beginners

Advice to Beginning Golfers

2 Comments

If you are starting to play golf, I would advise you in these ways.

1. Get lessons. This game is really hard. A pro can teach you in a half hour what it would take you months, maybe years, to figure out on your own.

2. Learn the game from the hole out, one phase at a time. Learn to putt, and get good at it. (By “learn” I mean get lessons and practice a lot what you were taught.) Then learn chipping, those little shots around the green, and get good at those. Then pitching, shots from 30-80 yards from the green. Finally, the swing. By all means play, but focus your learning. All this might take a year to a year and a half to absorb.

3. Golf is a game of feel. Almost all of it takes place outside your vison, so when you learn what the right movements are, you have to learn what they feel like. You also have to learn what the wrong movements feel like, so when you find yourself doing them, you’re aware of what the mistake is.

4. The ground makes the game difficult to play because it gets in the way of any but the most precise stroke. While you’re learning, tee up the ball for every shot over 30 yards from the green. Tee it up just enough so the ball is off the ground–maybe a quarter inch. Once you have begun to hit the ball cleanly on a regular basis, you can stop doing this.

putting

Putt Quickly

Leave a comment

The less time you take with a putt, the more likely you are to hit a good one. Try it this way.

Stand behind the ball and read the putt quickly (how to do that is another post). Stop when you see the line. Don’t worry about speed. That is subconsciously built into finding the line.

Now find a spot on the starting line about three inches or less in front of the ball.

Step up to the ball and square up your putter to that line.

Get in your stance.

Take one more look at the hole, then back at the ball, and go–no waiting for the Muse to strike. Hit the ball right over your spot.

All this should take less than fifteen seconds.

golf swing

Keeping the Clubface Square

Leave a comment

Keeping the clubface square depends a lot on your particular swing, so I can’t provide a complete and universal solution to the problem.

I can identify four places where you can get the clubface out of square that do apply, regardless of how you swing the club.

Grip. Use the grip that conforms to how your forearms are structured. See A Basic Golf Swing. If your grip isn’t right, nothing else matters.

Takeaway. The first foot you move your hands away from address is a danger zone, where it is so easy to get your clubface out of square that you will never notice you have done it. You think it must be happening somewhere late in the backswing, but it happened at the very start. If you get your clubface out of square consistently, check that it might be happening here.

Transition. When you start the club back down to the ball, if you try to hit with your hands from from up there, an easy mistake to make, there goes the clubface.

Just before impact. The urge to hit the ball, instead of swinging through it, makes you barrel into the ball with your right hand (left hand, for lefties). There goes the clubface.

putting

Take the Hit Out of Your Putting Stroke

Leave a comment

Take the “hit” out of your stroke by imagining the ball is transparent to the putter such that it will go right through the ball to strike it first on the side closest to the hole (yellow dot).

Taking out the hit smooths out your stroke, making it more reliable.

At the time you would brace for that little hit, it has already occurred. (And if you think you don’t brace for the hit, think again. You do.)

rhythm and tempo

The Right Tempo For Your Golf Swing

Leave a comment

Your golf swing’s tempo, or, the overall speed of the swing, is the glue that holds the swing together. Often what you think is a swing problem is a tempo problem.

Most golfers know that swinging to fast is a bad idea. But so is swinging too slow.

If you swing too fast, your swing doesn’t get a chance to develop. You rush through movments before they have a chance to work.

Swinging to slow creates a different problem. It gives your swing the chance to get out of position, to let your swing wander.

The only way to find your right tempo is to pay attention to impact and ball flight. At the right tempo, you’ll be hitting the ball in the center of the clubface, and not fat or thin. You will get nice-looking shots out of it.

Play around with this. Getting it right can be a revalation.

driver

How to Practice Your Driver

Leave a comment

The driver should be an easy club to hit. The ball sits up on a tee and the clubface is huge. You’re almost standing upright when you swing.

Yet it’s the club golfers have the least success with. Here’s how to change that.

Take a driver and a 9-iron to the range. Warm up with the 9. When you’re hitting them well, one after the other, put it down and pick up your driver. Swing your driver with a little bit of 9-iron in it.

After a few of those, go back to the 9-iron and put a bit of driver into it.

Keep going back and forth, bringing one club into the other, until you are using the same swing for both clubs.

That’s how you practice your driver. It’s the same swing as your 9-iron, just with you standing more upright.

BTW, all your other clubs are like that, too.

putting

The Key to Approach Putting

Leave a comment

When you hit an approach putt, you create a sort of stretched feeling on your lower back, because you are swinging your arms, but not turning your torso.

There are two things to notice about this stretched feeling. For any given length of approach putt, the stretched feeling will always be felt at the same place on your lower back.

Also, the stretched feeling for shorter approach putts gets felt on the right side of your lower back, and as the length of putt, and hence length of the putting stroke, increases, the stretched feeling migrates leftward across your lower back.

Please note that this is true only if the sole distance generator for an approach putt is the length of the putting stroke. That is, you do not add on any “hit” with your hands.

Consistently hitting putts on the same place on the putter’s face and using the same tempo in your stroke are important, too.

Spend some time on the practice green putting the ball with the stretched feeling in different places to see how far it goes each different time, and remember those location-distance relationships.

They allow you to relate the length of an approach putt to a known physical feeling instead of entrusting distance control to something vague called “feel.”

In a short time, you should start leaving approach putts close to the hole, and wave goodbye to three-putt greens.

See also: Leave Approach Putts Next to the Hole

putting

A Smooth Start to Your Putting Stroke

Leave a comment

Resting the putter on the ground at address means you have to lift it slightly when you make your stroke. That can cause a disturubance that throws off your stroke by enough for you to miss the putt.

Instead, address the ball so the sole barely grazes the grass and the weight of the club is already in your hands. This makes it easy to start the club back smoothly and calmly.

golf swing, video tip

My Golf Swing Reference Video

2 Comments

This is a video of my golf swing, taken in 2010 when I was playing 9-handicap golf. I watch it regularly to remind myself of what my personal swing is, because like so many golfers I drift occasionally, and I need to know where to get back to. Best to watch it with the sound turned off.

These are the things that define this swing for me.

First comes swing speed. This swing takes about 1:18 seconds from takeaway to impact. That’s not very fast, but this is the speed that makes sense to me while holding the swing together.

At the end of the backswing my shoulders have turned less than 90°. I could turn them more, but my swing sense says this is far enough. At the start of the forward swing, my hips do not turn ahead of my arms. Everything turns together.

Both of these are back-saving moves. I had back surgery in 1971, so I needed to have a swing that put the least stress on my lower back. I had two more in 2012 so the need now is even greater.

My head turns but does not move from side to side. This is a point of disagreement. Some teachers and pros say it is alright to let it move back in the backswing, while others say keep it in place. While both methods work, what I do is what feels right to me. I also get one less moving part to maintain.

Notice the rhythm of the swing. This is important. There is no pause in the middle. The first half of the swing flows neatly into the second half as if it were all just one movement, which I feel that the golf swing is.

There are other things that a swing analyst could comment on, but the only things that matter to me in re-creating this swing are what I explained above.

Do something like this for your swing. Make a video of it when you’re playing well. It will be the biggest favor you ever did for your golfing self because believe me, one day you will be glad you have it to look at.

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