Instruction
Stickney: How to practice like you play
As I have written in previous articles, there are two different types of practice you can do when you go to the range. One is hyper-focused on swing mechanics. And the other is focused on working on things you will find yourself having to do on the golf course in order to score.
These are the things I focus on when working on my swing, because my misses are mainly slight pulls like this one below from time to time:
These factors are the ones I find most helpful when working on MY swing fundamentals. Your misses and your swing focus may be totally different and that is OK. Remember, it’s here that we are ONLY working on your golf swing.
When I feel like my mechanics are under control, I tend to go to the range to focus on hitting shots — you know, the ones I must use on the golf course every time I play. This is the key to scoring…hitting shots! Not working on my mechanics. These types of practice times help me to learn how to PLAY golf.
When I do this I usually focus on a few areas to fine tune my “feels” so I can be a shotmaker:
I start by hitting a shot at partial speed and then trying to hit each successive ball just past the last one. This helps me to gain better yardage control, and therefore I seldom have in-between yardages I can’t handle.
Next I work on altering the height I hit the ball. I begin low and work my way to as high as I can hit the ball. As we know, the ball’s landing angle helps to stop the ball quicker on the firm greens we have during the summer and during tournaments. It is this drill that helps me find those hard to reach pins tucked behind bunkers. This type of practice helps my trajectory control.
As a player who moves the ball from left to right 90 percent of the time, it is important for me to also work on curving the ball the opposite way because sometimes I will have to do so on the course. Working on curing the ball the opposite way keeps your swing sharp and helps if you are tending to move the ball too much in the other direction. This drill helps me to feel the opposite curvature than what is normal in my world.
Now comes the fun drill hitting the ball both directions and curving the ball as much as I possibly can and still find the target. Here I am exaggerating curving the ball so I can get myself out of trouble on the course or find a pin that is tucked way right or left on the green. This drill helps me to fine tune my ball control.
As you can see, these are fun type of drills that have great advantages to players on the course. Not every shot is your stock shot and not every day plays the same. If you don’t work on hitting shots then you are only working on half your game at best!
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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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TONEY P
Nov 12, 2018 at 10:04 am
The best practice is to work on your game on the course, there you can see what you really need to do from actually being in the situation. Hitting on the range is fine but doesn’t apply the same pressure as knowing you can lose some new balls to water or an O.B.
Wyomick
Nov 13, 2018 at 4:05 am
Toney P. yo’d think a player that can afford a Puta Mia wouldn’t be worried about losing his balls. :):):)