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Jun
24
How To Hit A Golf Ball Solid And Straight
This tip is for all golfers, but especially the mid to high handicappers.
The number one problem that almost all amateurs have is OVERSWINGING. In effort to get the club as far back as the pro’s, most players swing their arms to the point that pull other muscles into the swing that don’t belong in it. The result is a lot of body movement and bad shots.
If you want to hit solid and straight shots, try stopping the back swing when your arms are at about 10 Oclock. Any farther than that is too far.
You don’t want to swing harder, just shorter. What you will find is that you consistently hit the ball solid and straight. And the swing will feel a lot better too.
Try it in practice first, then take it to the course. You will see the results on your scorecard.
May
19
Open Stance for Better Putting
This quick putting tip will help you see the line better.
In putting, if you can’t see the line you will not make the putt. To see the line better, open your stance about 45 degrees, while keeping your shoulders and eye line square to the line of the putt.
That moves you out of your own way and makes looking at the target line easier and more natural. Next time you are missing a lot of putts on the course, try opening up so you can see where your putt is going. If you do that, chances are it will get there.
May
02
Why Line Up Your Golf Ball For Putting?
As simple and obvious thing as it is to do, I still see most average players fail to line up their ball. I don’t care if you you use the brand name or make a line on it, if you don’t have your ball lined up you are putting blind.
I, for the life of me can’t figure out why it took the world so long to learn this little trick. I mean really, why use an imaginary line that you can’t see when they make Sharpies.
But I didn’t have the sense to do it until I saw somebody else doing it on TV. Innovation takes a while to catch on.
You benefit several ways by lining up your golf ball.
1) You create a visual image of the otherwise imaginary line
2) It makes lining up the putter simple. Not only making it square, but also making sure the putter face is in the same relation to the ball on every stroke.
3) You have a visual reference for lining up your body and feet.
4) You have a real line of reference for your eye alignment
5) It takes the guesswork out of picking your starting line once you get over the ball.
Just one word of caution. You must be totally committed to the alignment of the ball and the shot. If you don’t feel right about the line, take a page from Jim Furyk and step back behind it again. Adjust if necessary.
Being confident in what you are doing is half the battle. If there is doubt, your odds of success have decreased substantially.
Apr
15
Can You Putt Better Without Practice?
Putting is the easiest part of golf physically. At the same time it is the most difficult part of the game mentally. Only on the greens is perfection a requirement for a successful shot. You know that if the putt does not drop you can never get the stroke back.
Most putting errors happen outside of the stroke itself. It is really not difficult to roll a ball along a predetermined line. The problems happen when there is too much emphasis on the stroke and not enough on making the putt.
Many golfers put themselves at a disadvantage just by failing to line up their ball. That is the equivalent of hitting a tee shot on a par 5 with your driver off the deck. It makes no sense at all to visually handicap yourself when the rules allow you to provide for a visual reference by putting a line on your ball. If you are having trouble hitting the ball on line, it might be because you can’t see it!
But far and away the most common problem is one that is never talked about. Most putting teachers are all about the stroke. Their advice will never help the average player. The best they can do is to temporarily help the our pro who has hours a day to work on their physical putting stroke.
I am referring to hitting the ball before you are ready to hit it. Most players would benefit greatly just from taking five more seconds over the putt before they stroke it. So long as that time is used to mentally confirm and commit to the line and speed of the putt.
If you want to putt better, give yourself a line you can actually see and don’t hit the putt until you are totally committed to it. Give yourself an extra few seconds over the ball so your mind can complete all of its processing and allow your body to make the stroke you want.
Apr
13
My Experience With Target Putting
I remember when I was a young golfer in my teens. The thought of missing a putt never entered my mind. My fellow golf team members used to say I could get the ball up and down from the ball washer. And making putts inside of ten feet was a big part of that.
Fast forward about twenty years, then in my mid 30‘s. I still hit the ball pretty good, and I could still chip the ball close to the hole, but the putts almost never went in. I was working the corporate grind and didn’t get to play all that much, so the case of the yips I reluctantly admitted to having was very frustrating.
Eventually, the frustration of bad putting lead me to put the clubs up entirely. Golf just isn’t very much fun when you can hit 12 greens a round and shoot in the 80‘s.
As I approached my 40th birthday, I realized that life was too short to leave golf out of it. I have always loved the game. I had the standard dreams of playing the tour that every fanatic has growing up.
But there was still the problem with the yips that had drained all the fun out of it. As I researched on the internet to see what cures there were available now, it quickly became clear that nothing new was known. In fact, there was still no consensus about what caused them in the first place.
I stumbled upon a book called Target Putting in 2009. Frankly, it turned out to be the answer to all of my putting questions. It has a good explanation of what the yips are and why they happen.
It gave me four things to do that would help me putt better and overcome the problems. Three involved the pre shot, and the fourth about where the focus should be when stroking the golf ball.
I implemented the putting method shown using the same old putter I always yipped with. It took me several rounds to really get used to doing it, but one day I made a stroke and it all became crystal clear. It felt right, and it worked.
That was now almost two years ago. As I approach 50, I am putting like that teenager again. And I have been for a while now. I don’t fear short putts, and I am shooting in the mid to low 70’s almost every round.
Golf is fun again, and I owe it all to Target Putting. It’s a miracle disguised as a putting book that gives a simple lesson in putting that will help the average golfer become a better than average putter.
If you want to learn more about it, you can click the link below.
Apr
13
Short Putting Is Not Golf
For most people, golf gets really hard when they get close to the hole. One of the main reasons for that is players fail to acknowledge that the nature and requirements of the game change when it comes to short putting. Anything within 10 to 15 feet of the hole is no longer golf.
Instead, it becomes more like a target game. The goal is no longer to make a swing with a club that will hit the ball straight down the line the club is on at address. That works fine for a drive or an iron, but distracts the golfers attention away from where it should be when they are putting from close range.
The fact is, most golfers never pay a second thought to what the ball is going to do once it leaves the putter. They have a perfect plan for their stroke, but think nothing of what the ball is going to do after hitting it.
In reality, it is much simpler to make a ball go down a line if that is your intent in the first place. Who cares what the stroke looks like if the ball does what it is supposed to do? If the ball does what you want it to do after you hit it, you will make the putt regardless of how good the stroke was that caused it to happen.
That’s why short putting is different than golf.
With a longer shot, you are required to use every bit of your hand eye coordination to hit the ball. It takes a fundamentally sound swing to hit it solidly and straight. Still, the margin for error is large compared to putting.
With shorter distance putting, you need to move the focus on to what happens to the ball after you hit it. Putting can, and should, be reduced to a target game which focuses on results rather than technique.
Apr
11
A Putting Tip For Women
Putting is where all golfers get their score from. The ball and putter do not make a distinction between men and women, short and tall, or any other physical aspect of the golfer.
Having watched both mens and womens golf being played on TV, it is clear that the women suffer when it comes to chipping and pitching around the green from rough.
But I have also watched both men and women shoot pool at the highest level. I do not notice any difference in the level of skill or performance. When it comes to putting, the same thing is true. There is no difference in the skill level and potential between men and women. The problems in putting do not discriminate.
Both men and women golfers are victims of a flawed method being taught, and both are capable of overcoming those problems by adjusting the technique they use.
Putting tips for women leave them no better off than the men. They are still only trying to work around the flaw in the method being taught. It is far better to make a small change in the way you look at putting that will allow you to totally bypass all of the problems.
That is easily done by using target putting principles, which essentially takes the focus off of the putting stroke and puts it on what the ball does after you hit it. That’s what is really important anyway.
Any putting tip that suggest the same old thing will produce the same old results. That includes putting tips for women that do not take into account the principles of target putting.
Apr
08
Putting Improvement Will Lower Your Scores
What do you think the results would be of a poll that gave three following choices for improvement,
1) Hit two more greens per round
2) Hit two more fairways per round
3) Take two fewer putts per round
I can’t imagine anybody who would consider anything other than taking two fewer putts per round. You can always recover from a missed green or fairway. But you are not so lucky on the greens. There is no way to recover the stroke lost by missing a five foot putt.
Improved putting is the fastest way to lower golf scores. More specifically, improving your short putting is the fastest way to lower scores.
Improving your putting strategy and setting realistic expectations on longer putts is one of the fastest ways to cut strokes from your score. Tiger Woods once commented that one of the most important things he had learned as a professional was the value of the easy par. Instead of trying to make longer putts, try to leave yourself a tap in.
According to statistics, six feet is the distance that tour pros begin to make fewer than 50% of their putts. But if all of those putts were straight in and level, the percentage would go up considerably.
The easier the putts you leave yourself, the more of them you will make. Theoretically, you could make 50% more of your six foot putts just by leaving them straight uphill efforts.
Another area golfer frequently look to for putting improvement is in the physical stroke itself. It takes a lot of practice and effort to build a perfect putting stroke. Most people don’t have the time. And even those tour pros who do have the time can only get up to about 50% from six feet with their perfectly grooved strokes.
Another thing you frequently see is equipment changes. Some players go to the belly putter, or a different head. Those changes are like a prescription drug. The treat the symptoms of your putting problems and give you, for lack of a better word, a putting attitude adjustment, which can lead to more confidence in the short term. But how many of those going to different putters go back to the originals? Most.
The fastest way to improve your short putting is to realize you are playing a target game. It is not like the rest of golf. Until you learn the difference and how it applies to putting, your fastest putting improvement will come from improved strategy. New equipment and stroke changes will only provide temporary relief, if any at all.
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Apr
06
What’s Your 9 O’clock Distance?
When it comes to wedges, distance control is everything.
I am sure everyone remembers Phil Mickelson having the flag tended from 73 yards. How did he know how to hit the ball 73 yards? He practices the shot all of the time. He said he hits them at a towel from 75 yards.
For those who don’t have the time to do that, there is a better way. Practice just one shot with your wedge until you have it mastered. I recommend the 9 O’clock swing.
If you know how far you hit your wedge with a swing back to 9 o’clock, it will make adjustments on other distances much easier. If you hit it 75 yards with your 9 swing, you 10 o’clock swing will probably be 8o yards.
Feel out your distances so you know. But master one swing first so you have a reference you can depend on.
Your wedge play will get dramatically better, and that will show on your score card.