Instruction
How to Make BIG Changes
There are no magic fixes in golf that will transform your game at the flick of a switch.
There is no secret potion that can be consumed and instantly result in you hitting 18 of 18 greens in regulation, and no technique you can learn will make you never miss a putt within 10 feet. No club and shaft combination will immediately transform you from hitting 200 yard drives to competing on the long drive tours. It just doesn’t happen that way.
Think about it:
- The fitness magazine says that you have 30 days to get “ready for the summer” and with a new diet/exercise regime/mindset you will achieve the body that you have always dreamed of. Unfortunately, it is not quite true, even if you do start NOW. Change takes time.
- Dashrath Manjhi single-handedly spent 22 years digging out a 110-meter long tunnel to reduce the distance to the next town (which had the nearest hospital) from 75 kilometers down to 1 kilometer. Little chunks combined can equal a large result, but change takes time.
- Your favorite club manufacturer comes out with a new driver and you wonder what all the fuss is about as you struggle to see the difference from the last offering. But look at a modern driver against one from 10 or even five years ago, and you will see these little changes have culminated in quite a large shift over those years. Change takes time.
- I am currently learning Spanish to help with future job opportunities. Acquiring a new language with its words, grammar rules and sentence construction can be daunting. So I am chipping away at the task by using my 40 minutes of driving each day, plus any spare moments to listen to a language course. Change takes time.
- Henrik Stenson, winner of the 2013 FedEx Cup said after his final round: “This shows that I never give up, it’s been a lot of hard work and a couple of changes … it’s been some good work that’s starting to pay off big time. It wasn’t like you wake up in the middle of July and you start playing fantastic. I put the work in during the spring.” Change takes time.
So, what does this mean for your golf game? Many golfers I work with would love to have the time to play five rounds a week and practice each day. Unfortunately, life gets in the way. Does that mean they cannot play better golf? I don’t think so!
I am going to give you some of the best ways to develop your skills so that you can get a tiny bit better at golf every day. When totaled up, that equals a visible change.
- Working on shoulder alignment at address? Initiating the downswing with your lower body? Sequencing drills? A grip change? Experimenting with hitting different curves? The good news is that all of these can be worked on in the mirror, without ever hitting a golf ball. In fact, separating these movement changes from ball flight is often valuable for getting the best possible results. If you spend a few minutes, a few times a day working on these things, imagine the cumulative time you will spend in a few weeks.
- If you are trying to make any movement changes in your swing, try making really slow swings, emphasizing and exaggerating the changes you want to feel. Partner this with swinging with your eyes closed in order to heighten your senses. This extra awareness would not be felt from mindlessly hitting golf balls, so you can make more improvement in less time!
- In a few spare moments, have a recap of your last round of golf. What really caused the dropped shots? Look deeply into this. Was it really that you had a few three putts or was it that your pitching wasn’t good enough, which forced you to get over-aggressive with your putts to try to force a birdie. The more honest and thorough you can be, the more feedback you have to be more effective in subsequent practice sessions.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Get started, build a habit and reap the rewards.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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GolferX
Dec 24, 2013 at 4:40 am
Great advice! I have spent the last year changing my grip due to arthritis in my hands. This past summer had the two worst rounds of my life, hated the game. Kept at it, kept working, kept at the little things; things have finally started to click. My draw came back, my 3 wood works on the fairway, and I am able to hit my 1 iron like I did twenty years ago. It took some time and I am not yet to where I want to be, but I am getting there. Keep at it, and use the drills and homework suggested and you might get back that “old lovin’ feeling”.
Evan
Dec 23, 2013 at 10:41 am
Excellent advice, Andy! Too often we want a quick fix. Golfers think that changing equipment or one lesson or tip should fix everything! It is understanding and ingraining a consistent and effective swing that will make you significantly better at golf.
I also use to bang balls all summer long on the driving range. In the past couple years I have not had the time to practice as much. Working on your positions at home and “feeling” your swing without hitting balls is VERY EFFECTIVE if you know what you’re doing. It has really helped my consistency to understand my golf swing without hitting balls. Touch around the greens is more difficult if you can’t get to the course, IMO.