Have you ever noticed that the pros eat and drink during their round? You have to keep your energy up.
18 holes for me means a handful of trail mix (with raisins and M&Ms) every third hole, and a breakfast burrito at the turn.
I don’t know if this saved me any strokes or not, but I do know I was never tired going into the last few holes.
Last week I posted about a way to not hit the ball fat, assuming you don’t flip. But what if you do flip? (Raise your hand if you don’t flip at least occasionally. Hmm… I don’t see any body’s hand in the air.)
You start your forward swing with a turn of the hips. Do not let that start your hands moving forward (even though it does). Feel that your hands stay where they are at the top of the backswing just for a split second (even though they don’t) before they start forward.
That will delay them by just enough that it will be hard for them to catch up to the arm swing before you strike the ball. And that will give you the ball first, ground second strike that you want.
There’s no guarantee this will work. You can still be carried away with your right hand and hit too soon. But this feeling will at least give you the chance to get it right.
Lest you think this is building lag, it’s not. I hate that word. It’s building delay, and that’s all you need.
Let’s say your swing is OK, you’re not flipping, and you still hit the ground behind the ball. I do this and it drives me crazy.
Here’s how I solve the problem.
When you swing, you are probably looking at the back of the ball, because that is what you want to hit. But you should be looking instead at where you want the club to make contact with the ground, and that is a spot on the ground maybe a half-inch in front of the ball.
Just change where you look during the swing from the back of the ball to the ground in front of the ball, and you should see a big difference.
This video was shot in 1953. It is sheer poetry.
Hogan swung much faster than this, but still…
Many of us spend lots of time with our in-swing technique, and some time with our setup. But there are two things that can get overlooked that are vital for playing good golf.
When Greg Norman was in position to win his first Open Championship, which he did, on the eve of the final round he asked Jack Nicklaus what he should be thinking about. Nicklaus told him to monitor his grip pressure. Under stress, grip pressure tends to get tighter, to the detriment of a free-flowing swing.
So that’s the first thing. Consciously monitor your grip pressure every time you pick up a club.
Next is rhythm. I have been beating the drum on rhythm ever since this blog began fifteen years ago. No matter how good your technique is, it will not pay off unless you have proper rhythm when you swing.
By rhythm, I do not mean the 3:1 rhythm that you read about all the time. That’s way too technical and striving for it can even make things worse. I mean a loose, graceful, dancelike rhythm. Sunday afternoon walk in the park rhythm.
This will do two things. It will pull your swing together as one movement rather than a succession of linked movements that all have to work. It will generate more power. The looser you are, the more power you will create, and vice versa.
There you have it. Lots of swing tips I have written about might work for you or might not, and I say that. You have to try them and see for yourself. But I guarantee that these two things, light grip pressure and an easy rhythm, will make every golfer better.
I’m sure you know all this, but it’s easy to forget. If you swing your driver at the same speed as you do your 7-iron, you’ll get all the distance your driver was designed to give you.
By speed, I mean the time it takes you to get from takeaway back to impact. That is right around one second, maybe more, maybe less.
Because the driver’s shaft is longer than your 7-iron, the clubhead has farther to go in the same time, so it will go faster by design.
By not swinging faster just because it is a driver you’re swinging, you will tend to hit the ball on the center of the clubface more often, which is the real source of distance.
If you don’t ask more of your driver to do than you do of any your other clubs, it is really the easiest club to hit.
One of the biggest problems in golf is taking your game from the range to the course. Here’s why I think this is such a problem.
When you’re on the range, you have a bucket of balls and you hit them one after the other. Maybe you take a few practice swings in between, or maybe do a drill, and then you hit the ball to see how it went, and then you hit another one and you don’t really mind if the shot you hit is not your best because that’s what the range is all about. You’re here to learn, you’re here to correct mistakes, and mistakes are OK at the range.
But they’re not OK on the golf course. And the difference between the course and the range is that on the course you get to hit one shot, then you move on. And it might be three or four minutes since you hit your last shot. You don’t get to hit one maybe every 30 seconds and get into a groove like you do at the range, with lots of practice swings in between, and so forth.
That puts a bit of pressure on you when you play, and I understand that because I feel it myself. I only have one chance to get this right and then I have to live with the consequences.
So here’s how you minimize that problem over time. At the range, when you’re finished with most of your bucket, and you’ve accomplished what you sent to accomplish, leave about five balls.
Hit one. And sit down for about three minutes. And get up and hit another one, just like you were on the course. Align your shot, maybe take one practice swing, and then hit the ball. And then sit down again for another three or four minutes. Repeat.
Don’t limit yourself to full swings. Maybe hit a 75-yard pitch. Hit your driver one time. Mix it up, because that’s what you do when you play.
Now, you’re simulating the way you have to hit the balls on the golf course, one shot at a time, with a significant amount of time between shots. This kind of practicing gets you used to that, so on the course you’ll be a lot more at ease when it’s your turn to hit. It will just be business as usual.
I think if you make this procedure a regular part to your trips to the range, you’ll start feeling free to put your best swing on the ball more often than not when you play.
I like to read golf instruction books, especially ones that feed my confirmation bias. You know, they describe what I think is right.
But I want to suggest four books that set me off in the right direction and get me back on track if I get seduced by some tip on YouTube. You might find them to be valuable too.
1. Five Lessons, Ben Hogan
2. Shape Your Swing the Modern Way, Byron Nelson
3. Bobby Jones on Golf, Bobby Jones
4. On Learning Golf, Percy Boomer.
The Hogan and Nelson books say mainly the same thing. The difference is in how they are written. Five Lessons is not a casual read. You have to be paying attention and even then you still might not get it. Nelson is written in a more chatty manner, much easier to follow than Five Lessons, but it is still worth gold. You should have them both and read them both. They compliment each other. One of the problems with Hogan’s book is that he says there are only eight fundamentals, but he makes reference to a number of other fine points that are just as important and you have to be a very careful reader to notice them.
The Jones book is a joy to read just for being in the presence of writing that reflects a command of English equal to golf writers who were professional writers. Much of his swing advice, I think, is based the demands that hickory shafts made on a golfer. Some of the details might be obsolete. His higher level descriptions of swing technique are spot on, of course. But it is the feeling of command that he had on the course, and that he wants us to have, that pervades the book and is its greatest value.
The Boomer book, which you may never have heard of, is the first book published (1946) on how to be a feel player. You can read this every year before the start of the season (I do) and find something new that makes you a better golfer. If I had only one golf book, it would be this one.
There are lots of right things to do in a golf swing. If your swing isn’t working, you’re missing a few. Or maybe just one that would fix everything. So you go looking for fixes on YouTube or in books.
The problem is that you really don’t know what it is that will fix your swing. Trying out this or that can easily lead you in the wrong direction, or distract your attention away from what you need to change to get to the promised land.
That is why you should get a lesson. The pro can see right away what it is you need to change, and thereby save you from going down one dead end after another.
Winter is a good time to get that lesson. You can spend a few months working on it so that when the season opens in the spring, you will be ready.
1. Practice two-foot putts. Practice hitting two-foot putts so they roll into the hole dead center. Yes, you’ll get good at two-foot putts, but you’ll get good at six-foot putts and eight-foot putts, too.
A short putt that tumbles in from the side will miss from a longer distance, but a stroke that sends short ones in dead center will send the ball in from longer distances as well. That’s the point of this kind of practice.
I suggest two feet because that is a distance you should be successful at EVERY TIME. If it isn’t, move closer until you get it right every time, and then you can move back just a bit.
2. You’ve heard that it is a good idea to find a spot on the green on the starting line a few inches in front of your ball, and to roll the ball over that spot.
But the putter, which creates the rolling, needs to be travelling along this line, too. That means the imaginary line you visualize in front of the ball needs extend behind the ball, as well.
I think you can apply this tip to every shot you hit, too.