Category: Playing Tips

Different clubs require different swings. Your wedge, for example, requires a “steeper” swing than your 4I. Your driver and 3W require the sweeping swing of all.

The bottom of a sweeping swing is very flat – the club is just above the ground for two or three feet. To ingrain the feeling of keeping the club low to the ground for a long period of time, imagine swinging your driver under a hedge – don’t clip the wood chips or dirt, and don’t clip the leaves or branches above.

This works well for your driver, 3W, and long irons, but is difficult to manage with mid and short irons.

I’ve long employed a simple trick to hit the ball further and straighter: I put the logo (in my case, “Titleist”) on the back inside quadrant of the ball when teeing up. Then, my sole swing thought is “hit the logo with the clubface.”

Obviously, hitting the logo with the clubface would result in a massive hook or a blocked shot 45° right of your target line, but the simple reality is that nobody is that limber. Trying to hit the inside of the ball forces the club to come from just inside the target line – a powerful position that adds accuracy and distance and counters the weak over-the-top move of a lot of amateurs. It can also help to encourage a longer wrist cock, creating more “lag” and thus more powerful shots.

In the fairway, where you’re not able to position the ball, focus on a dimple or a spot in the same quadrant. You won’t actually hit the inside back quadrant of the ball, but trying to may help your scores more than you could imagine.

The next time you’re at the range, experiment with your grip. I like to hit shots while I hover my right thumb above the grip. I find that this forces me to swing more with control and to use the bigger muscles of my shoulders, arms, and trunk to control the club, not the small muscles in my wrists and fingers.

You may want to try strengthening your grip. Or weakening it. Try gripping the club more in your fingers or try putting it further back into your palms (my grip tends to work out towards my fingertips sometimes, but that’s rare – most people grip too much in their palms).

Try swinging a club with only your left hand. Switching from an overlap to an interlocking (or vice versa). Jim Furyk uses a double-overlap grip, after all.

Play around with your grip, making minor swing changes you feel necessary. Don’t spend too much time practicing grips that don’t pay off or that feel too awkward, because practice makes permanent. And nobody wants a permanent grip that doesn’t work.

How does your swing stack up against the lash of Tiger Woods? Or the silky smoothness of Ernie Els? The Arnie-like swat of Chris DiMarco?

You can find out at http://redgoat.smugmug.com/. The site, by Brady Riggs, has video and still frames for hundreds of people ranging from tour pros to students and solid amateurs. It’s important to try to match your swing to an existing swing – not everyone is built for Tiger’s swing or Ernie’s swing – but by carefully studying the images and video, you may be able to learn something about the swing.

Hop on over to Riggs’ site and have a look.

Golf for Women has published a snippet of a book called Tour Tempo: Golf’s Last Secret Finally Revealed. The snippet outlines the 3:1 ratio that most tour players seem to have in their swings. Three beats to reach the top of the backswing, one beat coming down to impact.

You too can attempt to achieve “Tour Tempo” by counting in your head. Most music is in 4/4 time, so pick a song with a rhythm you like. Swing back to the top on the first three beats while humming the song or singing it (even if you do so quietly or in your head), and swing down and make contact with the ball on the last beat. If you have decent rhythm, simply saying “1 2 3 4” rhythmically will be enough.

Give the “Tour Tempo” a try the next time you golf. It’s not much of a swing thought, but then again, that’s the point.

We’ve previously written about how tee height can affect shotmaking, but what’s the standard position for a teed ball?

The general rule of thumb for woods and metals these days is this: tee the ball up so that, when your club rests lightly on the ground, ½ of the ball is above the topline of the club. The image to the right, courtesy of Perry Andrisen’s site, is a touch above that but will encourage an upswing with the driver.

Here’s another image showing the heights of the tee for a driver, a 5-metal, and an 11-metal (which is similar to that of an iron), courtesy of Golf for Women:

Three footers, the bane of everyone’s existence. Short enough that you should make them, but long enough that you might just miss. Do you ease them into the hole or ram them into the back? If you choose the latter, you might just face another three-footer coming back, and if you choose the former you may fall prey to the break.

The clock drill will help you with those short ones. Place six to twelve balls three feet from the hole in every direction. This will give you sidehill, uphill, and downhill putts. You’ll quickly develop a feel for the break and the speed. Start with a straight putt and work your way around the hole. Just get the ball in the hole instinctively – don’t read the green. Whether you’re a “ram it in” or an “ease it in” kinda golfer will become obvious.

If you’ve watched Phil Mickelson play lately, you’ve seen him take this drill to the course. He lines up a straight version of his putt, makes a stroke, and then moves to his ball, addresses it, and puts it in the hole instinctively. Give it a try and let your inner putting instinct surface.

Eighty percent of the shots in golf occur inside of 100 yards. In order to score well, golfers need to be accurate with their wedges. The key to accuracy is proper contact in the sweet spot (the area which wastes the least amount of energy when struck). Many golfers hit the ball too far to the toe or hozel of the club due to either an outside-to-in swing plane or a swing that is over the top. Improper contact leads to twisting of the club head and offline shots.

In order to learn how to make consistent contact with your wedges, lay a 2-by-4 on its long side and place a ball on the ground an inch away. Start out hitting small chips without making any contact with the board. Both out to in swings and over the top motions will result in contact with the board and immediate feedback.

Once you are proficient, move on to pitches, and finally full swings. As your contact improves you’ll see your scores drop. Both out to in swings and over the top motions will result in contact with the board and immediate feedback.

Keep practicing and eventually you will groove an inside out swing with your wedges.

You’ve got a 20-yard pitch to a tight pin over a little bunker. You reach for your lob wedge, give it a good swing, and advance the ball 10 yards into the bunker.

Why?

Because you were pitching from an upslope, which added loft to your 60° club, launching the ball nearly straight up in the air. From an upslope, a PW, 9I, or even an 8I might have the same effective loft – 60° or so – as a lob wedge.

The opposite is true on downlopes, of course: your pitching wedge may have the loft of a 7I. Take a loftier club to counter the negative effect of the slope.