golf swing, playing the game, putting, short game

My Conception of Golf Technique

Leave a comment

Over the years I have sprinkled certain themes throughout my posts. I say them over and over because they work—not only for me, but for everybody.

To save you the trouble of searching for what you might not know is even there, here it all is. This post summarizes my thoughts. If you do all these things (and there aren’t many) you will play better golf.

The Swing

Control your tempo by starting the club forward at the same speed with which you brought it up.

Do not let the suspension point move.

Your hands must lead the clubhead into the ball. Accomplish this by feeling the butt end of the handle moving leftward from the start of the forward swing through impact.

Short Game

With a chip and a pitch, think of sliding the sole of the club underneath the ball. Do not hit down on the ball.

With a chip, use one swing and several clubs to regulate distance.

With a pitch, use two or three lengths of swing (your choice) and several clubs to regulate distance.

Putting

Hit the ball on the sweet spot of the putterface.

Let the length of the backswing be the sole distance generator.

Technique is less important than mentally bearing down the hole.

people

Dan Jenkins, 1928-2019

Leave a comment

Renowned golf writer and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame (2012) Dan Jenkins passed away on March 7 at the age of 89.

Read his obituary in the New York Times and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

And this tribute from Golf World.

Read also his hilarious “interview” with Tiger Woods which the then imperial personality did not find to be amusing. Be sure to listen to his monologue below the end of the article.

Jenkins’s novel, Semi-Tough, about pro football, was made into a movie starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, and Jill Clayburgh.

Another of his novels, Dead Solid Perfect, about professional golf, was filmed as well, starring Randy Quaid and Kathryn Harrold.

And finally, read his account of the stroke-play qualifying for the Greatest of All Time Invitational, played starting March 20 at the Augusta National Golf Club. It’s in the April 2109 Golf Digest, with Jordan Spieth on the cover. The article is likely Jenkins’s final piece of golf writing. It will leave you in stitches. What a gift to leave to us.

shot-making

Shaping Your Golf Shots

Leave a comment

I’ve written several times on how to hit fades and draws, and this one is probably my best post on the subject.

There are other ways to get this done, though, and you should be acquainted with a few of them. The ones I am going to talk about today involve the hands.

Let’s review the problem to be solved. To fade, the clubface must be open to the swing path. To draw, the clubface must be closed to the swing path.

Here are several ways to get that done with your hands alone.

When you set up, your right palm (left palm for left-handed golfers) faces a certain direction, and you can feel the orientation of that palm against the club and in relation to the other hand. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

When you take the club back and through and that feeling of orientation doesn’t change, you will hit a straight shot, all things being equal.

To hit a draw, feel like your palm has turned toward the other hand just a little bit as you bring the club into impact. That “just a little bit” part is important. Don’t overdo it.

To hit a fade, do the opposite. Feel as if the right palm has turned away from from the other hand and you come into the ball.

Note: this does not mean the hands have gotten closer together or separated. They stay as united as they were at address.

If you have feeling of the palm having moved, you will get it right. If you actually move the palm, you will overdo it and hit a slice or a hook, which you don’t want.

Another way to get this done is by altering the orientation of your hands during the takeaway.

When you take the club away, your forearms naturally rotate. Retard the rotation slightly and the clubface closes. Over-rotate slightly from normal and the clubface opens.

From there, hold that orientation throughout the backswing and forward into the ball.

A third way is a different way of looking at the first way. To draw, turn your right palm down as the club comes into the ball. To fade, turn the right palm upward.

A fourth way is entirely mental and relies on giving your unconscious mind instructions and then staying out of its way as it tells your body what to do.

If you look at your hands as they approach impact, the right palm faces somewhat upward, squares up at impact, and appears to turn and face downward following through. It is as if your hands are rotating. They aren’t, though. It’s the forearms that are rotating, but you get the idea.

To fade, think about delaying the rotation until a touch after impact. That will leave the clubface open at impact. To draw, think about rotating a tiny bit early. The clubface will then be closed at impact.

A fifth way is to swing back normally, and on the forward swing, to fade, think of the heel of the clubhead leading the clubface into the ball. To draw, think of the toe of the clubhead leading the clubface into the ball.

These thoughts will be felt in a subtle movement of the right hand of which there is no need to control deliberately. The shift will happen by itself and hopefully give you a controllable amount of curve.

Five ways to think about working the ball. Five ways of saying the same thing, probably. Pick one and work on it.

The benefit of these methods is that you can use the same setup and the same swing and still be able to move the ball. The more things you do that are the same, the easier golf is.

But to do something different with the ball, you have to change something that you do, which means you have to practice until you own that change.

putting

An Anchored Putting Revival

Leave a comment

Those of my readers who have been around for a few years remember my displeasure with the anchored putting ban. Search the tag “anchored putting” to read about that. There’s no point here in going over plowed ground.

You can still anchor your stroke, though, and I do it to great effect. I was doing it long before the ban. I putted then, and now, really well with it, and it is the foundation of my putting stroke.

What I do is bring my upper arms in contact with the sides of my torso. Light contact, not pressing. Pressing would make it almost impossible to move the putter. Just light contact so the upper arms stay in contact with the torso the whole time–slide over it, if you will.

That’s how I anchor my stroke. If my upper arms ride free in the air, they can go places they shouldn’t go to. By letting them slide freely in contact with my immovable body, they are guided along a predictable path consistently.

Combine that with a putting grip that does not allow my hands to wander, and I have the greater part of the stroke pretty well taken care of.

This anchoring gives me a mental boost, too. It creates a feeling of security that prevents any worry about moving the club from creeping in. I can concentrate on the only thing that is important–the ball going into the hole.

Anchoring works, or the USGA wouldn’t have outlawed it. This way of anchoring works, too, and it is legal.

For now.

golf swing

A Few Words About Lag

1 Comment

I was talking with my son last week about golf and his problem hitting the ball straight.

My son said he could hit the ball straight sometimes, but too often hit a huge banana slice, and the conversation went from there straight into talking about lag.

Lag is the Holy Grail of recreational golf. The more the better. Get that clubhead way behind you and whip it into the ball and your tee shot will go for miles.

I’m a right-to-left player, and when I hit a huge slice it’s because I forget myself and do what I just described. Only when I do it, my body gets way ahead of my hands and arms and the clubhead gets left too far behind. It has no chance to square up and comes into the ball wide open. Hello, adjoining fairway.

You see, when you TRY to create lag, creating it artificially, bad things can happen.

Lag is created by the hinging of your wrists, and the flexibility of your wrists in the process.

You want all the lag you can get at the top of the backswing, and maybe starting down. But once your hands get to about hip height on the way into the ball, the lag starts disappearing NATURALLY and the hands lead the clubhead by a few inches.

Trying to hold on to your lag for too long doesn’t work.

Many of today’s touring pros have with their body way out in front at impact, but they get away with it, because they don’t out-swing their arms. We’re not them and we can’t get away with it.

Forget about lag. Just pretend you never heard the word. If you hit the ball with the hands leading the clubhead in the way this drill teaches you , you will have all the lag you need and can use.

health

The Latest on Your Back and Golf

Leave a comment

Last week a new paper was published describing the effects of the modern golf swing on the lumbar spine. The effects are not good.

The article states that professional golfers generate “about 7500 N compressive on the spine during the downswing.” One N (newton) is the amount of force needed to move one kilogram at an acceleration of one meter per second per second.

No one’s back is designed to stand up to 7500 of those.

Then the article takes on the X-factor, without mentioning Jim McLean. But I will. The greater the angle between the hip line and the shoulder line at the end of the backswing, the more power can be generated on the downswing.

However, this position sets up the golfer to deliver a huge load of lateral bending and torsional axial moments (twisting of the spine) right before impact.

More distance = more back damage. Thanks, Jim.

Exercising the core muscles, and muscles in the back that support the spine, which golfers are told to do, do not help matters. Stronger muscles create stronger swings, which place more force on the spine, not less.

If you read the article, which you should absolutely do, there are some technical terms in it. This little glossary should help with a few of them.

acromion – a bony process (portrusion) on the shoulder blade that hooks over the front to make a joint with the collar bone.

facet joint – joints that allow vertebrae to slide over each other when the back goes through various movements.

spinal erector muscles – a set of long muscles that surround the spine and govern certain movements of the back. When these muscles are engaged they exert longitudinal compression on the spine which raises intradiscal pressure.

disc annulus – the outer portion of the pulpy mass between the bony vertebral bodies.

So. What does this mean for you?

First of all, study Justin Thomas’s swing carefully. Then do not do what he does. He is a case study of the scary swing identified in this article.

Second, remember that the pros need all the distance they can get to be competitive. You don’t if you play from the appropriate tees.

Again, though the X-factor that Jim McLean identified might well be true in terms of hitting the ball farther, it is murder on a golfer’s back. Don’t go there. Don’t force your backswing. Get your distance from hitting the ball on the center of the clubface.

Fourth, do the things I mentioned in this post about building a back-friendly golf swing.

short game

Roll the Ball To the Hole

Leave a comment

Seven years ago to this day, I was in my living room in a hospital bed we had rented for me to stay in following back surgery I had had two days earlier. Since I wasn’t going anywhere soon, I watched a lot of television.

I watched all the Dollar westerns, and Once Upon a Time In the West.

I also watched a lot of golf, including the Waste Management Open, the very one being played this weekend. All four rounds.

When you have nothing else you can do but watch, you can’t get up and wander into the kitchen to get a snack, for example, you really watch.

This is what I saw.

Whenever a player played a chip or a short pitch, they ROLLED the ball up to the hole. There was no flying the ball up the hole and making it stop on a dime.

Now that’s a spectacular shot, and it has its place, but it rarely ever gets done what a touring pro wants to get done—put the ball in the hole.

You see, the pros aren’t trying to get these shots close. They’re trying to sink them. It’s a rolling ball that will go in.

I had never noticed that until I saw a steady diet of it over four days.

The next weekend I was still housebound and I saw it again at the next tournament, the AT&T at Pebble Beach.

Roll the ball to the hole, don’t fly it there.

So when I was able to get up and around, but not able to swing a golf club, I had a lesson on chipping. From the ground up, learning how to roll the ball.

That, and lots of practice, changed me from an indifferent chipper into a very good chipper. Chipping is one of the strengths of my game.

So when you practice around the green, if you’re not doing so already, practice that way. Roll it.

Saudi tour

The Saudi International

Leave a comment

The Saudi International Golf Tournament starts later this week in Saudi Arabia, sponsored by a government that:

Murdered and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, an act, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, that with “high confidence,” was carried out with the approval of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“High confidence” is term a intelligence agencies use to say, “We’re certain of this, but we don’t like to say certain. But we’re certain.”

Is prosecuting a proxy war in Yemen that is needlessly creating a major humanitarian crisis, the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni citizens.

Arrests, tortures, gives excessive prison sentences to, and even executes political dissidents.

Kidnapped the Lebanese Prime Minister in 2017.

Exfiltrates from the U.S., Saudi nationals studying in Oregon, arrested and facing criminal charges, flouting U. S. laws.

Yet, these golfers are signed up to play: Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Brooks Koepka, Henrik Stenson, and Bryson DeChambeau. You can see the full field here.

Rose commented, “I’m not a politician.”

Johnson commented, “Unfortunately, it’s in a part of the world where most people don’t agree with what happened, and I definitely don’t support anything like that.”

Most people would not agree with all this, Dustin? Most people? How about anyone in their right mind?

Sorry, guys, this isn’t about politics or what you don’t agree with or support.

Politics is about what federal income tax rates should be, or whether a wall should be built along our southern border. You can agree or disagree, support or not.

What’s happening in Saudi Arabia is different, It’s criminal. It is the crime of the state against individuals, and in the cases of Khashoggi and the Oregon exfiltrations, crimes against the concept of international sovereignty as well.

Mohammed bin Salman is a young man drunk on his own power, not only turning his country into a toxic state, but exporting its terror beyond its borders.

THAT is why playing in the Saudi International is a mistake that the participants have no good answer for.

I don’t expect professional gofers to be experts on current affairs or international relations.

I do expect them to be able to see outrageous behavior clearly and respond appropriately.

The money they say they are playing for?

In the fall of 2018 the Saudis sponsored a conference of world business leaders called the Future Investment Initiative. Following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, these companies and individuals pulled out (not a complete list):

Uber
Fox Business Network
JP Morgan Chase
Blackstone Investment
AOL
Y Combinator
Google
Viacom
NY Times
LA Times
CNN
BlackRock
Ford Motor
The Financial Times
Bloomberg
Siemens
MasterCard
British Trade Secretary Liam Fox
PNB Paribas
Credit Suisse
HSBC
Standard Chartered
Société Générale
The Economist
CNBC
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim

These are business that stood to make LOTS of money in Saudi Arabia, and they washed their hands of partnerships for the time being.

But there’s money to be had, so golfers are going. Tell me, how much money is Jamal Khashoggi’s life worth to you?

You guys stand to make more money in one week than the vast majority of people in the world will make in their lifetime, yet you want more.

If what the Saudis are doing is not where you would draw the line, then where is it?

I would also ask, could the winning golfer, in good conscience, stand next to the Crown Prince for a photo at the end of the tournament? Would he really not know what stain that would place on his public image?

putting

Leave the Flagstck In or Take It Out?

2 Comments

The latest sideshow on the PGA Tour is watching the greatest golfers in the world play like they never heard there were any rules changes, and then saying how hard it is to remember to drop from knee-height instead of shoulder height.

Rocket scientists, they ain’t, apparently.

But rule causing the most discussion is the repeal of the two-stroke penalty for hitting the flagstick with a ball putted from the green.

That penalty was adopted in 1968. I started playing in about 1960, when you could leave the pin in, and no one seemed to mind. If you have access to old All-Star Golf videos you can see pros putting while the pin is still in and not being tended. I can’t find the reason why the rule was changed in 1968, but it’s history now.

The USGA alleges that keeping the pin in can speed up play. I would agree with that to some extent. When I play a solo round, I never take the pin out. It speeds up play considerably by not having to walk up to the pin, take it out, lay it (not drop it!) on the green, and walk back to my ball to hit my approach putt.

It’s true that for long approach putts, you get a better sense of how far away the hole is, but you got the same sense in the “old” days by having someone tend the pin. It’s just now you don’t have to take the time to ask. Just putt.

In a foursome, though, what if some players want the pin left in and others want it taken out? Catering to each player’s desires, which they have every right to insist on, could end up taking MORE time when putts get shorter.

As far as scoring goes, leaving the pin in helps you considerably in two ways.

First, it gives you something positive to aim at. Aiming at a hole is trying to hit something that isn’t there. In Better Recreational Golf, I discuss this point on pages 54-55.

Second, the pin acts as a backstop. This is where the controversy lies.

Recently, Edoardo Molinari, brother of 2019 British Open champion Francesco Molinari, did a series of experiments testing the effect of the pin on putts of different lengths and different speeds. His answer is, it depends.

As you might imagine, Dave Pelz also weighed in. He thinks you should always leave the pin in when you putt.

I agree with Pelz, mainly because my putts don’t approach the hole like a freight train. Any putt of mine that hits the pin will go in, not bounce away.

At what distance to the hole does it become silly to leave the pin in? I don’t think three feet is too close, especially if the putt is a downhill breaker. Again, having something positive to aim at makes a bigger difference than you might expect.

What I would suggest is to leave the little pin in the hole on the practice green and find out for yourself if you benefit or not.

Finally, if you play with someone who is a real stickler for leaving the pin in, and you think it’s being carried too far, show some respect and go along with it. It’s their golf, it’s how they want to play within the rules. What we really want to get out of golf is having fun with friends and making everyone glad that we played with them. Right?

[Update] See this site for some solid data on the subject–the verdict is, leave it in.

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