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.

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.

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