Trust Your Golf Swing

January 25, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

Trust your swing. You hear that phrase a lot from professional golfers. It means to rely on what you have practiced and play with what you’ve practiced instead of monitoring technical points as you play. That last part is still practice. Practice is over. It’s time to play.

I’ve heard Olympic athletes say that, too. They practice their skill over and over so when it’s time to compete they just do what they practiced. They don’t think about it any more. They just do it.

Recreational golfers, I think, would find this difficult to do. Very few of us (including me) practice enough that our positive habits become so ingrained and that we can rely on them without further reference.

In our game, when we address the ball, we’re often still not sure if this thing is going to work. So we decide to help it along.

There, my friend, is the worst mistake we can make on the golf course. That extra little thing, which is no more than a last-second guess, almost always makes things worse.

You might find instead that your best shots came when, by some lucky accident, your internal voice turned off for a moment and you just swung the club. What you had practiced is what came out and you got a great shot out of it.

When got to the ball for the shot after that one, you started to wonder what you did last time that made that shot so great so you began sorting through technical points, when all that really happened is you just SHUT UP for a change and played golf.

Leave all the technical stuff on the practice tee. On the course, concentrate on getting the ball into the hole.

short game

Transform Your Short Game

January 11, 2015 recgolfer 1 Comment

We don’t hit a lot of greens. If we want to try for our par, or preserve our bogey, we need a reliable short game. This is what I mean by “reliable” in terms of recreational golf: you make good contact every time, control the ball every time, and get the ball on the green every time so you can start putting.

Every recreational golfer can attain that standard. If you do, you will prevent yourself from ringing up strokes needlessly.

There are two ways of improving. One of them is to get good. The other is to stop being bad. Those two are different. This article is about the second one.

I want you to try something and see what happens. Spend some time on the practice tee learning it, then go out the the course and try it out.

Remember that article I posted a few weeks ago on hitting the ball in a flat trajectory and letting the club get the ball in the air?

That’s what I want you to do with every short shot you hit. EVERY short shot.

Whether it’s an 80-yard pitch or a 20-foot chip, hit the ball with a flat trajectory. Let the club get the ball in the air.

I’m not saying to skull it so the ball gets six inches off the ground and runs three miles.

I’m saying to keep the club low to the ground and level with it as you hit through the ball, allowing the clubface to do ALL the work of getting the ball in the air.

What you get from this solves two short game problems. First, you get much cleaner contact. No chunking. A clean, on-the-clubface strike.

Second, you get spin. You’ll have to learn how to work with this, but once you get spin, you can make the ball do anything.

Those two things add up to reliable short game shots. From there, you can start refining your shot-making to zero in on the pin, which is the getting good part.

Bonus: if you get this down in your short game, it will feed over into your long game and you’ll hit better long shots and more greens.

So try it!

rhythm and tempo

Ernie Els, You’re Not

January 5, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

Every golf instructor in the world wants you to swing like Ernie Els. They show you videos of him so you can see what you are aiming for. Watch out, though. His swing is not what it seems.

The main thing you get from watching Els’s swing is his marvelous rhythm. Go ahead and copy that. His swing speed is another matter entirely.

You know, it looks like he has a languid, flowing swing that any of us can imitate. But we also wonder why he hits the ball so far with such a slow swing. News flash: his swing is FAST. It only looks slow because of its efficiency.

Here’s a video from andrewrice.com that puts a clock on his swing. From takeaway to impact, it’s only 1.033 seconds. Let’s call it one second. That’s fast.

If you can get a metronome, set at mm=60 and get it going. Now when you hear a tick, start your swing, and swing the way you normally do. By the time you hear the next tick, the club should have returned to the impact point.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts you were maybe halfway into your downswing when you heard that second tick.

My Legal Department advised me to warn you against trying a one-second swing right now just to see if you can do it. You could hurt yourself. Seriously. So don’t do it!

If you want to hit the ball farther, one of the things you have to do is swing faster. But if you want to pick up your swing speed, you need to do it gradually. This is not a one-week project. More like six months, at least.

When you start swinging faster, it throws your timing off. You have to do the same things, in the same order, in less time. That takes getting used to.

Not to mention, there is a practical limit to your swing speed based on your strength, flexibility, and athleticism.

And finally, you don’t want to swing at your maximum speed anyway. You want to swing at your optimum speed, which is a bit slower.

How do you know what that speed is? It’s the fastest speed at which you can reliably hit the ball on the center of the clubface.

So let Ernie be Ernie. Let you be you. Admire his swing, but remember it’s his swing, not yours.

equipment

What’s In My Bag Update

January 3, 2015 recgolfer 2 Comments

I played nine holes this morning with five clubs: driver, 4i, 7i, 54 wedge, putter.

The only thing that went wrong was on the first hole. I thought I had taken along a 56 wedge. It was a 54 and my pitch on to the green was way overcooked.

Other than that, I shot the same score I usually do and had to hit a few creative shots I don’t otherwise get to hit.

Great fun.

distance, driver

How Far Do You Hit It, Really?

December 22, 2014 recgolfer Leave a comment

We all think we hit it farther than we do. You hear that a lot. Actually, I think each of us has a very good idea of how far we hit it. It’s just not as far as we would like.

This chart tells the approximate truth. If you have a swing speed with your driver of 95 mph, which is high for the majority of recreational golfers, you will carry the ball 210 yards. With adequate roll, you can get about 225 yards out of that shot.

Now roll is highly variable. Have you ever seen an aerial shot of a Tour event and there’s a shot of a drive that falls straight out of the sky and maybe gets two yards of roll?

But, it was hit in the air a ton. Recreational golfers don’t hit those kinds of shots. Ours go lower and roll more.

So don’t kid yourself. If you are an average recreational golfer and you hit your driver 200 yards in the air, that’s a good shot. Add on maybe 15-20 yards of roll and you can play with that length.

Want to hit it farther? Assuming you hit the ball on the center of the clubface regularly (and that’s a big assumption) you’ll hit it farther by swinging faster AND maintaining good tempo.

A more lofted driver might help, too, but that’s another post.

golf swing

Build Your Swing Around Your Wedges II

December 15, 2014 recgolfer 2 Comments

[Revised July 7, 2019.]

A few years ago I started advising anyone who would listen that this is the way to build a competent, consistent golf swing: hit wedges, lots of wedges. Take the club back halfway, swing through to a full finish.

This is my second post on the subject, hence the quantifier in the title. But the notion is so important that I don’t want to let it be one and done because you might never find that first post. So I’m posting the idea again.

Actually, I should post it every other week, it’s that important, but that probably would create a different impression in your mind than emphasis, so I won’t.

There are four reasons why this is such an important practice.

1. You learn how the timing of your swing works–how all the parts work in the right order and what it feels like when they do.

2. You learn to relate distance to tempo rather than effort.

3. You learn how to hit the ball on the center of the clubface. Your score is directly related to how often you do this.

What you learn with your wedge applies to every other club in the bag. And because it is so easy to hit the wedge, you will transfer that feeling of ease to every other club and hit shots with them just as confidently as you do with the wedge.

Here’s how to do it. First, set aside twelve balls out of your bucket. Take out your sand wedge. Make four practice swings. Swing halfway going back, and follow through to a full finish. After the four such swings, pull a ball forward hit it, using the same swing you made those four times. Go through the entire rest of the bucket in this way.

Do not rush the practice swings. Take a few seconds after each one to absorb the feeling of what you just did. You’re training your mind, and that won’t happen if you don’t give it a chance to soak in what it just did.

When you have emptied your bucket, take those ten of the balls you set aside and go through your bag, hitting each club, going from pitching wedge to driver, one swing each, a full swing, with the same timing and tempo that you used with all those sand wedges you hit. During this drill you will realize the fourth very important point:

4. You swing your driver just like you do your 9-iron, and you swing your 9-iron just like you do your driver. Ditto for every club in between.

You have two balls left. End the session by going back to the start: four half-swings with a sand wedge, hit one ball. Repeat.

golf swing

The Concept of the Golf Swing

December 1, 2014 recgolfer Leave a comment

I’m writing this post for the better golfers among my readers, the ones who shoot in the low 80s and high 70s. While it is true that lowering your score from here depends on improving your short game and putting, don’t think that you are finished with your swing just yet.

Up to this point you have likely thought that the purpose of the swing has been to hit the ball. Your swing starts at the ball and ends when the ball is struck.

Thinking like that keeps you stuck in technical details that makes you swing not fully reliable. While you hit a large number of good shots, you aren’t really sure beforehand that you’re going to hit one.

You might be thinking that one more tip that will pull everything together. What you need instead is a new conception of the swing.

The golf swing is built on mechanics and the ones that you have put together to build your swing may not be ignored. But the point of learning the swing is to play golf. And you play your best golf not by doing what it takes to hit the ball, but by doing what it takes to swing through to the finish.

You might have heard a professional golfer say that he just swings and the ball gets in the way. That’s correct, but let’s go deeper than that.

When a top-rank golfer stands over the ball, he feels the feeling of a good shot. He already knows how it should feel and his body responds to that feeling. Other golfers have no such feeling ahead of time which is why their good shots come as such a surprise.

A good golfer plays the shot based on his feeling of a good golf shot and plays through to the finish. The lesser golfer plays the shot based on his knowledge of good technique.

All this, again, begins with the setup. The right setup allows correct movements to occur and prevents the wrong ones. But more than that, it creates the feel of a good shot, which is what the player uses to play the game.

So if you have gotten to single-digit golf but seem to be stuck, it might well be that your technique is sufficient. What you need to do next is to adopt a different conception of what you’re doing when you approach the ball.

These ideas come from the book On Learning Golf, by Percy Boomer. It is likely the most valuable golf instruction book ever written.

golf swing, mental game

The Ball Makes No Difference

November 24, 2014 recgolfer Leave a comment

I played golf with my grandson (15) yesterday. He is getting the hang of things, hitting the ball long and straight on occasion. Much of the time, though, he hits it fat — ground first, ball second — the opposite of what is supposed to happen. So I did a bit of looking.

Note: he plays left-handed, so this analysis will read backwards for most of you.

I stood behind him and held up a golf club in front of me so it bisected his body vertically as he got into his address position for a rehearsal swing. He shifted a little bit to the left of the golf shaft on the backswing, and handsomely to the right of it on his follow-through. His clubhead brushed the ground just like it should. So far, so good.

I watched again when he stepped up to the ball. Same thing on the backswing, but on the through swing and follow-through, he didn’t move at all. When he finished his swing, his body was still bisecting the shaft, proving that his weight had remained on his left side.

In addition, his swing slowed down a bit. Not much, but enough to be noticeable.

What this means to me that his mind was on the ball. Now there is something for his club to hit, everything changes. He wants to be sure he doesn’t miss it, and that’s what he ends up doing.

Like I said before, there are times when he hits a beautiful-sounding shot that goes long and straight, and you can’t do that by luck alone.

A lot of things go through a golfer’s mind, and on the occasions when nothing much does, we succeed.

But when we think the purpose of the golf swing is to hit the ball, it all falls apart. When we try to get the ball in the air, we don’t. When we try to make sure of contact, we mishit or miss altogether.

There is nothing about having a ball in front of you that should change anything you do with your golf swing.

Yet only the very best players, the low single-digit handicappers and better, manage to play like that. The rest of us remain ball-bound.

There are two cures for this. My grandson applied one on the eighth hole, which slopes upward to the green. With the ball on an upslope, you do not want to swing along the upslope, but swing into the hill. I showed him the difference and he did just that.

The result was him hitting the ball first, the ground second, and he got the cleanest strike of the day and the most powerful, straight shot out of it. Now just do that on flat ground and he’s got it.

The second cure is more difficult, because it has to do with your mind. You need a new conception of the golf swing. You can only get so good by thinking that the swing is about hitting the golf ball, and it will take you along time to get there if you do.

The correct conception is based on the feel of a good golf shot. The best players know before they step up to the ball how it all should feel. Lesser players become aware of the feeling after the shot has been made.

You can start playing this way right now if you want to. There is no rule that says you have to be a 5 before you do. Here’s how to do it: instead of your technique leading up to impact, it should lead you to a satisfying follow-through.

commentary

Tiger Woods, Media Critic

November 19, 2014 recgolfer Leave a comment

Well, just when golf is getting non-existent at the recreational level (see: weather) and boring at the professional level, Tiger comes to our rescue, as we always hope he will.

This time, it’s his prickly (putting it mildly) response to Dan Jenkins’s mock interview with Woods that is on the newsstands in the December edition of Golf Digest.

Jenkins is a serious golf writer whose side job is as a devastating satirist of the sports world. All Jenkins did is (a) ask Woods a few questions, questions we would like to ask Tiger ourselves, and since Tiger wasn’t there to answer the questions, (b) made up Tiger’s answers.

These answers are not, of course, what Tiger would have said had he actually been asked the questions, but they are the real answers to the questions.

Which upsets Tiger greatly. Mark Steinberg, too, but more on him later.

I think it’s a really funny interview, and any other subject would too. But not Tiger. The Woods image, or what is left of it, is sacrosanct and is not to be trifled with without his permission.

But Jenkins went ahead anyway, the little imp.

Now assuming you paused at the top of this post to read the interview (go ahead, the link’s right there, I can wait), please tell me what is off? What doesn’t hit home?

About the only thing we don’t know is for real is the comment about what a lousy tipper Woods is. But if that’s it, what is all the fuss?

Like Woods writing a 600-word invective (OK, I just assumed Tiger wrote it). In a moment of great irony, Woods said “the concocted article was below the belt.”

Below the belt, yeah, but it wasn’t Jenkins’s article that was below the belt. It was you and Rachel Uchitel, Jaimee Grubbs, Jamie Jungers, Mindy Lawton, oh, you get the point.

Like Steinberg, his agent, releasing a letter complaining about the abysmal journalistic standards GD sunk to by printing the “interview” and demanding a formal apology.

Good grief. Woods and Steinberg still think when they say “Jump,” people are still saying “How high?” All that was over in November 2009.

You know the irony of all this, that Woods and Steinberg are just too self-righteous and opaque to get? That if they had ignored it, there would have been no controversy and in two weeks the interview would have been lost to history.

But just like Jennifer Lawrence, who made a stink about the nudes of her being published online so everyone would know they could be found and went to stare at them for an hour, while the other three women who also had nudes posted of them by the same hacker and said nothing and I’ll bet you don’t even know what their names are, W&S elevated Jenkins’s work to the front pages. They did his PR work for him!

Talk about a pair of boobs.

Tiger Woods. I just love this guy. He so doesn’t get it. He’s grist for every writer’s mill.

equipment

The Importance of Lie Angle

November 17, 2014 recgolfer 1 Comment

The golf club’s shaft runs down to the hosel, which takes off at an angle to the clubhead. That angle, called the lie angle, contributes to the direction the ball goes when you hit it, and more.

Golf club manufacturers build standard lie angles into their mass-produced clubs. There’s a good chance the standard lie angles do not fit your physique and swing, just like a suit off the rack in your size fits sort of, but not quite right. Just like you would get that suit tailored, part of a club fitting is getting the lie angle right.

Here’s why lie angle is important. If your clubs are too upright (the lie angle is too large), the club will be tilted toward you at impact, causing the clubface to face to the left of its address position, and the ball will go left. Conversely, if your lie angle is too small, the lie is too flat and you will tend to hit the ball to the right. (See drawing)

The more lofted the club, the more pronounced this effect is.

In addition, a club with the wrong lie angle will tend to strike the ball with a glancing blow. That will cause you to lose distance, the ball will fly lower and have less backspin, and the strike will never feel solid.

There’s an easy way to check whether the lie angle on your clubs is right for you. Get a Sharpie with a wide tip and draw a line on the ball. Put the ball down so the line is perfectly vertical and against the clubface when you address the ball. Now go ahead and hit the ball.

If the lie angle is correct, you will have a vertical stripe of ink on your clubface. If the lie is too upright, the stripe will lean toward the toe. Too flat, toward the heel. If there’s something wrong, get it corrected. This is a simple adjustment on a loft and lie machine.

The reason you want to get wrong lie angles corrected is that if you don’t, you have to introduce a compensation into your swing to make the ball go straight. It’s a lot easier to fix the club than to adjust your swing.

Get the lie angle on your irons checked every year if you play a lot of golf. Repeated impact against the ground can cause this angle to change.

You can use the theory of lie angles to help you play a shot from a sidehill lie. Imagine the ball being above your feet. When you address the ball, the bank raises the toe of the club, making the clubface point left of the swing path. So, aim right to compensate.

The opposite is true when the ball is below your feet. The clubface is now facing to the right, so aim the shot to the left of your target.

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