This golfer wanted to break 100. Instead, she shaved almost 20 strokes

A common goal for golf beginners is to simply break 100, which is one way to gauge how much progress they have made since I first bought a set of clubs.

As with all goals, reaching 100 takes effort and a lot of patience. Players often go from learning the basics such as have control over the club and improving their attitude or posture lift the ball into the air And making solid contact more consistently. Once they feel comfortable with these aspects of the game, they can aim to score lower.

Unfortunately, many amateurs become discouraged if they don’t reach 100 early in their golf career. But one player, Nikki, with a handicap of 33, wanted to make sure she completed her mission. That’s why she collaborated with GOLF Top 100 teacher Ed Oldham to really commit to this.

Not only did Nikki achieve her goal, but she did so with flying colors, going from a consistent 105 shooter to a career round of 87 earlier this year after her partnership with Oldham.

Naturally, I was intrigued, so I contacted Oldham to find out his secrets about what he did to help Nikki shave almost twenty strokes off her normal score. Below you can check out his advice, which could also bring you big profits.

How a handicap of 33 went from breaking 100 to shaving almost 20 strokes

Oldham told me that Nikki first contacted him in May, hoping that consistent work with a top teacher could get her through the 100s for the first time.

“Nikki had a handicap of 33 with an average score of 105,” Oldham told me. “Her original goal was to break 100 for the first time and eventually shoot into the low 90s regularly.”

First, Oldham referred to information from Mark Broadie’s book:Every shot counts”, which made Nikki understand how many strokes she was costing herself during each round by just bad shots.

“In Broadie’s book, terrible shots are basically a shot that doesn’t improve your situation much, such as a shot that goes from above into the water where you have to fall in the same spot, or a shot that goes out of bounds. A golfer who regularly hits 100 shots will have 10 terrible shots per round, per Broadie,” he said.

“When we started, Nikki’s bad shots were chunks, top shots and slices. Her grip was weak, the face remained open, and she had some typical open face compensations, including poor weight transfer and an early release. She’s had a lot of terrible shots.

Oldham then explained how he helped Nikki correct these mistakes, which in turn led to fewer lost strokes each round.

“As a coach, my top priorities are having good clubface at the top of the backswing and impact, as well as making solid contact,” he explained. “We strengthened Nikki’s grip and moved it more into the fingers of her left hand. This helped get the club face into a better position.

“We then spent most of the time during the first lesson improving her contact. In fact, we spent the first five lessons working on different ways to improve her club face control and contact.”

So what does it take to make solid contact more consistently? Oldham said it’s all about getting the ball first at impact.

“For solid contact you want to hit the ball first and Than the ground and make sure the divot is on the target side of the golf ball,” he said. “Most of the first lesson (with Nikki) was spent hitting the ground in the right place.”

He then described a simple exercise to practice this.

“We did a Goldilocks exercise where she hit the ground too far back, too far forward and then hit the ground in the right place – because the brain learns from the variation,” Oldham said. “We also did a tee drill, where I set up a ball similar to how high it would be on a par-3 hole, and then I put another tee in the ground two inches on the target side of the ground. Nikki’s job was to hit the ball and then the ground.”

Thanks to the tee exercise, Nikki received immediate feedback, so she could see exactly what they had done right or wrong.

After seeing Nikki start to make better contact, Oldham said they worked on controlling the clubface, which led to better results.

“To improve the skill of clubface control, we did an exercise called Variable Clubface Practice,” says Oldham. “When practicing with a variable club face, I ask the student to change the club face with each shot: one to the left, one to the right and then one in the middle. This is a great exercise for players of all levels, with better players having smaller variations.”

After just five classes together, Nikki not only reached 100 for the first time, she shattered the goal by breaking 90.

“Working on the club face and improving her contact helped Nikki achieve her goal of breaking 100,” Oldham told me. “She shot a 96 and a 93 within three weeks of our first lesson, and she recently even shot an 87, now regularly scoring in the low 90s.”

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