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.

tournaments

2023 U. S. Open Preview

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Winner: Wyndham Clark (-10) over Rory McIlroy (-9)

The U.S. Open, my lifelong favorite tournament, will be played this week at the Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course. It is a George Thomas design from 1921 that is routinely included in the top 20 of the rankings of American golf courses.

Thomas also designed the Bel Air CC and the Riviera CC, both in Los Angeles, along with a number of other well-known course in Southern California. This one, though is his masterpiece.

Watch the flyover of every hole from Golf Digest, and the corresponding flyover from the USGA.

Then listen to Gil Hanse being interviewed about his restoration and comments on how the course will play for the pros this week. You won’t miss much by starting the interview at the 17:00 minute mark.

This rather crowded overhead below of the entire course indicates its routing, which will help you make your way around a far less crowded Google Maps overhead. Note the Playboy Mansion next to the 14th tee.





Below is the much-photographed 11th green, the hole being a 290-yard par 3. The green is 40 feet below the level of the tee. Good luck.


Just to mention, the 15th hole, also a par 3, might play at 90 yards on one day. That won’t make it any easier to get par, especially if the pin is in the very narrow tongue of green at the front. (You really need to watch the flyovers.)

The 6th hole will be drivable par 4, but you have to hit a blind tee shot to a narrow green. (So watch the flyovers already!)

After all the recent hoo-hah around the PGA/LIV merger, we need a major tournament at a course like we have never seen before to take our mind off it. I hope the drama of competition matches the reputation and stature of the course.

I want to end this brief preview by telling you a personal story. I have known about this course, and how fine it is, for a long time. In all that time I wished there could be a U.S. Open there so I could see the course in detail, but the membership was not interested. However in 2015, the USGA announced that the course had agreed to host the Open in 2023.

2015 was the same year my cancer was discovered and in 2016 it was found that I had gotten one that had no cure and a five-year survival rate of around 50%. I couldn’t count on being alive in 2023.

But here I still am, and I think I’ll make it through this weekend. Actually I am doing very well and look forward to a good number of years more, especially with the advances in treatment for my disease.

The motto of my blog is “Little things that make a big difference.” I could modify that to say that my being able to see the U.S. Open at the LACC is a little thing that means a lot.

commentary

Golf Is Easy

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Golf is easy.

Playing golf the wrong way is easy. Anybody can do it.

Playing golf the right way is easy, too. Anybody can do it.

Which one do you like?

The right things in golf are no harder to do than the wrong things. They aren’t special skills which only the gifted can do. They’re just different things. Anybody can do them.

So learn what the right things are, practice to get be able to repeat them, and there you are.

This sounds so obvious, but the reason I’m saying it is that you won’t get good at golf until you realize in a deep way that getting good doesn’t require bucketloads of talent or ask you to perform skills you can’t possibly do.

Golf is easy. Anybody can do it.

golf swing

A Club-Centered Golf Swing

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Here’s something to think about and maybe try. You have heard of swing concepts based around the hands (really old guys), the arms (somewhat old guys), and the body (nearly everybody nowadays).

How about a swing based on the club? (See Ernest Jones, Manuel de la Torre, Vivien Saunders).

Watch this video of In Gee Chun’s golf swing. Start it at 2:25 to see it in super slow motion. Don’t watch her, though. Watch the club. Watch how the club is moving and you will see how a golf club is supposed to move. Go to full screen see it best.

Now figure out how to make your golf club move the same way. Hint: You don’t do that by copying how she moves. When you swing, keep your mind on your image of how her club moves.

All this has to do with applying the principle of external focus, as developed by Dr. Gabrielle Wulf.

driver

Skying My Driver – How I Stopped It

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You know the drives you hit dead straight but way up in the air and if you get 50 yards you’re lucky? That’s skying the ball. Maddening. There are three main causes for this.

First, and hopefully most obvious, is that you’re teeng the ball too high. The middle of the ball, as it sits on the tee, should meet the top of the driver head. This guideline has been around for years, because it works.

The other two causes are more involved. They are meant to correct the cause of the popup, which is the clubhead coming into the ball on a downward trajectory. You want the clubhead to be arcing upward a few degrees at impact.

One is that you are swaying toward the target during your forward swing. That moves the low point of your swing in that direction, which means the clubhead will still be travelling downward when it meets the ball, sending it up excessively.

At address, lean your torso toward the trailing side of your body by a few degrees, and keep it there. In the forward swing, think “stay back” so you don’t straighten up your posture.

The second reason is you take the club back too steeply. Your forward swing will follow this trajectory into the ball, and again, the clubhead comes into the ball at too steep an angle.

golf swing

More on Tempo

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Tempo is one of the most important things to get right in the golf swing, but the most difficult to describe so you know how to do it. I’m always looking for good ways to express what the right tempo feels like.

I would like to share with you this description of tempo, which comes from the book, How to Become a Complete Golfer, by Bob Toski and Jim Flick.

“In swinging the club back and during the change of direction at the top, you should have a feeling of ease. You should never feel you are swinging the club hard. If you lose the feeling of ease, you have swung the club too fast and are going out of control.”

I would add that the feeling of ease should continue as you swing through the ball, too.

Don’t go too far in this direction by swinging too slowly. A swing with no poop is no good. Swing with intent, but easy intent.

playing the game

An Easy Way to Lower Your Score

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I played nine holes yesterday and shot a 41. Not bad, but it could have been lower, not if I had hit better shots, but if I had made better decisions.

On the first hole, I had to hit to a green above my feet, and over a bunker to get to the pin. I thought I had enough club in my hand, so I aimed at the pin. Bunker. A deep one with hard wet sand. It took me four to get down.

Mistakes? First of all, I didn’t have to hit over the bunker. I could have aimed left of it, and even if I missed the green I would have had easy up and down for a par.

Second, I hit the second shot really well, but I should have used one more club.

Second hole, I was green high in two, but about 20 yards from the green with a bunker right in my way. I was still spooked from the last hole, so I took more than enough club to pitch over the bunker, and aimed left so as not to hit over it.

Too much insurance. The ball went way too far, and way left. I could have taken two less clubs, aimed for the pin, and been just fine, because I’m pretty good at this shot. I got a bogey, which could have been a par.

Two holes later I had an easy pitch into the pin which ended up hole high, but because I forgot to take careful aim, the ball ended up about fifteen feet left instead of much closer. Another possible par given away.

Two holes after that I had a pitch into the green from a lie significanlty below the green. I figured the club to use from my chart for normal (level) lies. I forgot that hitting from an upslope adds loft to the club, which will make the shot end up shorter. I used my gap wedge instead of my pitching wedge. The ball ended up about 30 feet short of the hole instead of much closer if I had used the lower-lofted club. Two putts to get down instead of maybe one.

So let’s say out of those five possible strokes saved by thinking more clearly, I got three of them, for a 38. Just by thinking more clearly.

I’ll bet you could lower your average score by four or five strokes over a 18-hole round just by making better decisions. Me, too.

short game

Short Shots From Close In

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Chipping from beside the green and pitching from long distances are shots we are all familiar with. They are both easy shots to get good at, too.

Short shots we don’t hit very often, and ones that confuse us, are the ones from close to the green but not that close. Here is some advice from Manuel de la Torre on what to do, from his book, Understanding the Golf Swing.

“If the flagstick is located close to the front edge of the green, the best option is to play a low running shot and use the grass on the fairway to slow the ball down and have it trickle slowly to the hole. Playing a high shot to land on the green would not result in a shot that would be able to stop near the hole—there is too short a distance between the edge of the green and the hole to be able to handle that type of shot.

“If the flagstick is located at the back of the green, you have a great number of options. Almost any iron will produce shots that can end close to the hole. Under these conditions pitch shots or pitch and run shots can be used and be equally successful. In many cases the pitch and run will produce better results than high pitch shots.”

This is good advice in my experience. With the advent of the four-wedge bag, you don’t see golfers hitting pitch and run shots too often even though it is a more effective shot that is hit with a lower-lofted club.

Practice this shot with your 6- to 8-irons to add a potent shot to your short game bag of tricks.

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