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.

golf swing

My Transition Move

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As the title suggests, this is how I start my forward swing. It is not the only way to do it, but it is my way and I’m presenting it to give you an option in addition to all the other stuff you see on the internet.

The move is this: my left butt cheek moves straight back. No turn, no slide, cheek straight back.

Of course it can’t do that really, it turns, but it feels straight back.

I move my hip back at a tempo that is in harmony with the rest of my swing. I make it fit in. Not too slow, and definitely not too fast.

What I get out of it is a turn of my torso that lines up everything so the arm/hand assembly flows into the hitting area with the clubhead traveling at the target through impact.

The hands lead the clubhead effortlessly through the ball and I get nice ball-then-ground contact off the center of the clubface.

All that is what you want in your swing, and this is how I get it.

There’s a Mike Malaska video in which he says the left leg pushes the left hip socket back on the forward swing. I think I am getting the same result in a different way.

Remember, this is just how my transition starts. You have do some other stuff after that, but that’s a different post.

commentary

The Golf Ball Rollback

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Golf Digest just published an article saying that the proposed golf ball rollback for professional tours might backfire. In time, a small number of elite golfers might figure out how to get their swing speed high enough to negate the changes in the ball.

By getting their swing speed up to 140+ mph, a few professional golfers could hit the shorter ball up to 350 yards. Everyone else would be left in the dust.

One solution would be to use course design and setup to penalize wayward drives more than is done now. That’s kind of expensive, though.

David Feherty once suggested making the ball bigger, which is known to cut down on how far it flies.

All this is guesswork. Leave it to The Recreational Golfer to come up with a foolproof solution: the exploding golf ball.

We would require a golf ball design that makes the ball disintegrate when struck at a swing speed of greater than, say, 135 mph.

BOOM! Cloud of dust! Tee up another, podner, you’re hitting two.

Not only would it solve the distance problem, it would be widely entertaining. Can you imagine the cheering? And the little cloud of white dust rising up over the tree tops from the number seven tee that you can see from way over at number 14?

And Jim Nantz saying, “Oops! Got another one!”

And think of the pressure on the guys with the big guns! Not, am I going to hit the fairway, but, is my golf ball going to blow up?

And Tour golf on TV, which has become about as boring as competitive cornhole, would become as popular a TV sport as any. Even more than World’s Strongest Man competitions.

Problems solved. You’re welcome.

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I hope this mildly amusing post has entertained you and taken your mind off, for a while, the impending debt limit crisis. (I just had to say that.)

commentary

The Debt Limit

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I turn from golf for a moment.

The Republican House refusing to increase the debt limit is not holding a gun to President Biden’s head. It’s holding a gun to the nation’s head. Your head.

If you live a congressional district with a Republican representative, write and urge your congressman/woman to vote in favor of increasing the debt limit and thereby avoid an economic nightmare. Thank you.

putting

A Few Putting Notes

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1. I’ve been doing something lately that has improved my ability to take the putter way from the ball on a straight line and return it on a straight line.

I rest the sole very lightly on the ground, not hovering it off the ground, but just lightly touching, instead of resting the putter on the ground with all of its weight.

What this does is avoids my having to lift the putter off the ground ever so slightly before I swing it back. The lifting motion can cause me to lose stability in my swing and take the putter back at an angle and spend effort to get it back on line. Not a good way to putt accurately.

I am sinking more putts than before, and this might be a reason.

2. Ever since we have been able to keep the flagstick in the hole when we putt I have been doing that.

A few days ago, though, I had a left-to-right breaking putt of about ten feet for a birdie. For some reason I walked up to the hole and took out the flagstick. I didn’t think about whether or not to take it out, it just seemed like the thing to do.

Sank the putt.

Maybe I’ll do this from now for putts I think are makeable. For approach putts that I can only expect to get close, having the flagstick in gives me a better idea of what the distance is.

3. Speaking of approach putts, for really long ones, 30 feet or more, I have been hitting them with an open stance.

Being turned a bit toward the hole puts my right hand, which has a great deal of sensitivity to propelling an object to a certain distance, as yours probably does, too, in control of the stroke.

The result is hitting the long ones closer than before.

driver

A Coordinated Driver Swing

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It’s easy to say there is one swing for your driver, hybrids, and irons. And that’s right. One swing is hard enough to get right, and one swing works.

But getting that one swing doesn’t solve your problems because you have to be able to use that swing on all your swinging clubs (I’m excepting your wedges and the putter.)

The club that is hardest to apply this concept to is the driver. It’s longer, it’s lighter, the swing is flatter, and you’re standing farther away from the ball. The 6-iron feeling, for example, just isn’t there.

The key to any swing, but especially the driver swing, is that in the forward swing, the body turn and the arm swing must be coordinated. They don’t each do their own thing and hope it all comes out good in the end.

What I have found works so well is the feeling that the hip/body turn carries the unmoving upper body assembly at the start of the forward swing.

As the turn continues, upper body momentum builds up, and a graceful and flowing release of the arms that times itself occurs, to swing the club through the ball without any effort of your own.

All this feels like one continuous movement. No parts, just one long, flowing movement. Watch the pros on TV swing their driver to see what I mean.

Practice your driver by creating this feeling as you swing it through the air (no swinging at golf balls). Over and over. Every swing feels this way; they are all identical.

Try that and see what you get.

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