golf swing

The Left Foot

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If you watch professional golfers these days, most of them keep their left foot (we’ll call it the leading foot so as not to leave out the left-handed golfers) planted firmly on the ground until after they have hit the ball.

There was a time when every one of them lifted their leading foot off the ground to some degree in their backswing. No more, it seems.

That doesn’t mean you should leave it on the ground in your golf swing. Here is one way to decide whether you should lift it or leave it.

When you have finished your backswing, how does your right side feel? By that I mean your trailing shoulder and the trailing side of your torso. Are they relaxed like they were at address? Or is there tightness or tension? Does it feel like that side is jammed up against something?

This might be the case if you are not expecially flexible, or if you are getting older and losing flexibility.

If you leave your leading foot on the ground and you feel something like this, you’re cramping your swing so it cannot flow freely. You need to let that foot come off the ground to loosen things up. How much to let it come up, you can figure out for yourself.

If you decide to lift your leading foot, the very first movement you need to do in the forward swing is to plant it back on the ground, not only to replace it, but to get your turn started. That gives you an unexpected bonus.

Power comes from hitting hard with your entire right side. Putting your leading heel back on the ground as the first move in the forward swing will, if you stay out of its way, unleash the turn and with it your entire right side coming into the ball. This is not a forceful power move. It’s a speed move that just happens. Let happen and see what you get.

Just a thought.

rhythm and tempo

Rose Goes Slow, Too

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A few days ago I mentioned that you should swing like you’re in no hurry to hit the ball.

The new Golf Digest came in the mail today with a cover article on Rose Zhang, who says the same thing.

“I can’t tell you how many times someone in my group would watch me for a few holes and then comment on how smooth and easy I swing the club.”

“When you focus on solid contact [which smooth and easy leads to] instead of trying to go all-out, your chance of keeping the ball in play and controlling distance is going to go way up.”

Yep.

golf swing

Picking the Ball Off the Fairway

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This is something I have been doing from the fairway for a while now and which seems to be working pretty well.

Hitting out of a fairway bunker is a real easy shot for me. I just keep my lower body quiet and nip the ball off the surface of the sand. It always works out well. Really nice ball flight.

I got the idea, why not try that off the fairway, too? I mean just the picking the ball off the sand part.

So I tried it, and it’s working really well. Just nip the ball off the turf, not try to be hitting down and all that stuff, but hitting level.

Result? Beautiful ball flight, the club not getting into an argument with the ground, everything good.

Just thought I would mention it.

practice

Good Golf Is About Controlling Distance

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We all want to hit the ball straight. We want to stop slicing or hooking. That’s important, but neither of these faults are hard to cure. Once you can hit the ball straight most of the time, then what?

Following your tee shot, getting the distance right is everything. If you’re in the fairway 143 yards from the pin, can you hit the ball 143 yards?

Further, if you’re 72 yards from the pin, can you pitch the ball 72 yards? If you’re putting from 27 feet can you make the ball go 27 feet?

THAT is how you score, and once you have basic tee-to-hole shot-making figured out, make those skills work for you by learning how to hit ANY kind of shot to a specific distance.

I’ll leave you to figure out how to do that, and close this short post by saying when you have acquired that ability, you’ll be playing a different game.

mental game

How the Mental Game Really Works

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The mental game of golf is all about being in the right frame of mind to hit the ball as well as you can. Oh sure, there’s decision-making, staying in focus and all that.

But the essence of how you use your mind when you play golf is in what happens in the few seconds just before you take your address, set up, pause, then swing back and through the ball.

How do you set up mentally for that? What goes through your mind during that time?

I have found that the key mental approach is to have a firm thought about where I intend the ball to go, and not on how my swing is going to get it there.

I reduce the moment to a simple thought–I want to hit the ball from here to there. Then, retaining that thought, I step up to the ball and hit it there.

The thought is not hoping, or “would liking,” or any of that. It’s, “The ball is going from here to there.” Period. And with a mind that believes that nothing will keep that from happening.

When you think this way, you would be surprised at how the technical stuff falls into place by itself.

Try it.

Uncategorized

A Day With the LPGA at the Portland Classic

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The Portland Classic is the oldest (1972) continuous tournament on the LPGA schedule. I go out to see it every year.

It rained for a while Thursday morning, but that didn’t bother anybody. I watched Madelene Sagstrom warm up and play a few holes. She hasn’t made a bogey in three rounds. She’s my fave, and five back going into the final round. I hope she finds a way to win.

I also followed the group of Lexi Thompson, Brooke Henderson, and In Gee Chun for a while. You do not have three more different swings. Lexi? She’s the Alpha female out there. I wish her game matched her presence. And I had never noticed this before. When she hits her driver, there is a moment when both feet are off the ground. No kidding! She missed the cut by one. I was also surprised at how tall In Gee Chun is. 5′ 9″.

Azahara Muñoz is very easy on the eyes. Photos you have seen of her don’t do her justice.

Both Thompson and Muñoz missed the cut by one shot. Here’s how it happened on Thursday morning.

Thompson duck-hooked her tee shot in #9, and had to play short of the green out of the rough. About forty yards from the pin now, with plenty of green to work with, she could have hit a bump-and-run, or flown it all the way. She did neither. A middling pitch landed short of the green and barely trickled onto the putting surface. Two putts, bogey, MC.

Muñoz hit her drive on #13 (par 5) onto an elevated surface bordering the fairway, and with a large tree blocking the way to the green. Instead of drawing the ball around the tree, she played a straight shot to the other side of the fairway, where there were more trees in her way. She tried to cut it too fine and her third hit a tree and dropped straight down about sixty yards away. Approach to the green, a chip and a putt, bogey, MC.

I’ll say what I said last year, from tee to green these gals hit the ball brilliantly, but around the green I saw some poor decision-making and just bad execution. On the PGA Tour, everyone out there has a ridiculous short game. You can’t say the about this Tour.

But the thing is from tee to green. Yes, there are a few sluggers out there, but most of the rest have a graceful, relaxed swing (much faster than it looks) that is very inspirational to golfers at our level. I don’t learn anything from Rory’s swing, but these gals teach me how to swing a golf club.

slow play

The Solution to the PGA Tour’s Slow Play Problem

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The PGA Tour thinks it has a slow play problem. Players take too long hit the next shot, which adds up to taking too long to play a round.

But that is the problem, long rounds, not slow play. We need to look at it from that end to see what can be done to cut down time time it takes players to make their way around the course. Where can time be saved?

The solution is so obvious. Walking from the tee to the fairway, and from the fairway to the green is golf’s dead time, and that is where time can be saved.

This year major league baseball installed a pitch clock that requires the pitcher to start his motion 15 seconds after getting the ball back from the catcher, 20 seconds if there is a runner on base.

But if baseball were played like golf, it would be about three minutes between pitches, not 15 seconds.

Let’s get back to golf and cut down the time between shots. How? Golf carts.

The PGA Tour is about to be awash with money from the Saudis. It can use some of that money to buy a fleet of golf carts.

Each pairing would have one cart per player. As soon as the threesome, or twosome, has teed off, the players and caddies would get in a golf cart, driven by a volunteer, and zoom down the fairway to their ball. After the approach shot, carts to the green.

That would cut down the walking time from six minutes to 30 seconds, on average, per hole. THAT is how you get players around the course faster.

One more thing. When a player hits the ball into a place that even 20-handicappers don’t visit, and wants a ruling, TWO rules officials, not one, get summoned. They examine the situation, confer, deliver their ruling and that’s it. Play on.

No holding up the tournament behind you for ten minutes to have your discussion with the rules official. The ruling gets made, end of story, hit the ball. If the player disagrees with the ruling, make the case AFTER the round is over. But until then, just play.

You read it here first.

practice

What Bucket of Balls is For

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When you go to the range, evaluate your shotmaking in a realistic way.

In seven balls, say, you will hit one that is just PERFECT. You will hit four that you would take on the course all day. You will hit one or two that aren’t quite up to snuff, and every so often you will hit one that is, YEEEGH!

What you should try to do every time is hit one of the middle four.

That perfect shot? Admire it, and move on. Those shots just happen, and if you try to reproduce them, you just go backwards. When the moment is over, go back to hitting one of the middle four.

The ones that aren’t up to speed you can live with. You’re a recreational golfer; they’re going to happen.

The cringeworthy shot? That one demands a reset. Reproduce that swing, which you can do because it is so far away from your usual swing that the glaring error should stand out in hindsight.

Practice the right swing a few times to get the particular wrinkle ironed out, then go back to hitting one of the middle four.

So. Don’t chase perfection, fix the glaring error, and hit shots that are good enough.

Over time, the good enough shots will become more frequent, and better, which is what you are after. And the ones that make you look like you took up the game last week will disappear.

mental game, scoring

An Easy Way to Shoot Lower Scores

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Following yesterday’s 58 in a LIV Tour event, Bryson DeChambeau had this to say to the press:

“Yeah, so for any junior golfers out there, it’s probably the best thing you can do when trying to learn how to score. You go up to the red tees and try and shoot sub-60 rounds, for a good aspiring junior golfer that’s trying to be a professional golfer.

“You just go to the front tees, try and shoot under 60. If you can do that and you consistently are able to do that every single round you play, get in that comfortable mind of, okay, I’m 10-, 11-, 12-under, let’s keep going, pedal to the metal, that gets you in a great mindset.

“That tremendously helped today, being able to say, okay, I’m 10-under; well, I can’t stop. I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to birdie 17, birdie 18, let’s go, and having that sort of — I’m not really going to say it in front of the media, like — Yeah, sort of the F-you mentality, like let’s go, let’s get it done. It’s something that led to me shooting 58 today.”

Bryson is exactly right. Are you trying to break 90? 80? 100? Always close, but no cigar? Go the forward tees and get it done. Over and over. Keeping doing it again and again.

You’ll get comfortable shooting those low scores and when you go back to the tees you normally play from, you’ll keep on doing it not because of your skills, but because of your new mindset.

Little Differences That Make a Big Difference in How Well You Play