A Piece of the Blueprint

While I have taken Hank Haney to task (a couple of times) for the way he's been advertising his Haney Blueprint system (in this post and in this one, in case you're interested), I've always said I suspected the material in the DVDs themselves was useful.

Well, Haney was on GC's Lesson Tee Live Wednesday night and, while I didn't get to see much of the show, one of the parts I did get to see concerned the Blueprint... and it certainly was good advice.

Haney's ads say his DVDs will help you learn how to eliminate your "big miss," among other things. What he talked about on LTL was part of the strategy that eliminating the "big miss" allows you to use. (In case you haven't seen any of the ads -- don't you ever watch TV? -- Haney says that lowering your score isn't just about your swing. It's also about your strategy around the course, and the Blueprint is supposed to teach you that as well.)

According to Haney, part of the Blueprint strategy definitely involves getting rid of wasted shots. He divided the ones into three different classes:

1. Penalty shots: An OB penalty adds 2 shots to your score. Dunking one in the water adds 1 shot, as does having to chip out sideways. You can probably think of others... and if you can't, I assure you that the USGA and R&A have done so for you!
2. Two-chips: That's when you mis-hit your first chip and have to chip again. Includes two-pitches and two-sand shots.
3. Three-putts: This one's self-explanatory, isn't it? One interesting thing Haney mentioned -- if I heard him correctly -- was that Steve Williams used to keep his own stats on Tiger's game and he calculated that if Tiger had eliminated all his three-putts, he would have won nearly 85% of his tournaments. In case you didn't know, three-putts are BAD.

Haney said that if you totaled up all of these in your round and subtracted them from your actual score, you'd have some idea of what you were capable of shooting if you just eliminated wasted shots from your game.

Alright, perhaps that sounds like "well, duh" material. But isn't that the stuff that always trips us up?

Whatever you think of Haney's teaching -- many players dislike his approach to plane (he tends to favor flatter planes, for one thing) -- this is definitely good advice if you're looking for a quick way to lower your scores. Even if you can't get rid of your "big miss" right away, do you have a shot you can use when you're faced with a threatening OB? Can you find a little time to improve your short game and putting? Are you willing to try?

If so, then you just might be able to drop a few strokes from your game within the next few weeks. And Haney definitely gave you that info for free. I'd say that's a pretty good deal.