Instruction
Celebrate Father’s Day on the course with a catch
One of the great moments in cinema is the iconic line from Field of Dreams: “Hey, dad, wanna have a catch?”
Every one of us who played catch with our dad would probably love the chance to do it again, especially on Father’s Day. When I was a child, my dad and I played hours and hours of catch in the big backyard we had in St. Louis. I lost him suddenly to a heart attack in 1999, and can still remember the last time I saw him. We were leaving a tour event and it was raining. I had just blown a top-5 finish with bogeys on two of the last three holes. We were loading the cars as the weather was getting worse, and I gave him a quick hug and said, “Love you,” and we got in our cars. A couple of weeks later he was gone.
If I’d known that was going be the last time we were together I would have held onto him a little longer before we left, no matter how hard it was raining, and I wish I had one more round of golf with him or one more catch.
When my son left for college at Florida State, he surprised me with a catch right before he got in the car. He played quarterback in high school, and he spent hours practicing with me as his wide receiver. He grabbed a ball he had stashed in his car, turned to me and threw me one last pass as he jumped into the truck and headed down the road to Tallahassee.
Golf is one of the few ball sports where you cannot play some sort of catch or pass game. Or is it? One drill I have my parents play with their kids is “catch” on the putting green. It is a great way to practice speed and hang out and share time together.
Here’s what you do:
- First, get your favorite on-course beverage.
- Second, position yourselves three paces apart on a putting green with three golf balls. All three balls start with one player, and his or her goal is to putt the ball to the other person at the perfect speed. If the ball rolls more than one shoe width past their heels, it was hit too hard. And it comes up more than one shoe width short, it was hit too soft.
- When the other player has all three balls, they are to return them to the other person with the same perfect speed. When both players have hit three consecutive putts at the proper speed, each takes one big step backward and the process is repeated.
Eventually, the players will get to a distance where at least one of them is struggling with speed control. Both remain there until they each get it right — six straight perfect putts. It’s a great practice drill for controlling speed, and affords both players an opportunity to hang out and chat. Try this and see if your putting speed control improves… and you add more great memories of hanging out with your kids or your parents.
Happy Father’s Day to everyone, and be sure to “have a catch” with your dad on the putting green!
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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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Rob Strano
Jun 22, 2015 at 10:01 am
My readers crack me up….Here is an article about Father’s Day and a drill to spend time with your dad or kids and there as many negative votes as positive. How can that be? Are there that many readers that dislike spending time with their family?
How about the drill…??? I have seen that speed control on the greens is a huge issue for 99% of the players on the planet and it is a great drill to “play catch” and work on your speed with another person.
The negative votes make me really scratch my head about what people think and what is going on in their head when they read a positive article with a solid drill to help them improve.
TR1PTIK
Jun 22, 2015 at 9:33 pm
I think it’s a great drill and it kind of reminds me of the egg drill they used for hockey in the Mighty Ducks movies – but with less mess. I’ve found that a lot of readers/commenters on GolfWRX have a serious stick poked up their @$$ and just like to let everyone else know about it. Don’t let ’em bother you.