Instruction

Tips to get the most out of your swing changes

Published

10 years ago

Jul 8, 2014

If you believed everything you read in golf media, it would be easy to assume that a few small swing changes or the adaption of a new technique is all that is required to play your best golf. Unfortunately, many golfers often have a hard time transferring their play to the course from the range, where they have been making all of these great changes.

Remember that even the best swing changes will not automatically result in the ball flying toward your target each and every time. In fact, you might even play worse after a swing change. That being said, here are some ways to help you transfer your new skills to the course.

Starting line

So you’ve improved the fact that your ball curved excessively to the right and now you have a slight draw that falls to the left. That’s great, but many golfers will still be used to seeing a ball that starts right of the target and that can be a huge problem. With your old swing, starting right (and curving right) was a disaster and despite now owning a better ball flight, you continue to start the ball too straight (or even left) of the target. No matter how much your technique improves, your mind has to change with it.

Transfer tip: Stick an alignment rod in the ground 15 feet in front of you and focus on starting the ball right of it (if you’re a right-handed golfer working on a draw, that is). That will help you become more comfortable seeing the ball start right of the target and allow your new technique to finally show its worth on the scorecard.

Distance

A better concept of impact and some hard work means that you are now striking the ground in a repeatable place and your ball striking has improved dramatically. Unfortunately, however, just striking the ball better and having it fly longer distances does not automatically lower your scores. A lot of golfers can actually start to fly the ball too long. That makes them tentative, and therefore they can’t perform their best with the great new swing they’ve been honing.

Transfer tip: In an ideal world, use a launch monitor such as Trackman or Flightscope to see your new carry distances and write them down. If this is not possible, go onto your practice facility, hit 10 shots, ignore the two best and worst shots and calculate your new distances.

Creativity

That chipping session that you had — the one on improving your technique and striking the ball more consistently — was very useful. However, without knowing what shot to hit and what club to use, the new skills probably won’t lead to much lower scores.

Transfer tip: Take your most lofted club, a pitching wedge, 7 iron and 4 iron, and try all of them from various lies around the green. Experiment with your new technique, but different clubs. Your discoveries of how and when different clubs will work best will enable you to hit your short-game shots closer to the hole.

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Remember that “random practice” as I like to call it and a willingness to constantly change the environment you are practicing in will make your practice more akin to the situations you will find on the golf course, which is the best way to practice if you want to shoot lower scores. Be sure to not exclusively practice by hitting the same 7 iron at the same target 20 times in a row, or practice in a similar fashion with other clubs. While those routines may give you a short-term feeling of success, they’re not the best way to transfer new skills to the golf course.

Give these ideas a try and see the work you have put in translate to lower scores out on the course.

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Instruction

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

Published

4 days 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

1 month 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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