. Fairways-and-centers wins here.

I wouldn’t say this ground breaking information, but this was the very first prompt, with no follow up questions. So the more you press the AI and ask, the more it will give you. If you’re playing a course for the first time, any information is good information.

Just be sure to verify some of the info when you get there. It can make errors.

For those of you who are premium subscribers, go ahead and head over to AI Golf Prompt List to view the rest if you’re interested.

For the rest of you, I’ll see you Sunday.

Tommy

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If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most recent and popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Welcome Scoring Letter subs. Here is the full list.

If any of you come across other great prompts, please shoot me a message. My goal is to keep adding to this list over time. I would love for it to serve as the best resource for AI golf coach prompting.

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Happy Sunday everyone. Hope you’ve all been enjoying your summertime golf and inflated carry distances from warmer weather :)

Let’s get into it.

Today’s quote:

“The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.”

-Bobby Jones

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Leaning Flags

If you’re on X and you don’t follow @engineeringolf, do yourself a favor and go follow him. If you subscribe to this newsletter then you’ll no doubt love his content.

Last week he shared this post on leaning flag sticks which I found to be very interesting:

I did a quick Grok search and asked if there was any validity to the claim. Here was what it said:

A leaning flag can create a visual reference or distraction that subtly alters perceived break and alignment for some golfers, consistent with sports vision principles where vertical objects act as plumb lines or introduce perspective distortion on contoured greens.

Validity is moderate and subjective: it supports personal preference for removal in many cases, but studies and pros note potential benefits of leaving it in for distance perception; no large peer-reviewed evidence isolates “optical illusion” specifically, though anecdotal and practical consensus aligns with the idea.

While the debate over leaving the flagstick in or out has been well-documented, the visual impact of a leaning flagstick appears to be unresearched.

I personally prefer taking the flag stick out on every single putt. Most of it is psychological, but I have seen a number of putts hit off the flag stick and miss that otherwise would have gone in.

Nonetheless, a leaning flag is an interesting offshoot of the larger flag debate, and one that I thought would be worthy of your attention.

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Three-Quarter Wedge Shots

Something I have been doing a lot of recently is clubbing up and hitting a three-quarter shot with wedges.

The consistency in flight, spin, and contact with shorter swings have been a real game changer for me, and it’s something I highly recommend to everyone.

I posted this to my X followers, and nearly all of them responded claiming similar experiences:

To give you an example:

A full swing with my 60-degree wedge goes about 90 yards.

A full swing with my 56-degree wedge goes about 110 yards.

I have found that if I have roughly 90-yards to the pin, taking my 56-degree and hitting a 3/4 “punch” style shot will be much more consistent.

The aggressive 3/4 swing also allows the ball to take off much lower and check up with less dramatic spin.

Give it a try if you haven't.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on leveraging AI as your personal golf coach.

A preview:

Using AI as a personal golf coach and caddie is a brilliant strategy, and one most players have barely begun to scratch the surface of.

Personally, I’ve used AI to break down my launch monitor metrics and scoring data to see how my game stacks up. But data tracking is just the tip of the iceberg. AI-driven golf coaching is a wide-open frontier. It’s the Wild West of player development, and there are absolutely no rules.

This post will be for premium subs only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Getting The Club Behind You

I always hear instructors and coaches online talking about the feeling of getting the club out in front of your body. And then they always follow it up by warning you of the golf swing’s greatest bogeyman (no pun intended) — letting the club get behind you.

James Nicholas recently shared a clip of Justin Rose explaining some of his feels through impact:

I found it interesting to hear him say he likes the feeling of the club tracking from behind him.

The reason I’m sharing this is to make the point that you need to be very discerning about which swing “feels” you choose to copy from videos or other players.

Just because someone says they like the feeling of getting the club out in front of them doesn’t mean that’s the feeling your swing needs.

Feeling the club behind you might result in better contact for YOU.

Also, I’m not advocating getting the club “stuck”, but I digress…

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and get out and play!

You can pre-order the digital version of my new book on Amazon HERE. It will be free for all premium subscribers.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most recent and popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Welcome to the third installment in my series Lessons From A Vintage Golf Magazine.

For those who are new here, the goal of the series is pretty simple: we dig up golf instruction from an old school magazine and hold it up against the game today. There are untapped gold mines of golf knowledge sitting in older writing. All you have to do is go digging.

For this installment, we’ll be looking at a Golf Digest series from 1975 called The Art of Putting. This was part two in their three-part series. This article was focused on “Judging Distance”.

It was written by Larry Dennis, drawing on insights from Golf Digest's Professional Teaching Panel — a legendary lineup that included major champions Bobby Jones and Cary Middlecoff, tour winners Paul Runyan and Bob Toski, alongside legendary instructors Eddie Merrins, John Jacobs, and Gary Wiren.

It has a few great conceptual tips that I think will really help a lot of you on the greens. Distance control and proper pace are vital to scoring as I'm sure many of you know. Without it, greens in regulation become useless, and scoring opportunities pass you by.

Let’s get into it.

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Distance Vs Direction

The article begins with their position:

Of the two dimensions in putting — distance and direction — I think the golfer should spend far more time concerning himself with making the ball go the required distance.

I don’t think this claim is shocking to the modern golfer. However they would be pleased to know that almost 50+ years later, their claim holds undeniably true now that we have modern ShotLink data and GPS-tracked amateur rounds to prove it.

Shot Scope’s data now puts a number on their original claim:

84% of missed putts over five feet finish short of the hole.

Not necessarily offline. Short.

The miss pattern on these shorter to mid length putts isn’t a circle. It’s more of an oval, stretched along the line of the putt. A slightly wrong line can still catch an edge and drop. Wrong pace has no mercy.

Here is the second useful Shot Scope stat for you:

83% of three-putts begin with the first putt from beyond 32 feet.

Three-putts are not because you missed the second putt. They are from a terribly paced first putt.

So we know that terrible speed control leads to terrible putting. Kind of obvious. But how can we actually improve our pace without grinding over 1000 putts on the practice green?

Let’s look at a few of the strategies they give to help golfers conceptualize speed and distance more effectively.

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Happy July 5th, everyone!

I’m sure most of you are waking up moving a little slower after a long Independence Day. With that in mind, I’m keeping today’s Sunday Bag short, sweet, and on-theme for yesterday’s holiday.

Hope you enjoy it.

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The American Promise

America was founded on a simple promise: it doesn’t matter where you start. If you work hard, if you fight, if you refuse to accept someone else’s limits, you can become anything you want to be.

Individual effort, individual determination, individual grit. You’re not trapped by your circumstances.

For 250 years, America has fought to fulfill this revolutionary promise. And running parallel to that history is the story of American golf — an evolution shaped by iconic figures whose journeys personify the defining American traits of meritocracy, grit, self-agency, and sheer determination.

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From Old Money to Raw Talent

When golf landed in America in the late 1800s, it arrived in the form of private clubs, expensive memberships, and a game reserved strictly for those with time and money. If you weren’t born into that world, you weren’t breaking in.

But then America got a hold of it, and golf slowly began shifting into the meritocratic game we know today.

Caddie yards let working-class kids in to learn for free, absorbing the game through years of repetition until they were better than the members who hired them. Municipal courses meant you didn’t need a country club membership to get better.

By the postwar era, golf had broken out of its closed loop, shifting into a game dominated by talent and effort. It didn’t matter where your family came from or how much money they had. It only mattered how talented you were and how hard you were willing to work.

Three Stories of American Grit

Francis Ouimet

If you’ve ever watched the movie The Greatest Game Ever Played, you’ll know this name. Born to an Irish and French-Canadian immigrant family in Brookline, Massachusetts. Ouimet was poor, working-class, and everything golf at that time said you couldn't be.

He grew up across the street from The Country Club, close enough to watch the members through the fence. At 11-years old, he started caddying. He taught himself to play with scavenged balls and cut-down clubs, practicing in his backyard.

By 20, he walked into the U.S. Open as an amateur and beat the two best professionals alive. They were both Englishmen which is quite apropos for today’s post.

His victory opened doors that had been previously locked. Golf participation in America reportedly doubled in the years that followed.

Ben Hogan

Hogan was born into Texas poverty and lost his father to suicide at just nine years old. When he turned 11, he began caddying to help his family survive.

What followed became arguably the greatest golf swing of all time.

He received only minimal initial instruction — primarily basic grip advice from the club professional. Beyond that, Hogan developed his renowned swing almost entirely on his own through relentless observation of the players he caddied for, and hitting hundreds of balls daily.

In 1949, a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus left him with injuries so severe doctors doubted he would ever walk again. Sixteen months later, he won the U.S. Open.

Hogan never had talent handed to him. He dug his entire game out of the dirt, one bloody rep at a time.

Tiger Woods

A kid whose father, a Green Beret, decided his son would be the best. Not really good — the best.

Earl Woods put a golf club in Tiger’s hands at three years old and taught him to dominate the game. He taught him that talent was secondary to work ethic, that comfort was secondary to improvement, and that individuals who refused to accept limits became champions.

Earl would also emphasize that Tiger’s extraordinary talent would leave the golf establishment no choice but to accept him, breaking down racial barriers as a natural consequence of his skill.

He spent his entire career proving just that.

He wasn’t just great at golf. He was a transformational force for the sport itself. He made the game bigger because he refused to accept that it couldn’t be.

In America, golf shifted from a game of privilege to an arena of merit. It transformed into a sport for those willing to prove through sheer determination, grit, and integrity, that the only thing that truly matters is the willingness to improve.

Not a bad idea to sit with the day after our 250th birthday.

I hope you guys enjoyed the post, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Tommy

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You can pre-order the digital version of my new book on Amazon HERE. It will be free for all premium subscribers.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

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If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Walk by any public golf course and you’ll see it. A player rolls a putt to within a few feet, and someone in the group says, “That’s good,” and the ball is picked up before the player ever attempts to read the putt. No debate, no delay — just a small courtesy that keeps the round moving and the atmosphere light.

In casual golf, gimmes feel harmless. They’re rooted in golf etiquette and pace of play. And I get it, nobody wants to be the guy who makes everyone wait while he grinds over a two-footer.

But here’s the problem:

That small social courtesy is quietly doing real damage to your putting.

Those “short, easy” putts you keep giving yourself are the thin margin separating you from the putter you want to be. By skipping them, you’ve systematically removed the only pressure cooker that builds the skill you think you already have.

Here’s a compilation of pros missing gimmes — If there even is such a thing as a “gimme”.

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What Actually Is a Gimme?

The most common definition you’ll hear is: inside the leather. Grip the putter, flip it upside down, place the grip end at the hole. If the ball is closer than the grip length, it’s good. That lands you somewhere around 18 inches to two feet depending on the putter.

That’s the standard. But in practice (as I’m sure you’ve all witnessed) gimmes can be anything people want them to be…

The “gimmes” I’ve seen people give themselves have no limit. Four-footers with a sharp break, downhill left-to-righters, three-foot birdie attempts. The list goes on.

And look, I get it. Nobody wants to be the serious hard-ass making everyone grind over every tap-in. It kills the vibe and makes a casual round feel way too stiff.

Your playing partners can do whatever they want. All I’m saying is that if your goal is to actually improve and become a better putter, you need to start politely declining the next time someone tells you “that’s good.”

Because you aren’t just taking a gimme. You’re completely bypassing the fundamental building blocks required to actually become a great putter.

Let’s break down why.

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Happy Sunday, everyone!

Here’s the bag.

Today’s quote:

“Happiness is a long walk with a putter”

— Greg Norman

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Speed Up Your Pre-Putt Routine

If you were to ask me a few years ago what my pre-putt routine was for an eagle putt, I probably would have said something to the effect of:

“If it’s an eagle putt I’ll spend extra time reading the putt and lining myself up to ensure I am confident in my alignment and my set-up so I have every possible chance of making the putt.”

And then if you asked my process for a double bogey putt, I’d probably tell you the exact opposite.

But then I watched a series of Brad Faxon videos where he explained his simple pre-putt routine, and the importance of repeating it for every single putt. It goes something like this:

- Look at the hole
- Step up to the ball
- Look one last time
- Go

Below is a video of Brandt Snedeker from this week’s Traveler’s Championship where he appears to do the exact same Faxon routine. Watch it and then we’ll discuss.

I adopted this routine in the last 6 months or so. I force myself to stay consistent in it no matter how important or unimportant I think the putt is.

Same routine with the same tempo for every length putt no matter if it’s for eagle or double bogey. The quicker I do it the better, because it deprives my brain of the time required to start spiraling.

My putting has never been better. I’ve had more sub-30 putt rounds in the last 6 months than I’ve had in my entire life. I highly recommend you try it out.

This is a topic that I think deserves a Wednesday post in the future where we can really dig into it.

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Wyndham Clark’s Tee Drill

Golf.com posted a clip of Wyndham Clark prepping for the U.S. Open. At first glance, it’s a perfectly normal warm-up routine. But when the camera zooms in, you notice a bizarre detail: he appears to be teeing his iron shots excessively high.

Check out the video below to see it for yourself:

In a different video, Wyndham explains the purpose of the drill. He says his tendency is to come down too steep with irons which causes him to fade the ball more than he would like.

Excessively teeing it up requires a shallower attack angle to deliver a clean strike.

I had never seen this drill, but as someone who also fades the ball too much with my irons (I’m sure my fade is a little worse than Wyndham’s), I’m certainly going to try it out.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on why gimmies are ruining your game.

A preview:

In casual golf, gimmes feel harmless. They’re rooted in golf etiquette and pace of play. But I think what feels polite in the moment carries a hidden cost to you as the putter. Many of the putts amateurs give themselves are far from automatic, and by choosing not to hit them, golfers quietly avoid the exact repetitions that tend to build better scoring ability.

This post will be for premium subscribers only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.

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Blocked Vs Randomized Putting Practice

If you read my post from a couple of weeks ago, you hopefully understand the important of randomized practice at the range.

If you didn’t read it, you can check it out here:

But what about randomized practice with putting?

I’m sure you’ve seen the clips of tour pros warming up before the round with all of their putting gadgets and training aids. But when is it time to put the toys away?

At some point, you have to practice the real thing: stepping up to a putt you’ve never seen before, reading it, trusting your routine, and executing.

That’s why I always dedicate a block of my putting practice to tossing balls at random spots on the green. It forces me to treat every single attempt like a brand-new scenario — because it is.

Mindlessly hitting the exact same six-footer over an alignment rod has its place, but it doesn’t train the intuitive and mental skills you actually need to execute the putt on the course when it matters.

That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and get out and play. Take advantage of that summer time daylight!

Tommy

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You can pre-order the digital version of my new book on Amazon HERE. It will be free for all premium subscribers.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

’Twas the night before golf, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

You know that magical feeling. It’s Christmas Eve for grown men. You have a tee time tomorrow morning and you can’t sleep!

Maybe you’ve been playing really well lately. The driver is finally locked in. The putter is behaving. The short game is sharp. This could finally be the round where it all comes together!

You’re lying in bed, running the mental math:

“If I can par #7 and #14, and maybe sneak a birdie on #9, that sets me up to play safe down the stretch…”

You can already see the final number on the scorecard.

Then you double the first hole and proceed to shoot the exact same score you always shoot…

After the round, your buddies offer their expert analysis: You cared too much. You went in with expectations. You tensed up because you were trying to force a score.

And so, with good faith and sincerity, they give you the classic advice: You just need to LOWER your expectations.

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Before we continue:

My first book The Game Within The Game will be released on 9/20/2026. You can pre-order the digital edition on Amazon HERE.

The digital edition will be free for all premium subscribers.

If you’re interested in purchasing a physical copy, please enter your email address below so I know how many to produce.

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You Can’t Remove Expectations

Expectations are an odd thing in golf. You can’t really play without them. Every shot comes with a mental picture of what should happen — where the ball should start, how it should curve, where it should finish.

Every hole comes with a number of strokes it should take to make par. Every course carries a target score based on its difficulty. There is even a target time to complete all 18 holes. So expectations are kind of baked in. They are all around you. They’re unavoidable.

And according to the conventional wisdom: they are also quietly ruining your game.

The argument makes sense. You get tense over a shot you need to hit well. The very act of wanting the outcome seems to get in the way of producing it. Every golfer has felt this.

But here is where it gets interesting.

While it’s true that expectations can sometimes backfire, plenty of psychological research shows that high expectations can actually supercharge performance.

You've all heard the idea that athletes who expect to perform well actually do perform better — not because believing makes it so, but because confidence allows the automated skill to run without interference.

There is plenty of research that point in the same direction: golfers with higher pre-shot self-belief make more putts, not fewer.

The more you believe in your ability to execute, the more likely you tend to execute.

So which is it? Are expectations hindering your game, or are expectations holding it together?

The answer is both.

Let’s break it down.

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Happy Sunday everyone. And Happy Father’s Day to all of the fathers out there.

A quick note before we get into it:

I know the time has probably passed to buy a Father’s Day gift, but there are still some good deals out there through the end the week on golf equipment. So if you still want to take advantage and buy yourself something, I’ve included a short section at the end of today’s post with some solid deals to snag before the end of the week.

Anyway, here’s this week’s bag.

Today’s quote:

“Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake. A man can muff a serve in tennis, miss a strike in baseball, or throw an incomplete pass in football and still have another chance to square himself. In golf, every swing counts against you.”

- Lloyd Mangrum

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Lee Trevino Chipping Lesson

There are thousands of YouTube tutorials teaching the “proper” form and technique for chipping. But honestly, I’ve watched maybe two or three clips of Lee Trevino demonstrating his chipping philosophy, and in my opinion, that’s all you’ll ever need.

Trevino is possessed by whatever golf demon possesses Gary Player. There’s just something about those two men for whatever reason when they pick up a club and start talking, you can’t help but stop and listen.

Below is a short clip uploaded to X by Lee Trevino’s son, Daniel. Take a look, and let’s break it down below.

The “pulling” action Trevino describes has been talked about by some of the best short game players of all time. They all describe it differently, but the idea of keeping the face open and pulling it through has always been a great feel for me, and has really helped my chipping.

The other nugget of wisdom was the “weak right hand”. I hadn't heard this concept talked about with chipping but it makes perfect sense. A weaker right hand (meaning the hand is turned over instead of under) encourages an open club face.

The last thing you want on these short shots is any face rotation going into the ball. Phil Mickelson famously teaches his hinge-and-hold technique which is a similar idea — set the club face, and hold it there through impact.

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What Does “One Cup” Mean to You?

I saw this graphic the other day asking golfers where they would aim if they were told to aim “one cup left”.

Have a look and think of your answer.

For me when I hear “one cup left”, I aim at 3. But after reading through the replies, I quickly learned that I was in the minority.

I asked Grok to summarize the replies and tell me which answer was most popular.

Here is what it said:

The funny part about this question is that among the repliers were a few high-level PGA Tour caddies, and even they didn’t agree on a number! lol

All of this is to say, if you’re going to give someone a read and you tell them, “Aim one cup left”, you better be damn sure you both agree on what “one cup left” actually means.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be about expectations in golf.

A preview:

Maybe you’ve been playing really well lately. The driver is finally locked in. The putter is behaving. The short game is sharp. This could finally be the round where it all comes together.

You’re lying in bed, running the mental math:

“If I can par #7 and #14, and maybe sneak a birdie on #9, that sets me up to play safe down the stretch…”

You can already see the final number on the scorecard.

Then you double the first hole. And proceed to shoot the exact same score you always shoot…

This post will be for premium subs only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Father’s Day Gift Guide

As I mentioned in the intro, this guide probably should have been on last week’s Sunday Bag, but oh well. I think most of my readers are fathers, so consider this more of an excuse to buy yourself a gift lol.

So if you’re in the market for any of the items below, you may want to consider snagging them while they’re still on sale.

I imagine the Father’s Day golf sales will continue for another few days.

Garmin Launch Monitor

• View at Amazon

• View at Worldwide Golf

Launch monitors continue to keep cheaper every time I check. I’d imagine in 10 years every single amateur will be carrying one around with them at the range. It’s currently listed around $399. I’ve normally seen them between $500-600.

These budget launch monitors still offer some fantastic metrics such as:

• Club Head Speed (±3 mph)

• Ball Speed (±1 mph)

• Launch Angle (±1°)

• Launch Direction (±1°)

If you’ve been considering pulling the trigger, $350-399 seem to be as low as they go during sales according to my research.

Luxury Golf Apparel

• View at Fairway Styles

For those of you who enjoy shopping for higher end golf apparel from brands like Peter Millar, RLX Ralph Lauren, Greyson, johnny-O, etc. Fairway Styles has some fantastic deals going on right now.

They carry premium polos, shorts, shoes, and pullovers. If you’re lucky you can usually snag something at a pretty significant discount. So if you believe in looking good to play good — Fairway Styles is your place.

Nikon Rangefinder

• View at Amazon

• View at Worldwide Golf

If you want to become a better golfer, you absolutely must own a rangefinder. If you need proof of their importance, you can read my post on them below.

Nikon is a great brand, and they are currently offering $100 off. I’m still a little bit surprised at how expensive rangefinders are, considering how cheap launch monitors are becoming, but you can grab this Nikon one for $200 which is a pretty good price for a quality rangefinder.

If you completely reject rangefinders and insist on using something else like a watch, Garmin has a sale going on right now too. They aren’t much cheaper, but figured I’d at least link it below.

Check at Amazon

Check at Worldwide Golf

Bushnell Golf

If you’re a heavier spender and want the nicer rangefinders, Bushnell is offering some discounts on their models.

You can check them out here.

You can also check on Amazon here.

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That’s all for today. But before you go, I’d like to announce the release of my first book The Game Within The Game.

It will be free as an ebook for all premium subscribers. However if you’d like to pre-order a physical copy, please enter your email below so I know how many to make.

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For more information on the book, please click HERE.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

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I’m a range rat. I’ll admit it.

It’s therapy for me. Grabbing a bucket, throwing in my AirPods, and just spacing out.

Usually I can get in a groove with a specific club and flush a few in a row right at my target. Or, towards the end of my session, I’ll start aping driver and rattle the back fence just to impress all the Covidians on the range.

Does it make me feel good? Yes, it does. Does any of it actually make me a better golfer? No, absolutely not.

Practice time is precious and finite. Especially for those of us with busy schedules. So if you’re going to practice, why not spend that time doing it the right way?

Not to mention, if you’re buying a large bucket of balls — which last I checked is comparable to the cost of a down payment on a small home — you better make damn sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

When it comes to effective practice, there’s an important distinction you need to understand:

Performance does not always equal learning.

Performance is temporary. It’s how well you hit the ball right now, under your current conditions. Learning is permanent. It’s the actual change in your game. It’s what’s still there next week, on a different course, under pressure, and when it truly counts.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about practicing in golf: the two are often inversely related.

The exact conditions that make you stripe the ball beautifully on the range are usually the ones that produce the least amount of lasting improvement.

I understand you want to show off your club head speed to the cougars who just took up golf last week and are hitting balls next to you. But don’t give in.

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The Research

You need to drill this into your head:

The practice that feels clumsy and frustrating is the practice doing the real work.

Robert Bjork is a UCLA psychologist who has spent a career studying this concept. He calls these frustrating conditions “desirable difficulties.” His collaborator Nicholas Soderstrom explains it like this:

We confuse current performance with durable learning, and training built around feeling good in the moment quietly optimizes for the wrong thing.

Which means the mid-bucket groove — the very thing most of use to judge whether a session was worth it — is measuring the wrong variable.

You can feel productive for an hour and bank almost nothing. That’s the precise definition of wasted time: not time spent badly, but time spent on the wrong currency.

A 2017 study in “Perceptual and Motor Skills” had golfers learn putting under blocked versus random schedules.

The random group putted worse during acquisition, and better on retention and transfer.

Now think about what ten consecutive balls with the same club is.

It’s blocked practice. The purest form of it. Each swing calibrates the next swing. Same club, same lie, same target, same rhythm. The groove you find mid-bucket is real, but it’s a short-term calibration, and you will never be asked to use it on a golf course.

Our goal in practice shouldn’t be short-term calibration. It needs to be long-term retention. We need to train the mind and muscles for skills that actually transfer to the course.

So, I’ve compiled a list of five games/techniques you can use on the range to help you achieve this. Some are unconventional. Others you may be familiar with. They are in no particular order, but they all share the same objective of making you uncomfortable. You should expect to struggle, because as we’ve learned:

Performance does not always equal learning.

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Happy Sunday, everyone, and happy U.S. Open week. We saw some great golf from the women last week (congrats Nelly), and hopefully, we’ll get some more of the same this week at Shinnecock.

Here’s the bag.

Alternating Between Putting Grips

I tuned in on Thursday to watch some of the RBC Canadian Open. Something I noticed right away, which I found very interesting, was that Sahith Theegala appeared to be putting with both a left-hand low grip and a conventional grip.

Now, I have seen this before, but the order in which Sahith was doing it seemed backwards to me.

As I mentioned above in my X post, Fred Couples famously has employed this tactic on the Champions Tour. He claims that conventional is better for longer putts because it allows him better distance control and feel. He then switches to left-hand low for shorter, straight putts to lock in his start line.

If you’re curious, or you just enjoy watching Fred Couples highlights for fun like I do, watch the video below.

You’ll see Fred go back and forth between grips: left-hand low for inside 10 feet, and conventional for anything outside of that.

All of this is to say, no one ever said you had to use the same putting grip for the entire round.

Play around with them. You never know — you might find more success using more than one.

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Conflicting Alignment

I posted a video on X last week of a close-up of Aaron Rai attempting a short birdie putt.

You can watch it below:

What immediately stood out to me were the conflicting lines between his putter head and his ball.

For those who read last week’s premium post on lining up your putts, this topic will sound familiar.

Now, no one can say for sure what Aaron Rai’s personal preferences are, or what he’s visualizing here. I can’t even guarantee he lined this up intentionally—after all, the putt was only a few feet. But what I can say for sure is that this exact visual conflict is the reason I personally avoid lining up the ball.

Too often, I stand over a putt and find myself battling competing lines. As soon as I start second-guessing my alignment, I’ve already missed the putt.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will cover how to stop wasting time at the range.

A preview:

When it comes to effective practice, there’s an important distinction you need to understand:

Performance does not always equal learning.

Performance is temporary. It’s how well you hit the ball right now, under your current conditions. Learning is permanent. It’s the actual change in your game. It’s what’s still there next week, on a different course, under pressure, and when it truly counts.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about practicing in golf: the two are often inversely related.

The exact conditions that make you stripe the ball beautifully on the range are usually the ones that produce the least amount of lasting improvement.

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Ball Below Your Feet

During the third round of the U.S. Women’s Open, Gaby Lopez was faced with one of the most subtly challenging shots in golf:

A ball severely below your feet.

Now, if you’ve never attempted this shot before, you may be wondering what the big deal is. On the surface, it looks harmless. But don’t let it fool you… This is the one shot in golf that demands absolutely flawless posture from takeaway to finish.

Watch the clip of Gaby Lopez below and then we’ll discuss it.

Now that you’ve watched, let’s break down exactly what she does so well, and how you can survive unscathed the next time you’re faced with this brutal lie.

The absolute number-one priority on this shot:

Maintaining your posture exactly as it was at address.

On a flat lie, you can sometimes get away with losing your height or lifting out of your swing early. Sure you’ll hit a mishit, but it’s usually manageable. Not with these lies.

With the ball severely below your feet, your margin for error basically evaporates:

• If you stand up even a fraction too soon: you’ll top the ball.

• If you dip too low: you’ll chunk it.

With these lies, the bottom of your swing arc requires surgical precision. Any vertical movement in your body will immediately throw the club off the strictly required path.

Pro tip:

When you find yourself in this situation, squat a little deeper into your setup and really sit into your stance. Get comfortable, because once you lock that posture in, you aren’t allowed to change it ;)

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and get out and play!

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

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If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Golf is governed by an endless list of unwritten rules.

Never talk during a backswing. Don’t offer unsolicited swing advice. Keep pace with the group in front of you. And for the most part, we follow these commandments without question, like the good little golfers we are.

But of all the unspoken rules I see amateurs strictly adhering to, one reigns supreme:

Always line up your putt using the line on the ball.

Let me be clear. Using the line isn’t wrong. It can be very beneficial if done correctly. Also, it looks pretty damn cool right? Squatting down behind your ball, adjusting its alignment, then gently lifting your marker. It’s one of the few ways you can pretend to be a tour pro.

The case for doing it practically writes itself: most golfers have terrible aim, the physical line removes the guesswork, and eliminating guesswork is how you lower your handicap.

Makes perfect sense.

But what does the data say? And maybe more importantly, does the data even matter?

Because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what produces results for you. And the truth is for most golfers, lining up the ball might just be a ritual masquerading as a solution.

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The Case For Using The Line

The case for using a line starts with a simple, unfortunate fact:

Most amateur golfers have almost no idea where they are actually aiming.

Dave Pelz spent decades running tests at his golf schools. One of his experiments was attaching lasers to putters to see exactly where players aimed at address. His findings were brutal: from just ten feet away, the vast majority of amateurs were convinced they were aimed dead center, when in reality, their putters were pointed well outside the hole.

The gap between perceived aim and actual aim is surprisingly large, and it’s the dominant variable in why short putts are missed so often.

Against this backdrop, the line is an entirely logical response. If you can’t trust your eyes to aim the putter, then give yourself something external to look at. Translate your read into a physical direction, set the ball down with that instruction literally encoded on it, then simply execute.

The decision is made. The doubt is resolved. All that remains is the stroke.

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What Does The Data Say?

So far there really have only been a handful of controlled studies to test whether a line improves putting performance.

All of the studies disagree.

The first one, conducted at Baylor University in 2012, tested forty-eight golfers. Of those golfers, half were experts (D1 golfers) and half were novice (college students who never really play).

They had them hit putts from three feet and thirteen feet, with and without an alignment line. They used a SAM PuttLab, which is a device that measures putter aim to a tenth of a degree, precise enough to detect differences the human eye cannot see.

The results:

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Happy Sunday everyone.

Let’s get into it.

Today’s quote:

“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.”

- Arnold Palmer

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LPGA Players Outdrive You

Last week, I posted a video on X of LPGA players teeing off at Riviera with this caption:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

Watching and emulating LPGA swings instead of PGA swings would do most amateurs a lot of good.

The post is currently at 850K views — which I’m choosing to believe is a reflection of its truth.

Still, I was shocked by the flood of comments claiming that LPGA swings just don’t generate enough distance.

I couldn’t disagree more.

So, I followed up my original post with this:

This post generated even more debate. Currently sitting at 1.2 million views.

I guess that’s what happens when you dare to question the driving distance of the male amateur golfer lol…

While the vast majority of users agreed with me, a surprisingly large group still refused to believe that professional women drive the ball further, on average, than young amateur men. Key word: on average.

I asked Grok, and here was the answer I received:

Is it possible for a young 30-year-old 15-handicap to get ahold of one and drive it 290? Absolutely.

But is Nelly Korda’s drive landing beyond his drive 90 out of 100 times? Absolutely.

Long story short: you don’t drive the ball nearly as far as you think you do.

Record Your Swing

How many of you regularly record your golf swings?

Well, if you don’t, you need to start. As most of you know, feel and real are very different things, and seeing your swing on camera is the only way to reconcile them.

I haven’t accepted sponsors on the newsletter because I don’t want to promote something I wouldn’t use. But KineVision is one I genuinely recommend.

I’ve used dozens of swing analysis apps over the years, and they all felt a little bit laggy and cheap. But not KineVision. The interface is sleek and easy to use, and it has every tool you need to analyze/compare your swings. And for the coaches out there, it makes exporting analysis to students extremely easy.

You can download KineVision on the App Store HERE.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be about using the line on your ball when you putt. Should you use it?

A preview:

Against this backdrop, the line is an entirely logical response. If you can’t trust your eyes to aim the putter, give yourself something external to look at. Translate your read into a physical direction, set the ball down with that instruction literally encoded on it, then simply execute.

The decision is made. The doubt is resolved. All that remains is the stroke.

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The Shadow Trick

How many of you have heard of the “Shadow Trick”?

Below is a video from the 2021 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play where this “trick” is in full display. Watch it below:

I was shocked when I saw this. I’d never heard of the “Shadow Trick,” so I immediately started doing some digging.

Turns out, it’s mostly a golf superstition, but it has a kernel of plausible physiology behind it.

The “scientific” explanation is that direct sunlight keeps grass blades more upright (due to photosynthesis and warmth), while casting a shadow cools them slightly, causing the blades to “relax” and lay down.

This supposedly reduces friction just enough for a teetering ball on the lip to drop.

It’s pretty rare that any of us are faced with a ball teetering on the lip, but you can bet your ass that I’ll be trying this trick every single time it happens from here on out lol.

And for those who might be wondering, you only get ten seconds to sit and wait for a ball to drop. After that it becomes a one stroke penalty if you’re playing by the official rules.

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Bird’s-Eye View

We’ve all seen swings from down-the-line and face-on. Those are the two primary ways to study and analyze the golf swing.

However, an underrated angle that rarely gets shared is the bird’s-eye view.

Below is a video of Ben Crenshaw:

The major benefit of this view is being able to see just how far behind the ball he gets.

I’m not sure it’s physically possible to record yourself from this angle lol. But regardless, it’s a great reminder of how the head and body should move during the takeaway.

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and can get out and play!

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

How many of you have ever hit a perfect putt?

Not a putt that simply goes in — a putt that dies into the hole. One that takes its last waking breath right at the lip… then finally gives in.

There’s a theory in putting: the slower the ball arrives at the hole, the more likely it is to fall in.

Not marginally more likely. Dramatically more likely. The physics and data behind this are solid, and they should change the way every serious golfer thinks about putting.

The concept is called effective hole size. And once you understand it, you won’t be able to unsee it.

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The Hole Is Not Always 4.25 Inches Wide

The rules of golf state this: a hole is 4.25 inches in diameter, and it sits at least four inches below the surface — and there’s nothing you can do to change that.

Trust me, I’ve tried. I asked my local muni to change all of the holes to 10 inches. They told me if they ever saw me again, they’d have security escort me off the property.

Oh well…

Okay, so we can’t change the size of the hole physically. But there is a way we can change the size of the hole functionally.

You see, the faster you hit a putt, the smaller that 4.25 inch diameter behaves. Conversely, the slower you hit a putt, the larger that 4.25 inch diameter behaves.

To be more specific:

The hole is 4.25 inches in diameter.

At near-zero velocity, the entire 4.25 inches is available to you.

The moment the ball has any forward velocity, that number starts shrinking.

Let’s look at some basic physics. I hate physics, but I promise it will help you putt better if you understand this stuff.

There are two forces at play when you hit a putt into the hole:

1. Once the ball rolls past the front edge of the hole, gravity begins pulling it downward into the cup.

2. As the putt approaches the front edge, there is forward momentum carrying it toward the back of the cup.

For the putt to fall in, gravity has to drop the ball before its forward momentum carries it past the back lip.

The faster the ball is moving, the less time the hole’s gravity has to work.

At a high enough velocity, the ball simply skips across the hole rather than falling into it. We’ve all experienced this...

This is how most lip outs happen. You may have had a great line, but your speed made the effective hole size too small.

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Capture Width

There’s a concept called capture width, and it ties all of this together perfectly. It puts a precise numerical value on how much of the hole is actually available to you depending on the speed of your putt.

Once you understand it, you’ll never view putting the same way again.

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Happy Sunday everyone. Hope you’ve had a great week. I had an interesting one. I shot my best round of 2026, and followed it up by shooting my worst round of 2026.

As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out…

Today’s quote:

“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening – and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.”

-Arnold Palmer

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Blade vs Mallet Alignment

If you’ve paid attention to putting trends over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed blade putters slowly disappearing from the game. Larger mallet-style putters now occupy the majority of bags on both tour and your local muni — and despite the resistance from putting “traditionalists”, the data continue to point in the same direction: mallets produce better results for the majority of golfers.

Most of you are probably familiar with the idea that mallets are more forgiving on off-center strikes. But Luke Kerr-Dineen recently shared a thread on X that outlined a different benefit I hadn’t heard before.

Take a look at the image below. The two small lines represent the face of a blade putter. As LKD explains, one of the lines is square to the target, and the other is pointed off target by 1 degree, which is incredibly difficult to see.

Now take a look at the second image. He shows the same two lines, but longer — which represents the face of a bigger/longer mallet head.

As you can see, it’s significantly easier to distinguish between the square face and the face that’s pointed 1 degree off target. This is essentially the argument. A larger putter head makes alignment easier.

To give you some context: a 1 degree misalignment on a flat 10-footer is a miss.

I still haven’t given in to the mallet... I simply enjoy the feeling of hitting my blade too much. I know there are many others like me. Stay strong gentlemen. We may be fully extinct before long.

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Record Your Swing

How many of you regularly record your golf swings?

Well if you don’t, you need to start. As most of you know, feel and real are very different things, and seeing your swing on camera is the only way to reconcile them.

I haven’t accepted sponsors on the newsletter because I don’t want to promote something I wouldn’t use. But KineVision is one I genuinely recommend.

I’ve used dozens of swing analysis apps over the years, and they all felt a little bit laggy and cheap. But not KineVision. The interface is sleek and easy to use, and it has every tool you need to analyze/compare your swings. And for the coaches out there, it makes exporting analysis to students extremely easy.

You can download KineVision on the App Store HERE.

Join The Scoring Letter

This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be

A preview:

“There’s a theory in putting that goes like this: the slower the ball arrives at the hole, the more likely it is to fall in.

Not marginally more likely. Dramatically more likely. The physics and data behind this are solid, and they should change the way every serious golfer thinks about hitting a putt.”

This post will be for premium subs only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.

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Putt Everything Out

A few weeks ago at the PGA Championship, a clip went viral of Cameron Young missing two straight putts inside what looks to be about 3-4 feet. You can watch the video below.

So I quoted the post and captioned it as this:

The amount of times I've played with guys who just pick up and give themselves these putts is mind-blowing.

Tour pros make this distance look automatic, but I promise you'd miss a ton of them if you forced yourself to putt everything out.

It also does you no favors if your ultimate goal is to become a better putter.

All the mechanical errors get exposed from this distance. Don't hide it. Embrace it.

The post blew up, reaching just under 1 million views.

I think most serious amateurs have experienced this reality firsthand: three-footers aren't gimmes. And if you actually want to improve your putting, you have to treat them like every other putt — same focus, same routine.

Definitely an interesting topic, and one I may do a full post on in the future.

Keep Your Head Down?

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the legendary swing of David Duval.

I posted the video below to X with the caption “Keep your head down.”

I got dozens of replies from confused golfers who couldn't square what they were seeing with advice they'd been given their whole lives: “keep your head down!”

Keeping your head down seems to be an antiquated tip that more and more instructors are slowly abandoning. Letting the head rotate frees the body to rotate — which is something the vast majority of amateurs would benefit from.

Definitely something worth looking into if you’re curious.

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week, and I’ll see you Wednesday!

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Welcome to the second installment of my series Lessons from a Vintage Golf Magazine.

For those who are new here or missed the first post, the goal of the series is simple: take an old piece of golf literature and see what we can learn from it.

As you might expect, the core principles of the game haven't changed much. There are untapped gold mines of golf knowledge sitting in older writing. All you have to do is go digging.

Let’s get into it.

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Sometime in the early 1940s, a writer named Guy B. Farrar published a short piece in Golf Monthly called “A Second Chance.” Farrar wrote this piece as a light wartime diversion — something to amuse club members while the world was on fire. He wasn’t trying to build a framework for course management, but the controlled golf-experiment he had set up certainly turned out to be just that.

If you want to read the original, you can view the images below.

Farrar basically hypothesized “What would happen if we gave an amateur golfer a second chance on EVERY single shot?”

Here was the setup for the experiment:

A 6-handicap golfer, referred to as “Player A”, challenges a scratch player to an 18-hole match. The handicap is unconventional: instead of getting strokes back, Player A is allowed to recall (replay) any shot he chooses during the round. There is one condition though:

He must accept the result of the second attempt, whatever it is.

At the end of the round, Player A recalled a total of 24 shots. The results produced a nice little data set that we are going to dissect and discuss.

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The Results of The Experiment

First let’s look at the results of the recalled shots.

• Tee shots: 7 recalled. Approximately 4 strokes saved.

• Approach shots: 5 recalled. 2 strokes saved.

• On the green: 11 recalled. 2 strokes saved, 1 lost. Net: 1 stroke saved.

Interesting.

Player A recalled nearly half his shots from the putting surface, and walked away with a net gain of only one stroke.

Meanwhile, seven recalled tee shots returned four strokes. Five approach shots returned two.

Not entirely what I would have guessed.

Recalling a putt produced almost nothing. Standing over a second attempt with full knowledge of what the first one did turned out to be nearly useless.

This small experiment is a microcosm for the game at large. It’s filled with lessons worth carrying into your practice and your attention to the game.

Let’s break it down further.

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Why The Tee Shot Is So Important

Four strokes saved from seven tee shot recalls. That’s a return rate of more than half a stroke per recall. Nothing else in the round came close.

Why is the tee shot so disproportionately valuable?

We know that golf is a game of compounding consequences. Every shot you hit exists in the context of the shot before it. A blocked drive doesn’t just cost you the drive. It costs you your approach angle, your shot shape options, and maybe even your mental state walking into the shot (I’m trying to get better at this one).

If it’s a really bad tee shot, it could corrupt three or four holes of your thinking. (see Shank)

Something I found kind of hilarious, as Farrar noted, two of the seven recalled drives hit trees — and on both of those second attempts, the ball hit trees again.

It turns out amateurs in the 1940s are no different than amateurs in 2026.

But the other five recalls did finish in the fairway. Position off the tee creates options, and options create scoring opportunities.

Here is the practical implication for you:

It’s possible you would benefit from spending less time on the putting green, and more time on the range hitting driver. And I mean ONLY hitting driver. I’m serious.

You have to be able to get off the tee.

I know that sounds kind of backwards from the traditional advice that old man at the range would give you.

But if you can’t get off the tee, then you can’t get on the green in regulation. And if you can’t get on the green in regulation, then putting won’t save you — learning to get off the tee will.

Modern data still suggests that approach shots have the highest strokes-gained potential, but tee shots were a very close 2nd.

If you didn’t get a chance to read my post on this, you can read it below.

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Even With Hindsight, Execution Is Unreliable

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Happy Sunday, everyone. Belated congratulations to Aaron Rai for last Sunday. From everything I’ve seen/read, he seems like one of the good guys. Wouldn’t mind seeing him win some more.

Here’s what’s in the bag.

Today’s quote:

“Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.”

- Sam Snead

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Ben Crenshaw Putting Stroke

Brandel Chamblee, former PGA player and now Golf Channel Analyst, shared some amazing footage of the great Ben Crenshaw putting at the US Open at Shinnecock.

For those who are unfamiliar, Ben Crenshaw is a 2x Masters winner, and the guy tour pros go to when they need help with putting (see Tiger sharing putting tips from Ben Crenshaw).

Chamblee shared a face on view, as well as a down-the-line view. I attached both videos below for your pleasure. If I were you, I’d download both of them to your phone and emulate the parts you like for your own stroke.

As with all great putters, Crenshaw made it look so damn simple…

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Bridgestone’s New Golf Ball

For those who missed it, Bridgestone came out with their new Tour B X and RX models. There’s just one tiny detail.

The golf balls are BLACK.

I’m not sure about you, but playing a black golf ball after spending your entire life learning to concentrate on hitting a white golf ball seems counterproductive. But who knows, maybe some people genuinely have an easier time hitting a black ball.

Bridgestone claims the new ball adds more ball speed and distance than Bridgestone’s prior models.

Jason Day tested the ball and saw +2.3 mph of ball speed and 6.7 more yards of distance. Chris Gotterup added 2.1 mph and 7 yards.

Last I heard the ball was sold out everywhere. So if this is your kind of thing, you may have to do some digging.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be the 2nd in my Lessons from a Vintage Golf Magazine series. The topic will be on which shots have the highest value.

A preview:

Farrar basically hypothesized “What would happen if we gave an amateur golfer a second chance on EVERY single shot?”

Here was the setup for the experiment:

A 6-handicap golfer, referred to as “Player A”, challenges a scratch player to an 18-hole match. The handicap is unconventional: instead of getting strokes back, Player A is allowed to recall (replay) any shot he chooses during the round. There is one condition though:

He must accept the result of the second attempt, whatever it is.

This post will be for premium subs only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.

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Justin Rose Training His Eyes

Luke Kerr-Dineen from Golf Digest visited the PGA Championship last week and wrote about 9 things he learned from the pros. You can read it here.

The one I found most interesting was Justin Rose lining up tees on the putting green to train his eyes.

We are constantly concerned with our putting stance, our stroke, our alignment, you name it... And don’t get me wrong, we absolutely should be concerned with those things. But often we forget about the most important part of putting — our eyes.

How do you even know you’re aimed where you’re looking?

That’s what Justin Rose is training here.

The idea is to find a straight putt, line up the putter face square to the target, and just look. Where do you feel like you’re aiming? If you know for certain that it’s a straight putt, your face is square to your start line, yet you still feel like you’re going to pull it, then your vision is in conflict with your alignment.

Training your eyes is an underrated part of not only putting, but the entire game of golf.

For those interested, I wrote a piece on this idea below:

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and get a chance to play!

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

How many of you truly understand what a “flyer” lie is?

If you don’t know it by name, you’ve certainly experienced it. You walk up to your golf ball after an errant drive and there it is — sitting up in the rough like it was gently placed there. The Golf Gods, for once, taking mercy! A teed-up lie where you were expecting punishment. So you pull out your 7-iron, deliver clean confident contact, and the ball flies off the back of the green and continues rolling another 20 yards. You walk away with a bogey.

What the hell just happened?

I’ll be the first to admit I had never really stopped to understand what made a flyer lie different from other lies. I used to think it was just a cooler way of describing a ball sitting in the rough. I heard it said on TV one time and just started parroting it. I probably used the term incorrectly dozens of times. So to anyone who golfed with me before 2023, thanks for politely ignoring my ignorance.

Well, I am here to tell you that I am a changed man, and a flyer is indeed NOT just a ball sitting in the rough. There is actually much more to it.

Let’s first define what a flyer is:

A flyer is a shot from light to moderate rough where grass gets trapped between the club face and ball at impact, killing spin while preserving ball speed, causing the ball to fly farther than expected with minimal stopping power.

The flyer is unique because it’s the only shot where gaining distance is a bad thing. No one wants to gain distance if it means sacrificing control and predictability.

Where amateurs get into trouble is lie assessment. Pros build entire pre-shot routines around reading flyers. Amateurs barely glance at the grass behind their ball.

This post will change that.

We'll work through identifying them, the variables that matter, the physics, the technique, and ultimately some strategy. By the end you'll know more about flyer lies than 95% of the people you play with. That doesn't mean you'll successfully execute them — I can't help with that unfortunately... But you'll at least be making a sound decision before swinging rather than guessing.

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The Physics

I know I gave a definition in the intro, but let’s review in more detail exactly what makes a flyer, a flyer.

Grass (and sometimes moisture) gets trapped between the club face and the ball at impact. The grooves can’t catch the ball, and you lose the normal friction. The ball slides up the face instead of compressing against it.

You hear many pros and instructors describe the ball coming off the club face like a knuckleball.

Andrew Rice, a Golf Digest’s top instructor, explains it like this:

“As this grass/matter fills the grooves at impact and gets trapped between the ball and the face, there is very little grip on the ball, and as a result the ball launches closer to the dynamic/delivered loft (higher) and spins very little. High launch, low spin — that’s what we’re looking for with our driver, but not with an 8-iron from 130 yards.”

You’re ultimately hitting a shot that takes off with the spin profile of a driver and the loft of a 7-iron. Knuckleballish in the air. Hot when it lands. Very difficult to hold the green.

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How To Spot One

Set your club behind the ball and look at what’s between the face and the ball. If you see any grass there (blades of grass where the face would make contact) you have a flyer candidate. Candidate being the key word.

Not every candidate (ball in the rough) is a flyer. There’s a Goldilocks principle to it. Too little grass between the face and ball, and it’s not going to come out a flyer. Too much, and the grass slows the club before it even reaches the ball. Not a flyer, just a deadened shot. The flyer lives in the very narrow middle. Just enough grass to reduce friction. Not enough to kill your club head speed.

Here is a great visual for you:

This photo is obviously a little too perfect. But you get the idea. Notice how in the middle picture (the flyer lie) there is just enough grass to obstruct the friction of the grooves but not enough to slow down club head speed. This is the Goldilocks zone.

A Few Pre-shot routines

- Look behind the ball, not at it. Two or three inches behind is where the club actually contacts the grass first. This is the area you need to assess. It does you no good to just stand above and look down at the ball.

- Grain direction. Grass leaning toward your target (down-grain) amplifies the flyer. Grass growing toward you (into-grain) reduces it by reducing club head speed.

- Moisture. Light dampness (morning dew) or light drizzle makes flyers worse. Heavy, saturated rough does the opposite.

The bottom line: a ball sitting on top of the grass with grass behind it is a flyer lie. A ball that’s a little more sunken into the grass is a different problem entirely. The visual difference can sometimes be subtle. The outcome unfortunately is not.

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How To Play The Shot (There is Disagreement)

There isn’t much disagreement on how to identify or assess a flyer lie. But when it comes to actually playing one — ball position, club face, swing speed, club selection — the advice can get messy pretty quickly.

Let’s go through all of it and you can decide what suits your game.

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Here’s what’s in the bag.

Today’s quote:

“You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.”

-Bobby Jones

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Brandt Snedeker’s Pop-Stroke

After Brandt Snedeker’s win last Sunday, I couldn’t help but relive some old-school Sned footage. One of the first clips I came across was this classic where he explains his throwback putting stroke which many have referred to as a “pop-stroke” style.

My favorite part is when he casually drains 3 straight 15-footers.

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Be Careful at PGA Events

There is a viral clip going around of Wyndham Clark pulling an iron shot directly into a group of spectators. Pretty scary stuff. Watch the video first and then I’ll go over two things that I thought would be useful for you all.

1. Most of you reading this are pretty serious golfers, so I’m assuming you’re all aware of how dangerous an errant shot can be. But if you do go to a PGA event, don’t risk your life for a cool video. These guys are insanely good, but they aren’t machines. Someone is eventually going to take a golf ball straight to the dome on live TV and it’s not gonna be pretty.

2. The more actionable advice for you: those ugly lies with an awkward downhill stance are a perfect recipe for pull hooks — like Wyndham hit. I can’t be certain where he was intending to hit it, but I’m assuming it wasn’t directly at the spectators lol. Nonetheless, the key with those shots is to stay unbelievably still in your posture. If you come up out of it at all, you’ll have a real chance of hooking your ball into trouble. Or worse maybe OB. Stay still and deliver solid contact.

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This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on flyer lies.

A preview:

“The flyer is unique because it’s the only shot where gaining distance is a bad thing. No one wants to gain distance if it means sacrificing control and predictability.

Where amateurs get into trouble is lie assessment. Pros build entire pre-shot routines around reading flyers. Amateurs barely glance at the grass behind their ball.”

The post will be for paid subs only. If you haven’t already, you can upgrade HERE.

Lag Putting Visual

Lag putting is one of the few areas of the game where visualization can have a major impact. When I first started playing I used the old trash can lid visual, and now I visualize the entire putt rolling along the green into the side of the cup. It’s helpful to develop a consistent mental routine for how you want to roll these longer putts.

I saw this great post by @drakesmith_ on X and thought some of you might find it useful. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the 3 feet in front/back visual, but I’m sure it will be helpful for some.

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Alignment Vs Intent

This is a concept I’ve talked a lot about in this newsletter. Alignment does not always equal aim. You can read the full article on it here:

The video below is of Chris Gotterup aligned at what looks to me like the right side of the trees. Watch the clip and you’ll see his ball take off way right of the screen. There is no denying Gotterup is very unique in this regard. He plays somewhat of a push draw. But the point is that there’s no hard rule that says swing path needs to follow feet path.

If you’re going to stand open to your target, just make sure your intent is where your eyes are looking. Trevino and Fred Couples are a couple of names that come to mind.

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That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and can get out and play.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

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I bet you’ve never heard that one before…

But seriously — learning to miss well is a real skill. More specifically, learning where to miss around greens. Every golfer misses them. If you’re a 15-handicap, you miss roughly 13 per round.

The breakthrough comes when you realize no two misses are created equal. Every hole has a miss carefully designed to punish poor decisions.

This week’s post focuses on one of the most common green side misses, and maybe the most damaging:

The short-sided miss

(Cue the dramatic music)

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How Common is a Short-Sided Miss?

Before I get into how damaging a short-sided miss is, let’s first figure out how often they occur. You could track your own short-sided misses per round — and you should — but that would take considerable effort and I don’t blame you for not doing it… So you can assume your percentages based on my math (risky).

I’ll use Scottie Scheffler as the benchmark since he’s the only player I can find with a legitimately tracked short-siding stat. Luke Kerr-Dineen at Golf Digest hand-charted 1,353 of Scheffler’s shots from a 2024 stretch. So massive thanks to him. He only tracked his short-siding on back pin locations, so that’s what we’ll work with.

(Also side note, he is a great follow on Instagram. Follow him here if you haven't)

Based on his data, Scottie short-sides himself 2.82% on back-left pins, and 3.23% on back-right. Unbelievably low.

Spoiler alert: the amateur rates are going to be much higher.

It’s slightly difficult because no one publishes amateur short-sided miss rates. Measuring them would require miss direction and pin location for every shot. So we have to kind of deduce what the rates would be based off of other publicly available data.

A 15-handicap misses around 13 greens per round. Shot Scope’s data says 80% of those misses finish short. 47% short-right, 33% short-left. We’ll assume a third of pin placements sit on the right side, a third on the left, and a third in the center. Your miss only becomes short-sided when it matches the pin’s side.

The math:

• 13 missed greens

• 80% finishing short on a side (47% right + 33% left)

• Roughly 33% of pins matching the miss side

That works out to roughly 3 to 4 short-sided positions per round for a 15-handicap. You can scale up or down for whatever your index is: assume 2 to 3 for a 10-handicap, or 4 to 5 for a 20 etc…

This comes out to a 17-22% short-sided rate for a 15-handicap. That's 6 to 7 times Scheffler's rate. He short-sides himself once every 30+ shots. You probably do it once every four or five.

You’re free to challenge my math/assumptions if you think I’m way off. I won’t be offended.

Side note: The short-sided miss is most common with a front right pin location since it directly coincides with the stock amateur miss — a little “flared” mis-hit short and right. You get a little excited, come over the top and catch it a hair heavy. Now you’re behind a bunker with zero green to work with because you thought you could take on the flag.

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The Cost Per Miss

Ok so now we know roughly how often you’re faced with this miss. Now let’s figure out how many strokes it’s costing you. Similar to the frequency of the shot, we will have to make some assumptions based on the only data publicly available.

There are really only two data points available to us. The Mark Broadie research, and the Lou Stagner research.

Let’s start with Lou Stagner.

What Stagner did was pull real amateur shots out of the Arccos database, and sorted them by how much green sat between the ball and hole and then assigned a percentage.

For example, a 20 yard chip with the hole 16 yards from the edge is 80% green to work with. 20 yards with the hole 2 yards from the edge is 10% and so on.

The number Stagner got was +0.17 strokes for being short sided.

The 0.17 stroke figure comes from chips with 39% or less green to work with. That’s what he considered a “moderate to difficult” short sided chip.

He stopped at 39%. So we can assume that the penalty grows as the % of green to work with gets smaller.

One huge piece of context that is missing from the data (since it would be way too much work to gather) is that we don’t know anything about the penalty for each type of short-sided lie. All we have is the +0.17 strokes as an average of all the shots.

What I mean by this, is that let’s say some of those short sided chip shots were from behind a bunker with 20% of green to work with. I want to know what the penalty is for that shot. That way when I’m playing with a front right pin location and I see a bunker next to it, I can accurately weigh the risk/reward. As opposed to a front right pin with no bunker. In that case, maybe taking on the pin is worth the risk.

Broadie on the other hand measured something slightly different.

He built a Short-Side Index for the PGA Tour measuring moderate short-sided positions, and severe short-sided positions. From 29 yards in the rough, a tour pro in a severely short-sided position averages 3.06 strokes to hole out. From the same distance, same lie, in a moderately short-sided position: it takes them 2.72.

That’s a 0.34-stroke penalty per shot comparing one bad position to a slightly less bad one. For tour pros.

Here’s what’s interesting though. The penalty doesn’t scale upwards the worse the golfer gets. You would naturally imagine the 0.34 stroke penalty for pros would be something like a 0.5 stroke penalty for a 5-handicap. But Stagner's amateur figure is actually smaller. The reason is because amateurs were most likely going to bogey from either position anyway. The gap between bad and very bad matters more when you're capable of converting the bad one.

All of this is to say, the data isn’t as catastrophic as I thought it would be. Some of that is due to the fact that we just don’t have great data on it. But the data we do have certainly doesn’t point to short-siding being a scorecard wrecker in general.

Which means maybe the question isn’t “how do I avoid short-siding myself at all costs?” but instead “when is the risk worth it?”.

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How To Identify The Truly Dangerous Short-Sides

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