All posts by recgolfer

rhythm and tempo

The Right Tempo For Your Golf Swing

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Your golf swing’s tempo, or, the overall speed of the swing, is the glue that holds the swing together. Often what you think is a swing problem is a tempo problem.

Most golfers know that swinging to fast is a bad idea. But so is swinging too slow.

If you swing too fast, your swing doesn’t get a chance to develop. You rush through movments before they have a chance to work.

Swinging to slow creates a different problem. It gives your swing the chance to get out of position, to let your swing wander.

The only way to find your right tempo is to pay attention to impact and ball flight. At the right tempo, you’ll be hitting the ball in the center of the clubface, and not fat or thin. You will get nice-looking shots out of it.

Play around with this. Getting it right can be a revalation.

driver

How to Practice Your Driver

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The driver should be an easy club to hit. The ball sits up on a tee and the clubface is huge. You’re almost standing upright when you swing.

Yet it’s the club golfers have the least success with. Here’s how to change that.

Take a driver and a 9-iron to the range. Warm up with the 9. When you’re hitting them well, one after the other, put it down and pick up your driver. Swing your driver with a little bit of 9-iron in it.

After a few of those, go back to the 9-iron and put a bit of driver into it.

Keep going back and forth, bringing one club into the other, until you are using the same swing for both clubs.

That’s how you practice your driver. It’s the same swing as your 9-iron, just with you standing more upright.

BTW, all your other clubs are like that, too.

putting

The Key to Approach Putting

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When you hit an approach putt, you create a sort of stretched feeling on your lower back, because you are swinging your arms, but not turning your torso.

There are two things to notice about this stretched feeling. For any given length of approach putt, the stretched feeling will always be felt at the same place on your lower back.

Also, the stretched feeling for shorter approach putts gets felt on the right side of your lower back, and as the length of putt, and hence length of the putting stroke, increases, the stretched feeling migrates leftward across your lower back.

Please note that this is true only if the sole distance generator for an approach putt is the length of the putting stroke. That is, you do not add on any “hit” with your hands.

Consistently hitting putts on the same place on the putter’s face and using the same tempo in your stroke are important, too.

Spend some time on the practice green putting the ball with the stretched feeling in different places to see how far it goes each different time, and remember those location-distance relationships.

They allow you to relate the length of an approach putt to a known physical feeling instead of entrusting distance control to something vague called “feel.”

In a short time, you should start leaving approach putts close to the hole, and wave goodbye to three-putt greens.

See also: Leave Approach Putts Next to the Hole

putting

A Smooth Start to Your Putting Stroke

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Resting the putter on the ground at address means you have to lift it slightly when you make your stroke. That can cause a disturubance that throws off your stroke by enough for you to miss the putt.

Instead, address the ball so the sole barely grazes the grass and the weight of the club is already in your hands. This makes it easy to start the club back smoothly and calmly.

golf swing, video tip

My Golf Swing Reference Video

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This is a video of my golf swing, taken in 2010 when I was playing 9-handicap golf. I watch it regularly to remind myself of what my personal swing is, because like so many golfers I drift occasionally, and I need to know where to get back to. Best to watch it with the sound turned off.

These are the things that define this swing for me.

First comes swing speed. This swing takes about 1:18 seconds from takeaway to impact. That’s not very fast, but this is the speed that makes sense to me while holding the swing together.

At the end of the backswing my shoulders have turned less than 90°. I could turn them more, but my swing sense says this is far enough. At the start of the forward swing, my hips do not turn ahead of my arms. Everything turns together.

Both of these are back-saving moves. I had back surgery in 1971, so I needed to have a swing that put the least stress on my lower back. I had two more in 2012 so the need now is even greater.

My head turns but does not move from side to side. This is a point of disagreement. Some teachers and pros say it is alright to let it move back in the backswing, while others say keep it in place. While both methods work, what I do is what feels right to me. I also get one less moving part to maintain.

Notice the rhythm of the swing. This is important. There is no pause in the middle. The first half of the swing flows neatly into the second half as if it were all just one movement, which I feel that the golf swing is.

There are other things that a swing analyst could comment on, but the only things that matter to me in re-creating this swing are what I explained above.

Do something like this for your swing. Make a video of it when you’re playing well. It will be the biggest favor you ever did for your golfing self because believe me, one day you will be glad you have it to look at.

golf swing

Basic Swing Skills

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You need four skills to have a working golf swing:

1. A swing that keeps the clubface square up to the top of the backswing.
2. A swing that starts forward without over-accelerating the club.
3. A pivot that coordinates the turning of the body with the swinging of the arms.
4. A swing swings the club through the ball with a ball-first-ground second impact.

1. The right grip is vital for this, and it must be personalized. See A Basic Golf Swing (video) to learn how to get yours. After you have that, learn what it feels like to swing back with the clubface staying square to the swing path all the way back.

2. Pause at the top for the barest moment. Start down as slowly as you swung up. Think you are going to swing through the ball in slow motion. This thought will not slow you down. It prevents you from speeding up.

3. In the forward swing, everything is turning and flowing through the ball toward the target, from the very start in coordinated way. The forward swing must feel like it is one movement, not a collection of separate movements working together. And the club, especially the club, is included in this unified feeling.

4. Do not think of hitting at the ball, but swinging through it. Your forward swing up to this point has been a flow. Continue that feeling through the ball to the finish.

playing the game

Valuable YouTube Channel

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Check out the Golf Sidekick channel on YouTube. This guy knows what he is talking about. He’s not into technique, but into playing the game.

Raymond Floyd wrote that “If somehow I was given your physical (golf) game, and we had a match, I would beat you 99 times out of 100. Because I know how to play the game better than you do.”

Golf is a game you play.

brilliant ideas

Odd Golf Terms

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My mind moves in directions other people don’t take. How else can I have kept this blog going for fourteen years?

This thought occurred to me last night.

We have the backswing and the downswing. Those two are opposites, because they take our swing in opposite directions. Shouldn’t they have opposite names?

If you like the word “backswing,” which implies that we swing back and forth, which we do, the swing part that hits the ball should be called the forthswing.

But maybe that’s awkward, so forswing. That’s awkward, too, so how about forward swing? But to be consistent, we would need to relable the backswing as the backward swing.

Hmmm… Let’s start over.

With the downsing. This one is easy. The opposite of down is up, so the downswing would be preceded by the upswing. But those might suggest swinging the club in exaggerated directions that we don’t want.

(This is turning out to be harder than I thought.)

(Five-minute pause.)

How about this? The windup and the release? Perfect description of what we do.

Except that the word “release” is already taken in golf, so we would have to come up with a new word for what it now means.

But that’s another post.

fundamentals

Your Natural Grip

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In my multi-media piece, A Basic Golf Swing, I talked about assuming a grip that is based on the way your arms are built. Taking your grip that way, and not in a generic manner like you see in books, contributes greatly to keeping the clubface square throughout the swing.

This is something I figured out by studying functional anatomy, but later I did find references to this advice in three golf instruction books I have, none of which you may never have heard of.

Here are the ways that each one describes what to do.

“The whole purpose of the grip is to position your hands upon the club in such a way that they will return to their original natural position at contact. Throughout any swing, no matter how you grip the club, the hands tend to return to their normal position at the hit. Normal position of the hands is how they fall naturally when you stand up straight and let your arms dangle to the sides of your body.”
Mickey Wright, Play Golf the Wright Way.

“Your hands should be placed on the club the way they hang naturally at your side. Try this out for yourself. Bend slightly from your hips and let your arms hang in front of you. Note where the back of your left hand and the palm of your right hand face in relation to an imaginary target. That’s the natural position in which your arms and hands hang. They are going to want to return there at the bottom of your swing, just when you are striking the ball. So if you make any radical departure* from that position when you put your hands on the club, you’re asking for trouble.”
Al Geiberger, Tempo.
* Better: “…make any departure…”

“The trick is to find out at what angle your left hand is in while it is relaxed, for this is the angle your hand should be in as it holds the club. Leaving the left hand where it is as it hangs down, place a golf club in your left hand. As long as you do no conscious turning of the left hand* as you hold the club handle, you have the correct hold with your left hand. The same applies to the right hand— there should not be any turning**.”
Phil Galvano, Secrets of the Perfect Golf Swing.
* Better: “…turning of the left forearm…” and
** “…not be any turning of the forearm.”

Do this. It will change everything for the better.

One more note. The first two excerpts say your hands and arms return to their normal position at the hit. They return much earlier than that, literally moments after you take the club away.