Golf instruction - what is essential to the swing and what is merely style?
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Golf Instruction - What is essential to the swing and what is merely a matter of style? A page for everybody who loves golf! Here I will discuss the swing, architecture, equipment, players and the general state of the game.
If you're intrested in improving yoursand play, and who isn't, then check out my most recent video....
A few points to remember:
Aim your body slightly left(as a right hander) of the target line
The stance should be fairly wide- similar to that of a driver stance
The ball position should be forward of center
The weight should favor the front foot
Feel in a low posture- keep your butt close to the ground. This will help with a shallow angle of attack
Your target is the sand - two to 6 inches behind the ball. Hit somewhere there and the club will pass safely under the ball
Control the distancewith the length of your follow through. An unusual feel but try it, it really works.
Remember, you'll get more out of 15 minutes of bunker practice than you will out of practicing any other part of your game - so what are you waiting for....?
This is an excellent drill to help simplify your approach to the shortgame. Using one method and changing the club to fit each situation you encounter is so much easier than trying to hit one club both high and low! If you focus on the landing spot for each shot around the green and, with the help of practice, learn how each mid to short iron makes the ball fly and roll out you will start to feel so much more confident. And we could all benefit from that!
One of the most demoralizing, confidence sapping shots a golfer can hit is the dreaded chunk! Or fat! Or heavy shot! Whatever name it goes by, this unfortunate experience will deplete any measure of confidence you might have had. I have had quite a few of you come to me and ask for an article addressing this so here it is. While I have used pictures referring to pitching please know that all of the points mentioned below apply wholly to the full swing as well.
I find that while there are many reasons as to why a golfer might be contacting the ground before the club gets to the ball the following four points are certainly the lead candidates....
Here the weight tends to get too far back in the backswing due to either lateral slide or sway in the upper body or just simply setting up with the weight too far back. As a result there is no time to get it forward by the time impactoccurs and the club bottoms out before it gets to the ball.
An excellent drill to aid with this tendency is to practice the towel drill. It involves folding a towel and laying it on the ground 10-12 inches behind the ball. The towel encourages the weight to stay more centeredat address and in the backswing, thus shifting the low point of the swing up to a few inches in front of the ball - which means ball first, divot second!
In this situation the ball is simply placed too far forward in the stance. The more forward the ball is the more difficult it is get your weight in front- notice I said weight and not head - of the ball. If your stance tends to get too open then you very well could have the ball too far forward. In order to strike the ball first here you would need to really slide the upper body forward.
A good check point to make sure you're not doing this is to simply start your address by placing your feet together with the ball centeredbetween them (as pictured). Now take a step with either foot and match the size of the step with the other foot - the ball is now in the correct position and you are fully capable of striking it before the ground.
In this example the ball position is good, the body pivots back correctly, but there is simply no unwind through the hit. The chest turns back and away from the target, but never gets around to it on the way through impact. As a result the onus of squaring the face is placed on the hand action (flipping) and any lag is lost. The hands early releaseand throw the clubhead into the ball at impact, often sticking the clubhead into the ground.
A feel to get that body moving is to make sure the chest clears aggressivelythrough impact. David Leadbetter always said that an active body leads to passive hands and this is what you're after. Keep the body unwinding through the hit and you'll start to maintain your lag and compress the ball.
Here the club approaches the ball too far from the inside - it is under the plane. This very often occurs due to a backswing that takes the arms and club too far to the inside. Due to the fact that the club is under plane, the tendency is for the hit to be too shallow. The club will often brush the turf before contact and create havoc with the clubface and your timing.
An excellent drill (see picture) to improve not only your ball striking, but also your directional control is to make use of an alignment rod that is pegged in the ground at the same angle as the shaft at address. The rod should be 2 feet outside your back foot and just under the shaft at address. Now make swings (slowly at first!) to get a sense for what you need to do to get the club on plane and really start striking the ball beautifully.
The web is the largest library on golf we have ever had available to us. It can be a tremendous resource as long as you either know where to look. Let's be frank, not all golf instruction or advice is what it should be. You can only benefit from certain advice if it is grounded in sound fundamentals. For example you would not want to copy this guys pre-shot routine.....
......I don't think anybody would, but it was worth a laugh! The web is also chock full of golf entertainment. Whether it be the latest news, what type of grip Tiger just installed on his new driver, or just something funny like the swings above, here are a few suggestions:
For Golf Instruction:
There is way too much information out there to comprehend, but after a little research you'll figure out whose style you like. (Hopefully you like what you see here!)
If you want to stay in touch with anything and everything that is happening in the world of golf, then you must become a regular at one of these sites....
You junkies are out there - everyday, wherever you might be - checking out all the latest from Japan or the winner's bag. Of course if you're doing that you more than likely know better than me where to look online....
I know you'll find something you like out there. Stay patient and keep looking. Please let me know of a tremendous "golf" site and I'll happily add it to my recommendations here.
This week the PGA Tour adds a new stat Strokes Gained - Putting. The number-crunchers at the Tour say the reason is simple -- Strokes Gained-Putting takes out the bias of the old stats. The new statistic isn't impacted by what you did to get to the green; it only reflects what you did (against what your opponents did) once you got there. I love the idea. Similar to the ideas used in Michael Lewis' Moneyball (about baseball statistics)what truly goes into each statistics is being brought into question and as a result, being understood that much better.
Initially developed by Professor Mark Broadie of Columbia Business School and further analyzed in collaboration with a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Professor Stephen Graves, Strokes Gained-Putting measures a player's putting performance relative to his fellow competitors in a tournament and will offer a more accurate portrayal of his overall putting performance.
Strokes Gained-Putting takes into account putting proficiency from various distances and computes the difference between a player's performance on every green -- the number of strokes needed to hole out -- against the performance of the other players for each round. This ultimately shows how many strokes are gained or lost due to putting for a particular round, for a tournament and over the course of a year.
Steve Evans from the PGA Tour called the new stat an "evolution in the way we understand the game." Brad Faxon, long known as one of the Tour's best putters, said the statistic "moves us well beyond where we have been in the past in our ability to measure, teach and explain putting performance."
Here's how the new statistic is computed:
For example, the average number of putts used to hole out from 7 feet, 10 inches is 1.5. If a player one-putts from this distance, he gains 0.5 strokes (1.5 - 1). If he two-putts, he loses 0.5 strokes (1.5 - 2). If he three-putts, he loses 1.5 strokes (1.5 - 3).
For the final statistic, a player's strokes gained or lost putting is compared to the field. For example, if a player gained a total of three strokes over the course of a round and the field gained an average of one stroke, the player's "Strokes Gained Against the Field" would be two.
Here are a few interesting points:
The top 5 putters for 2011 using the new stat are Merrick, Chalmers, Snedeker, Stricker and Glover. If all the players in the field hit the ball the same this group would finish a combined 19.44 strokes ahead of average.
The bottom 5 putters for 2011 are Cejka, Trahan, Slocum, Weekley and Els. They would finish 21.608 strokes behind average and lose to the lead group by more than a whopping 41 strokes! That requires a tremendous amount of great ball striking in order to compete.
The Tour's most average putter is Harrison Frazar.
The best handful of putters over the last few years (2004-present) on the PGA Tour have been: Tiger Woods; Brad Faxon; Luke Donald; Aaron Baddeley; Greg Chalmers; Steve Stricker; Brandt Snedeker; Ben Crane and Brian Gay. So these are the guys to imitate....
Less than 6 percent of putts are made from more than 25 feet.
Here are a few "baseline" points against which the golfers will be measured:
A player's chance of one-putting drops 20 percent when moving from 3 feet back to 5 feet.
Just under 8 feet: At the 7-foot, 10-inch mark, it's 50/50 whether players will one or two putt.
Players have a 1 in 3 chance of one-putting from 11 feet (34 percent).
Players have a 3 in 4 chance of two-putt or better from 14 feet (75 percent).
Players have a 1 in 10 chance of one-putting from 25 feet (10 percent).
33 feet is the point at which a player is expected to two-putt. This is interesting because while there is an 88 percent chance of a two-putt from this distance, it is the point at which a player is equally likely to one-putt or three-putt (6 percent each way).
Players have a 1 in 10 chance of three-putting from 40 feet (10 percent).
Players have a 1 in 3 chance of three-putting from 73 feet (33 percent).
It is estimated that a players chances of a three-putt are not 50/50 until 120 feet. In general, greens on the PGA Tour are not large enough to provide a player with a 50/50 chance of three-putting.
Thanks to some very smart people and the PGA Tour, we now have a statistic that truly does measure putting prowess. Let the games begin.....
If you were fortunate enough yesterday to catch the Heritage playoff you might have noticed Luke Donald hit into a buried lie on the final playoff hole. It really was a beauty - way down in the sand. If you noticed how he went about playing the shot you would have seen him get the handle very low at address and keep the face open. This is a great way to get the ball close from this very challenging situation.
Now if only he'd have played for it to come out a little left (as it most often does!)......
I always ask my students which is more important in putting:distance or direction? I am pleased to report that about 60-70% of them correctly side with distance. Think about it this way; are you more likely to hit a 30 footer 10 feet beyond/short or 10 feet wide of the cup? Hopefully your answer is beyond/short, because if it was wide you have serious additional issues.
Much of the information I read on putting today is directionally oriented; the arc of the stroke, face rotation and balancing, path and face and so on. Is this information correct and valid? Yes! I just don't believe it should be the priority. Think about the last round of poor putting you had (hopefully you cannot remember!) - I can almost guarantee you it was due to poor distance control. When you practice focus on speed control as a priority and you must start to encounter better results. Good distance control comes from; a solid and centered strike where the appropriate amount of energy is transferred to the ball and a backstroke that closely matches the through stroke (most golfers are short back and long through!). Here are a few things that will help.
This is an excellent drill to help you acquire the feel of a solid strike: Gather a dozen balls in the center of a green and quickly and casually “hit” them back to a point off the side of the green -- just like when you are clearing a putting green by hitting all the balls off the green with your putter. Do not emphasize a target; don’t take time to set up; just pop the balls off the face of the putter. When done correctly, you should be able to feel how efficient the stroke is. There should be a minimal amount of follow through, the strike should feel crisp, and the sound should be louder than what you are accustomed to. When I see a golfer struggling with the putter, they are almost always overemphasizing the “stroke” element and have lost the concept that there needs to be some impact or “hit.” The problem most often is that their motion is long, slow and overly mechanical. You should be able to sense the ballcompressing off the putter face.
An excellent training aid that conveys the feel of the correct strike on the ball in putting is the Ball of Steel from Eyelinegolf.com - each ball weighs 5x what a golf ball weighs and you had better transfer energy efficientlyif you want to even have a chance of making a 3 footer with the ball steel. I have found it works really nicely when alternating between a real ball and a heavy ball, but be sure to stay within three feet. After using this teaching aid your putting stroke will be more compact and efficient and thus more consistent.
When putting key in on distance first and your results will improve dramatically - I guarantee it!
This is a version of a drill that I have presented many times, but each time I use it, it impresses upon me the importance of a proper strike on the golf ball. In using Trackman I have come to learn that the correct attack angle (an upward or downward hit) with an iron should be anywhere between 2 and 5 degrees down. If you have ever topped shots or alternated between thin and heavy strikes, you are more than likely getting scoopy through impact and this drill is right up your alley.
This drill will get you to do the following through impact:
Get the weight shifted onto the front foot
Lead the hands ahead of the clubhead
Hit down on the ball
Take divots in the right place - after the ball!
All you need is a small piece of one of those swim noodles that all the kids like to use in the pool. Secure the strip of noodle into the ground by pressing tees through the center as illustrated. It may take a little experimenting, but eventually you'll find the appropriate distance to line the balls up from the noodle. Before long you should start to see a consistent line of divots occurring on the target side of the golf ball - a positive sign! If you find yourself hitting a few of the dreaded "hosel rockets" your grip is too weak; Essentially you now need to scoop the face in order to square the clubface through impact. Get it stronger!
When it comes to the shortgame it is vital that the golfer strikes the ball and the ground on every shot - and preferably in that order! Golfers run into trouble when the club contacts the ground before the ball, particularly with a closing clubface as the leading edge will dig into the turf. There is no quicker way to deplete confidence than to start alternating between bladed and heavy pitch shots.
A helpful drill is to practice hitting 40-60 yard pitch shots with an 8-iron. Try to get the ball up in the air, with a slight cut action and have it land softly. This will give you the sense of keeping the face openand using the bounce of the club correctly. It will also prevent the wrists from being overly active. A feeling to key in on is the sense of swinging to the inside after impact (as pictured below). Be sure to keep the face open or looking up while the club tracks to the insideas this will prevent the leading edge from digging. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite drills!
Here is an excellent method to ensure that your grip stays in the fingers and favors the strong end of the spectrum.
Remember - a strong "ish" grip helps the handle get in front of the clubhead at impact and encourages all golfers to keep their hands passive through impact.
Have a friend draw a "channel" on your glove diagonally across the base of the fingers (as illustrated left). Be sure that the guidelines are not too high up in the palm - if this is the case the wrists will have a hard time setting the club and the grip will always look weak.
When gripping the club be sure to position the handle along the lower of the two guidelines - this will make sure that the handle does not sneak up into the palm.
Be sure that once your glove hand is positioned on the club you can see at least two knucklesand the V formed between the thumb and the index finger is pointing to the trailing shoulder.
As we saw with Louis Oosthuizen and his glove - you can draw or write whatever you want on any part of your equipment, in any color too!
I often talk to golfers I teach about how they play the buried lie out of a sand trap and more often than not they say they used the closed face method to get the club to dig the ball up and out onto the green. This method works fine if you don't have much of a lip or plenty of green to work with, but how do you handle this situation if you have a short sided pin or high lipto clear?
Here is a great method I got from Lee Trevino:
At address the weight should be well onto the front foot
The ball should be in the center of the stance or slightly back
The hands should be forward of the ball and very low
The idea is to get the "V" formed between the hosel and the sole of the club to delve down into the sand and lift it up and out of the sand
Notice how the clubface remains open so as to impart some height and softnessto the shot
The hands need to be very low at address to get the toe up in the air and the "V" exposed to the entry point
The swing is steep with a sharp downward attack into the sand
There is no need to overpower this shot as, when executed correctly, the ball should pop out with some height and softness.
Over the last decade the long putter has become accepted as a viable option for golfers that have woes on the greens. I used the long putter for the 6 or 7 year period that I played professionally and it essentially enabled me to have a career in golf. I liked it for the fact that it stopped me from twitching through impact, but also because there were two distinct methods that I could use with the broomstick.
The first option is known as the piston method and is the one I tended to prefer:
Form a circle around the grip cap with your thumb and index finger with the left hand (if you are a righty).
Do not wrap your other fingers on the left hand around the grip as you want the shaft to be able to pivot from a fixed axis.
Hold the club in the right hand in one of the methods illustrated below.
Keeping the shoulders out of the stroke - stroke the putt by "pistoning" the right arms back and forth.
With this stroke the only part of the body moving should be the right arm. Berhard Langerhas used this method very effectively over the years.
The second method is a stroke based on connection and using everything as a unit. Here the shoulders and arms all work together to get the ball rolling.
Place your left thumbon top of the grip cap and wrap all the fingers comfortably around the shaft.
Once the putter is anchored in your sternum pivot the shouldersback and through.
Make sure the arms are linked to your side or at least stay in place relative to the shoulders during the stroke to ensure a "one piece"motion.
The following pictures are various versions of how to hold the club in your bottom hand. Whichever one feels best to you should be the one to get the job done.
Additonal articles and sites for using the long putter:
I see far too many golfers that set-up poorly to their putters. This is something that is quite easy to improve and in this article I will isolate a few important keys to help you improve your set-up when putting and ultimately reduce the numbers of putts you take on the golf course. Remember that a good stroke is first built by having a solid setup.
Putting priorities:
Think of the bounce on wedge as an insurance policy against digging the leading edge of the golf club into the ground.
It is very important for any golfer to not only understand what the bounce is, but how to use it to their advantage. An excellent exercise to do every now and then is to hit a few pitch shots off of a lie board. This is a flat plexiglass board that most club fitters use in determining the correct lie angle a golfers irons should be set at. If you do not have access to a lie board, use a piece of plywood painted black. Just be sure to not hit any shots where the ball is too close to the edge of the board.
What you should see...If the markings on the sole of the club are as pictured above you are using the club correctly. Should they be closer to the leading edge you might be in danger of sticking the club into the ground on your next chip of pitch. The most important aspect of using the bounce correctly is addressing the ball correctly. Take a look:
The Set Up for a Chip or PitchIn the above image you will see the ball positioned in the center (watch out for too far back as it reduces the bounce at impact and makes it easier to do some gardening); the feet are fairly close together; and the hands and weight are just slightly in front of the ball, with emphasis on slightly.
As you go through the motion of striking that chip or pitch try to feel that the handle and the clubhead get back to impact at the same time - in other words don't allow the handle to get too far in front of the clubhead at impact as you are then exposing more of that sharp leading edge to the ground. And we all know what that can lead to.....
Golfers love to chip with their favorite club. Regardless of what the shot or situation calls for the majority of golfers are going to use their 'go to' club. That is fine if you are a genius around the greens and have the talent and touch to create any shot with that one club, but I am sorry to say that there are very few golfers who can hit those shots and you are more than likely not one of them. There is an easier way.
I find it interesting that there are so many instructors and golfers who are striving for what merely amounts to a good looking, pretty swing. Learn to impact the ball correctly, and it will go straighter and further more frequently--something every golfer wants in their golf game.
I spoke with Ian Woosnam on the phone the other day for about 15 minutes discussing the importance of getting the club on the back of the ball correctly ( a long way to say: impact!) and here is what he had to say:
“Even as a youngster I focused on the strike. In fact I would go down to the beach and practice hitting the ball first and the ground second."
This is a quote from Conrad Ray, the Stanford University Golf Coach and one of the few people to ever win an NCAA Team title as a player and a coach:
"Understanding that the most important detail is "how the ball flies" not "how your swing looks" is essential at the collegiate level and for all golfers. Impact is the determining factor...."
In looking at the three swings above notice how the club, arms and lower bodies are all in completely different positions. Why then are we all chasing our own tails by trying to get our swings to fit into this text-book "perfect" picture?
Forget form in the name of function; put substance over style; and start hitting the golf ball like never before!
I really do believe that “It’s All About Impact” is a book that will teach you how to strike the ball like never before without completely revamping your swing. Keep what you have, just make it work better.
I have always believed there should be a measure of “hit” in every putting stroke. In studying the top putters, it is uncanny how they seem to pop the ball off the center of the putter face; it’s almost as though they manage to compress the ball with the putter face. True, there is no divot involved (call me if there is - soon!), but there is definitely a louder and crisper impact sound when an expert putts the ball. Throughout the stroke, the putter seems to load in the backswing, lag in the transition, pop through the hit, and release into the follow through -- a similar motion to the one required to crack a whip, yet on a substantially smaller scale.
For example: A club with ten degrees bounce will have a ten degree angle between the sole and the ground (barring any rounding of the sole). Notice how the back edge of the sole of the wedge rests on my finger, while the leading edge is slightly raised. Thanks to Gene Sarazen, who first invented bounce, irons have been built this way to deter the leading edge from shoveling or digging into the ground.
In order to be a better chipper you need to be flexible and play whatever shot the situation calls for. Some shots require a low releaser while others might call for a medium to high checker. Here are two simple shots that will help you "fit" into any situation you may encounter around the greens.
The greenside sand shot is unique to the game of golf in that it is the only shot we hit where we do not (or at least should not!) hit the golf ball. Some people I know have hit their longest drives ever from a greenside bunker!
Here are two simple things to keep in mind when extricating your ball from the sand:
Set-up and aim to hit the sand before the ball.Hover the club over the spot that you intend to impact. When practicing, draw a line in the sand and see how many times you can impact the sand right on the line. Avoid holding the clubhead over the ball at address for more consistent ground contact!
In a regular golf shot we should be attempting to strike the ball first and the ground second. This can only be done with a slightly descending blow and the weight on the golfers front foot. Due to the fact that we only want all sand and no ball in the bunker there should be no forward weight shift into the hit. Try to play sand shots with the back foot remaining fully planted and quiet throughout the swing. The weight should remain where it was set at address. (Notice the post impact picture below) This will reduce those 'low heaters' out of greenside bunkers!
Andrew Rice Golf
Andrew Rice Golf. Providing golf instruction for all levels of golfers. Here you will find advice on golf instruction, golf course management and golf tips. Andrew Rice Golf is located at the Westin Savannah Harbor Resort and Golf Club. Three-Day Golf School information may also be found here.
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