Instruction

Flight Plan: Touch and Go For Take-off Success!

Published

11 years ago

May 24, 2013

A common problem I work on with clients is helping them break the habit of spending too much time locked over the ball before each swing. An effective remedy I often prescribe comes from my time learning to fly airplanes.

Part of my pilot training was practicing what are called “touch and go’s.” In a “touch and go,” the pilot momentarily touches the wheels down upon landing and then goes full-throttle back into take-off procedure. The purpose of the touch and go is to provide the pilot with a means of quickly leaving the runway in the event of an emergency. In addition, it’s also a great way to quickly get a bunch of practice in take-offs and landings.

When working with players who get frozen over the ball, I also have them practice “touch and go’s” as a means of staying relaxed, fluid and engaged with the target. For many of my clients, this little tip has been the catalyst behind getting their swings started off on time and in rhythm, leading to more consistent shots.

Missile Lock

Anyone who has seen the 80’s movie, “Top Gun,” remembers how the pilots would lock their weapon systems onto the enemy aircraft before firing on their opponents. As a golfer intent on blowing up your target, begin by focusing on exactly where you want the ball to go. As your eyes lock on for the strike, keep your body moving as you waggle the club head to promote relaxation and rhythm. Once it’s go time, shift your focus momentarily back toward to the ball and sole the club head on the ground.

Touch

Upon touchdown, your goal is to stay loose, athletic and mentally connected with where you’re going. After you take a long look at the target, I recommend following up with a very short look at the ball. This will ensure that you don’t freeze up and lose all your mojo. The moment the club head touches down, the next move should be immediately into the takeaway.

And

When it comes to rhythm, the two most critical points in the swing are the start and transition from back swing to down swing. As you reach the top of your swing, try to exercise patience. Resist your eagerness to zip back to the ball and instead, stretch the amount of time in which you’re wound up at the top. I’m not asking you to pause, you’ll still be in motion, but your unwind sequence should feel slow and smooth as you positively accumulate energy for the big hit. A good tip is use the word “and” as a timing mechanism to keep things smooth. Just as you’ve probably experienced rhythm as “one and two and three and four,” think of the rhythm or spacing of the words “touch and go.” Say the words in your mind as you swing. To really get my transition perfect, I like to elongate the word “and” making it feel 2-3 times longer than the words “touch” or “go.”

Go

You’ve locked on to the target, re-connected with the ball, stayed loose and got moving in rhythm. Nothing else to do but trust and let it fly. Like an airplane on autopilot, you’ve got to relinquish your desire to control. Tension and doubt are the great killers of performance, and I can remember a bunch of times where squeezing too tight or being indecisive caused me to bounce a landing or knock a tee ball out of bounds. Swing away with freedom like your mashing your ball toward an unmissable target like the Pacific Ocean. If you set the stage with good target awareness, you’ll be surprised at just how accurate a tension free mind and swing can be.

The next time you’re on the practice tee, line up a few balls and practice “touch and go’s.” I guarantee this one little tip will go a long way towards keeping you loose while elevating your game!

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

13 hours ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

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

Published

4 weeks ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

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.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

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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