5 Starter Lessons

Everybody wants to hit their drives straight and far. If you shoot around 100 and want to get in the 80s, learning how to hit your drives solidly and keep them in play is a fast way to do it. In this video, Golf Digest Best Young Teacher Nick Clearwater says good driving starts with a few basics: setup, making solid contact and avoiding the big miss. Here, he offers his keys for hitting quality tee shots.

For a lot of golfers, the prospect of hitting an iron shot off a tight lie in the fairway is intimidating. Off a tee or from the first cut of rough, you feel like you have some margin for error. But on closely cropped fairway grass, you know that if you don’t strike the ball precisely, you might chunk or skull it. In this video, Nick Clearwater shares his best tips for making ball-first contact with your irons.

Launching big drives and hitting crisp iron shots can be exhilarating, but the good times can be short-lived if you get sloppy on the greens and make a bunch of three-putts. In this video, Golf Digest Best Young Teacher Nick Clearwater demonstrates how to become a fundamentally sound putter.

For beginners, some of the hardest shots come around the greens. To avoid chunking and blading your short-game shots, you need to develop a sound, repeatable chipping technique. Here, Nick Clearwater advocates learning just one type of shot to simplify things. You can use it from the rough, fringe or fairway to avoid wasted shots around the greens.

A lot of beginners fear the bunker shot more than any other. Chances are, some even play away from bunkers to avoid them at any cost. But as Nick Clearwater explains in this video, bunker shots aren’t really that difficult if you know the basics of the setup and swing. Here, he offers a step-by-step tutorial on how to hit quality sand shots and conquer your fear.