I call it The New Math, but you can think of it as a simple way to cut strokes from your scorecard quickly and easily.  As an instructor, I like to teach my students the basic premise that by adding to their technical repertoire and eliminating incorrect moves, they can effectively lower their handicaps. In other words, I believe that a good instructor subtracts as much, if not more, than they add. By eliminating inefficient and wasted motion and streamlining your technique, you’ll be making a giant first step toward improving your swing and your scores.

A good backswing creates torque and is achieved by rotating the body away from the ground using the feet as an anchor. Except for unusually flexible players, the knees, hips, core, back and shoulders should all be used to create torque. Once you get the feel of creating leverage against the ground, your power will increase significantly.

One of the keys to accurate pitching is getting the clubhead moving consistently down the target line. A great way to practice this is to take a 10-foot piece of string and stretch it out directly on the target line of a pitch shot. 

There’s at least one basic certainty in golf and that is that good, solid contact produces quality shots. Every player, even those who compete on the PGA Tour, knows this and strives to perfect the moment of impact. Unfortunately, many recreational golfers don’t make high-quality contact as often as they should, in part because they simply don’t know the key elements necessary to do so.

When someone refers to “saving your score” on a particular hole, it typically requires a chip, pitch or bunker shot to get the ball up and down. These three shots can have the biggest impact on your score when learned and executed properly, since you can only do so much to make up strokes from the tee box or on the green.

If you want to become a better putter, you have to learn to stabilize the lower body as much as possible. All great putters have a rock-steady lower half and swing the putter from above the waist. Now, deciding whether you’re a hands-driven putter or a shoulder-driven putter (or both!) is a matter of personal style, but one thing is for sure: No matter how you choose to swing with the upper body, the lower body must stay as still as possible.

Keep Your Hands Low - Limiting the height of the followthrough will effectively reduce the height of your shots. The lower the hands, the lower the ballflight. Moving the ball back in your stance or choosing a stronger club and trying to swing easy are other ways to accomplish the same thing, but they’re less reliable and more difficult to execute.