Instruction
Four ways to get your game ready for the summer
I have to admit, I am very spoiled when it comes to golf and the weather I have chosen to work in and around all my career. Personally, I detest cold weather: playing in it and teaching in it STINKS. Therefore, I have always lived and worked during the winters in Florida or Southern California and the weather is always conducive to improving your golf game no matter what month of the year it is. After doing this for the past 15 years or so, it hit me that not everyone plays golf in the winter on green grass and in short sleeves!
As I type this article I am on vacation in Vail, Colo., where we used to spend our summers. It is 38 degrees outside and snowing and it dawned on me that I have become too soft. I remember as a kid growing up in Memphis and playing golf all winter long. The best time was when the lakes froze over and I wouldn’t have to worry about hitting the ball into the water whatsoever: it would just bounce to the other side. Sometimes, I could even gingerly step out and hit it back to the land without a penalty. This is what most of you deal with on a yearly basis. Therefore, I wanted to help you get your “summer game” back as soon as possible.
There are four things that you must focus on to get your game back that I want you to remember for this season (in no particular order):
- Physical Fitness
- Long Game
- Short Game
- Equipment and Set Makeup
Physical Fitness
Now I know what you are thinking. I’m not asking you to spend an hour per day in the gym after doing nothing all winter long, but I am asking you to work on a few things you might have neglected that will really improve your golf.
- Stretching: Please take the time to get on some type of stretching program that will “remind” your muscles as to what they should do to hit golf balls again. You can find sources like www.mytpi.com or google “golf stretching programs” in efforts to find a program that will help break the rust off of your physical movement.
- Swing a Heavy Club: Now, I did not say swing all out or see how fast you can move a 10-pound driver. The goal here is to swing it SLOWLY and fully a few times a day. We are trying to loosen up and stretch your golf muscles a little bit at a time. At NO time do I want you to swing fast with a weighted club. Just loosen up.
- Treadmill: Because golf is a walking game and relies on ground reaction forces during the golf swing, I would suggest walking on a treadmill a few times a week and gently working up and down inclines through various programs on the machine itself. We are not going for a new land-speed record while doing this; we are trying to strengthen your legs and improve your endurance. There is nothing worse than playing on “tired legs.”
Long Game
Everyone wants to know how to get your long game back when you begin again, but sadly most go about it incorrectly.
- Ask your teaching professional to provide you with a photo of the correct setup he’d like you to emulate from the front and down-the-line views. Practice this for a few minutes nightly so you can “remember” what you should feel at address.
- Ask your teaching professional to provide you with a photo of the correct grip that he’d like you to utilize. Practice this on your chair while watching TV. This will remind your hands to do the right thing when you hold on to the club.
- Next, go to the practice range or an open field and work on the following drill to re-learn “connection.” Hit balls 30-to-60 yards with a towel under your armpits with the feeling of everything working together. You want hit the ball solid, flat and in a consistent direction in regard to the ball’s curvature. It’s here that you will discover how the body, hands and the club works together.
- Finally, when you can hit the ball solid again and have an idea of where it is going (it shouldn’t take too long), it’s time to to take a lesson! Seeing your teaching professional after working on your setup, grip and connection will allow them to fine tune your plane, transition and face-to-path relationship at impact so you can hit the ball effectively once again.
Short Game
Your short game should be broken down into two parts: regaining feel with your pitch shots and then putting. The other parts of your short game will come back quickly, but I don’t want you to waste your time working on things that will repair themselves like chipping from a few feet off the green.
- I would suggest finding grass that will perch your ball up so you can focus on hitting the ball solid first. Just hit a few pitches from about 20 feet to 80 feet. Your goal is to hit those shots solid and in the direction you want.
- Once you can hit the ball solid, the next phase is to see if you can land your ball in a hula-hoop-size area that will encourage your ball to finish next the pin.
- After hitting these simple half-in-the-air, half-on-the-ground pitch shots, the next phase it to back up and work these shots from slightly longer distances and repeat.
- Next, work on your putting, however, do not work on short putts! I only want you to focus on long lag putts, big breaking putts and super-fast putts from across the green. It’s here that you will regain your lost feel from not playing in the winter.
- After you can lag these three types of putts, then it’s time to take a short game lesson!
Now that you have honed in solid contact and feel, now you can work on your mechanics and short putts after you have had a refresher lesson.
Set Makeup and Equipment
Are your grips slick? Are your wedges worn? Do you have a gap in your iron yardages? Are you missing a club or hybrid that you need?
These are just a few of the things that I suggest you fix before your first real summer round. These are things that you can easily be amended if you take a few moments to inspect your set and see a club fitter.
Don’t think you are good enough to make due without a certain club or gap in your yardages? The pros don’t, so why should you?
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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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Break80
May 29, 2014 at 10:57 am
Once again, top notch advice, for free at that. I would say this is great for anyone wanting to regain feel, whether it’s from a seasonal layoff, a week layoff (like us floridians), even playing too much can lead to a desensitized feel of where the golf club is head, especially w/ the full swing. I think I’ll give this a go today to hopefully re-establish more feel in my game. Thanks for the article.
tom Stickney
May 29, 2014 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for the note; all the best.
Jeff Irwin
May 27, 2014 at 9:33 am
Snowed down in Gunnison, CO too but warmed up to 43 so got in 18 in the afternoon. Easy walking with nobody on the course. That speeds up the game for sure.
Tom Stickney
May 27, 2014 at 10:54 am
We played all spring long when I worked in vail. No one arrives until June!
nikkyd
May 26, 2014 at 4:52 pm
I live 20 miles north of duluth , mn on the northshore of lake superior. I was in duluth today, top of the hill was 90°, and by the lake it was 75°.there is still ice on the lake and people are sunbathing on the beach already haha. Gotta love northern golf! Seriously, it looked like the north atlantic out there today
Tom Stickney
May 26, 2014 at 6:32 pm
Ha
Chris Miller
May 26, 2014 at 10:11 am
I would recommend against swinging a heavy club prior to playing. It requires a different motor pattern than the normal golf swing, because it requires a sequence and recruitment of muscles different than when you swing a regular golf club.
As for stretching, static stretching before golfing not only increases risk for injury it will decrease your performance. A better alternative would be to include dynamic movements for your pre-golf warm-up. However, participating in a stretching regimen, yoga or Pilates program on days you do not golf help to maintain your flexibility.
Tom Stickney
May 26, 2014 at 1:16 pm
Anything is better than just grabbing your driver and swinging away for sure.
Philip
May 26, 2014 at 5:45 pm
For myself, I tried the weighted ring on my clubs, but didn’t like the feel and discovered it messed with my swing a bit.
For stretching I used to do static (now only do yoga type stretching at home), but found I could still pull muscles and it didn’t seem to real help that much. For the last two years I have been doing a 10-15 minute dynamic routine and haven’t injured myself since. Plus, in a pinch I’ve found I can go straight from my dynamic stretch routine to the tee and my game is ready to go – I don’t need 3-5 holes to warm up.
paul
May 26, 2014 at 8:39 am
Stretching, swinging a heavy club slowly, sounds good to me. I went to see a golf fit physiotherapist and she did a tpi assessment on me and gave me exercises to strengthen me weaker golf muscles. Gave me a physical golf handicap of 2. Now I have fitness goals to help my year start off better. Just shot my best 9.
Tom Stickney
May 26, 2014 at 9:52 am
Love it!
Cris
May 26, 2014 at 1:45 am
Stretching? Swing a heavy club? I respect your knowledge of the golf swing, but you’ve evidently stepped out of your area of expertise dispensing fitness advice.
Tom Stickney
May 26, 2014 at 9:52 am
I guess my exercise science degree in college means nothing?
nikkyd
May 26, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Tom, i swung e heavy club all winter long and i tell you what, ive gained 10 mph of clubhead speed and every shot i struck this year is effortless.and for the most part straight. I think it is a great tip.