burnabao

I was on a society day last year and there was an old boy outside the clubhouse offering to give our clubs an "ultrasonic" clean for £5. He claimed that grips/shafts and head would all be as new. I was skeptical but went for it out of interest and what do you know - the old boy really delivered! All metal was super clean/shiny and grips were tacky like new. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the franchise...

I clean my clubs every weekend, usually on a Sunday night in front of the TV. It drives Mrs burnabao nuts, but I find it quite theraputic. My bag towel has a ballzee pad, so I can ususally get the worst of the muck off the heads/out of the grooves while I'm out on the course, but once you've given them a proper going over at home, there's something satisfying knowing that your clubs are clean, shiny, and ready to go when you next want to pick them up!

+1 here. Amen to that.

I know for a fact that I have a very deliberate pre-shot routine on the tee and also when putting, but I tend not to observe it between the tee and green (which is where most of most shots go awry). I'm really going to have to try and focus on that actually...it had made my tee shots much less of a lottery! FWIW, my non-putting routine is: check out tee box for a level position; tee up ball; step back behind ball and pick a target in the distance; set up to target and make 2-3 practice swings; refocus on target from behind ball; club addressess ball, left foot in position, right foot in position; quick check on target; takeaway.

Check out the standard length of the hybrid vs the iron - longer shaft will equal (theoretically) more distance for the same loft, but you also need to factor in whether the hybrid has a different (e.g. graphite) shaft. Oh, and you might find that you get a different trajectory with the hybrid than you're used to with the iron. If you can get fitted for a shaft though, you should be able to tweak that.

I'm a huge fan of lining up putts during a round, but I purposely don't do it when practising (although I kind of imagine a line to make sure I set the ball off on the right track and swing on-path). If I can make putts during practice without a line, when it comes to the round I can set the line up and just concentrate on weight, knowing that direction will take care of itself. This does, of course, assume that your green-reading is "on"!

By all means tell him what you'd like to achieve, but don't expect the route to your goal to be straightforward. If you can get the basic grip/swing "fixed" with a wedge or short iron, the transition to the longer clubs will be far simpler and you'll be working with a swing that has solid foundations, rather than just papering over the cracks as you would be if you tried to cure the driver slice straight away. If you go into the lessons looking to "become a better golfer" rather than fixing this or that problem, I believe you will get more out of it. Also, if you can see a video of your swing, prepare to be amazed at how different you look compared to how you imagine yourself. I was ashamed when I first saw my swing on tape, but the memory of that image has done as much as anything else to improve my swing (i.e. "what not to do")!!

Go with whatever works! One of my regular playing partners is a similar mystery - he golfs lefty, throws a ball righty, bats at cricket lefty, bowls at cricket righty, kicks a ball lefty, plays tennis righty, ten-pin bowling lefty, snooker righty. No discernable logic, but there it is! If it feels right, go with it.

On a general level, and after a bit of personal experimentation, I will never go back to using an "all weather" synthetic-type glove. The minute I pulled on a full leather glove (a free Mizuno Retroflex that I got with my irons) I knew I'd been missing out. Sure they'll wear out quicker, but the level of feel/touch is worth it in my opinion.

My 60* is a real get-out-of-jail-free card for me. The only time I won't use it is for a full or 3/4 shot from a really tight lie on hard ground, where the loft/bouce can combine to equal a blade over the green. Out of the bunker, it's like cheating. The fact that it's the most worn of my 3 wedges is no coincidence. I'm considering a 64*, but that might be too much even for me...!

For me there's no question: 18th 415y par 4 (usually) into the wind. You've just played 3 holes up the hill and, even assuming a 250y drive in the fairway (which is optimistic for most!), you are then faced with the choice of either laying up to, or trying to carry approx 170y over, the moat which guards the front of the green. There's barely 10y between the back edge of the water and the front of the green, so even if you do carry, unless you can stop the ball effectively you run a real risk of running off through the back of the green. All this at the end of your round, too, when you're tired/not at your sharpest mentally. Great finishing hole, though.

We played here last year http://www.manorofgroves.co.uk and a group of 8 of us teed off in front of a 40-50 strong society who had finished for the day and were drinking/lunching by the first tee. Not a single one of us hit the green. Some short, long, left, right - everything. We all moved very quickly (and sheepishly) to the second tee once we'd eventually holed out. Oh the shame...!

I am absolutely useless if I've had a drink the night before - I don't know how some guys drink during their round and don't fall to pieces! Tiredness, dehydration, lack of concentration, red mist - you name it, it gets worse with a hangover!

Absolutely. Golf is better than no golf, and if you want to watch something else on a Monday or Tuesday - who's stopping you?! Sounds like journos just trying to find something to write/complain about to me...

It's probably a fair compromise to agree that although hitting "up" on the ball might be a bit of an exaggeration, the feeling should be "more up" (or perhaps "less down"?) than compared to an iron-shot off the deck.

I think I tend to take more risks when I'm alone, which inevitably ends up with worse scores overall. Although I probably "play better golf shots" - not least of all because I find it easier to keep my rhythm when not waiting for another 3 people to play.

There's nothing to stop you putting it on playing club from a practical point of view (i.e. you can still hit balls with it), but I would imagine that it wouldn't be legal for playing comps/matches. For practice, though, I don't see why not.

I've been shooting low nineties since new year in all sorts of weather, then when it's finally brightened up my last three rounds have been 105, 104 and 102. Haven't been able to hit an iron for toffee the last couple of weeks out on the course (at the range I'm like Tiger - which is really useful ). Nice to know that I'm not the only one suffering! Playing again at the weekend, so hopefully I can banish those woes...

Just my 2 cents, but I used to have this problem a LOT and it was because I was hitting "down" on the ball (like a short iron shot) and either hitting the ball with the top of the clubhead or swinging right under it completely. The tip that got me on the road to recovery was to think of the club head as a hammer, and focus on the idea that you are trying to hit a nail into the golf ball parallel to the ground. This will (hopefully) result in a level/upwards strike and if you can sweep the ball off the tee like this, your high swingspeed and 10.5 degrees will do the rest. You can then work on optimising your trajectory with small adjustments, but the core hammer/nail principle will still stand.

FWIW, I bought Leadbetter's Swing Setter a few years back, and the best thing about it (for me, anyway) was the grip. So much so that I've subsequently bought one of the grips (made by Golf Pride) and stuck it on a weighted club that I use for warming up/practice. Although by the sounds of your problem (duck hook etc.) it might be the swing line/plane rather than the grip that's causing you the trouble?

I tried to introduce Mrs burnabao to the game this time last year in the hope of achieving what you already have done (you lucky devil) - needless to say she couldn't stand it! She has neither the patience, nor the inclination to "hit a little white ball into a stupid hole". The big upshot for me was that she's now really good about me playing every weekend - I think she might feel a little guilty that she didn't want to share my hobby with me!

My club is just outside London, no unaccompanied guests at weekends so it's pretty quiet, and works out around £1,500 (approx. $2,250) per year inc. £150 bar tab, but excluding anything else (balls/carts etc.). I've never golfed in the States, but I get the impression that you guys generally get more for your money over there.

Definitely consider half-swings if your contact goes - focus on clipping the ball off the turf/mat, not hitting the ground first and then steadily increase your swing length. A "free gift" included with this drill is that it reminds you how far you can actually hit a well-struck iron with only a short swing. My own experience says that I can hit a ball about 80% of the distance with 50% of the swing (and waaay more accurately), but I just can't bring myself to apply that mantra out on the course! Maybe I'll try it for a full 18 when I'm on my own one day!

Man, I hear that - nothing more frustrating than laying-up, only to not hit your chip/putt close enough to have made it worthwile playing the "safe" approach! I genuinely believed this about my game too until this season. I'm hitting more fairways than ever in my life (70-75% and the "misses" aren't by much) but my mid iron play has completely gone to pieces since last season. I'm now scoring worse that I did last year with my wayward driving!

That's golf summed up, right there. No matter how well you do, you could always have done better! Well done though, 100 is a real milestone to have broken!