All posts by recgolfer

golf swing

My Annual Swing Rebuilding Project

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Every year, when golf season is over, I work on my swing, starting over from the start. I go through my bag, from 9-iron to driver.

If you have seen some of my recent videos on YouTube, you know I have a little practice station in my back yard. I went out to my practice mat with my 9-iron, and hit just that club. Over and over. When I get 3 out of 5 shots just right consistently, and the other two aren’t bad, I’ll move up to the 8-iron. And then one club at a time when I’m ready for it.

I probably won’t be up to the driver before the rainy season hits. We’re having warm weather with clear skies, but in Oregon that won’t last too long this time of year.

I’m dedicating myself to building the Six Fundamentals into every swing. I review them all before I hit a ball. One thing I’ve added is to sweep the club through the ball, and not to hit at it. That is making a world of difference.

Aside: If you get the latest Golf Digest, with Beef Johnston on the cover, you’ll find an article inside by Bob Toski about swinging with your hands, and not with the big muscles that is so much in vogue nowdays. This is exactly what I said in SF. I advise you to get this article and read it carefully. A lot of what pros say about the risks of your hands being in charge of your golf is baloney.

But back to my program. If you want to be better ball striker, take the swing you have and work your way through your bag, one club at a time, demanding a quality hit with every ball before you move up. Really. This works.

The other part of getting my game back in order is hitting two to four-foot putts in my back room. I am getting REAL good at these. Sinking these putts is how you avoid three-putt greens or not getting up and down.

people

An Arnold Palmer Reminisce

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Arnold Palmer’s passing is the biggest golf story of the year. There are articles today in every newspaper about who he was and what he meant to the game. I won’t go over any of that. This post is about my personal recollections.

A number of years ago I posted my story about the one time I met him, when I was eleven years old, getting his autograph. That was the start.

The Golden Age of Sport was whenever you were between the ages of about nine and fourteen. You’re old enough to know what’s going on, and young enough to still have heroes. That’s exactly where I was during Palmer’s rise, and he was my hero. I reveled in his victories. When he lost the 1966 U.S. Open I was despondent for days.

All my friends I golfed with liked him best. Really — who else was there to have as a favorite compared to the likes of Arnold Palmer?

Yes, he was charismatic. Yes, he was telegenic. But he was more than that. We learned (eventually) to admire Jack Nicklaus. We respected Gary Player. But Arnie was one of us. He never hid himself from us. The more attention he got from his fans, the more he thrived. The phenomenon of Arnie’s Army has never been duplicated — no other golfer has ever commanded than kind of attention. For a while there was Jack’s Pack, but it never got off the ground like the Army did.

In an time when most Tour pros had an idiosynchratic, home-grown golf swing that was recognizable two fairways away, Palmer’s was the the most recognizable and the most exciting. He didn’t swing at the ball, he attacked it, forcing it go where he wanted. Though a long hitter, he wasn’t that long, but he was very straight. The shots he took that looked like gambles generally weren’t. He knew he could pull it off and he did.

In the really 1960s Palmer won many times each year. It was said once that your tournament wasn’t a real success unless Arnie won it. How he won was exciting, too. It seems no other golfer could withstand his onslaught once he put his mind to winning.

But if that’s all there had been, he wouldn’t have been The King. It was his touch with people. A nicer man never walked the Earth. His warmth and charisma touched people on a personal level. His fondness for people was genuine. Given his status, he could have been anything he wanted, but in the end he never retreated from treating everyone he met with courtesy and respect, as if it were his honor to have met you.

We’ve had lots of good golfers over the years. But there has been only one Arnold Palmer. Long live The King.

putting

Make More Short Putts

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Short putts are between two feet and four feet long. There is no reason you can’t sink them at professional rates. Here are four ideas on how to meet that standard.

1. Practice them. Hit putts from two to four feet over and over again. You can do this at home every day on a carpet. Hit ten putts or so. That will take you two minutes, tops. Put your putter down, come back a half hour later, and hit ten more. Repeat every half hour.

This is the “little and often” method that is used so effectively in foreign language learning. Do a little bit, but repeat it often.

2. Putt at an object. Do you have a water bottle that is about four inches in diameter? You can get one at an outdoor store.

In my first book, Better Recreational Golf, I suggested that you putt at a positive object rather than a negative hole. Putt to hit the water bottle. It is so easy you just can’t miss.

You’re training your mind to see a bottle rather than a hole. When you play, hit the ball against the imaginary bottle, and the ball goes in the hole, simple as that.

3. Start the putter back slowly, gradually. By starting the stroke very slowly you keep the putter under control. The face stays square, the putter goes straight back and naturally comes straight through.

There’s no need to rush your short putting stroke. On the other hand, don’t be deliberate. The entire stroke doesn’t need to be slow, just the start.

4. Take the putter straight back and bring it straight through. This keeps the putter’s face square at all times. The short putting stroke is short enough that you can do that without having to manipulate the club.

mental game

Don’t Let One Bad Hole Get You Down

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You’re cruising and up comes a blow-up hole. The round is trashed. For the rest of the day you can’t get over what happened.

The mistake is that you were thinking about how well you have been playing up that point, and getting an inflated opinion of your true ability. You forget that even though your game can get you around the course looking pretty good for a while, it’s not so good that an X can’t pop out every now and then.

In golf, you get what you deserve. If you go fairway, green, putt, putt, you deserve that because you’re good enough to have earned it. Sometimes you get into a situation you just aren’t skilled enough to handle, and you deserve the score you get there, too. You have to accept your weaknesses along with your strengths.

So, when you write a few pars on your scorecard, don’t think you have become a par golfer all of a sudden. Learn how to write “par” on the scorecard when you get one, and then forget about it. That hole is over. Once you can do that, you can write an X on your scorecard and forget about that, too, and go back to enjoying yourself.

Uncategorized

I’m Taking a Break

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Circumstances requiring my time and my full attention require me to take a break from weekly posting at this space for a month or so.

Don’t go away just because there’s no new content for you every Monday morning. Just work on what I’ve given you so far. That will be more than enough to keep you busy until I’m back at it.

Play well and have fun.

playing the game, practice

A Few Little Things

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No essay today — just a few thoughts for you, in no particular order.

1. At the range, hit one ball at a time. Put your bucket in a place where you have to walk to it to get another ball. This will force you to set up all over again for each shot. This is how you practice your setup: grip, stance, posture, aim, ball position. Most of your bad shots are the result of a bad setup, not a bad swing.

2. Make your first read of a putt standing 30 feet from the hole. Only from that distance can you see the overall tilt of the green. Do you want to know why you missed that straight-in 3-footer? Because you couldn’t see from just a few feet behind the ball that the entire green was tilted to the left.

3. Have you figured out which club you want to hit from the fairway? Factored in lie, wind, green firmness? Good. Now take one more club and grip down an inch. Otherwise, you’re relying on a perfect strike.

4. Hit a few stock 9-irons. Your swing with a driver should take just as long, from start to finish, as those.

5. Unless you’re hitting a specialty shot, use the same ball position for all shots off the ground. Thus the ball will always be in the same place relative to the bottom of your swing.

6. You can’t generate clubhead speed by turning your hips at 100 mph. The calmer your center stays, the more speed will be built up at the outside — the clubhead.

7. Never hit over water unless you have no choice. Bad things happen when you challenge a water hazard needlessly.

8. Make it your rule from close in to get the ball on the green in one shot. Even if you leave the ball 30 feet from the hole, you’ve done your job.

9. The conventional advice when playing a par 3 from an elevated tee is to take less club. Actually, you should take more club and punch the ball off the tee. This is a more secure swing, and keeps the ball down to get the ball on the green quicker.

10. At the range, practice as long as your mind is sharp. If you feel your mind is losing focus, that’s enough for the day. Give the rest of your bucket to another golfer and go home. You don’t learn anything when your mind is tired.

putting

A Putting Drill

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Go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and buy a 4-foot metal ruler. It’s just a couple bucks.

Lay the ruler down on the floor and put a golf ball in the center of the ruler at about the 40-inch mark or so.

Putting ruler

Now putt the ball down the length of the ruler so it stays between the numbers on each side.

Try not to manipulate the ball down the ruler. The ball staying between the numbers is an indicator, not the goal.

Just staying on the ruler doesn’t count. The ball has to run the length of the ruler in the center.

If you need to make a correction, do, but when you hit the ball, trust your stoke and see what happens.

The practice green, is for learning pace and green-reading. Develop your stroke at home. This is a good way to do it.

tournaments

2016 PGA Championship Preview

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This year’s PGA returns to the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey, site of 15 USGA championships and this the second PGA.

Official website.

The club was founded in 1895 on the site of farmland once owned by Baltus Roll. The original course was plowed up when architect A.W. Tillinghast was hired to build a second course. The Upper and Lower courses were the result.

This year’s PGA will be played on the Lower Course, which is shaped something like a dumbbell. After a tight cluster formed by the first four holes, the 5th and 6th take off to connect another cluster of holes, 7 though 16. The 17th and 18th lead straight back to the clubhouse parallel to 5 and 6.

Two holes of note on the course, which will play to 7,462 yards, are the 4th and the 17th.

Baltusrol 4th hole

4th hole, Baltusrol

Robert Trent Jones toughened up the course for the 1954 U.S. Open. Members thought he had made the 4th hole too tough. So Jones went to the 4th tee with club pro Johnny Farrell, the club president, and the chairman of the Open committee. After the first three had hit, Jones teed up, hit on, and the ball rolled in for a hole-in-one. “As you can see, gentlemen,” Jones said, “this hole is not too tough.”

The par-3 hole plays at 196 yards this week.

Baltusrol 17th hole

17th hole, Baltusrol

The 17th hole is likely (I don’t have the data) the longest hole in major championship golf, at 650 yards, uphill at the end. A series of cross-bunkers challenge the second shot, which can be carried only following a long tee shot. Most golfers will lay up short of them. Reaching the green in two will be possible, but who besides the likes of Dustin, Bubba, or Tony Finau might try it?

In general, the course is straightforward. Hit fairways, hit greens, and you’ll be all right. The greens have subtle breaks, a little here, a little there, but are not easy.

The bunkers come in many shapes and depths, are not too plentiful (see Oakmont), but seem always to be in the right place.

The first three major championships of the year all have their devoted followers who say their favorite is the best one. Hardly anyone says that about the PGA. But it’s played on top-quality courses, it has arguably the best field of the four majors, and it has a strong list of past champions.

Maybe the mark against it is that it also has a longer list of what’s-this-guy-doing-winning-a major champions in modern times than any of the others.

Who will win? I know Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson will get a lot of support in the press. The easy way to write an article like that is to be a front-runner.

I’m going to pick Bubba Watson. If it were the U.S. Open being played here, forget it. But it’s not the U.S. Open, it’s the PGA, and the course will more forgiving, the kind Bubba needs to win on. It’s long and so is Bubba.

There’s the limb I’m out on. Make your pick, watch, then rest up for Olympic Golf in two weeks.

fundamentals

My Guest Spot on The Golf Fix

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I got a call from The Golf Channel a few weeks ago saying they liked my blog and would I like to be a guest on The Golf Fix. I said, sure. They said bring three things to talk about. I said that would be easy.

So when Michael Breed asks me what I have for the viewers, I will mention three things that if every golfer could do them, the sound of a nationwide crash of handicaps plummeting would be enough to put the National Guard on alert.

Faithful readers of this space should already know what two of them are.

The first one is rhythm and tempo — 3:1 rhythm from takeaway to impact, at a tempo that lets you get the center of the clubface on the ball.

The second one is the hands lead the clubhead into impact. This leads to mastery. The clubhead getting to the ball first leads to one disaster after another.

The third one is to replace your urge to hit the golf ball with the joy of swinging the golf club. If there’s a ball in the way of the swing, so much the better.

Then I would show drills you could use for each point.

To get rhythm and tempo right, just count as you swing. 1 is the moment of takeaway, 2, 3, 4 to the top, and 5 at impact, performed at a pace (tempo) that, to you, feels unhurried.

For the hands leading the clubhead, I demonstrate drill from Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book on swinging down slowly to hip level three times and on the fourth, at the same speed, continuing down and through the ball.

For the third point, I would say take practice swings, as many as you like, with a ball in front of you, but a few inches farther away so you can see it, but won’t hit it. By seeing the ball but never hitting it, you gradually replace “hit” in your mind with “swing.”

I would say, Do each of these drills for two minutes every day (six minutes, total), and see what you get after 60 days.

Then I would look at Michael, who for once would be speechless. After all, what more would there be to say?

This is what I’ll present for my guest spot on The Golf Fix. But you don’t have to wait. Start doing these three things right now, and let me know in 60 days how it came out.

So when will my fifteen minutes of fame be on the air? Well, unfortunately they had the wrong number. When they realized who they were really talking to, they apologized and hung up.

I guess all this will remain our little secret, and my little fantasy.

[April 2018 note: Now that The Golf Fix is no longer on the air, it’s even more important that you read this blog, because where else are you going find instruction that speaks to your game?]