January 2007 Issue

This month's articles

-HOW TO ESCAPE FROM A BURIED LIE.—Mitchell is offering some ideas that can be helpful. Here is my suggestion: Look at the lie. Ask yourself, if the sand behind the ball was going to push the ball out of the bunker and onto the green what would you see happen (e.g. a tidal wave of sand starting below the ball and moving in the direction of the flag). Now ask yourself how could you swing the club so that it would create that tidal wave of sand. Once you get the idea of how that could happen, use the club that way and make the swing. Turn to page 95 and you will see Stuart making a bunker shot. Notice the plume of sand chasing after the ball. He has used his club to create a "tidal wave" of sand that pushed the ball out of the bunker. Manuel does a good job of explaining and demonstrating this on the video.

PUTTER ALIGNMENT—the straw idea is ok. The problem is our tendency to line ourself to the cup instead of aligning the club to the cup. My suggestion is to run a string from the target to your ball, set the club behind the ball with its face aligned to the string. Now set yourself to the putter and then look at the target. It will look to the right of you—because it is. Be sure you are used to seeing the target (putting, chipping, or full swing) off to the right.

REACH BACK FOR POWER.—I didn’t see anything in this article about “reaching back”. Regarding Tim’s swing—don’t try this at home. Tim’s grip is overly rotated and shuts the face of the club—which compensates for his follow-through that is stiff and forces the club face open. It works for him—but you wouldn’t want to model this.

CATCH EVERY CHIP CLEAN.— “…hitting down into the back of the ball.” PLEASE TRY THIS!!!! And after you do and can’t figure out how to do it, I want you to realize that it’s not possible to hit down on the ball and have it do anything but squirt along the ground. Look at Glenn’s club in the main photo. Does that look like a club that was hitting “down” or a club that was swinging forward?

HOW TO GET YOUR ROUND BACK ON TRACK.—Brian’s ideas can’t hurt but they are very general. Don’t be disappointed if they don’t work.

GROOVE IT.—Ok.

MAKE A BAD SWING FROM THE ROUGH. If you have a 165 yard slice, you should recognize that your golf skills are not very developed and that the best play from the rough is a simple chip shot to get the ball back into the fairway. Trying “hail Mary passes” from the rough is the beginning of double or triple bogey.

LEVEL YOUR HIPS AND STOP YOUR SLICE. The ball doesn’t care about your hips. It slices because of what you are doing with the club and you can do it with your hips level or not. Fix the club.

ADD WIDTH TO ADD YARDS. Keeping anything “firm” is a nice way of saying “tension”. The left arm is not “firm” at address. Making it firm during your swing adds tension which reduces speed. Notice how much shorter Kevin’s swing is in the “DO THIS” photo. Shorter swings make shorter shots (I hope that’s not surprising). Tour players who have a “straight left arm” at the end of their backswing work on having a large range of motion in their left shoulder joint. Their arm is straight but not firm. It has no more “firm-ness” at the top than at address.

HIT MORE HOME RUNS WITH MORE TURN.—Don’t spin! All of us have different range of motions in our hips and spine. The maximum turn is for your shoulder line to be perpendicular to the target line. If you want to work on this you can but don’t force it. Forcing will cause tension and set you up for a trip to the chiropractor.

THE HILLS HAVE LIES.—Ok.

DON’T GET CROSS.—Ok.

FIX BAD FOOTWORK.—Ok. (there’s no such thing as muscle memory)

HOW TO DIAL IN YOUR PITCHES.—Sounds a little like de la Torre to me.

HOW TO ROLL SMOOTH PUTTS.—no hand action.

WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM A SNAPSHOT.—the golf swing is a motion not a collection of positions. Create the right motion you’ll get these positions.

YOU CAN BUY A BETTER GAME.—If there is an ounce of truth in this (and there is) there is also a ton of trouble. It boils down to these two points: 1) to the extent that your missed shots result from clubs that mis-fit you, fitting will improve your game, 2)to the extent that your score is high because you hit too many shots toward the toe or heel, some high MOI clubs will help narrow the shot pattern. That’s it. So don’t worry about your buddies “buying a better game”. Other than in the above two scenario, its what you do with the club more than the club you do it with.

PLAY THE SPLASH SHOT.—don’t try this unless you practice it—take the drop.

AVOID “UNSQUARING: THE BLADE.—Ok. But its easier to make sure its square is to raise the club head from the address position until the shaft is parallel to the ground. Look at the grooves and rotate the club in your hands until the grooves are pointed straight up to the sky. Now set the club behind the ball and facing the target. Don’t move it and take your stance.

ITS ALL IN THE LAG.—Ok.

POWER KILLERS.—Ok.

BITE-SIZED GOLF.—Ok.