December 2006 Issue

This month's articles

-HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM A LESSON—Ok.

-WHY YOU SHOULD CHANGE TO A LEFT-HAND-LOW PUTTING GRIP. Wow, Dave is making a great point—you don’t want your shoulders aligned left. But guess what? You don’t want them aligned left for any shot. So how do you get them aligned for a drive or a five iron? However you do that, do it the same way for your putting. There is no need to reverse your grip. What really surprises me is how Dave can recommend reversing the grip to fix one problem when he explains it creates another problem—deteriorated performance on longer putts.

-DING THE WING.—This is ok, but there is a simpler way to learn how the forward swing works. Simply end the swing with the club shaft resting “on” your left shoulder. In fact, a very nice way to experience the swing is to rest the club on your right shoulder and from that position swing it to a resting position on the left. Look Mom, no chicken wing.

-FINE TUNE YOUR TEMPO.—Pia is a pioneer in many aspects of golf training. While the tempo exploration she is describing may have a legitimate benefit, I would recommend that your focus on tempo not be on experimenting with different tempos but on keeping your swing in tempo. When you do this you will sense two things. First, at no point in the swing did you attempt to speed it up or slow it down. The increase in speed occurred smoothly on its own as the club swung to the center point of the swing and the slowing of the club was also smooth. Second, your grip pressure was constant. You never felt your hands increase the pressure during the swing. Your swing improves as your tempo reflects the smooth increase and decrease inherent in swinging.

-GREEN READING.—Very logical. Not very practical. Todd suggests a number of facts that you would want to gather regarding the putt, but he doesn’t explain how to assemble them all into making the putt. The fact is that reading a putt is much more a matter of trial and error. You ask your self ok if I send the ball along this line will it find the target. If not, then how about this line, etc. Make guesses until one makes sense to you. Once you’ve arrived at your best guess, practice conviction and stick with that plan.

-READING BREAK FROM OFF THE GREEN.—Very logical. Not very practical. While standing behind your ball, approximate where the club you are using will land the ball. From that point imagine how the ball will break. If the imagined break does not get the ball to the hole, choose another line and imagine how that would break. When you find a line from which the ball will break to the hole, set up for that line. Remember…conviction.

-MAKE CLEAN CONTACT FROM HILLSIDE LIES.—David covers a lot of ground in this article--more than necessary to address clean contact. Contact stays clean when your center stays the same distance from the ball and when you use your arms (vs. hands) to swing. That’s all. The rest of the comments David makes have nothing to do with “clean contact”.

-SOFTEN UP YOUR PITCHES.—This article targets “loft and pinpoint distance control”. The first thing we are told to do is to setup so the club is delofted. If that doesn’t make you want to turn the page, then we are told to stop our backswing “as your hands pass your right knee.” For “pinpoint” accuracy the backswing will have to vary in size with the length of the shot.

-FIND THE STANCE THAT SETS YOUR BODY SQUARE. The premise of this instruction is that there is some benefit to setting yourself square. What we really want is to set ourselves so that we can swing the club in the direction of the target. The variation in foot position is nothing more than the player discovering how to best set their body to swing the club to the target.

-THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNHILL CHIPS.—Ok.

-USE THE SAME SWING TO HIT IT HIGH OR LOW.—While Dana’s suggestion that different clubs be played from different positions (i.e. mid-iron played back of center), I fully agree that you never want to change the swing, just change the setup.

-RELEASE WITH POWER.--#1 We spoke about he chicken wing earlier. I’ll spare you the repeat. #2 The release is not a release at all. It is the sensation we experience as the clubhead rapidly increases in speed as a function of swinging. You don’t need to “release”, just don’t add any stiffness that could get in the way of allowing it to happen. If you bow your wrists, you’ll prematurely close the club face and hit it left. #3 Look at the photo of Pia on page 51 do you see any sign of wrist manipulation? No!

GRIP IT RIGHT EVERY TIME.—The idea of a “natural arm hang” as being the guide for putting your hands on the club has been around for years—but makes no sense. We are not interested in how our arms hang. We are interested in how they react to the centrifugal pull of the club. We want to hold the club with one concern in mind. Does my grip square the clubface during the swing as a result of centrifugal force. Keep it simple. Make the V’s formed by your thumbs and forefingers point to your shirt buttons.

--WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM A SNAPSHOT.—When you setup at address the club is positioned perfectly to send the ball to the target. Notice how your left wrist is cupped. Now try to flatten the left wrist but still have the club facing the target. Forget the “flat left wrist at the top” nonsense. The rest of this is more misleading than helpful.

-SWING IT-AND STING IT—LIKE TIGER.—Remember the earlier article about using the same swing to hit it low or high. Stick with that.

-BAST FROM THE ROUGH.—Get back to me when your chest and arms look like Tiger’s.

-DEAD-ARM WEDGE.—The ball doesn’t care if your arm is dead or alive. The amount of backspin is a function of ball, lie, club loft, and club speed. Making these abbreviated swings reduces the club speed.

HIGH-SPEED DRIVER.—When you get to 73% of greens in regulation, consider then the time to improve your swing speed. Accuracy first, distance second. A seven iron is an immediate fix when your eight iron isn’t delivering enough distance. There is no immediate fix for a club that doesn’t deliver enough accuracy.

-HOW TO TONE UP LIKE A TIGER.—Ok. However unless you are at 73% of greens in regulation don’t get the cart before the horse. Accuracy first, distance second.

-FIX YOUR DISTANCE.—Unfortuantely, Mark proves himself wrong in the photo. In the photo with the left heel down, drop a line from his right ear you’ll see that the line intersects the ball of his right foot. In the photo with the left heel up, drop the line and you’ll see it to intersects with the ball of his foot. Raising the heel nor keeping it down causes or prevents a weight shift. You can keep you balance regardless of left heel position.

-FIX YOUR ACCURACY.—If you slice to the right set up for the left? Duh!

-FIX YOUR IRON PLAY.—Any time the hands lead the clubface, the club is delofted and is looking to the right. Notice Mark’s grip. He has rolled his hand to the left in order to fix the clubface alignment but it is still delofted. This is way too difficult and produces ball flight that is too low.

-FIX YOUR LONG GAME.—You never have to concern yourself with the angle of your swing plane. When you setup with a shorter club the plane is more verticle. When you setup with a longer club the plane is less vertical. Just never let anyone convince you that angle of all swing planes should be the same.

-FIX YOUR SHORT GAME.—Mark wants us to steepen our backswing for accuracy. What is the correlation between steepness and the ball going straight to the target with the right distance? There isn’t a correlation. With regard to the swing plane for the shorter clubs, review the comments in for the prior article.

-FIX YOUR LAG PUTTING.—Ok.

-FIX YOUR MID-RANGE PUTTING.—The title of this article refers to distance but Mark’s comments refer to line.

-FIX YOU UPS AND DOWNS.—The photos of the club heads show the club on the left as delofted and out-of-square (it will send the ball to the left). The club on the right is lofte and square. If you are going to deloft a club make sure you also set the face square to the target line.

FIX YOUR ROUGH ESCAPES.—When we get in the rough, we can become fixated on the idea of making the clubface hit the ball. A better intention is to swing the club to the target. This will promote a swinging motion (more speed) and a follow-through. Choose a club that has enough loft that you don’t have to do anything extra during the swing to achieve loft.

FIX YOUR SAND PLAY.—Not letting your weight shift to your back foot during a swing is good advice for any shot. It is no particular cure-all for sand play.

FIX YOUR SCORING.—Be careful. Intermediate targets are a lot easier to align to than they are to choose. Most of the time, your intermediate target is not going to be on the target line—its tougher to do than you might think. Try it a few times and then lay your club down on the line from your ball to the intermediate target. Look at it carefully. Probably 2 out of three times you’ll be off.

FIX YOUR SHORT PUTTING.—Wow! Look at what Mark is telling us about the triangle, “To sink more putts, keep the triangle formed by your arms and chest intact, AS YOU WOULD ON A FULL SWING.” Now turn back to the article on iron play. Do you see any intact triangle? There should be.

-MAKE YOUR LAST SHOT A FULL ONE. Good logic, but not practical. In this article you are in the fairway 280 yards form the green. You hit a wedge 100 yards. What’s the chance of your hitting the lay-up shot 175 or 185? The lay-up strategy is fine. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that your lay-up will eliminate the need for you to be able to hit your 120 yard club 115 yards.

-ELIMINATE YOUR SLOUCH.—Ok.

-GRIP DOWN FOR ACCURACY. There is a correlation between length of club and center-of-face contact. However, today’s high MOI clubs (clubface does not twist much for off-center contact), they still go fairly straight. When you choke down, the club speed is reduced and the distance is reduced. Imagine a drive that just trickles into the rough. Had you choked down you would be in the fairway. If this appears to be an advantage you want sometimes, then choking down can be helpful.

-“THUMBS UP” FOR MORE POWER.—Worth a try. Don’t expect miracles.

USE THE “BOX-AND-ONE” DRILL.—With the ball positioned opposite the inside of your left heel, the clubface will be facing left at impact unless you sway forward. This is not a fix for “spraying the ball.”