Archive for 'Golf Insider'
The fairway woods
Posted on 03. Sep, 2010 by admin.
The biggest mistake I see amateurs make with the fairway woods is trying to hit up on the ball. They’re worried about getting the ball airborne, so they try to help it by lifting up with their bodies. Unfortunately, the result is just the opposite, a topped shot.
You can break out of this vicious cycle by trusting the loft of your fairway wood to do its job. Remember the key: Hit down on your fairway woods and take a divot!
The correct address position is very important to good fairway wood play, so here are some basics:
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Low hands high clubhead
Posted on 20. Aug, 2010 by admin.
You don’t have to reach too high to achieve an ideal position at the top of your swing. But most golfers try to swing their hands as high as possible on the backswing because they equate “high hands” with increased power.
Flexible golfers tend to get their hands “up,” and there are players on the PGA Tour such as John Daly, Bubba Watson and Phil Mickelson who have very high hands. However, I’m convinced that most golfers would benefit greatly from what I call “low hands, high clubhead.”
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A Flare for the game
Posted on 06. Aug, 2010 by admin.
Here’s a question for you: Do you need a complete swing reconstruction or just a
custom re-matching?
If your swing is really bad and you have the time and dedication for a complete overhaul, find a teacher who’s going to be around for at least the next year, agree on a blueprint and stick with it. It took Tiger a year plus each time he retooled his swing.
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Bend THE BALL
Posted on 30. Jul, 2010 by admin.
It’s the course architect’s job to make golf exciting, so he prepares a progression of tests, some requiring the ball to curve to the left, some to the right and some to fly straight.
For a right-handed golfer, a fade is a curve on the ball from left to right; a draw is just the opposite. A fade for a pro is a straight ball that gets to the top of its flight pattern, then falls to the right, at most about three or four yards.
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A MIRACLE OF RESTORATION
Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by admin.
In order to make solid contact you must use the “long arm” method: The arms are long at address, then the back arm folds and the front wrist cocks, decreasing your clubhead’s distance to the ball. Then just in time for impact, the arms go long again, re-creating the distance you established at address.
For purposes of discussion, let’s assume that the golf swing is a circle, even though it is not exactly so. The radius of your swing circle is a combination of your front arm plus the length of the club.
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Stopping the SLICE
Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by admin.
Three degrees open at impact doesn’t sound like much, but at 90 mph, you might as well reach for your sand wedge because that ball is either in the greenside bunker or in the fairway rough, depending on what club you just cuffed it with.
When you leave the face open, the biggest curve put on the ball
is with the driver.
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BE A GOLF SUPERHERO
Posted on 09. Jul, 2010 by admin.
Here’s a question for you: If, by some magical operation, you could make your arm adjustable in length and shaped into a golf club — a sort of golfing Wolverine — would you do it to hit the ball better? Sounds like a lot of trouble, but it might be easier to do than you think.
Recent research done by Alessandro Farne and Lucilla Cardinali at the French Universite Claude Bernard Lyon, shows that human brains can be convinced to treat tools (aka golf clubs) as if they were actual body parts.
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Good posture benefits both mind and body
Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by admin.
In an interesting study, Richard Petty, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, shows that body posture can affect how humans think about themselves and the things they do.
“If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you’re in,” Petty said. “People assume their confidence is coming from their own thoughts. They don’t realize their posture is affecting how much they believe in what they’re thinking.”
Studies by psychologist Paul Ekman and his colleagues have also showed a relationship between physical posture and mental states like emotions. For example, by posturing yourself correctly you can condition yourself to be more confident and less stressed.
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A line in the sand
Posted on 25. Jun, 2010 by admin.
While the photos might lead you to believe that this article is about sand play, it isn’t. At least not directly. It’s about where you should start your divot with any iron.
I chose to demonstrate this in a fairway bunker sand shot because it’s easy to see by the divot that I picked the ball cleanly before my clubhead continued down and forward. So the divot starts where the front of the ball used to b
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Shoulder blades power the swing
Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by admin.
The scapula or shoulder blade is your back’s contribution to the three-bone shoulder joint. The other two bones are the clavicle and the humerus, the big bone in your upper arm. The scapula is attached to the rotator cuff, a group of four muscles that operates the shoulder. The ends of these muscles join tendons that in turn connect to your arm bone, so basically, the scapula moves your shoulder and your arm.
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Accuracy overcomes distance deficit
Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by admin.
Golf is like life — when they give you lemons, you’ve got to make lemonade. When Calvin Peete fell out of a tree, the 11-year-old broke his left arm in three places and it never healed correctly, so his forearm couldn’t rotate. He played his first game of golf at 23 in 1966, then qualified for the PGA tour in 1973 and won 12 times.
