All posts by recgolfer

putting

An Experiment With Uphill and Downhill Putts

Leave a comment

Short post today. Yesterday morning I was at the range and I tried something different on uphill and downhill putts to get the distance right. For the uphill putt, I gripped the putter at the very end of the handle. My left little finger was barely on the club. That has the effect of lengthening the club, giving the stroke a little more speed without any more effort. I usually leave uphill putts short of the hole, and this trick did get the ball closer.

I tried the opposite for a downhill putt, by gripping down from where I usually hold the putter, thereby shortening the club, which takes off speed. That didn’t help as much, though I must say that I’m pretty good at downhill putts already and don’t need this kind of assistance.

You might try it, though, lengthening or shortening up on the grip to adjust for slope. Then you hit the ball using the same pace as you would for the length of putt you are facing as if it were a putt across level ground. I can’t say anything conclusive about this trick, because I only played with it for a few minutes. It’s just another variable that might help.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

rules

Know the Rules: Ball on a Cart Path

Leave a comment

It’s not unusual for a golf ball to wind up on a cart path. It’s also not unusual for a player not to know what to do.

A cart path is an immovable obstruction (See Obstructions, Definitions; Rule 24-2).

You get a free drop from the cart path, but it has to be taken at the right spot. That spot is based on the nearest point of relief. Many people think this point is off the side of the path closest to where the ball is resting, but that is not so. Remember that the nearest point of relief is the spot where the ball would lie when you take a stance, with the club you would normally use to hit the upcoming shot, in the direction you would be hitting it, and not be interfered with by the cart path in any way.

The best way to determine the nearest point of relief off a cart path is to establish a point of relief on each side of the path, marking each one with a tee, and then measuring from the ball to each point to find which point is the nearest to where the ball lies.

Once the nearest point of relief has been found, measure one club-length away from that spot, but no nearer to the hole, and put another tee in the ground. Use any club you like to make that measurement. If it’s your driver, take off the clubhead cover first.

Pick up your ball from the cart path and drop it so it hits the ground somewhere between the two tees and behind the line between them. As soon as you have a legal drop, play on.

If the ball rolls back onto the cart path, you must drop it again. If the ball rolls onto the path again, you must place the ball as close as possible to the spot where it hit a part of the course, usually the ground.

What happens if the cart path is right next to a bush, and the nearest point of relief is inside the bush, and one club length from it would be either inside the bush or in a place where the bush obstructs your swing? You can substitute “tree” for “bush” and the problem is the same. Those objects are not obstructions, but part of the course, so you get no further relief from them.

The answer is that you might be better off playing the ball as it lies on the cart path. Just because you can take a drop doesn’t mean you have to take a drop. Once you pick the ball up, though, you are obliged to drop it, so think about it first.

Once again:
1. Find the point of relief on each side of the cart path and drop the ball within one club-length of the point closest to the ball, but no nearer to the hole.
2. If it is difficult or impossible to play from there, you might have to play the ball as it lies on the cart path.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

center of the clubface

A Critical Golfing Skill

Leave a comment

Two days ago I suggested that you might find it rewarding to spend a year starting over and learning to hit the ball the right way instead of putting patches on your mistakes. Let me spend today’s post talking about what it means to hit the ball the right way. That means to hit the ball on the center of the clubface every time.

To get consistent results you have to hit the ball consistently. There are many variables you can put into your shotmaking, but there must be one constant that those variables play off of, and that constant is hitting the ball on the center of the clubface.

If you want a good short game, you don’t build it around a bagful of shots. You build it around a predictable response every time you hit the ball, and the only way to do that is to hit the ball off the same spot of the clubface every time. Then you can add on variables that make the ball do this or that, but you know that when the ball does something different it was because of the variable you added on, and not from missing the strike.

It pays to know how far you hit your irons, but if you hit the ball on different places on the clubface each time, you will never be able to take advantage of that knowledge to get the ball close to the pin.

We all know about putting, don’t we? Every piece you read on putting that goes into it in any depth stresses the importance of hitting the ball on the sweet spot. You might have the perfect stroke for a twenty-foot putt, but if you miss the sweet spot, the ball will only roll eighteen feet. And off line.

If you can hit the ball on the center of the clubface every time, you don’t have to practice very long to get your feel for a particular shot. Hitting the ball all over the face leaves you confused at the range and guessing on the course.

So if you want to take me up on the one-year program, spend it doing this. It is the end of the golf stroke. Swing mechanics are the means. To learn ball-striking with this end in mind, you will have to swing the club correctly, no matter what the shot is. You can’t hit the ball consistently on the middle of the clubface without doing a lot of other things right at the same time.

Start with your putter and see if what I just said isn’t true. By the time you have developed a stroke that lets you hit the ball on the sweet spot consistently, you will also have developed a stroke that returns the clubface square to the starting path and moving in line with it. It can’t happen any other way. Then transfer that awareness to the rest of your game, one shot at a time, one club at a time.

Let me end with a story about Ben Crenshaw. This is from the days when metal drivers were being introduced to replace wooden drivers. A rep approached Crenshaw with the pitch that the metal driver would make it a lot easier to hit the ball off the sweet spot. Crenshaw took the driver out of his bag, showed the rep a worn spot on the center of the clubface about the size of a dime, and said, “I don’t have any trouble hitting the sweet spot.”

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

fundamentals

Maybe You Should Start Golf Over

Leave a comment

Be honest. If you’re not very good and not getting better, you know it. You don’t have to tell me, you don’t have to tell anyone else, and it’s not a judgmental thing. But if you don’t hit good shots very often, and you want to do better, what do you do? You take lessons, and practice, and play, and nothing changes, or maybe it changes a little, but not in the way you want it to.

Today I’m going to talk about how your entire approach to improving might be what is holding you back. There will be no swing tips here, no instructions on how to hit a new shot that will turn everything around, just a sit-down discussion on why starting over might be the best way to free you up to be the good golfer you believe you can be.

Last Sunday I went to visit my son for Easter dinner. He’s learning golf as an adult. He’s 37 years old right now, and has been at it for about six or seven years. This is how he started–get some clubs, go to the range, swing away. Maybe if you’re an original genius, you can get away with this. An example is our current Masters champion, Bubba Watson, who is entirely self-taught. My son is not that way. Might not be you, either.

A few years ago, after suffering through round after round of whiffs, shanks, and 10+ lost balls per round (I’m not kidding. I play with him.), my son decided to take some lessons. The lessons are going all right, but he doesn’t have them that often and I’m not sure what he’s practicing in the meantime. He does want to become a good golfer, though.

So when we were sitting in the TV room before dinner, I told him something quite plain. I said, you are playing with a weak foundation. The way you swing now still has many remnants of a swing based on a conception of movement that contributes little that is good to hitting a golf ball well or at all. What you’re doing now is putting patches on patches, trying to fix a swing that is unfixable.

I said, you have to be willing to start over again. Learn how to do it right from the ground up. Learn how to putt. Learn what a professional putting stroke is. Learn how to look like a pro, feel like a pro, and move like a pro when there’s a putter in your hands. Get a conception of movement for this little stroke that is different from the one you have now. And then when you have it, move on to chipping with the same goal. Look, feel, and move like a professional golfer with those little shots.

If you keep doing this, I went on, working your way up to a full swing, then after a year of steady effort, you will be the golfer you want to be–someone who is in control of every shot. You will be someone who knows the ball is going where he intends rather than someone who hopes the ball will maybe go there this time. You will be someone who can plan his way around the course because you know that your plans will work out more often than not.

Reader, I don’t know where you are in your game. I don’t know what kind of a foundation you have for golf and how much you’re improving, if at all. I understand that the way you play now might be all right with you and that making a serious, time-consuming commitment to golf beyond what you’re giving the sport right now would take you away from other things more important to you than golf.

If that’s not you, there is no reason why you can’t be a much better player than you are now if you are willing to devote one year to a program like I outlined above, working your way up from putting to swinging. One year is not a very long time to spend on earning a lifetime of first-class golf for yourself. This is a shorter time than it would take to learn to play a musical instrument well, or speak a foreign language well.

Start over. Instead of spending your time on correcting things that are wrong, spend your time learning only things that are right. If right things are all that you do, how can you go wrong? With a golf game built on that kind of a foundation, the way is clear to being as good as you want. Be my guest.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

putting, short game

A Morning Around the Practice Green

Leave a comment

I went to the range this morning to get a little practice in before I settle down to watch the Masters broadcast. I took a putter, and 8-iron, and four balls. I started chipping with the 8-iron to holes different distances away to see how close I could chip effectively with it, and how far away. I plan on doing that with all my chipping clubs, 6-iron through sand wedge. Someone else can chip with their lob wedge, but not me.

In addition to finding out what I wanted to know about the 8-iron, I found an effective way of judging the strength of the stroke. It’s fairly intuitive. I was just looking at the hole and waiting for a feeling to appear that said, in its own way, “This hard.” It is a feeling that is in your mind, but is felt in some way in your body, too. I found that if I executed that feeling with my body turn, and not with my hands and arms, my distance control was really good. When the feeling got into my hands, all was lost.

As for putting, I worked on approach putts by dropping balls at 20, 25, 30, and 35 feet, then putting them toward a hole. Again, looking at the length of the putt and letting the right feeling of power to infuse itself worked like a charm. For these longer putts I am finding that the best power generators are the oblique muscles of the abdomen. They are big muscles, not subject to flinching, and are the muscles of the moving stroke farthest away from the hands, which are the last source of power you should consider.

Short putts: Remember how, in the real old days, golfers would putt their putter in front of the ball, then lift it over to the back and make their stroke? They were checking to see if the clubface was square to their starting line, and that is easier to do without a ball in the way. If you have an alignment mark in the top surface of your putter, all the better. Mine doesn’t, so I drew one with a Sharpie.

You put the putter in front of the ball, line things up, lift up the putter and replace it behind the ball without disturbing the alignment of the mark, and stroke along that line. Works great. You don’t have to spend all that time fussing with the mark on the golf ball.

One last thing. Two last things, actually. Set the putter down gently so it barely touches the ground. That gives you a freer start to the stroke. Keep looking at where the ball was for a few seconds after you have hit the putt. I don’t know why, by this greatly improves your accuracy.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfers.com

rules

Know the Rules: Dropping the Ball

Leave a comment

There are times when you can drop the ball to get relief from an obstruction, or when putting a ball in play after a penalty has been incurred. We’ll talk about those situations later, but today I want to go over the procedures surrounding dropped balls. They’re not simple. Actually, just dropping the ball is simple. You hold the ball out at shoulder height and arm’s length, open your fingers, and let it go. Enjoy the ride down, because all the fun starts when the ball hits the ground.

Once the ball is dropped and comes to rest*, it is in play unless it: (this is straight from the rule book)

(i) rolls into and comes to rest in a hazard;
(ii) rolls out of and comes to rest outside a hazard;
(iii) rolls onto and comes to rest on a putting green;
(iv) rolls and comes to rest out of bounds;
(v) rolls to and comes to rest in a position where there is interference by the condition from which relief was taken under Rule 24-2b (immovable obstruction), Rule 25-1 (abnormal ground conditions), Rule 25-3 (wrong putting green) or a Local Rule (Rule 33-8a), or rolls back into the pitch-mark from which it was lifted under Rule 25-2 (embedded ball);
(vi) rolls and comes to rest more than two club-lengths from where it first struck a part of the course; or
(vii) rolls and comes to rest nearer the hole than:
  (a) its original position or estimated position (see Rule 20-2b) unless otherwise permitted by the Rules; or
  (b) the nearest point of relief or maximum available relief (Rule 24-2, 25-1 or 25-3); or
  (c) the point where the original ball last crossed the margin of the water hazard or lateral water hazard (Rule 26-1).

In any of these cases, you must re-drop the ball, without penalty. If the re-dropped ball does one of these things again, you must place the ball as near as possible to the spot where it hit the ground on the second drop. Fortunately, most of these cases are rare. The ones that occur most often are (v) and (vii).

Deep Rules: If the dropped ball comes to rest but then moves again, it is played as it lies without penalty. If the dropped ball is not recoverable, such as it rolls into a pond, another ball may be substituted.

All of this is found in Rule 20-2.

The penalty for an illegal drop is one stroke, but if the mistake is corrected before the ball is played, there is no penalty (Rule 20-6).

*More Deep Rules: “Comes to rest” is the operative phrase. The ball does not have to hit the ground. It only has to strike part of the course. If it comes to rest in a bush without hitting the ground, it is play. If it strikes a branch on the way down, it has struck a part of the course and in play where it comes to rest, except for (i) through (vii) above.

Practical advice:
Many times you will be dropping the ball onto less-than-ideal ground. Since the ball is held an arm’s length away from you, it’s hard to tell exactly where the ball will hit the ground and end up. You want to be left with the best lie possible within the limits the rules allow. You should therefore practice dropping the ball, so you can predict just where the ball will land. When it comes time to drop the ball on the course, you’ll know how to drop it on the best spot of ground, again, within limits, to increase your chances of getting a good lie after the drop. And no tricks. It’s a gravity-fed drop only.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

commentary

Payne Whiffs the Discrimination Issue at Masters Press Conference

Leave a comment

Yesterday, Masters chairman Billy Payne faced questioning from reporters about the continuing absence of female members at the Augusta National Golf Club. He handled the issue as poorly as a 30-handicapper dealing with a downhill slider on one of Augusta’s bikini-waxed* greens.

Payne’s stock answer to the question was, “That’s a membership issue,” hoping the assembled press would get the hint and realize where they were and whom they were talking to, and start minding their manners. In other words, golf’s equivalent of being in church and speaking to the head prelate.

Apparently the press hasn’t drunk the Augusta Kool-Aid, because the questions kept coming. Apparently, too, Payne had only one answer scripted because he didn’t expect to have the same question asked more than once after he gave the word. Since he was prepared with only one answer, that’s the answer he kept on giving, and it got worse every time.

In my April 2 post, I suggested that Martha Burk should work this issue from the inside, through the golf organizations that have leverage. Now that the press has picked up on the points in that post (are people in high places loyal readers?) that will be another point of pressure if they don’t let go, and keep asking the question after the Masters is over. At the Players Championship press conference. At the U.S. Open press conference. At the PGA Championship press conference. Keep the ball in the air.

Now I know this is a golf instruction blog and that’s what you expect to read when you dial it up. There’s another Know the Rules post coming tomorrow. This issue is important, though, and I am using this space to add my voice to the list of people who don’t believe that Augusta is above criticism or accountability in the golf world, and that we have a duty to ask why ANGC is getting by with flouting the rules that the rest of this country has to live by, and the golf world thinks nothing of it.

I hope to see a fine tournament ending with Webb Simpson and Keenan Bradley playing off in a battle of belly putters. But let’s not allow the issue of female membership die as soon as the honorary starters tee off tomorrow.

* So described in 1994 by Gary McCord in his final** Masters as a broadcaster.

** Per request/demand of the Masters Tournament Committee.

See also Finchem Whiffs Discrimination Issue at Ponte Vedra Beach

commentary

Augusta National and Women as Members

Leave a comment

The issue of Augusta National Golf Club admitting a female member is in the news again. Martha Burk, instigator of the protest over the same issue in 2003, is pressuring Augusta once more. Normally, the CEO of IBM is invited to become a member. IBM has a new CEO, a woman. Will Augusta National stick to something of a tradition and issue an invitation to her because of her corporate status, as Burk says it should, or say nothing because of its own tradition of never having had a female member?

Something might be said about that at a press conferences this week, who knows. What we do know is that Augusta National is a private club and they can admit or deny admission to anyone they care to. That doesn’t mean we have to give them a pass.

Shoal Creek Golf Club became a pariah in 1990 because of its policy of not admitting Blacks, and the PGA withdrew its offer to the club to host that year’s PGA Championship. Shoal Creek could not have gone ahead and run the tournament anyway because the Championship is run by a governing body not attached to the course. The Masters tournament is run by the offending club, so Augusta National would have to be sanctioned via outside pressure by a relevant organization instead of orders given. But it has to be the right organization. The National Organization for Women is not the right organization.

Burk didn’t get that the first time, and she still doesn’t get it. A more effective strategy would be for her to go behind the scenes and lobby the PGA Tour not to recognize the tournament as an official win, not to count the money earned on the official money list, and not to award FedEx Cup points to the winner. She can lobby the PGA of America and the USGA to remove the Masters champion from its list of players exempted from qualifying for the U.S. Open.

This would be a more effective strategy because what drives the Masters is prestige. They’re not worried about money. In 2003 and 2004, the tournament was broadcast without commercials in order to avoid the prospect of a sponsor boycott. What would hurt would be to take away the trappings of prestige that has elevated this chummy invitational to a status co-equal to the title tournaments of golf’s major governing bodies. Even Jones thought the tournament had wrongly outgrown its original nature.

I doubt that will ever happen, though. The good old boy network is too strong. Can you see Tim Finchem even giving this idea more than a millisecond of consideration? In the end, Golf should be asked to explain why it came down hard on one private club for discriminating, and but does not on another. That would be a good question to ask at the U.S. Open press conference this June and the PGA Championship press conference in August.

ball first ground second

Ball First, Ground Second

Leave a comment

To hit a decent golf shot, you need to make contact on the center of the clubface with the clubface square to the target, and the clubhead moving toward the target. Do that and you can play decent golf.

If you want to play outstanding golf, there’s one more thing. Hit the ball first, the ground second.

If your handicap is in double digits, the chances are great that you hit the ground first, and the ball second most of the time. When that happens, clubhead speed is diminished before the ball is struck, causing you to lose distance. The clubhead can get twisted, affecting accuracy.

The most effective strike is to hit the ball before the clubhead reaches the bottom of its arc. This drill teaches you how to do that.

Fold up a bath towel two times, so there are four thicknesses of towel, and place the towel about six to eight inches behind the ball. Now hit 9-irons without brushing the towel on the way down.

When you do, the ball leaps off the ground with what seems like no effort on your part. That’s the kind of shot you want to be hitting.

After you get good at this drill, you can try a more challenging one which tests what you think you have learned. Take the towel away and put a tee on the ground so it points (from you) to the leading edge of the ball.

The divot that you make with your 9-iron should start on the target side of where the tee is pointing.

The 9-iron is a good club to start both drills with, but once it gets easy with that club move to an 8-iron. Work your way through your irons one club at a time, not moving to the next one until you have mastered both drills with the club you’re working on at the moment.

And I do mean “mastered.” “Pretty good” isn’t good enough. That means old habits are still kicking around. You need to practice until they are entirely gone. Don’t be surprised if it takes several months of steady practice to work through all your irons.

Of all the instructional posts on this blog, this is the one that will have the greatest positive effect on your game. All the other tips will help you to become better. This one will transform you. You’ll be playing a different game. I’m not kidding.

rules

Know the Rules: Nearest Point of Relief

Leave a comment

Perhaps the primary rule of golf is to play the ball as it lies. There are several circumstances, however, under which a player may lift the ball and drop it elsewhere to get relief from certain conditions.

Relief is often based on finding a reference point called the nearest point of relief, which is defined in the Definitions section. It is the spot nearest to where the ball lies, and not nearer to the hole, from where a player can make the stroke the player would have made from the original position had the interference from which relief is being sought not been present.

In finding this point, the player must simulate the address position and stroke, with the same club, and swing in the same direction, as if the interference from which the player is taking relief were not present. For example, if a player would have made a right-handed stroke with a 4-iron toward the green were the condition not there, that is the stroke he must simulate to find the nearest point of relief. The nearest point of relief from a particular spot might be different for a right- and left-handed golfer.

Determining the nearest point of relief can get tricky. If it appears that the nearest point of relief is an unplayable lie, such as tall grass, this does not change where the nearest point of relief is. In this case, the player might choose not to take relief and to play the ball instead from where it lies.

After finding the nearest point of relief, the player must hit the ball in the same direction that was used to find that point.

If playing from the nearest point of relief means a club different from the one used to determine the nearest point of relief is now a better choice, the player may use the different club.

It is possible that the nearest point of relief is inside an object, like a tree trunk, or cannot be physically determined because a barrier prevents taking an address position. In these cases, the player must estimate where that point would be if those complications were not there.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.