This is a great way to cut the sloppiness out of your golf game

I'm kind of convinced this is the single best thing you can do to cut all the sloppiness out of your golf game.

I try to do it at least once a season—honestly, I should do it more—and pros talk about doing it a lot as junior golfers. It's not as easy as it sounds, but the benefits are real.

So what am I talking about? Playing from the forward tees.

Yes, there's a logistical hurdle. You're not going to want to bail on your buddies' match to tee it forward, so you have to pick your spots—an evening nine or an early, empty morning when you're out on your own. But once you do, It can help your game a lot...

1. It leaves you nowhere to hide

From the forward tees, you'll never step onto a hole that looks like a cop-out, easy bogey hole. Every par-5 is reachable in two or three, and every par 3 is a short iron or less. A decent drive will leave you a short club into most par-4s. It means that you'll never get to slip into that conservative "just keep it in the ballpark" mindset. You'll always put yourself in a position to make a good score, rather than settling for an average one.

2. It hones in on your scoring distances

Playing forward only makes one thing easier—getting your drive closer to the green. The problem is, once you're in the fairway, the benefits are over.

That 70-yard wedge doesn't get any easier. The pin's in the same spot. A 12-footer is the same 12-footer you'd have from the tips.

So you end up with a round full of scoring shots—wedges inside 100, greenside chips, bunker shots, and a ton of those 8-, 10-, and 12-footers that actually move your scores. That's where the fat lives in most of our games, and this drags it all into the light. And unlike dropping balls on the putting green, it still feels like real golf—you're going through the motions of a drive and an approach before every one of those putts.

3. It sharpens your strategy off the tee

This is why Cam Young's dad David had him playing forward as a junior. From the tips, a young Cam wasn't long enough to reach the trouble, so he never really played the course as designed. Move up, and the architecture comes into play. Now you can reach that bunker, or carry it, and you've got to decide—take it on, lay back, where's my bailout? No more autopilot driver 14 times a round.

4. It blows up your comfort zone

For whatever reason, we drift back toward the scores we're used to shooting. Bryson has talked about playing the forward tees as a junior for exactly this reason—instead of stumbling into a low round once every two weeks and getting nervous, he'd be in that spot five or six times a week, forcing himself to get comfortable going low.

You don't need to do it all the time. But a few times a season, tee it way forward and take a little pulse check on your game. If there's sloppiness in there, you'll spot it instantly—and just by doing it, you'll start sharpening up.

You can listen to the full episode of Golf IQ, where I discuess this below (and subscribe right here!)