The only thing that should be on your mind the moment before you take the club away is the feeling of joy over what you are about to do.
That’s it!
Take the Hit Out of Your Swing
I have to remind myself of something constantly. And it’s not to keep the lid to the toilet down. I have that one figured out.
It’s rather to stop trying to hit the ball a long way by hitting it hard.
I have written about this before. But as I said then, this advice is difficult to remember.
Today in my backyard driving range, after hitting about ten plastic balls not really that well, I decided to just make my swing feel like a walk in the park.
I hope that means something to you, because it did to me. It didn’t result in slowing down my swing that much, if at all, but it made my swing flow better. That’s the best way I can describe it.
The result, of course, was a dead center hit that made a loud crack against the clubface instead of a muffled whatever. Ball flight? I’ll take it any day.
Just too make sure that wasn’t pure luck, I did the same thing again and got the same result.
Find a way to build this idea into your game in a way that means something to you.
And then do a better job of remembering it than I do.
Acquire Positive Habits at the Range
There’s a lot to think about when you’re playing golf. The less you have to think about, the better it will be for you.
That means making as much as you can automatic. I know that every so often you play less than your best because you forgot to do something important in hitting your shot.
The way out of that lapse is to practice shotmaking habits when you go to the range. This is what I mean.
There’s a ball in front of you. Before you swing at it, check your grip, aim yourself and check your aim, check your ball position, check your posture. EVERY TIME. It takes only a few seconds to do this, and by going through this procedure before every range ball, you take one step closer to not forgetting to do it when you play.
If you have a practice swing technique you rely on, do that, too.
By doing this sixty times before you hit sixty balls, the same way every time, you build habit. You’ll eventually do it right without even thinking about it. That’s your goal.
Or when you putt on the practice green, do the same thing. Before you hit any putt, line it up. Get a feel for the distance, however you do that.* Check your grip. Check how far away from the ball you stand. Check the width of your stance. Check your posture. Check your aim. Check the alignment of the putter’s face. There might be some more things for you. There are for me, but they are personal, so I won’t go into them.
The point is to go through the whole procedure before any shot to build up the habit. All of it is automatic so all you have to think about is hitting the ball into the fairway/green/hole.
I’m not forgetting the short game, but you should be able to fill in that blank on your own.
Another way of looking at this is that automatic features of your game keep you from straying from what works. We get lazy, we forget. Then you aren’t playing well and you can’t figure out what went wrong.
Every time you go the range practice your shotmaking procedures constantly. The little things. You will never get to the point where you can stop doing this.
*Read my distance finding method called Triangulated Approach Putting.
My Putting Stance
Sometimes I fall into something quite by accident and I find out that it works really well. Most of the time these accidents don’t work so well, but here’s one that does, in regard to putting.
When I take my stance, my upper arms arm press lightly against my torso. Don’t worry, this isn’t anchoring. That only applies to fixing the forearm(s) against something.
Try this. Sit in a chair, press your upper arms lightly against your torso, put your forearms straight out (parallel to the floor), and join your hands.
Now swing your arms back and forth, sliding them against your torso. See how your hands return to their exact staring spot?
If you putt using this setup and motion, your putter will moving along the right path when it hits the ball, and the putter face will be as square as it was at address.
What more can you ask for?
For short putts, your torso doesn’t have to turn, but for approach putts it’s O.K. if it does, and it should, actually.
Combine this with spot putting and you’ll be way ahead of the game, in my experience.
Something I Need to Say
Republican politicians are saying exactly this to the families of those killed in recent mass murders*: “The cost to me of not getting re-elected because I voted to approve effective gun control legislation is greater than the cost to you of your child being murdered in their school classroom, or your loved ones in their grocery store or church.”
Why Republicans Won’t Budge on Guns
* Let’s stop saying “mass shootings.” They’re mass murders.
A Critical Angle in the Golf swing
Sometimes you read there are angles in the golf swing, and that the key to a good swing is to maintain those angles. I agree whole-heartedly.
What those angles are is the important point. There is one I have been working on for a while that is paying big dividends. It is the angle shown in the picture below, made by the clubshaft and arms as seen from a down-the-line point of view.
I became aware of this angle in Terry Kohler’s article that appeared in GolfWRX recently.
That angle need to be preserved throughout the swing. You will get a swing that returns the clubhead as square the target and as centered to the ball as it was at address.
How hard is this technique to learn? You can figure out in minutes.
When you stand at address with your arms hanging straight down and the club angled away from you, you will have a certain feeling in your forearms and your hands.
MAINTAIN THE FEELING THROUGHOUT THE SWING. That’s all there is to it.
I would recommend learning the feeling by making half swings with a 9-iron at a slower tempo than usual. When you start getting it, work into longer clubs and longer swings, concentrating at all times on the feeling of maintaining the angle as described.
When the feeling is good and uniform throughout the bag, then start hitting balls.
You’re welcome.
My Day At the Range
I went to the range a few days ago and hit a medium bucket of balls. I got a lot of things done.
Then I went to the practice green. There must have been about fifteen other guys on the range, but I walked onto the practice green alone.
And I stayed there alone until I went home about 45 minutes later.
Happens all the time. Like it’s my private practice green. I just don’t get it.
Three Ways to Lower Your Score Easily
Shooting good scores overall is more a matter of avoiding a high score on a hole than of getting a low one.
These three things put a lid on it:
1. Get the ball in the fairway off the tee. If you don’t hit a driver well, leave it at home.
2. Get the ball on the green with your first short game shot. Down in two is great, down in three is O.K., down in four is a big no-no.
3. Sink putts from under four feet. That takes lots of practice, but it’s worth it.
Two Vital Short Game Tips
Short game swings are not abbreviated versions of the full swing. The pitching and chipping strokes are each their own animal.
Two things are common to both of them, though.
Light grip pressure. Slower tempo.
These are finesse shots. You are not banging the ball. You are caressing it.
This is where the short game begins:
Light grip pressure. Slower tempo.
Greg Norman, Digging His Hole Deeper and Deeper
This is going to be a difficult post to write. Not because of what I have to say, but because events will likely overtake it hours after it goes live and I’m not going to keep writing posts to stay with it all.
Greg Norman, the quintessential Australian alpha male, is shooting himself in the foot almost daily and it would be amusing to watch if it weren’t so tragic.
Norman’s latest salvo is in reference to the hit squad that Mohammed bin Salman sent to Istanbul to murder and dismember Jamal Khashoggi for the crime of publishing newspaper articles critical of the Saudi regime in general and MbS in particular.
Norman’s response? “From what I heard and what you guys reported, just take ownership of what it is. Take ownership no matter what it is. Look, we’ve all made mistakes, and you just want to learn from those mistakes and how you can correct them going forward.”
I have made mistakes I my life, but they did not involve murdering somebody.
As if Norman wants MbS to say:
“Oops! I shouldn’t have killed that guy. My bad! I’ll try to do better, O.K.? Now what say we all go grow the game of golf!”
Backpedalling furiously, LIV Golf released this statement:
“The killing of Jamal Khashoggi was reprehensible. Everyone agrees on that, including Greg, as he has said as such previously on many occasions. Greg also knows that golf is a force for good around the world and can help make inroads toward positive change. That is why he is so excited about LIV and that was the point he was making.”
So growing the game of golf in Saudi Arabia will change MbS to a kind, loving, benevolent despot.
Right.
See this article from Al Jazeera about even more stuff that teaching Saudis how to hit every fairway and every green won’t cure.
Greg, at some point you have to stop. We can see what you’re trying to with golf, and we have no argument with it. But you have attached yourself to some of the slimiest people on Earth to help you, and their slime is starting to stick to you.
Not that I care, really.