golf swing, video tip

Staying Behind the Ball

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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.]

golf swing

Rhythm in Golf Revisited

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For a long time, I though that the rhythm of the golf swing was 3:1. There is a book you can still get, called Tour Tempo (it should have been called Tour Rhythm) that says so, based on videotape evidence.

You can read it all over the internet, too. 3:1. Everyone has bought into it. The trouble is, it’s not quite true. Leave it to me to say so.

Let’s remind ourselves what rhythm is. It is the relative duration of the component parts of a movement.

3:1 is the rhythm of the clubhead’s movement. The clubhead takes three counts to go from address to the end of the backswing, and one count to get back to impact, all counts being equally paced. That part is true.

But the rhythm of the clubhead is not the rhythm of the golf swing. It is the result of the golfer swinging with the proper rhythm, which is 1:1.

The body turns toward the ball at the same speed it turns away from it. And since the distance turned through in each direction is the same, the result is a 1:1 rhythm.

The trouble with ignoring the rhythm of the swing is that you try to do whatever you can to get a 3:1 clubhead rhythm at the expense of an easy rhythm for your golf swing.

You try to time your backswing and forward swing so you get a 3:1 clubhead rhythm, when all you have to do is swing at a 1:1 torso rhythm and you’ve got it.

How easy is that?

Yes, I know there are professional golfers who don’t have a 1:1 swing rhythm. Hooray for them. But the large majority of pros do. The ones who don’t are highly talented athletes who can make it work.

Make your swing simple. Take your mind off getting the right clubhead rhythm and put it on what produces the right clubhead rhythm. Much easier.

driver, golf swing

Nine Clubs, One Swing

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There’s a piece of swing advice that goes something like this: “13 clubs, one swing.” We’re excluding the putter, of course. But every other club is swung the same way.

There is disagreement about this, but a lot of it is nit-picky.

Of course a driver swing will be different from a 9-iron swing because you stand farther away from the ball with a driver so it is a flatter swing. And the attack angle is accordingly different. Etc.

But what is the same is that the driver swing is just a 9-iron swing with you standing a bit more upright and you holding a different club. None of your swing principles change.

Don’t take my word for it, though. See this video for another golfer’s opinion that you swing all the clubs the same way.

There is one way in which I disagree with the 13 clubs part, though. You DO NOT pitch with your wedges using the same swing you do for long shots. The pitching swing is not just a shorter version of the full swing.

See this post for what I mean.

So if you have a putter and four wedges, I would say, roughly, the saying should be “9 clubs, one swing.” You can pick around the edges but you know what I’m getting at.

This is an effective way to go, and it makes the game so much simpler to play.

playing the game

Acceptable Golf Shots

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You might have heard the saying that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That is certainly true in golf.

The self-induced pressure to hit your best shot every time leads to poor decision-making and poor performance.

Sometimes you do hit a perfect shot. When I hit one I say to myself, “How did that happen?” And I move on.

All I strive for is to hit acceptable shots. Strike the ball fairly cleanly, with decent shot shape, to a place that’s pretty close to where I wanted it to go.

Long game, short game, putting, that’s what I’m aiming to do.

When my round is over, my satisfaction is having hit more shots than not which fell into that box, the more the better. The score will take care of itself.

putting

My Putting Procedure

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A few days ago a friend of mine, who took up golf late in life, asked me for some advice on reading greens. So I described how I go about it.

Later that day I wrote up the procedure and sent it to him in an e-mail message. Here it is.

1. Look at the putt from the side to notice any elevation changes along the line of the putt. You can also see if the ground along that line slopes toward you or away from you. Do this when you first walk on to the green.

2. Look at the entire green in the broad area of the putt to see the slope of the entire piece of ground.

3. Look at the local slope between the ball and the hole. Merge that read with what you got in #2.

4. Go with your first impression. It is usually correct. The longer you look the more you think you see.

5. With short putts, play the break, but do not give away the hole. Spend time on the practice green learning how to take out break by hitting a short putt harder.

6. Spot putt. Pick a mark on the green about two inches in front of the ball on your starting line. Roll the ball over that spot.

golf swing

Video-tape your golf swing

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For a while I have been adrift as concerns my golf swing. I try doing all the right things, but they don’t come together to make a swing that is worth two cents for hitting a golf ball.

But I have an answer. In 2010, I made a video for this blog on learning how to swing so your hands lead the clubhead into the ball. At the time was playing single-digit golf.

So what I do when I hit golf balls like I picked up a club for the first time last week, is look at that video and do what I see.

That is the swing that has been inside me for over 60 years. Watching that swing unlocks the skill I once had and brings it all back.

That swing times at 1 second from takeaway to impact. I can’t swing that fast any more, so I have to slow down to about 1.25, but everything else I can do. (That doesn’t sound like a big difference, but it really is.)

So I would recommend to you, that if you are playing well, video-tape your swing. That video will be your life-saver, when you start wandering, for the rest of your golfing life.

mental game

The Number One Enemy of Golfers

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You might hear that the number one enemy of golfers is fear. Sorry, that ain’t it.

No one is throwing a baseball past you at 95 mph and if it misses the strike zone it could hit you. No one is trying to tackle you with as hard a hit as he can muster.

In golf you just stand there and swing a club at a ball. And if it goes in the water instead of on the green, how are you harmed? What have you lost except a golf ball and a stroke on your scorecard?

The number one enemy is uncertainty — that you have picked the right shot (knowledge) or that you can hit the shot you picked (confidence).

If you have acquired both of those qualities, golf is a simple game.

driver

Get your tee height right

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This is one of those little things that could make a big difference by getting it right and getting it the same very time.

They say the ball should be teed up for a driver so the center of the ball is even with the top of the driver’s clubface. You know I question everything, but I’ll let that one go.

Measure the height of your clubface. Mine is 2 inches on the nose (Titleist 983K).

(I know about the post I put up last year about Tiger’s driver and my driver, both Titliest 975D, but I switched. So did Tiger. Anyway…)

Subtract from that half the diameter of the ball (half of 1.68 inches is 0.84 inches). I get 1.16 inches.

That is the height of the tee ABOVE THE GROUND for my driver.

Get a tee and draw a line around the shaft with a Sharpie that is 1.16 inches (or whatever you get) from the TOP of the tee.

Push the tee into the ground as far as the line, with a golf ball on top of it, and address the ball with your driver. That is what a properly teed-up ball should look like with your driver.

Now. How do you tee it up at the same height every time without drawing lines around all your tees? Simple!

With your trial ball and tee still in the ground, put your hand on the ball so the top of it lies in the junction between your thumb and the base of your forefinger, with your thumb sticking straight down.

Notice where the tip of your thumb is in relation to the ground. THAT is how you are going to tell that you have the right tee height.

I know, this sounds really obsessive. But it’s a detail that is easy to pay attention to, which accords with a major principle of playing golf:

The more things you can do the right way every time, the easier the game gets and the better you play it.

improvement

Some Advice on Improving Your Golf Swing

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An article came out recently in Golf Digest that told the truth about swing changes. In a nutshell, this is the advice from a +2.6 handicap golfer:

“Improvement—real, lasting improvement (for me, at least)—comes from diligently working on the things holding your swing back. If you’ve properly identified the flaws, you should be working on the same things for months, maybe years.”

IOW, a few trips to the range ain’t gonna do it.

And from a 1.8 handicap golfer:

“When you don’t have lots of time and energy to spend, focus on the basics. By those I mean:

“Your ball position is in the right spot for each club.
“Your posture is sharp.
“You’re aiming in the place you’re intending to aim.
“Your grip matches your body and helps keep your clubface relatively square.
“You’re transferring your weight onto your lead foot on the way through.

“You can never get that stuff too good, and you’ll be surprised at how many good downstream effects it’ll have in your golf swing—without having to worry about spending hours at the range.”

practice

How to Practice Your Swing

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A few years ago, I put up a video post called How to Get Good at Golf. It was about installing the right movements into your swing.

After you have done that, the next step is to learn how to repeat those movements. That’s what this post is about.

Use your driver. That takes the ground out of play.

Tee up a ball. Now make five swings in one continuous motion. Pay attention to getting your swing right and identical several times in a row. It might take more than five swings to get there. If you’re having trouble, slow down until you can repeat.

When you do, without hesitation, address the ball and make your swing just like you have been practicing. If you hit a good shot, do it again: continuous swings you can repeat, then hit a ball.

If you did not hit a good shot, repeat, but WITH A SLOWER SWING. Very important.

Keep repeating, slowing down a bit more if you keep hitting bad shots. Sooner or later you will bust one. That is your tempo. Keep practicing at that tempo. DO NOT SPEED UP.

By swinging at that tempo, you give your swing the time it needs to fall into place. Swing faster and you push your body beyond its ability to perform a complicated series of movements correctly, which means you don’t accomplish your purpose. You actually make it worse because you are not giving the right things you learned a chance to emerge and repeat.

And remember, the point of this drill is not to hit balls. The ball is merely an indicator. This is a swing drill. Do it over and over until you get to the point where the right way is the only way you can swing.

That’s a lot to ask, but it’s the price of becoming good at golf. It’s with the price.

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