A few weeks before Christmas, Santa said, “Bob, I’m going to bring you a Leupold GX-1* rangefinder for Christmas, but I’m pretty busy right now. Can take care of that for me? Wrap it, put my name on it? Thanks a bunch.”
Thank you, Santa.
If you’re looking for a distance-measuring device, this is the one to get.
*No longer manufactured. Click link to see current models.
I’m slowly getting back into my swing after my surgeries earlier this year. My pro and I have developed a healthier swing, which I spent a few months learning. Now I am putting it into my game, one club at a time.
I started with a 9-iron and worked with it exclusively for about three weeks until I got consistent (-ly good) results with it. Then I started easing in the 8-iron. It has taken about ten days for that club to come up to speed, so later this week I will introduce my 7-iron to the practice plan.
I might help you to try the same thing in the next few months. Start with your 9-iron and keep at it until at least three out of five shots are exactly like you want them to be. Then keep hitting the 9, but hit a few balls here and there with the 8 — just one or two, then go back to the 9. Ease the 8 into your practice until it is performing like the 9, then you can introduce the 7.
By getting reacquainted with the clubs in your bag this way, one club at a time, slowly, and only when you’re ready, you’ll improve your swing by quite a bit.
What we normally do during the golf season is spend time at the range hitting the clubs we want to hit, or trying to fix problems. Do yourself a favor by starting over. Learn to hit an easy one well. Then take the one next to it and learn to hit that one well. And so on.
It wouldn’t hurt to suspend playing until this exercise is over. It night take a few weeks with each club at first, but once you get the hang of how to make transitions, it will proceed more quickly.
Just because you woke up today doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods.
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Everyone wants more distance, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t get it. Here are two simple ways to add a few more yards to every full shot.
1. Get your rhythm right. Last week’s post on the subject tells you how to do that.
2. Lighten up your grip pressure. There’s no need to squeeze the club. How hard do you hold when you shake hands with a child? Or how tightly would you hold a pretty woman?*
That’s how hard you should hold the club, and try to keep it that light all the way through the swing. Holding too tightly makes your muscles work against you, slowing down the swing.
*My wife says I hold her like a golf club.
A few days ago, I found this comment on an Internet golf forum: Slow down your swing and learn to live with the extra distance you get.
Exactly.
Whenever I’m at the range and I get into a patch of poor ball-striking, the first thing I do is slow down my swing. Most of the time that is all it takes to get back on track. I do the same thing after a couple of bad shots in a row on the course, too.
I hit straight again, and the ball jumps off the clubface and flies out to the full distance I expect from that club, with what seems like no effort at all.
Now I grant you that clubhead speed contributes to distance. You can’t chip the ball with a 7-iron as far as you hit it when you swing. But. . .
What is far more important to getting the distance you want, and the accuracy, is square, centered, in-line contact. You might be surprised how far you can hit the ball with just a half swing when all those factors are lined up.
Or let’s look at it from the other end. I was at the range with my son a few years ago, trying to show him why he needn’t swing so hard. I took out a mid-iron and swung as fast as I could without falling down.
Then I hit another ball using my usual swing speed. The second ball landed less than five yards short of the first ball. All that effort for just a few extra yards and the risk of a poorer shot.
There is just no percentage in swinging hard. You do want to hit hard, but that happens when you have the clubface all lined up at impact. You give yourself a much greater chance of that happening when you swing smoothly, which means slower.
Here’s one way to figure that out. When you’re on the range, assume that your task it hit one thousand golf balls without taking any big breaks. You would having to be saving your energy on every swing in order to get that done.
On the course, same thing. Assume you’re going to play 72 holes today. If you swing for the fences every time, you’ll never make it. You need to figure out how relaxed you can be when you swing the club.
Many people think that to be relaxed is to be out of power, lacking in strength. This is not true. What it means is to be using only the necessary amount of muscle power to get the job done. Just like cracking a whip, or casting a fly rod, the center must stay relaxed in order for speed to multiply outwards along the full radius of motion.
I am finding lately that the best way to monitor and keep your tempo under control is by the speed at which you rotate your hips. It should be the same speed going back and swinging through. You absolutely cannot control your tempo with your hands and arms.
Take a lot of swings without a ball, just to build up a sensitivity for the right tempo. When you do put a ball in front of you, be careful, because that by itself makes us swing faster. We don’t clobber the ball, we just swing the club.
I get telephone calls every so often about business services that the caller would love to provide to me. I say I am a VERY small business, and don’t need their help, but thank you very much for calling. It never hurts to be polite.
Last night I got a call from someone who said I had been sent a preapproved application for equipment and vehicle purchases. I signed off as usual, because I don’t need a fleet of trucks to deliver all the books that everyone is buying from me. I just need to make a trip to the post office, and it’s close by.
If you click over to therecreationalgolfer.com and buy one of my books, I’ll sign it, put it in an envelope, go to the post office, and mail it to you. What could be better than that?
Normally I don’t post twice in one day, but this is not normal. Today’s post is a call to action.
Yesterday, the USGA proposed, as expected, a rule change banning the anchored putting stroke, effective in 2016. It also opened a 90-day comment period during which it will receive and consider commentary from anyone who care to opine. Please opine (below).
Regular readers of this space know that I am totally opposed to such a rule change. If you wish to be refreshed, the “belly putter” link under the Labels heading on the right will guide you to my earlier thoughts on the subject.
There is an argument that the anchored stroke gives some players an advantage. This does not hold up to any statistical evidence thus far presented.
So far, the USGA has released no statistical study showing the professionals who anchor putters are better putters as a group the the rest of their comrades. Nor is there any evidence relevant to amateur golfers.
I have heard that among the top 25 putters in the PGA statistics for 2012, there is not one player who anchors. Since I don’t know who anchors and who doesn’t, I’ll have to take that claim on face value, but I don’t think it’s wrong.
In your neck of the woods, if you think other golfers are beating you because of anchored putting, then you can try it, too. After all, are you the only one left playing with a wooden-headed driver? Of course not. You saw the advantage and switched. So did the pros.
The other argument that I have heard in support of the ban is that this not a traditional stroke.
It comes down to the sentiment that this is not the way golf has always been played and if we want it to stay golf, we can’t allow this stroke to remain legal. This is the way we’ve always done it. What does your boss say when he asks you why you’re doing something in a particular way and you give him that answer? You learn pretty fast that’s the wrong answer. It is here, too.
Lots of things about today’s golf aren’t traditional. Hybrid irons aren’t traditional. 460cc driver heads aren’t traditional. Two-piece golf balls aren’t traditional. Graphite shafts aren’t traditional. Steel shafts aren’t either, but it’s 80 years too late to get started on that one.
Let’s not forget that golf is a game that People Play. People=the masses. Play=enjoy. We don’t need golf to exist as perfection on paper. It is for the people who play the game that the rules should be created, the millions of recreational golfers for whom golf is their hobby, their happiness. The rules should reflect who they are.
Nor does golf exist solely for the elite players and the rest of us follow along thankful for the favor. Only for a vanishingly small percentage of players is it a career. They need rules, too, but there is no ultimate reason why the rules for each set of golfers needs to be the same. It certainly isn’t in other sports.
What is the Summer Game that everyone in America plays? It isn’t baseball, it’s softball. Baseball (or, hardball), is for young, strong men. For the rest of us, baseball has been modified so we can play it. The general rules of each game are the same, but softball is a game within reach of anyone who can swing a bat, throw, and run.
One game allows everyone to enjoy the outlines of a game they would otherwise lack the physical ability to play. This is where the anchored stroke comes in and this is where golf’s ruling bodies need to make an accommodation.
There are thousands of golfers who would just not be able to putt if not for being able to anchor a long putter of some kind. These are people who are too inflexible to bend over and putt. People who have physical infirmities or handicaps.
Why make golf difficult and painful for people who are out there getting exercise and enjoyment?
And, yes, some people have the yips.
One official reason supporting the ban is that putting should be a test of nerves and the anchored stroke takes that away. That’s fine if you’re a competitive golfer. But if you’re just out there to hit the ball around the course and have fun with friends, you’re not out there to be “tested.” Why make golf harder people than it needs to be if all they want to do is get in the out of doors and have enjoy yourself?
What is comes down to is this: anchored putting is an issue in professional golf. The governing bodies of each professional tour are allowed to make their own rules. They follow the USGA and R&A rule book, but they can make any exception they want to. If they feel that the anchored stroke is disrupting competition on their tour, they can institute a ban on their own, or ignore the new rule if they choose to.
But that is not a practical solution here. Tours will not thumb their nose at the official rules. That’s why there has to be two sets of rules, one for professional competition and one for amateur competition.
Professional baseball did this. Amateur baseball players, even college players, and softball players, use metal bats. Professional baseball players, though, have to use wooden bats. There’s a good reason. Put metal bats in the hands of major league hitters and you could have more home runs in a game than foul balls, not to mention the safety issue. Some pitcher would likely get killed by a hard shot through the box.
I know the USGA hates the word bifurcation, but it’s necessary because, as Bobby Jones said, “There are two distinct kinds of golf — just plain golf and tournament golf.”
It is time to fully admit that two different games are being played, and it is the game of the millions to which the rules in general should speak, and there are thousands of us who need the anchored putting stroke to be able to play and enjoy our playing.
An exception for professional golf can be inserted, but for the rest of us, things are just fine like they are.
If you wish to submit a comment to the USGA, you send a surface post or e-mail. Find out how to do either at http://USGA.org/Anchoring.
After the ball has been struck, the swing ends by the golfer continuing the turn to a finish position of some kind. What is little appreciated is that this position goes a long way toward defining everything that happens beforehand, and therefore deserves careful attention.
Probably the best way to say it is that a finish should be a finish. It should be a position of repose, of calm completion. It should not feel like the swing is over and you are hanging on.
Ideally, you would be facing your target squarely. This is, in fact, a good way to check your alignment. If you were to take a practice swing, where you are looking when the swing is over is where you are aimed.
But where your hands are, where the club is, all that depends on the type of swing you have, and there is no one position that is best. Your swing takes you to where it will. Wherever you end up, though, you must be in perfect balance.
Try this. Set up, without a ball, close your eyes, and swing to the finish. Eyes still closed, are you balanced? Are you about to fall over? Do this a few more times until you get it right. This exercise might do more good for your swing than any swing modification.
I’ll let one of my favorite authors, Percy Boomer,* say it for me:
“When I go up to address my ball, I do not think of pivoting (as you do); I think of following through. I think of the end, not the means. So if you and I are standing together on the tee, I am mentally playing my shot through to the finish while you are preparing to play yours through your pivot. My feel is based upon what constitutes a good shot, while yours is based upon what prepares the way for the creation of a good shot–obviously much further back in the golf conception.”
If the goal of your swing is a good finish, then the mind will create a swing which leads to that finish, with a clean, solid strike along the way.
* Author of, On Learning Golf, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
When you’re learning a foreign language, they’ll tell you that fifteen minutes every day is better that two hours on Sunday. It’s that periodic repetition that keeps the ball in the air which does the trick.
Golf is the same way. If you can practice fifteen minutes a day, you can keep your game in tune even if you can’t play.
Putt across the carpet. Step up to each stroke like it’s a putt on the green–go through your whole routine. Practice three- and four-footers by rolling the ball over a tin can lid. Practice 30-footers in the same way, using a pillow for a backstop. The important thing here is that in making your 30-foot stroke, you hit the ball on the sweet spot and still roll the ball over the lid.
Get a carpet remnant and chip off that with plastic balls into the pillow you used for approach putts. Ball first, ground second. Rotate through all your chipping clubs over a period of days.
Hang a mattress pad or a blanket over a curtain rod in front of one of your windows and hit pitches into it (use plastic balls, please, and hit off a carpet remnant to save wear and tear on your flooring.)
Full swing? You can swing under an 8-foot ceiling with a 7-iron or less, but for a longer, club, step outside. If you have a back yard, you can hit plastic balls into a net or against that mattress pad. If you’re an apartment dweller, well, just swing. Before very swing, go through your entire pre-swing routine.
Just do something, every day.
