shortgamewiz

sorry.. i just realized you must own a radar or you wouldn't know what your swing speed is.. doi. here's another idea if you haven't done it..and a lot of people wont because of shame.. .. and that is to video your swing.. you can then a-b it it to pros you like. maybe similar in body type to you. you could even post it here and get suggestions. If you haven't seen your swing lately I highly recommend this as you could probably quickly spot a bunch of things to work on. dont worry if your fat and out of shape like me.. just do it. swallow your pride and you'll reap the rewards. on the other hand if you are already doing this just ignore this post. More along those lines, it nuts how some seemingly tiny technique can translate to a bunch of more speed. You could see something that could add 5mph right off the bat. I once, by accident almost, started turning my head away more on the backswing (a la nickaus, except more mid-swing then pre-swing) when on the range, and I noticed that I immediately started carrying much further and past a target that was prob 40 yards past where I had been landing prior.. and the change was consistent. just by turning my head ! Then days would go by, I would forget to do it for a while and over time start wondering why i had lost the distance, then I did it again and voila..the length was there again. Turns out the head move was allowing my upper body to turn away more.. maybe 20 degress oreven more so. Definitely a full turn away from the target and a full turn through/ past it will add lots of speed if your not already doing that.. and most amateurs arent, btw.. just check out the range the next time your there. . other stuff like moving your upper body ahead of the ball (i.e. not staying behing it at impact) will cost you distance/speed. Again, you might think your doing something alright but a quick view of yourself on the video will often reveal some big power leaks. or glaring faults in technique. It did for me. Spend a little time fixing them and bam-- you're sh*t will be flyin out there. And that's a cool feeling. Recently something similar happened to me with grip pressure.. but I caught it with the radar instead of the camera. I was wondering why I had lost 4mph or so on my drives, and then I remmbered I had been experimenting with different grip pressures in the short game, so I tried a super light grip.. bam.. the distance came right back..Thats not to say a light grip is always the answer for everyone.. grip pressure I find to be an odd thing.. sometimes a too light grip will cause excess tension in other body parts (like shoulders and arms) because you are compensating for a feeling of not being able to control the club.. so youde be better off with a firmer grip. So, as stan utley says, the answer to most golf questions is "it depends". Anyway.. sorry to bend your ear. Good luck!

I started playing when I was 20. That was a while ago. I used to like to get long light wood sticks, longer than a driver length, from the hardware store and rig somthing like a handle on them, so I barely had to hold onto it and swing those things back and forth as fast as I could.. try to get the swosh as high pitched as possible. I'd do it with each arm individually and then both together. I found that better than turning the driver upside down, but that worked too and I did it if I didn't have my sticks or I broke em I did that one plenty. I'm not a tremendously strong person so i had to work on my distance a lot. But I liked practicing. I alternated the stick drill with swinging a broom to stretch myself out. I did that kind of stuff for a year or so at the range. And would revisit the drills from time to time. A few people thought I was nuts with the broom but I didn't care. Of course, over time you also figure out flaws and improvments in technique and that translates to more speed. I did a lot of drills.. feet together, baseball step in, walking in and hitting a line of balls in sequence without stopping between, flat footed, stance angled away (uber closed) or uber open. One footed swings. One arm swings. etc. All those drills translated into greater swing speed and more accurate striking over time. I did those drills a lot, over many years. Also, I know this might sound dumb, but it took me a long time to learn when I was hitting it fat, which was quite often, and that the solution to both fats and tops is to take a divot ahead of the ball. Sorry if that seems obvious, but its amazing how this little something is missed by so many learning the game, for so long.I know it's dumb, but I would hit it a little fat on the range, and would think I was making some bad swing error because of all the distance I had lost, when it was really a very very small thing I needed to fix. Small but very significant. So make sure you know the mishits and how to fix them. Its crazy how long it takes people to really understand the cause and cure of a fat shot.. or to even recognize it at all. Another thing, sort of on the topic.. before playing I learned it was very helpful for me to do slow mo swiings with my driver, holding it very very tightly, and tensing other muscle groups tensed and exxagerating differnt aspects of the swing..i.e uber wide stance, or an exagerated extended arms or, ultra low and slow start to get a lot of width in my swing. The goal was to stretch stuff that wasn't normally stretched that I needed for golf. I found out that I really had to be stretched out enough and warmed up enough or my swing wasn't very good on the course. Also, beating balls as hard as I could, not worrying about where they go was another big mainstay for me, for years. I remember davis love (who hit a four hundred some odd drive once with a persimmon driver in a tournament which is still the second longest pga drive ever.) once said that he was taught to hit it as hard as he could while still being in balance. Nicklaus was tautht something similar, except without the "in balance" caveat. you hear it over an over from Pro's. You want distance, spend lots of time hitting it as hard as you can-- don't worry about technique, or 'doing it right'.. just smash and smash again. If it goes sideways don't worry about it. Also, many years later I got a radar which was a great investment and relatively cheap. You can lie to youself about your distance but the numbers wont lie. Its good to use it for a few shots for a reality check. very helpful tool I think. At some point I stopped working on my full swing cuz I finally realized It was reasonably ok, but my short game really sucked. So I obsessed on that for a long time. Now Im started back on the long game again. Clubhead speed varies from 105 to 110 now which puts me in the category of the very short hitting pros (at least in terms of clubhead speed) but I just found two significant flaws in my swing thanks to my trusty video, that I'm working out and am expecting to pick up 5 mph at least when all that is said and done. hopefully Then I guess I'll be satisfied. Maybe.. NAAAhhh!!! One thing I have learned recently is that you can increase your 'overall' tempo (i.e. backswing/downswing timing) without feeling lke you are swinging any 'harder- your just doing the whole thing more.. "briskly" , and (all things being equal), the ball will go further, in general. Its like putting the washing machine on a higher cycle. So that's another thing I work on. Sorry if that seems obvoious to you..it took me a long time to figure that one out. I always worked on rhthem .. that definitely helps in getting more distance. And what's great about good rhythem is it actually takes less effort to swing rhythmically, and the ball goes further as a bonus. And its fun! just pick tunes to swing to at different tempos or rythems. Or feel like your dancing.. and different kinds of dances at different speeds. Acutally hit balls doing this stuff. It's amazing how rhythem affects everything else.. and distance. I should add that you should always be careful and go easy on your body. It's easy to get hurt and that's the last thing you need. I did something to my lower back after really pushing myself one day, about 10 years ago and got siatica as a result and am still paying the price. But its not too bad..I do bikram yoga several times a week and that keeps it in check, plus it's really is great for my flexibility. the siatica doesn't affect my golf swing oddly. But the point is it would have been nice to not have been hurt in the first place. Good luck. jerry

Well, after focusing on my short game for a good long time, I am now officially back to obsessing on smashing the ball again. yipee.. I like to watch Sadlowski videos from youtube these days. I used to like to watch Couples a lot. I would like to see more Daly but I cant get videos of him when he was younger. I think that Sadlowski's swing is close to perfect. Just love it. It seems to me that a lot of the swings on youtube of sadlowski (especially from a few years ago.. less so on the more recent) are very reminiscent of Couples' movement.. stand tall at address, on the backswing straighten back leg have really high hands and full cock.. So, I noticed that both Sadlowski and Couples seem to increase their shoulder turn as they start back down. I believe that most of this is "prying their upper body" awary from the base config they set up with their legs and various angles they start down, but I also think that there's another step.. I think they are also using their right elbow at that point to also increase the turn .. after lifting it up they are pulling it back toward the target, to assist in that " prying apart" maneuver. This is really noticable, I think in many of the couples videos but I suspect Sadlowski is also doing that. What do people think of this???? And if its been discussed elsewhere, please point me to the thread.

I agree that he really doesn't spill all the beans. But he does focus on a few simple things which i appreciate. I think if you do an in depth study of phil's dvd, stan's golf channel, utube and mycontent vids, and seve's vimeo vids , and then practice your ass off for a year or so, in a really good short game facility, your bound to make some improvement.

I found that phils video helped me with this prob. I love utley but I think you need different perspectives in golf and in life. Phil likes to keep these shots compact, firm, from mainly a slighly open stance with some cut spin on it. That's how seve does it on his videos on the web too. Seve even says "keep it short".

it's a shank. ball hitting hosel. nasty buggers. I struggled with them and I too found it mostly happened in wedge practice. The best thing I could come up with is you simply loose feel for the clubhead and where it's contacting the ball. I think once I get a little tired and loose a little concentration, which may happen sooner then I'd like to think with the wedge practice it tends to crop up. Not sure why exactly. I developed my own set of remedies which seem to help me but no guarantee they'll work for you. They are: instead of standing square as stan suggests, I stand a little open (use a reference club on the ground) and I firm up my grip esp. my left hand, but also my right. (I try to do that without over tightening up my shoulders or arms and losing fluidity) and then I make sure I'm addressing it and ultimately hitting it more towards the toe than the heel. Since I'm a little open the action is more 'cut' ( a la phil/seve) then 'draw/straight' (a la stan). I also make sure my posture is very good and back is straight and chin and neck aligned to my back. Lazy posture seems to breed the problem. Also I noticed that a backswing and stroke that is too slow or lazy seems to breed it as well, so I firm up and speed up the backswing and stroke. I make sure my backswing is very short and compact as well. I think we get in trouble when we watch players like utley or couples because they look so smooth to us but what they're actually doing physically might not be exactly what it looks like to us, so we tend to slow down, over lenghthen the backswing, hold it too loose and simply get too pretty. You may not completely grasp all that stuff if youre a beginner which is understandable. Good luck with this problem, it's very annyoying. The other things you can try are: taking a break when it starts.. sitting down in the shade and drinking some water or something. Or if you're on the range, switching to another kind of shot/club. What's particularly annoying about this problem is once you think you got them licked they come back another day of short game practice. Very annoying. That's why i think it's mainly a feel/awareness problem. You can try doing silly swings/shots, one handed shots or radically wierd shots to help regain feel too. nasty problem.

Right now I would say that if you 'sank plenty' then you should use that putter. Don't worry about what "you like" so much.. worry about 'what works'. I was in love with the idea of using either an original wilson or original ping anser, but I ended up giving up on that, after buying about a dozen 8802s and other assorted relics.. I finall got an Odyssey 882, which is based on the 8802 but much bigger sweet spot. This decision to switch was purely based on performance. It just worked better. (It's also a shorter putter than my other ones which im sure is a factor as well but that's another point.) Take all your putters out and have a putting contest with yourself. And take a look at your mishits. If you tend to hit it more solid with a putter than use it and forget asthetics. I also think you should get away from utleys books and rely more on his videos on the web.. I think you'll learn more from them. I know I did. Utley says himself he was told as a kid not to read golf books and not to use training aids!!

anyone into Utley has to check out his latest videos, with the same name as the book. They're on "mycontent.com" .. you gotta buy them for 20 bucks or so a pop (there's 4.. one for putting, chipping, pitching, sand) so you gotta drop a hundred for all of them. It's sooo much easier to learn from video than a book. They are worth every penny if not many times that amount, imo. we're all rich golfers anyway, right? . Just kidding. The other thing you can do with videos, which I highly recommend, is video yourself and then do a side by side, with you and utley and become your own guru. Absolutely amazing how informative t it is and easy to do, once you get over the self image issues (which are a big thing when you're a little round like me) and the lazyness issues, and the 'fear of looking like a freak' issues. The speed in which you will be able to spot things .. little mistakes.. that you were making, is increadible. He's also changed the way he presents his technique, recently, I've noticed, with a much greater focus on what he calls "allowing yourself to feel wristy ". I think he used to shy away from that type of advice thinking that it would scare away too many golfers but now he doesn't care, and just says it like it is. Of course, just "being wristy" is not the complete solution, and there's a lot more to it than that. In fact, he even mentions in his book about how he sometimes "takes the wrists out of it" on certain shots. Good golf is never going to be a cookbook, I'm afraid. But his messages and delivery are just soo refreshing... People talk about his sand technique and how easy it is and effective, once you get the hang of it. I have had that experience as well. He reveals in his videos that, not only did he learn this technique from Tom Pernice, but Pernice learned it from Ballesteros, so you cant go wrong learning from a genius. Others have mentioned that Player used a similar style as well, although I am not as familiar with his technique, although I heard he was the best out of sand in his time.

I actually was tapping the ground with my clubhead where I wanted the bottom to be, right before I hit it.. that seemed to help drive the point home. Gonna definitely try your tee trick.

thanks shanks! At one point I also had thought about 'not taking a divot' on long shots, which is probably how I fixed my fat problem there. But for some reason now that I'm mainly focusing on the short shots it seems as though I need to relearn everything... It was really amazing how much more 'room for error' it made when I moved the point forward... what a wonderful feeling!!! I hope it lasts!

it's wierd in that somehow I managed to hit to hit the ball. I guess maybe my 'inner golfer' knew on some level. I did know that hitting behind was certainly fat, and that a good divot was in front, but I always thought that the divot should start where the ball touched the ground... but now that I think about it-- that was dumb.

I found a new bottom today. I'm not talking about a new level of depravity-- I already bottomed out on that long ago. I was helped by *shanksamillion* once again in this respect-- after reading one of his posts the thought started to percolate that I could conceivably change the way I thought of the bottom of the swing, and then other voices I've heard started to reverberate in my cranium. I just downloaded Utley's new short game lesson videos, which I highly recommend, btw. And he also mentioned bottoming out 'ahead of the ball'. So what I've been focusing on is that the bottom occurs not at the ball, or even a little ahead of the ball, but actually even further ahead than that. This concept was so helpful to me when chipping and pitching from tight lies that it seemed to just about solve my tendency to hit fat. So, I just thought I'd relay that bit of info. I'm sure many here will already know this quite well, but I thought that someone might benifit from it. In my mind it also goes hand in hand with Utly's concept of "tilt left". I reason now that you can tilt left all you want, but if you are aiming your general contact point too far back you'll still have a tendency to hit it fat. Just mentally moving the point a few inches forward of the ball really did the trick. I also realized that there's a big difference, for me, between changing the overall swing so that it bottoms out further up, then just trying to force the clubhead to do something midswing, which I fear I was also guilty of. If I do it right, then I'm just swinging the club, and not manipulating it.. so much easier... Also, videos of me, when compared with to Stan the man, on a 40 yd pitch, betrayed a jerkiness through the ball that I am now convince was caused in part by this error (we'll see if new videos of me are any better now that I've seen the light). Fantastic result today for sure. And it's such a small thing!! The average quality, consistency and ease was improved considerably, even and esp. on the tighter lies. It really did for me. At least today, that is...

Nice. Nicklaus described a similar drill in his books. That must be how you do it. I should do that.

ok.. i'll take a stab at this one. Dont practice anything. Heresy, I know. But hear me out. I started out as a big sliceer. then I finally figured out how to draw the ball on the range, but still would often end up reverting to slicing when I actually was playing, especially when the fairways got tight. I finally got a system that seemed to help me in that situation. First of all, and most importantly, if I was fading, or slicing, I would accept that ball flight as 'my shot', not try to fight it, allow for it, and pick a target way left (way right in your case), out in the distance. Usually it was a tree, or something else real big. Then I would approach the ball starting from a few paces behind it, after looking at the target I picked, blocking everything else in the world out, walking up briskly, with this target held in mind, "walk around it" as they say (in your case that would be counter clockwise) so that I ended up walking in towards the ball at a ninety degree angle to that target line I established. This all happened very quickly.. Then I would ** quickly ** hit a hard slice, right at that target I picked. I did it all quickly, before the target evaporated in my mind. Since I gave myself plenty of fairway, this method usually relaxed me so the cut wasn't tremendously bad. Ok, to this approach (you could call it my "routine) I added 3 thoughts to control the severity of the fade.. but only used them if it still was too harsh. Otherwise i would be satisfied with a hard cut as "my shot" -- hey it worked for Fred Couples for several decades just fine. Here they are: Thought 1.. turn away **fully** and complete the backswing (most beginners are afraid to turn away completely, esp on tight holes.. this ends up causing a slice). Thought 2.. keep the head behind the ball at impact (moving the head forward before the hit also causes a slice) Thought 3... remember to hit it real hard, that is *smash it* at that target you picked These thoughts would usually serve to stabilize the hard fade. Sometimes (often) I would find that my shots started straightening out while playin when doing the above procedure. In that case I just establish the new target accordingly. It might take a few holes to start to feel something reliable emerging. I usually would try to keep the fade as opposed to changing to a draw mid round. A firm left hand grip and thinking "hard cut" would usually insure that. But if I started drawing and felt like that was my new shape, I wouldn't fight it too hard either. Even though now my normal shot is a draw, I don't believe in forcing a pattern.. they both (draws/ fades) work just fine, and you can play scratch golf with either one.. so why struggle with trying to control that (esp. when you're starting out, or you don't play that much). here's an interesting bit of info on the topic.. do you know the ball flight Jason Zuback preferred in all his years dominating the Long Drive circuit? Hint: its wasn't a draw. So if you're a fader than fade away..youre in great company.. Nicklaus, Hogan, Couples, Lyle.. The one other bit of wisdom I can impart is this. Golf is filled with things that make us tense, that we have to overcome. Sometimes we never do, unfortunately. For a beginner that kind of fear causing tension usually results in a slice. The two fear biggies for begginners I think are the fear of turning away fully, and the other is the fear of turning through fully. And I think the underlying fear is getting everything (body, clubhead, hands, etc.) too far away from the ball. But you have to do that in order to *swing*. So there you have it. Its all about different kinds of fears. Hope something was helpful. -- Jerry

think you definitely should do that. I got my self an exilim ex fs-10 for under 200 bucks. Sucker does unbelievable slo mo, and just for pure clarity it's awesome. I've used it only a few times and spotted so many obvious and easy fixes I've lost count. I think it might be the best golf purchase I ever made.. oh, and also got a gorillapod type stand for about 15 bucks.. and use it right on my bag like *shanks* suggested. I know it's a big hump to jump over and actually video yourself.. trust me. 'Self image' issues (good god i'm fat), embarrasment of people thinking your a freak for videoing yourself issues, technical annoyance issues in terms of setting it up (although it's easy once you actually break down and do it). But this problem you are having could conceivably fix itself instantly once you actually saw what you were doing. If you have more balls than I do you even could try posting your vids here, but that probably wouldn't even be necessary. But, just to add my two cents.. here are some technical things that could help you.. Rate of arm rotation, relative to rate of shoulder and body rotation not sure why no one has really discussed arm rotation in relation to shoulder rotaion and body rotation as the cause of this, but in my mind that's more critical to hooking than things like a cupped or flat wrist wrist position. Obviously all these are interconnected, but If my body stops rotating and my shoulders stop then my arms will have to speed up the rotation in order to compensate. Then if in the next swing I keep the same rate of rotation in the arms out of habit, but then speed up the body or shoulders, Im out of synch and will tend to hook. Allignment Another two things to look into are initial body and clubface allignment... if you are alligned at address to the right in one or both of those ways your brain will signal to compensate and do the above type of adjustments. Work with an allignment club to determine this. Overcorrect As an experiment, aim *way* left (with body and clubface) and hit huge slices. Its easier to feel big changes than small ones. Once you are bananna slicing happily, you can try aiming a little less left and work your way back to more straight shot. Grip pressure if you have an overly loose grip (and I bet you do) this can encourage hooking as well, imo. It's commonly discussed that tension reduces feel and an overly tight grip can hurt you, but I have learned that an overly loose grip at address will hurt you and will cause a miriad of swing flaws.. I would look into holding the club with an extra firm death grip to begin with, especially with the left hand (but you can try firming up your right hand too-- a lot of us have overcooked the "loose right hand" so it ends up hurting us) and firm up your left arm too. Do this while you are doing the slicing drill above (especially if you are still finding it hard to slice). A firm grip will help inhibit arm rotation through the ball. Looping If your problem is you are looping too far to the inside on the backswing, you once again could be setting yourself up so you have to compensate by closing up coming through.. you could try reversing the loop to work on this.. ie do a figure eight so you first loop inside then out, so you end up more outside. Davis Love's dad and bob Toski were big on loop drills.. you could check out there books.. although most people have the opposite problem that you (might) be having need to end up more inside out. Hope one of these things helps. - Jerry