Do these four things every time you hit the ball, and you’ll have a game.
1. Check your grip visually before every shot.
2. Check your aim before every shot.
3. On every shot, the butt end of the club needs to be moving foward as the clubhead comes into the ball. Even when you putt. Especially when you putt.
4. Swing with rhythm in mind, nothing else.
Driver
24* hybrid
7-iron
56* wedge
Putter
That’s your game, right there.
Most of us know to align our setup on the tee by picking out something on the ground a few feet in front of your ball that is on the ball-to-target line.
You find a nice place to stand, put the ball and tee in the ground, then step back and find that spot.
Wrong.
Find the spot first. Then put the tee in the ground on the target-to-spot line extended. If you try this, I’ll think you will get a surer feeling of being aligned when you take your stance.
There are two kinds of working shots in golf. There are the ones that go straight and get the job done. The others look like they belong in a highight reel, and get the job done.
The first kind are much easier to hit, and as recreational golfers, are the ones we should aspire to.
The second kind pop out every now and then, and they are the memories we take home. But they are not the ones we should chase when we practice.
Good enough is good enough. Once you have that, leave it alone.
Those of us whose age leads off with a 7 might be finding that the swing we used even into our 60’s doesn’t work too well anymore.
We’re not as flexible as we used to be, and our body is not responsive to the demands of the swing we had when we were younger.
We have lost distance, and maybe we don’t hit the ball that well. Never fear. The Recreational Golfer has a solution for you. It’s in the form of a shorter backswing.
If you take the club back no farther than where your leading forearm is parallel to the ground, and rotate everything back through the ball, it will be much easier to meet the ball with the center of the clubface, where distance is born, and to hit the ball straight.
To see what I mean, look at this swing of mine from 2010, which is pretty close to what I’m recommending now. This swing gave me 230 yards off the tee and 142 yards with my 7-iron.
Trust that this is all you need to do. It could be easy to think that with such a short backswing you will have to swing harder and power into the ball. That, of course will ruin everything.
Swing with the same tempo and rhythm you have always used. We’re just giving your body something it can do now, and do well.
Everybody knows that the major influence in hitting a putt along a selected line is the orientation of the clubface. The clubface is square the starting line at address (if you are aimed correctly), and we want to get it back to square when the putter meets the ball during the stroke.
It would also be nice if the putter was travelling along the starting line at contact, and not to the right or left of it.
An easy way to solve both problems is to rest your upper arms lightly against your torso. When you swing the putter, in either direction, let your arms stay in contact, sliding back and forth on your torso.
If your hands do nothing but hold the putter, that is, add nothing of their own to the stroke, the putter has to perform as desired.
Don’t worry, the Rules of Golf allow this. It is your forearms that may not be anchored.
What you do with the club in the first two feet of your backswing makes all the difference between your best shot and your worst.
That is the interval where your clubface can get out of alignment without your noticing it. Open or closed, this is where it happens, and you can’t do a thing about it because you won’t feel it.
Practice this a lot: Take the club away using your normal swing and stop after the clubhead is about two feet away from the ball. Using your arms only, bring the clubhead back to the ball.
If it’s not square, you have something to work on, and it’s simple. Practice taking the club back those two feet so the clubface stays square. Learn what it feels like to do that.
When you play, do this takeaway drill before very shot. Remind yourself of the feeling, because the difference between right and wrong is hard to detect.
With that, and a soft grip pressure, you’re good to go.
“Well, I think I’ll go out to the range and hit some balls.”
How often do you do that and by the end of the bucket are hitting balls better than when you began?
I thought so. Let’s try something different.
What you really mean is that you are going to the range to work on your swing, but you change the focus to hitting golf balls. Stick with your swing.
Put a ball on the ground, or on a tee, but before you hit it, step away from it and do this.
Set up, swing. Set up, swing. Set up, swing. Etc. Not rushing, but with no hesitation between on swing and setting up for the next one. When you finish one swing, put the clubhead on the ground and swing again. Right away.
Pay attention to how a swing feels. Ask yourself, as you go, would this swing given me a good shot?
If no, try to figure out, on the fly, where it needs smoothing out, and fix it on the next swing. If yes, then repeat the feeling of that swing with the next swing.
When you have made a series of satisfying swings in a row, step to the ball and hit it without hesitation.
It might take six or seven swings before you feel that you have one worthy of hitting a ball with.
Getting back to your bucket, say all you did was hit a sixty-ball bucket. Sixty swings. Maybe a practice swing or two in between. 150 swings? And how many were purposeful?
If you practice this new way, you get over 400 swings, each one having a purpose.
Improvement is not about how many balls you hit, but how many good swings you make.
When your hips and your arms are moving forward as you swing through the ball, there might be a tendency to shift your whole body forward. Avoid that tendency, if you have it.
When you shift forward, you shift the bottom point of your swing forward, too. Now your swing and the ball on the ground are in a different conversation.
All you have to do is keep your head from going forward, and that will take care of things. Bobby Jones called it “swinging out from underneath yourself.”
When you swing the club back and consequently up, you might have a tendency to rise up with it. That is, raise your body up a bit.
That gives your swing a new bottoming out point, and you have to go reaching for the ball as you go through impact. This is so easy to do without being aware of it.
Give this a try. Swing back and tell yourself to keep your head where it is. Don’t let it rise up.
If you do that, and it feels odd, then you have habit of rising up in the swing that needs to be broken.
How do you break the habit? Practice swinging without your head rising up.