THE RESEARCH
My new book, Dave Pelz's Damage Control, is not about avoiding trouble; it's about getting out of trouble after you're already in it. Through a recent research project at the Pelz Golf Institute involving thousands of golfers just like you, I've learned the following groundbreaking points:
• Golfers play two to five strokes below their handicaps for most of each round.
• They also have disaster holes mixed in, bringing their total scores back up to handicap level.
THE METHOD
Damage Control works for Tour pros and it will save you strokes, too. I'll stake my reputation on it. If you learn Damage Control you will lower your scores by two to five shots per round! Working with my staff at the Institute, we've developed the fix for disaster scoring — the concept we call Damage Control. Here are the relevant points:
• Disaster holes happen to everyone. It's an unwritten law: "You can't put together a complete 18-hole round without a disaster score or two." You must accept this reality.
• You can limit the damage disaster holes have on your score. The main reason disaster holes get out of control is that you don't always know how to hit trouble shots from weird stances on uneven terrain, with a bush behind your ball or a tree limb in the way of your swing. You try to escape using your normal swing and aiming at a normal target, and end up making a bad situation worse. Damage Control will enable you to escape from trouble without ruining your score.
• You can develop Damage Control in your own backyard. The five skills of Damage Control are:
- Set-up-ology: How to set your body for trouble swings
- Swing Shaping: How to shape swings from trouble lies on difficult terrain
- Hand-Fire Feel: How to use your hands in escape shots
- Red-Flag Touch: Planning for the behavior of trouble shots after they are launched
- Damage Control Mentality: How to use this mental approach to play your entire round without any disaster holes
