Category: Playing Tips

Physical Conditioning: Training the Body for Golf Tournaments

Properly preparing can be more important than the actual tournament.

Preparing for golf tournaments can be challenging. Golf tournaments run for four days with up to seventy-two holes to complete, and a player can make even a hundred swings per game. That, combined with long walks on the golf course, can be very exhausting.

Although golf is not physical like rugby and football, physical conditioning is crucial in helping golfers move and work more efficiently. Also, players need physical conditioning to be able to drive the ball far with accuracy and consistency. In addition, it builds players’ endurance in the game.

In this article, we will unpack aspects of physical conditioning that will help you prepare for golf tournaments.

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Exploring the Appeal of Golf in the United States

Golf has long been a popular sport in the United States and continues to grow in popularity among American players. With its rich history, competitive nature and wide range of courses available across the country, golf has all the reasons to be one of the most beloved sports in the US. From professional tournaments to weekend rounds with friends, the sport offers a rich experience that appeal to players of all ages and skill levels.

The competitive nature of golf makes it enticing to gamblers. Many sports betting sites in the US set up bets on golf tournaments that anyone interested can access for betting. For betting on golf and sports betting in general, you may see more at www.thesportsgeek.com/sportsbooks/us/florida/ to sample out anything that appeals to you.

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Recording Your Golf Swing

The proper angles and camera positions to film your golf swing with modern technology.

This is an updated (and slimmed down) article to the original one here.

Recording Your Golf Swing

Recording your swing from the proper angles is very important. Consistently filming your swing from the proper locations not only makes it easier for you to compare your swings against previous and future swings, but also makes it easier for others you might show your swing to (for example, to folks in the Member Swings forum or to an instructor) see what’s going on.

Two views are commonly used in looking at a golf swing. If you’ve watched golf on television, you’ll be familiar with them. They are the “Down the Line” view and the “Face-On” or “Caddie” view.

Here’s how to set up and record each. (Mentally replace the camera images with your iPhone 23 Pro if you don’t mind. 😀)

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Want to Improve? Check out the X Mount

Check out the X Mount – the solution to recording your golf swing (and more) with your phone.

Protosports Holster
I’m sometimes asked why I got into golf instruction, and the answer is very simple. I am passionate about the game, and by helping others, and improving their ability to play the game, I am acting as an ambassador for the game of golf, and bringing a little bit more joy to the lives of others.

One of my favorite sub-forums on the forum section of our site is the Member Swings sub-forum. In here, forum members post videos of their golf swings, drills, putting, and more, and the knowledgeable members of the forum along with my co-owner Mike McLoughlin and myself help them out.

There’s a common saying in the world of photography that the best camera is the one you’ve got with you, and more and more, smart phones these days are equipped with some pretty decent cameras capable of capturing good video at high frame rates. My iPhone 5S, for example, records 720P video at 120 FPS, and I’ve always got my phone with me.

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Filming Your Golf Swing

Technology is a wonderful thing, and with all due respect to Vijay Singh, it can help you quite a bit.

Casio FH25Vijay Singh was once famously quoted for saying that he doesn’t look at his swing on video because he’d be tempted to make it look pretty rather than focusing on building a swing that works. This quote is often used by people trying to justify why they won’t record their swing or buy a camera.

Unfortunately, Vijay’s quote was taken out of context, misunderstood, or was simply untrue. Singh has used high-speed cameras to record his swing for years and maintains a large library of his videos. While practicing, he often has his caddie or others record his swing, and will stop to look at things and make adjustments.

I think that what Vijay Singh was trying to say is that he values function over form. That’s fine – and something virtually every good golfer has in common. And while it’s true that form follows function in the golf swing, the opposite is also true: function follows form. A high-speed video camera is a useful, valid tool in improving both the form and function of your swing.

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Ball Flight Laws

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, golf instructors have been teaching the ball flight laws incorrectly. Many blame the PGA Teaching Manual, and have said that it has contained some incorrect or incomplete information pertaining to a golf ball’s flight. These pros – from Butch Harmon to Nick Faldo – often state the ball flight laws 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, many instructors and famous golfers have stated that the swing path is the primary determinant of the golf ball’s starting direction. This information is wrong, and it’s slowly coming to be understood as such in recent years. Unfortunately, many golfers – famous or otherwise – and instructors – famous or otherwise – still believe these outdated and incorrect ball flight laws.

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The Instructor Quiz: Nine Questions You’ve Gotta Ask

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 based on the 5 Simple Keys®… but all of the questions and answers are the same for any efficient method of swinging the golf club.

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Stack and Tilt vs. Power Pivot: A Conversation

Read the debate between Stack and Tilt versus the “classic” golf swing, as discussed by T.M. O’Connell and Dave Wedzik.

Aaron BaddeleyA 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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Scorecard Golf Statistics Software Now at 2.0

Track your statistics to get better at golf.

ScorecardThis 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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