Category Archives: video tip

Golfing For Cats – Part 2

About ten years ago I wrote a post titled Golfing For Cats. You might want to read it. It brings back fond memories for me.

But now I have to post Part 2.

I avoid posting things I find on the Internet, but this little video is priceless.


The cat does what it is born to do, but you have to admit she’s a pretty good chipper to always hit the ball just right.

Notice how the cat dips its head to the ground every time, right when she takes the club away. I don’t know why it does that, but it must be part of preparing to catch in some way.

Any cat experts out there?

I sent this video to a friend of mine, who replied:

“It would be better if it was a ball retriever, though. But no cat would be that helpful.”

Staying Behind the Ball

A critical piece of the golf swing is to stay behind the ball, or as I like to say it, stay back. My latest video shows you what that means and how to learn it.

Byron Nelson, in his book, Shape Your Swing the Modern Way, said, “swing out from under your head.” Here’s the passage:

“I can’t emphasize too much the fact that your lower body must lead the downswing while your head remains relatively still. You must create the sensation of swinging past your chin, of keeping your head back while your hips and legs swing past it toward the target. The best way I can describe the feeling is that you swing completely out from under your head. Your body moves clear past the point of your chin and your arms swing into the follow-through before your head moves.” [Nelson’s emphasis.]

A Single-Digit Golf Swing

Want to see what the golf swing of a single-digit player looks like? Go to this post, the video shot in 2010, and take a look at how I was swinging when I played at that level.

It’s nice-looking swing, simple, effective. It doesn’t hit great shots, but it hits good shots, one after the other.

I look at this video often to remind myself that I don’t have to have breathtaking technique to play good golf.

I look at this video often to remind myself that this is how I play golf.

This swing is my golfing personality. There is no need to mess with it.

This swing works. All I have to do is this and I can play good golf.

When you get into an extended spell of playing well, hopefully because you have gotten unstuck and are now playing at a new level, make a video of yourself swinging.

I guarantee you will come back to it sometime later to remind yourself of how simple it all was, and how simple it needs to be now.

Manuel de la Torre Golf Swing

Though thousands of golf instruction books have been written, going back well into the 19th century, on how to swing a golf cub effectively, no one has come up with the magic formula.

I can tell you lots of things that I do in my golf swing but how they get the clubface back to the ball square and on line to the target, I have no idea. It might as well be magic for all I know.

Or for all anyone knows.

So I’m going to tell you what to do to get a conception of the golf swing into your head that doesn’t involve yet another opinion on what the right set of moves are.

From there, it’s up to you to figure out how to build that conception into your swing, but I guarantee approaching the task this way will be a lot easier than trying more well-intentioned instructions that bear little relation to each other.

Watch this video. It takes 45 minutes.

After you have done that, watch this video of de la Torre hitting balls.

It was shot in 1990, when de la Torre was 69 years old.

It is so smooth and fluid–a model for you to follow.

To be honest, it took me a few years of trying this, then going off on a wild goose chase, coming back to this, going off on another tangent, until I finally settled into this conception of the swing.

If you want to know how to swing a golf club, here it is. And that’s the last thing I’m going to say about how to swing a golf club.

Want more? Read de la Torre’s has a book, Understanding the Golf Swing.

How to Square up the clubface at impact

For almost two years, I would say, I have been working on a swing principle I discovered that has to do with keeping the clubface square at the start of the swing.

I’m certainly not the first one to have ever discovered it, but I knew from the first moment that it was true and correct.

For all this time I did not know how to extend that startup principle into the whole of my golf swing. I did not know that I was trying to incorporate that principle into a swing that was not designed to accept it.

Which meant I couldn’t tell you about it.

Now I can.

Instruction books show pictures of how the clubhead should be oriented when you have taken the club back to the place where the shaft is parallel to the ground. These pictures show the sole of the club pointing straight up in the air, perpendicular to the ground.

That is entirely incorrect.

At that point in the swing the sole of the club should be parallel to the axis of rotation of the swing, which is the spine angle. The clubhead taken back parallel in this way will be leaning forward a bit. That looks closed, but it is really square.

The pictures in all those books are showing you how to open the clubface at the start of the swing, which might partially explain why so many people slice.

If you want to confirm this for yourself, get into your setup, take the club back to where the shaft is parallel to the ground, and with the sole of the club pointing straight up and down.

Now stand up straight without adjusting your hands. The clubface is open, isn’t it?

A few weeks ago I came across a video by Mike Malaska which (a) confirmed that what I had found was right, and (b) showed me how to integrate that principle into my golf swing.

This next video of his shows you how to practice this technique, starting at 3:40.

For my entire golfing career I could not explain how the clubface got back to the ball as square as it was at address. All I could say was it’s something that just happens, which is no which explanation at all. On some days it happened for me, on other days it didn’t, and I thought, that’s the just way golf is.

Now I can explain how the clubface gets back to the ball square, and now I’m in control of it happening.

You can be, too. It’s really easy.

Four Steps Toward Hitting the Golf Ball Straight

The key to playing good recreational golf is to hit the ball straight. Distance is fine, but hole in, hole out, straight is the goal. Hit into the fairway, and onto the green, and you can shoot lots of good scores.

Hitting straight is not easy. It takes dedicated practice to become a straight hitter. I want to give you four points to work on that will take you a long way in that direction. If you put these points into your swing, I guarantee good things will happen.