How to Lower Your Golf Score Using Sam Stevens Drills
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How to Lower Your Golf Score Using Sam Stevens Drills
12 min read
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Sam Stevens focuses on fundamentals-first golf: a repeatable grip, a stable setup, and a consistent tempo. Apply his core drills — the 9-to-3 half swing, the gate putting drill, and smart course management — to improve without overhauling your game.
Sam Stevens has built a reputation as a coach who simplifies what many instructors overcomplicate. His approach centers on three pillars: correct fundamentals, targeted repetition, and smart course management. Rather than rebuilding a student's swing from scratch, Stevens identifies the two or three technical errors causing the most damage and fixes those first.
This is why golfers at every level respond to his method. You are not asked to change everything at once — you are asked to change the right things in the right order. The result is faster, more durable improvement than wholesale swing changes produce.
A student who understands why a drill works will continue doing it correctly long after the lesson ends. That self-sufficiency is central to Stevens' philosophy: he aims to give you a diagnostic framework, not a dependency on constant instruction.
Before any drill makes sense, your setup must be solid. Stevens insists that 80 percent of swing errors originate in a flawed grip, stance, or posture — not in what happens during the swing itself. Fix the setup, and the swing often corrects itself.
Use a neutral grip: the back of your lead hand (left hand for right-handers) should face the target at address. Place the club in the fingers — not the palm — of both hands. When you look down, you should see two to two-and-a-half knuckles on your lead hand.
Feet shoulder-width apart for a mid-iron. Ball position is slightly forward of center for irons and opposite your lead heel for the driver. Weight should be balanced 50/50 between both feet at address, not tilted toward the back foot.
Hinge forward from the hips — not the waist — until your arms hang naturally under your shoulders. Knees softly flexed, spine straight but not rigid. A simple check: hold a club against your spine and verify the butt of the grip points toward your belt buckle, not your chest. Rounded posture is the most common setup fault Stevens corrects.
This is the centerpiece of Stevens' early teaching. The 9-to-3 drill uses a half swing — club pointing to 9 o'clock on the backswing and 3 o'clock on the follow-through — to teach a centered, repeatable arc before adding power. It is deceptively simple and extremely effective.
Progression: Once 9-to-3 feels automatic and your contact is consistently solid, extend to a full swing while keeping the same tempo and rotational feeling. Add range of motion, not effort. Most players who rush past this stage regress within a few weeks.
Stevens is emphatic: the average recreational golfer loses 40 to 50 percent of their strokes within 50 yards of the hole. Improving your short game returns more shots per hour of practice than any full-swing work, and the motor patterns are simpler to learn.
Place two tees in the ground just wider than your putter head, about 6 inches in front of the ball on the target line. Make putting strokes that send the putter head cleanly between the tees without touching either one. This trains a straight, square stroke and eliminates the most common putting fault — an inside-out or outside-in path that causes pulls and pushes.
Around a practice hole, place balls at the 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-o'clock positions, each about 10 feet off the edge of the green. Chip each ball and try to get it within 3 feet of the hole. Record how many you convert from each position. Stevens recommends targeting a 60 percent success rate to reach bogey golf consistently, and 75 percent to regularly shoot bogey or better.
For chipping technique: use a narrow stance, lean the shaft slightly toward the target at address, and keep your hands ahead of the clubhead throughout the stroke. Think of chipping as a long, firm putting stroke rather than a miniature swing. The ball should roll more than it flies on most chip shots.
Stevens argues that most amateur golfers lose 6 to 8 shots per round not to poor ball-striking but to poor decisions. Course management is the fastest route to a lower score that requires no change to your swing at all.
Instead of aiming at the center of the fairway, aim at the half that keeps your miss in play. If there is water left of the fairway, aim at the right half. A slight draw or push still finds the short grass. A miss toward water costs two or more shots.
Before hitting an approach shot, identify where a difficult recovery lies — a steep upslope, a deep bunker, or a tight lie on a downhill chip. Aim deliberately away from that spot. A ball that misses the green but leaves an easy chip costs at most one shot; a ball in a greenside bunker often costs two or three.
Most amateur golfers overestimate how far they hit each club by 10 to 20 yards. Use a GPS app or a rangefinder during practice rounds and record actual carry distances for each club over several sessions. Then club up — take one more club than you think you need — on approach shots, especially when a short miss finds water or a bunker. Hitting past the hole is almost always easier to recover from than coming up short.
If you consistently draw or fade the ball, factor that shape into your alignment rather than fighting it. Aim your body and club at a starting line that lets your natural shape bring the ball to the target. Fighting your own ball flight wastes energy and creates tension.
Consistency beats intensity. Stevens recommends five to six sessions per week of 30 to 45 minutes rather than one long range session on the weekend. Short, frequent sessions build motor patterns faster than infrequent marathon sessions.
Those three numbers — fairways, greens, putts — tell you exactly where to concentrate next week. If putts are high, shift more practice time to the gate drill. If greens are low, spend more time on approach distances and short-game recovery.
Stevens has identified the most frequent errors he sees across students of all levels. Each has a direct, repeatable fix:
Sam Stevens is a golf instructor known for breaking down the swing into clear, repeatable fundamentals. His teaching emphasizes correct setup, controlled tempo, and targeted short-game practice rather than radical swing overhauls, making his method accessible to players at every level.
The method works for all levels. Beginners use it to build correct habits from scratch, while mid- and high-handicap players use it to diagnose and fix ingrained faults. Even low-handicap golfers benefit from the short-game drills and course-management framework.
Most players notice measurable improvement in ball contact within two to four weeks of consistent daily practice, even with just 20 to 30 minutes per session. Short-game drills — putting and chipping — tend to show results fastest because they are simpler motor patterns than the full swing.
No. The core drills require only a club, a few alignment sticks (available for under $15), and a flat practice area. A phone camera propped up behind you is useful for self-check on posture and swing path. No launch monitors or expensive gear are needed.
Stevens consistently recommends that 60 to 70 percent of practice time focus on putting and chipping. The average recreational golfer loses 40 to 50 percent of their strokes within 50 yards of the hole, so this is where practice time yields the fastest score reduction.
Trying to hit the ball too hard. Overswinging breaks down posture, timing, and contact all at once. Stevens teaches players to swing at 75 to 80 percent effort while focusing on solid contact and a balanced, complete follow-through. More clubhead speed comes naturally once the swing path is consistent.
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