Category Archives: Gold Post

Gold Post, improvement

Playing Golf Better

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A few days ago I was on a golf forum and the question was asked, What is the key to becoming better?

Lots of the respondents talked about hitting greens in regulation. GIR for recreational golfers doesn’t mean a whole lot. I pay no attention to it. It focuses on results, and to get better, we need to focus on skills. These skills:

1. Hitting the ball accurately (to where you intend it to go).

2. Getting up and down from off the green, say, five yards and in, as an expectation.

3. Hitting approach putts to tap-in distance.

4. Knowing how to play the game.

Get good at those things and see what happens.

Gold Post, mental game

Golf Is a Game of Perfect

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There’s this guy named Bob Rotella who is the cat’s meow among golf psychologists. He seems to have helped a lot of touring pros to play better. More power to him.

I finally read one of his books, the famous one, I guess, Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect. I’m sorry to say I came a way quite disappointed.

First of all, the title is all wrong. If you don’t expect to hit the shot you planned on, which is my definition of a perfect shot, then choose another shot that you do expect to come off as you planned it to.

I mean, do you step up to the ball and expect to hit a mediocre shot, or a lousy shot? Really?

And what is “perfect,” anyway? It all depends on what you are capable of.

Touring pros aim for a spot on the green about the size of a throw rug, and they have the skill to hit it.

Me, I just want my ball to hit somewhere on the green and stay on it. That for me is a perfect shot, given my skills.

The trap, and what he is probably addressing, is that while we (should) expect to hit a perfect shot, we get disappointed when we don’t.

The skill every golfer needs to have, from hacker to pro, is to pick a shot you believe in, hit it, see where it ends up, and start thinking about the next shot. Period. No more than that.

No sense of uncertainty as you are about to swing the club away. No emoting because the ball went somewhere else. No wondering if your game is falling apart because you hit one bad shot. And so on. None of that.

That was the whole point of his book, and it’s a good point. It can’t be said often enough.

But where the book fails is though he tells you what to do, he is silent on how to do it.

It’s as if he had written a book of golf swing instruction that says you need to hit the ball with the clubface square to the swing path and the swing path going toward your target, the end.

Good advice. How about telling us how to do that?

Well, the mental game is the same. “What to do” is not “how to do.”

Just as you don’t get a good swing for the asking, and you don’t acquire good mental habits for the asking. You have to know how to get them and then develop yourself long those lines.

[WARNING: Massive product promotion coming up.]

There is only one book on the mental game that I know of, and I have read a lot of them, that goes beyond telling you what to do and also tells you how to develop your mind so you can do it.

It is my own book, The Golfing Self. It contains exercises that if you do them train your mind to maintain your concentration for the entire round, every shot, so you have your best chance of hitting perfect shots.

You get the book as a free download on this site. Hard copy at Amazon.

Gold Post, playing the game, practice

150 Yards and In

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Harvey Penick has a short bit in his Little Red Book titled “Long and Short.” The point he makes is that you should spend most of your practice time on your 150-yard shot, using whatever club that is.

This is best advice I have ever seen for the strength of your overall game.

Why?

Penick said, “There’s no reason why the average golfer should take more than three to get down from 150 yards.”

If you make your goal to get down in three once you have arrived at or beyond the 150-yard marker that most courses have, the 70s are within reach.

If you are money with an iron from 150 yards and in, that same swing will put your tee ball in the fairway reliably, too.

From there, use that swing to hit the ball on the green, then get your approach putt close – or – hit the ball next to the green and get your chip close.

That’s three skills to get really good at:
– hitting the ball reasonably straight,
– approach putting, and
– chipping.

That’s how I got into single digits, and that’s what you can do if you dedicate yourself to the task.

Gold Post, golf swing

Ernie, Fred, and Vijay

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Let me point you to a video that shows four key swing principles very clearly. It is of Ernie Els, Fred Couples, and Vijay Singh warming up.

You will have to watch it several times to see all of what is there.

What you will see right off is their perfect rhythm and tempo.

Then notice how their arms stay together instead of flying all over the place.

Then notice how their suspension point does not move.

Finally, and it’s hard to see, but it’s there, their hands get back to the ball before the clubhead does.

The one thing it does not show is how they maintain the critical address angle.

If you are hitting the ball well, keep doing it. But if you aren’t, you might consider putting these five things into your swing.

Gold Post, golf swing

A Critical Angle in the Golf swing

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Sometimes you read there are angles in the golf swing, and that the key to a good swing is to maintain those angles. I agree whole-heartedly.

What those angles are is the important point. There is one I have been working on for a while that is paying big dividends. It is the angle shown in the picture below, made by the clubshaft and arms as seen from a down-the-line point of view.

I became aware of this angle in Terry Kohler’s article that appeared in GolfWRX recently.

That angle need to be preserved throughout the swing. You will get a swing that returns the clubhead as square the target and as centered to the ball as it was at address.

How hard is this technique to learn? You can figure out in minutes.

When you stand at address with your arms hanging straight down and the club angled away from you, you will have a certain feeling in your forearms and your hands.

MAINTAIN THE FEELING THROUGHOUT THE SWING. That’s all there is to it.

I would recommend learning the feeling by making half swings with a 9-iron at a slower tempo than usual. When you start getting it, work into longer clubs and longer swings, concentrating at all times on the feeling of maintaining the angle as described.

When the feeling is good and uniform throughout the bag, then start hitting balls.

You’re welcome.

Gold Post, short game

How I Stopped Shanking Pitch Shots

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For the longest time I would shank pitch shots. Not constantly, but occasionally, and I never knew when one would pop out.

I tried everything I could think of to fix it. Nothing worked. So I gave up and signed up for a lesson.

The pro said, “Let me see you hit a couple.” So I hit four or five 65-yard pitches as pretty as you please.

Then he said, “Hit them half that distance.”

I did, and sure enough, on the third try, the ball went shooting off low and to the right.

I turned to him said, “There it is!”

He said, “That wasn’t a shank.”

I said, “Then what was it?”

He said, “Your clubface was wide open.”

“You’re opening the clubface when you take the club back, and sometimes you don’t get it closed, so the clubface is still wide open when you make contact. The ball goes where the clubface points.”

So he taught me a radically a different pitching stroke that I’m not going to try to describe to you because this YouTube video with Lee Trevino shows you exactly the stroke the pro taught me.

If you shank pitches there’s a chance you are really doing the same thing I was doing and this is the cure.

Watch how Trevino doesn’t break his wrists when he takes the club back at 0:38. There is NO WRIST SET. The shaft and the left arm are in a straight line (3:27). That is the key.

This is a Steve Stricker video. Watch the whole video, it’s short, but pay attention at 1:10. No wrist set, as he says.

It is said that the long pitching stroke is a miniature swing. Not true. Not true at all. They are entirely different strokes and need to learned separately.

These are the key feelings I have identified after working on this shot for several months. The left arm (right arm, for you lefties) stays straight when you take it back. That arm feels like it is reaching out to the side, not swinging up in a circle.

The club feels like the shaft is sticking straight out to the side and the wrists have not broken at all. If you look, you will find neither of those things are true, but it will feel like they are.

Then you turn and swing the arms/hands/club assembly through the ball without changing any of these feelings I have described. Without changing the feelings. But do not force them.

Not only do I not hit those shooters anymore, but I am deadly accurate. If I get lined up at the pin that’s exactly where the ball goes.

You can do that to.

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Note: Some of you are having trouble seeing the videos. They show up just fine on my iMac. Here are the links to the videos. If you can’t see them in the blog, let me know, tell me how you are viewing the blog, and I will try to fix it. Thank you very much.

“https://youtu.be/JbkLDwa1Nxc”

“https://youtu.be/0NYjM5UkxZQ”

Gold Post, playing the game

Your Needlessly High Golf Score

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Golf is a game you play. You play golf by hitting shots. Many people think you play good golf by hitting good shots. Yes, but they have to be the right shots, and that’s the rub.

I am convinced, based on my experience, and by watching other golfers play, that anyone could lower their average score by 3 to 6 strokes just by being a better player.* Same skills, wiser use.

The only book I know of devoted to this topic is The Elements of Scoring, by Raymond Floyd. I suggest you get a copy.

I went through notes I made on my rounds over the years to find mistakes I commonly made, that raised my score needlessly. You might think these things are obvious, and they are, but only when your attention is called to them.

Most of them have to do with play around the green, the place where most strokes get thrown away.

1. From close in, get the ball on the green with one shot. Two is an absolute no-no. Think about the pin only if course conditions are perfect, and you have the shot to get the ball close. Otherwise, forget about zeroing in on the pin. Just get the ball on the green in its vicinity.

2. From about 30 yards and closer, know when to chip and when to pitch. My notes are full of “Should have chipped” and “Should have pitched.”

3. Aim your chips with the intention having them go in. It doesn’t do you any good to get the distance right when the ball finishes five feet left because you didn’t aim the shot. Or read the green.

4. From the fairway, always have enough club in your hand. “I can get there with a 7-iron” is a way of saying, “I think I’ll hit a 6.”

5. Never take unnecessary risks over water. In fact avoid hitting over water unless you absolutely have to.

6. Develop good habits so they become habits and you don’t muff a shot because of a simple thing you should have done but forgot to. Like using an identical grip for every shot. Like having the ball in a consistent position that matches your swing. Like aiming yourself at the target. Like the little things you have found that make each stroke type (swing, pitch, chip, putt) work best for you.

7. Learn to LOOK at the course and see what is there that will affect the choice of shots: your lie, hazards, intervening ground, landing area, wind, etc. Don’t be thinking about what you want to do, but instead think about what the course is giving you.

8. Hit only shots you know how to hit. “This worked once,” or “I think I’ll try this” are not good ways of getting the ball around the course.

Bonus (this is something I never fail to do, but I wonder who else does it): Have a plan for how you are going to play the hole, in general, and adapted to the day’s conditions (weather, pin positions, how you’re playing that day, etc.). The plan is where to put your tee ball to have the easiest shot into the green, how you want to ball to approach the pin from the fairway and where the safe miss is, how to get down in two and no more than three shots from around the green.

*Or if you had a professional caddy. We don’t, so you have to be your own caddy. I would like to see a professional tournament where caddies were not allowed and the players had to make their own decisions. Like the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open, so no one could duck out.

Gold Post, putting

How to Sink a Certain Kind of Putt

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Most of the things I discover about putting come from hours spent on the practice green. Every so often something goes click. This one, however, comes from my back room, where I knock the ball around for a few minutes every night.

It’s about sinking the putts that you just have to sink–short, no break. Just straight in the hole. Yet, those can be the hardest ones, for some reason.

This is what I noticed. I had been imagining a tiny line between the ball and the hole, and hitting the putt so the ball rolls along that line. That’s a lot of pressure

But what popped into my head that night was a band, as wide as the putter, going to the hole.

Not only that, but I saw that if you line up the toe of the putter with the corresponding edge of the hole, so that if the putter could magically slide across the green to the hole, the absolute toe would graze that edge of the hole, which would square up the putterface to roll ball into my rubber “hole” dead center.

In the photo, the thin red line lines up of the toe of the putter with the outside edge of the hole, and the transparent red band is what the putterface stays square to–a much easier image to believe in that a tiny line going from the ball to the hole.

So forget about the hole, forget about the ball, just make your stroke to have the putter face stay square to the band and the ball goes in. Easy!

As for lining up the toe of the putter with the outside edge of the hole, it might seem like this would not be exact. But if you try this out, and the putterface is not square to the hole, you will see clearly that the toe is not “pointing” to the edge.

I think this works because you are squaring up the entire surface of the putterface rather than a small point on the surface. And to tell the truth, I’m not even sure you can square up a point to something.

I tried out this method on a putting green and found it to be reliable up to about 15 feet.

[Update: With practice, you can use this technique on breaking putts, too, by learning how much to line up the tip of the putterface outside (R to L) or inside (L to R) the hole.]

Gold Post, grip

The Natural Placement of Your Hands on the Golf Club

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NOTE: A Basic Golf Swing is now available that develops the comments below in full, and more, in both words and video.

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Golf instruction books speak of three orientations of the hands when taking a grip: strong (the Vs between your thumbs and forefingers point outside your trailing shoulder), neutral (the Vs point at your trailing shoulder), and weak (the Vs point at your chin).

These are grip categories, however. They should not be taken as actual ways to set your hands on the club. How you do that is an individual matter that should reflect the natural orientation of your forearms. *

Instructors often talk about the clubface getting out of alignment because the hands turned the clubhead, but they do no such thing because they can’t turn. It is the forearms that turn, carrying the hands with them. This is not a trivial distinction.

When the forearms start out in their natural position, they will stay there (unless you disturb them) and return the clubface to the ball square. If you address the ball with them out of position, they will return to their natural position during the first few feet of takeaway, very likely without your being aware of it. There goes your shot when it has just barely started.

Stand with your arms hanging naturally by your sides. Notice where the backs of your hands are facing. They must face the same way when you put your hands on the club, which in turn puts your forearms in their natural position.

If you have trouble with the clubface being either open all the time at impact, or closed, and have tried everything to fix it without success, consider that the only problem is with your grip. It’s not your grip, but someone else’s.

You might find as well that the swing feels kind of effortless because you are not forcing your arms to move in a way they don’t like. That’s not a bad thing!

* The only instruction books I have found that mention this point is the chapter on the grip in Al Geiberger’s book, appropriately titled, Tempo, and Phil Galvano’s Secrets of the Perfect Golf Swing.