For decades golfers have employed an incorrect understanding of why the ball flies the way it does. Science has set things straight, but many golfers remain unaware.
For decades, the PGA Teaching Manual has contained some incorrect information pertaining to a golf ball's flight. That information can be summed up as follows: "The golf ball starts on the direction of the swing path and curves back to where the clubface was aimed at impact."
Put another way, the Manual has stated that the swing path is the primary, over-riding determinant in the golf ball's initial starting direction. This information is wrong. It's been updated (slightly) within recent years, yet many golfers - famous or otherwise - and instructors - famous or otherwise - still believe it.
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How to avoid wasting your time and money: put your instructor through this simple quiz.
There are a lot of golf instructors out there. Many of them are qualified, intelligent instructors with the best of intentions. They want to help you, they want to see you improve, and they enjoy doing it.
Unfortunately, intentions don't always translate into ability, and there are a good number of instructors out there who may not be helping their students as much as they'd like.
Over the last few years I have become increasingly frustrated with feedback I have received from students who have taken lessons from seemingly "qualified" instructors. In this era of the Internet and YouTube, I have also had the chance to view a large number of videos and read many instructional articles online and, again, it seems that much of the information is misleading at best. Because of this I took the time to devise a short nine-question "test" for golf instructors.
I would like to point out upfront that I, and all the instructors at my academy, teach the Stack and Tilt pattern… but all of the questions and answers are the same for any efficient method of swinging the golf club.
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Read the debate between Stack and Tilt versus the "classic" golf swing, as discussed by T.M. O'Connell and Dave Wedzik.
A few years ago, two instructors made a large splash in the relatively small pond of golf instruction when they shared their thoughts on what was perceived by many to be a radical new way to swing the golf club.
Though Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett studied the moves of some of the greatest golfers in history, including Ben Hogan, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and others, the The Stack and Tilt golf swing was rejected by virtually every known teacher as a fad. It was tarnished with "that's a reverse pivot" and "you'll hurt your back with that reverse C finish." Mudslinging, golfers discovered, wasn't just for politics anymore.
In the years since, the Stack and Tilt golf swing has gained a steady following on the PGA Tour. Some high-profile names "gave up" on the swing, but many more higher-profile players have joined the ranks as well. What's more, the violent reaction a lot of "traditional" instructors have had to the Stack and Tilt move has subsided and allowed for some real study, and many instructors who take the time to understand the swing have come to see that it's not as different as they once thought.
On October 15, 2009 we held a chat between Stack and Tilt instructor David Wedzik and The Sand Trap's own T.M. O'Connell, Swing Check columnist and author of "Golf's Not Hard." Dave Wedzik just opened the first Stack and Tilt certified academy. T.M. O'Connell is a proponent of what he calls the classic move with a "Power Pivot."
The chat was a revealing one, and given the popularity of The Sand Trap's lone article on S&T from 2007, I suspect a lot of you out there may benefit from reading it.
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Track your statistics to get better at golf.
This is one of our off weeks from doing the Golf Talk podcast, so I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about the recent release of some golf statistics software - Scorecard - which was just bumped to version 2.0 with some well-requested features.
In the interest of disclosure, I'm a partial owner of the software company that makes Scorecard as well as one of the developers/designers for the software. It's not free ($29.95, or $14.95 for upgrades from 1.x), and thus, I make a bit of money from the sales of Scorecard.
As I said, Scorecard 2.0 was just released with several user-requested features, including full nine-hole support for both statistics and handicap calculation, per-hole user notes (so you can document what clubs you hit or anything else you'd like), and graphing of over 35 statistics (with markers).
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Stack and Tilt: a fad or a little bit closer to a universal golf truth? We'd like your feedback.
Three simple words - Stack and Tilt - have done about as much to turn the world of golf instruction upside down as anything in recent memory.
It's the move that led the U.S. Open through three rounds this year. It's the move that's led to the resurgence of the careers of a number of pros, including former Masters champ Mike Weir. It's a move pros have been adopting in quantity, and a move amateurs have been adopting with sometimes remarkable success.
It's also been a few months since the Golf Digest article first hit newsstands. I postulated that a lot of the early success amateurs were experiencing was simply a result of a temporary short-circuiting of their brain and that, eventually, the old swing flaws would return. Perhaps that was a bit short-sighted…
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I also know that 90% of putts left short don't go in, but you probably already heard that one from Yogi Berra.
A member of our forum, after noticing that my putting stats are pretty good, asked me what tips I could offer to help others become a better putter. After thinking about it, I realized that being a "good putter" is more about the sum of the parts than any individual part. So, I wrote back to the forum member and said "I'll write something up in the future and post it for all to see."
This is the answer to that question. I can't promise that this will help everyone become a great putter - though I believe great putters are made, not born - because this process is mine. Still, a piece or two can likely be adapted to fit anyone, and I encourage comments from others about the different things they do to make themselves good putters.
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My keys to becoming a better putter.
For amateurs, putting makes up between half and one-third of all strokes on a golf course. If you can lower the amount of putts you take by only 10%, that's a three- to four-shot improvement.
Yet visit any golf course, and you'll likely not see many people practicing their putting despite the obvious importance.
I used to neglect putting, but I've since served penance to the golf gods and am starting to get the ball to the hole a lot better than I used to. To me, putting boils down to a few basic ideas: stroke, aim, and confidence. You can make huge steps towards dropping strokes off your scorecard by practicing these three things. Read on to see how I'm doing it.
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Mac OS X users, we shed some light on a Dashboard Widget can help you score better.
Golfers who use Macintosh computers, rejoice! There's a way to make your computer even golfier. The new Mac OS is code-named Tiger (which is pretty golfy all by itself, no?), and it has a cool feature called Dashboard. When you activate Dashboard, a serious of little web-enabled programs called Widgets pops up. There are plenty of Widgets you can install, from eBay auction trackers to local weather reports. Your golf fix is taken care of by the new Golf Tips Widget. It provides a new golf tip each day, courtesy of Golf magazine. If you're using a Mac with Tiger installed (and if you're not, you really should be), you can download the Golf Tips Widget here or here.
The around the world drill is great for improving your putting under pressure, but increasing the distance after each putt will build pressure faster.
It's often suggested that a great drill to improve one's putting is to roll in as many consecutive putts from several "stations" in a circle around a hole as possible. There are variations, but the theme is the same, miss one and you start over from the beginning. Not only are you improving your stroke (hopefully) but you are also simulating pressure as you get closer and closer to the end of the drill. It's a good drill, but I'd like to suggest a slightly different one.
Find a level stretch of putting surface extending fifteen to twenty feet from the hole (with permission from the pro shop, you can take chalk string from a hardware store and mark the straight line). Next, place a ball three feet from the cup on the level line that you found and knock the putt in. Now, place the ball five feet from the cup and knock that putt in. Then seven feet, etc., continuing in this manner, getting further and further away from the hole until you miss, at which point you start over again from three feet. The object of the drill is to see how far away you can get from the cup, always attempting to beat your personal best.
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