Do not be in a hurry to start your downswing.
All posts by recgolfer
A Club-Centered Golf Swing
Here’s something to think about and maybe try. You have heard of swing concepts based around the hands (really old guys), the arms (somewhat old guys), and the body (nearly everybody nowadays).
How about a swing based on the club? (See Ernest Jones, Manuel de la Torre, Vivien Saunders).
Watch this video of In Gee Chun’s golf swing. Start it at 2:25 to see it in super slow motion. Don’t watch her, though. Watch the club. Watch how the club is moving and you will see how a golf club is supposed to move. Go to full screen see it best.
Now figure out how to make your golf club move the same way. Hint: You don’t do that by copying how she moves. When you swing, keep your mind on your image of how her club moves.
All this has to do with applying the principle of external focus, as developed by Dr. Gabrielle Wulf.
Skying My Driver – How I Stopped It
You know the drives you hit dead straight but way up in the air and if you get 50 yards you’re lucky? That’s skying the ball. Maddening. There are three main causes for this.
First, and hopefully most obvious, is that you’re teeng the ball too high. The middle of the ball, as it sits on the tee, should meet the top of the driver head. This guideline has been around for years, because it works.
The other two causes are more involved. They are meant to correct the cause of the popup, which is the clubhead coming into the ball on a downward trajectory. You want the clubhead to be arcing upward a few degrees at impact.
One is that you are swaying toward the target during your forward swing. That moves the low point of your swing in that direction, which means the clubhead will still be travelling downward when it meets the ball, sending it up excessively.
At address, lean your torso toward the trailing side of your body by a few degrees, and keep it there. In the forward swing, think “stay back” so you don’t straighten up your posture.
The second reason is you take the club back too steeply. Your forward swing will follow this trajectory into the ball, and again, the clubhead comes into the ball at too steep an angle.
More on Tempo
Tempo is one of the most important things to get right in the golf swing, but the most difficult to describe so you know how to do it. I’m always looking for good ways to express what the right tempo feels like.
I would like to share with you this description of tempo, which comes from the book, How to Become a Complete Golfer, by Bob Toski and Jim Flick.
“In swinging the club back and during the change of direction at the top, you should have a feeling of ease. You should never feel you are swinging the club hard. If you lose the feeling of ease, you have swung the club too fast and are going out of control.”
I would add that the feeling of ease should continue as you swing through the ball, too.
Don’t go too far in this direction by swinging too slowly. A swing with no poop is no good. Swing with intent, but easy intent.
An Easy Way to Lower Your Score
I played nine holes yesterday and shot a 41. Not bad, but it could have been lower, not if I had hit better shots, but if I had made better decisions.
On the first hole, I had to hit to a green above my feet, and over a bunker to get to the pin. I thought I had enough club in my hand, so I aimed at the pin. Bunker. A deep one with hard wet sand. It took me four to get down.
Mistakes? First of all, I didn’t have to hit over the bunker. I could have aimed left of it, and even if I missed the green I would have had easy up and down for a par.
Second, I hit the second shot really well, but I should have used one more club.
Second hole, I was green high in two, but about 20 yards from the green with a bunker right in my way. I was still spooked from the last hole, so I took more than enough club to pitch over the bunker, and aimed left so as not to hit over it.
Too much insurance. The ball went way too far, and way left. I could have taken two less clubs, aimed for the pin, and been just fine, because I’m pretty good at this shot. I got a bogey, which could have been a par.
Two holes later I had an easy pitch into the pin which ended up hole high, but because I forgot to take careful aim, the ball ended up about fifteen feet left instead of much closer. Another possible par given away.
Two holes after that I had a pitch into the green from a lie significanlty below the green. I figured the club to use from my chart for normal (level) lies. I forgot that hitting from an upslope adds loft to the club, which will make the shot end up shorter. I used my gap wedge instead of my pitching wedge. The ball ended up about 30 feet short of the hole instead of much closer if I had used the lower-lofted club. Two putts to get down instead of maybe one.
So let’s say out of those five possible strokes saved by thinking more clearly, I got three of them, for a 38. Just by thinking more clearly.
I’ll bet you could lower your average score by four or five strokes over a 18-hole round just by making better decisions. Me, too.
Short Shots From Close In
Chipping from beside the green and pitching from long distances are shots we are all familiar with. They are both easy shots to get good at, too.
Short shots we don’t hit very often, and ones that confuse us, are the ones from close to the green but not that close. Here is some advice from Manuel de la Torre on what to do, from his book, Understanding the Golf Swing.
“If the flagstick is located close to the front edge of the green, the best option is to play a low running shot and use the grass on the fairway to slow the ball down and have it trickle slowly to the hole. Playing a high shot to land on the green would not result in a shot that would be able to stop near the hole—there is too short a distance between the edge of the green and the hole to be able to handle that type of shot.
“If the flagstick is located at the back of the green, you have a great number of options. Almost any iron will produce shots that can end close to the hole. Under these conditions pitch shots or pitch and run shots can be used and be equally successful. In many cases the pitch and run will produce better results than high pitch shots.”
This is good advice in my experience. With the advent of the four-wedge bag, you don’t see golfers hitting pitch and run shots too often even though it is a more effective shot that is hit with a lower-lofted club.
Practice this shot with your 6- to 8-irons to add a potent shot to your short game bag of tricks.
My Transition Move
As the title suggests, this is how I start my forward swing. It is not the only way to do it, but it is my way and I’m presenting it to give you an option in addition to all the other stuff you see on the internet.
The move is this: my left butt cheek moves straight back. No turn, no slide, cheek straight back.
Of course it can’t do that really, it turns, but it feels straight back.
I move my hip back at a tempo that is in harmony with the rest of my swing. I make it fit in. Not too slow, and definitely not too fast.
What I get out of it is a turn of my torso that lines up everything so the arm/hand assembly flows into the hitting area with the clubhead traveling at the target through impact.
The hands lead the clubhead effortlessly through the ball and I get nice ball-then-ground contact off the center of the clubface.
All that is what you want in your swing, and this is how I get it.
There’s a Mike Malaska video in which he says the left leg pushes the left hip socket back on the forward swing. I think I am getting the same result in a different way.
Remember, this is just how my transition starts. You have do some other stuff after that, but that’s a different post.
Marlene Bauer Hagge (1934-2023)
The last surviving founder of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, Marlene Bauer Hagge, died Tuesday at the age of 89.
She began her professional career at the age of 13. She won 26 professional tournaments including the 1956 L.P.G.A. Championship. She is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Read obituaries in the New York Times, Golfweek, and lpga.com.
The Golf Ball Rollback
Golf Digest just published an article saying that the proposed golf ball rollback for professional tours might backfire. In time, a small number of elite golfers might figure out how to get their swing speed high enough to negate the changes in the ball.
By getting their swing speed up to 140+ mph, a few professional golfers could hit the shorter ball up to 350 yards. Everyone else would be left in the dust.
One solution would be to use course design and setup to penalize wayward drives more than is done now. That’s kind of expensive, though.
David Feherty once suggested making the ball bigger, which is known to cut down on how far it flies.
All this is guesswork. Leave it to The Recreational Golfer to come up with a foolproof solution: the exploding golf ball.
We would require a golf ball design that makes the ball disintegrate when struck at a swing speed of greater than, say, 135 mph.
BOOM! Cloud of dust! Tee up another, podner, you’re hitting two.
Not only would it solve the distance problem, it would be widely entertaining. Can you imagine the cheering? And the little cloud of white dust rising up over the tree tops from the number seven tee that you can see from way over at number 14?
And Jim Nantz saying, “Oops! Got another one!”
And think of the pressure on the guys with the big guns! Not, am I going to hit the fairway, but, is my golf ball going to blow up?
And Tour golf on TV, which has become about as boring as competitive cornhole, would become as popular a TV sport as any. Even more than World’s Strongest Man competitions.
Problems solved. You’re welcome.
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I hope this mildly amusing post has entertained you and taken your mind off, for a while, the impending debt limit crisis. (I just had to say that.)
The Debt Limit
I turn from golf for a moment.
The Republican House refusing to increase the debt limit is not holding a gun to President Biden’s head. It’s holding a gun to the nation’s head. Your head.
If you live a congressional district with a Republican representative, write and urge your congressman/woman to vote in favor of increasing the debt limit and thereby avoid an economic nightmare. Thank you.