By T.J. TOMASI

Putting on the pro tours demands mastery of a stroke with greater control and a more sensitive touch than the average golfer uses because the greens are so slick and unforgiving. The traditional putting grip in the photo here is where it starts.

The index finger of this player’s left hand is pointing at the ground as a cue to start the putter head moving straight back away from the ball. This helps ensure that his left wrist does not cup more than it started with at address.

The key to this stroke is the right index finger, which is curled into a trigger. This is the feel center, and the golfer gets his go signal as he monitors the pressure point of his right “trigger”finger.

The putting stroke is initiated by a rocking motion of the elbows on the backswing where the left elbow moves downward and the right moves up. On the way to impact, the right elbow straightens a tad, creating a piston-type stroke where the clubface points directly at the target even after the ball is long gone.

This action causes the clubhead to rise significantly because the butt end of the club remains pointed at his belt buckle, where it was at address. This method is great for producing a slight overspin on the ball, which helps it stay on its line.

By T.J. TOMASI

The quality of your impact position is determined by the relationship between two body parts: your trail elbow and hip. The trail elbow determines the path of the clubhead to the ball, so if your elbow matches up evenly with your hip, as in the first photo below, your hands can get back in front of your body in time for impact.

However, if your elbow is trapped behind your hip, as the second golfer’s is below, you’ll have an awful time squaring the face correctly.

Here are two cures for a hip/elbow package that is out of sync:

1. A long elbow swing: If your elbow must travel a long distance from the top of your backswing to impact, then your hips need to wait a bit as they make their turn so your elbow can catch up. You can keep the long backswing, but you need to slow down your hip turn.

2. A short elbow swing: It’s just the opposite if your trail elbow doesn’t swing long enough at the end of the backswing. Since the elbow has a short journey to impact, it runs the risk of arriving too early, well ahead of the hip. In this case, you can lengthen your backswing or, if you like your short swing, ­simply speed up your hip turn. Either way, you’re back in match.

Slow hips and fast elbows are mismatched unless you like to pull the ball way to the left. The fast hips/slow elbow duo isn’t any better ­because your clubhead will be late for impact, sending the ball to the right of the target.

To swing your best, you need to coordinate your elbows and hips so they match, slow with slow, or fast with fast.

By T.J. TOMASI

You can learn a lot by comparing the swing positions of good and not-so-good players. In the photo at left below is Ryder Cup player Boo Weekley, one of the better ball strikers on the PGA Tour. There are several things to note that are instructive:

1. Because Weekley started his downswing by transferring his weight to his left side, he simply continues the process until the weight is on the outer rim of his front foot toward the heel of his foot.

Compare this to the amateur in the second photo. This golfer is on his toes, a sign that he’s had trouble shifting his weight to his left foot to start the downswing. Weight on the toes triggers the neural program for jumping, and to prevent falling over, he will snap his spine upright.

2. Note also how fully released Weekley’s core is. Boo is thick around the middle, but still makes sure to keep his midsection moving freely through the ball. Remember: The core is the drum major in the weight flow parade.

By contrast, the amateur’s chest, pelvis and shoulders appear frozen. The only body part he used to hit the ball was his arms, and that’s not good enough when you play the very difficult Champions course at PGA National as he and Boo are in these photos.

3. As part of his full body rotation, Weekley keeps his right shoulder chasing his left, assuring that he will not “run out of right arm,” an error the amateur has fallen prey to. When this young player stops his shoulder rotation and simply hits with his arms, the trail arm is also stopped, and that causes the club to wrap around the body.

A few years ago, scientists discovered the mimic gene. It controls our ability to learn by copying, using a major tool — the visual system. The moral: Be careful who you watch.

By T.J. TOMASI

Whatever else golf is, it’s a game of geometry. Lines and angles on a four-dimensional playing field relate the golfer, the ball and the target.

The mistake I see most in my teaching is a faulty setup, and that is like beginning a trip by heading in the wrong direction. The first step to a perfect setup is to aim your clubface correctly, and the second is to align your body, and always in that order — aim, then align.

Aiming

Because it’s your clubface that makes contact with the ball, where it’s pointing at impact determines the direction the golf ball will initially travel. It’s helpful to use the lines on the toe and heel formed by the grooves on your clubface for aiming.

It may sound simplistic, but you must take great care to aim your clubface at the target at address because that’s where you want it looking at impact.

Always set the clubface behind the ball before you take the rest of your set up. Then build your stance around your clubface so that if you extended a line from the leading edge (the bottom part) of the clubface to your toe line, the two lines would be perpendicular.

Aligning

Your shoulders determine the direction your arms swing, so they must be aligned correctly to ensure that your clubface looks at the target at impact. They should be parallel to the target line because, biomechanically, your arms swing in the direction that your shoulders point. When you’re aligned to the right, if you make a good swing, your swing path will be too much inside-to-outside of the target line.

The alignment of your hips is important because your hips dictate the amount of rotation away from and back to the ball. Open hips (facing more toward the target than strictly parallel to the target line) cause you to underturn on the backswing. If your hips are closed at address (lined up facing away from the target), you run the risk of overturning on the backswing and then not being able to get your hips turned back in time for impact.

To make sure your aim and alignment are correct, lay down two clubs to help you judge your position, one along your foot line parallel to the target line and one behind the ball on the target line. When your body is parallel with the target line, it’s said to be “square” to the target. When your clubface points at the target, it is also square. Begin from a perfectly square stance and then make adjustments based on your flexibility and body shape.

By T.J. TOMASI

Sticking the finish

The gymnasts call it “sticking the finish,” and when you stick your finish in golf, good things will happen. Here is the anatomy of your Kodak Moment:

1. Your weight is balanced on the front foot, with the back foot acting as a rudder.

2. Your hips are perpendicular to the target line.

3. Your shoulders have rotated past perpendicular with your right shoulder in advance of the left.

4. Everything you own — your nose, your belt buckle, your right knee — is pointing at the target.

But while this template is the same for all Kodak Moments, there are variations caused by your body type — how you’re built, your strength, and most important, your flexibility.

Three variations of thefinish position are illustratedin the accompanying photos. But no matter which finish your body dictates, you can memorize it by repeating the “posing drill”:

Close your eyes, swing the club, and pose in your finish for a slow count of three. Open your eyes and make certain you match your prototype. This is your swing’s Kodak Moment, and it should be your goal to nail this position for every swing.

To find out more about which swing you should use, take the LAWs test at www.tjtomasi.com.

By T.J. TOMASI

Mental images, the pictures you draw in your mind, let your muscles know what needs to be done when you make a golf swing. What you see on your mental screen helps you understand what you’re trying to do.

An image I often use is of a horse and rider moving away from a wall with one end of a 60-foot coil of rope tied to the saddle and the other end anchored securely to the wall. The horse gains speed and the rope ­rapidly uncoils until, in a bone-jarring tug, the rope goes taut and the horse stops dead in its tracks. As you can imagine, the rider is flung (released) from the saddle, continuing alone in the direction he and his horse were traveling only a fraction of a second before.

Now reverse the situation so that the horse and rider are approaching the wall at full gallop, and just as they get to the wall, the horse stops dead. Once again, our helpless rider continues on alone as he’s thrown over the wall.

In the first image, the wall represents your right leg, in the second, the wall is your left leg. The rider is your clubhead andhis separation from the horse causes the release of your clubhead through the hitting zone.

To get the feel for this two-wall swing, at first exaggerate the move by taking some swings where it feels like your right heel stays on the ground until it’s pulled off by your body turning up and into your follow-through. Feel as if, for a fraction of a second, you’re sitting on your right knee to start the downswing.

But there are two things to watch out for: Take care to keep both knees flexed, and make sure you transfer your weight to your left hip. What you want is to let your weight empty into your left hip joint while keeping your right heel down.

By T.J. TOMASI

Around the greens, it’s best to keep the ball on the ground whenever feasible because it’s easier to judge a rolling ball than a high flying one. Thus the lob — a pitch that’s high and soft with little roll — is the last shot you should use. Your strategy should be: “Putt it first; if you can’t putt it, chip it; if you can’t chip it, pitch it; and only when you have to, do you lob it.”

But even though the lob shot is the hardest to judge, there are some situations, such as playing over trouble (bunkers, water, etc.) to a tucked pin, where you need a high, soft shot.

The key is to make a silky, flowing swing, moving the clubface with the rotation of your body, absent any manipulation by your arms or hands. Since your body leads the way throughout your swing, your clubhead stays trapped behind you and therefore remains open through impact, allowing the bounce on the bottom of your sand wedge to slide gently under the ball as you swing to a full finish.

Setup

Since the lob shot stops primarily due to its high arc, position your ball just forward of center in your stance. Make sure the butt end of your golf club is in the mid-line of your body.

With your heels a little less than hip width apart, open your stance so your body is open to the target, anchoring the majority of your weight in your front hip joint and establishing it as the rotational center throughout your swing. Once your setup is complete, the operational word that governs your swing is rotation.

Swing

Start your swing by simply turning your chest away from the target so that everything moves away from the ball as a unit. Unlike the normal pitch shot, make sure to cock your wrists early; your mantra here is “low hands-high clubhead,” a condition that unlocks the loft of the clubface. Note that in executing the lob shot, there is a turn, but no weight shift.

Your downswing is characterized by the sweet surrender to gravity, a phrase I use to emphasize the absence of manipulation as you allow your clubhead to fall to the ball — this means (1) no lateral body motion, (2) keeping your head behind the ball, and (3) certainly no hitting with your hands. If you simply rotate your body around your front hip, your clubhead comes to impact with a slightly open face, perfect for a high, soft lob.

The lob shot requires a long backswing plus a long follow-through; think of it as “long to long.” But remember, your arms must move at a slow but constant pace with no bursts of power.

The tough part of the lob shot is convincing yourself that you can take such a long swing for such a short shot. To get your brain used to the length and nonviolence of the swing, practice hitting a lot of 10- to 20-yard lobs until you can produce the high, soft trajectory every time.

By T.J. TOMASI

Errors occur when your head slides past the ball toward the target during the golf swing, or when it moves too far off the ball away from the target. Either way it’s not good for consistency. Your head should rotate and float with the spine tilt, all the while staying in the middle of your shoulders.

Forget the advice to keep your head down. Your swing is made worse by trying to keep your head stock still, and it can cause injury.

You would think that with all the bad things this shibboleth (“Don’t move your head”) has caused, it would have lost its reputation by now, but I see a lot of beginners adhering to it, and some teachers actually teach it.

Tests show that the head floats in a good swing because under the stress of proper coil, it has to biomechanically. If it is not allowed to rotate, you will ­almost always be forced intoa correction, making it difficult to keep the club on plane.

So let your head float with your body turn.

How much depends on your body build. If you’re thin and very flexible, as many tour players are, the float will be slight. Medium builds demand a bit more float, andif you’re thick-chested and flexibility-challenged, your head float will be noticeable. It is the swing center, a point just below the chin, that must stay over the ball at impact, but everyone uses the head as a marker, perhaps because the head has ears and the swing center does not.

By T.J. TOMASI

The advice Rory McIlroy received that carried him to a record-setting U.S. Open win after his Masters collapse was to find a way to be comfortable being uncomfortable. But how? The answer was simple: Under intense pressure, he used the thought of hitting his balance point.

Balance is the self-organizing principle around which your golf swing is built. If you have the basic mechanics of grip, stance, posture, aim, alignment, etc., then all you have to do is turn your entire swing over to good balance, and the proper sequence will unfold.

Of course, you are in balance because you made a good swing, but there is another way to look at it: You make a good swing because you are in balance. I have found it to be very effective when a golfer learns his or her balance point at the finish of the swing, and then swings to this balance point.

Your goal is to become a golfing archaeologist, someone who can analyze the remains of his swing, i.e., the follow-through, to discover important information about what went on ­during the downswing and at impact. So learn the basics and then focus on hitting your balance point. You’ll find that relying on balance to get the job done while you swing is much more effective than thinking about swing mechanics.

Here’s a handy drill to help you find your balance point:

Close your eyes, make a swing and pose in your finish position for a slow count of three. Make sure to brush the ground at impact — it doesn’t count if you don’t brush.  Open your eyes and check your feet, the curve of your body, your back knee (should be even with your forward knee and pointing at the target), and make certain that your belt buckle is facing the target. It should be your goal to nail this position for every swing, using your balance point as a magnet that pulls you into position time after time.

By T.J. Tomasi

Many golfers make a practice swing in which they shift their weight to the front leg at the same time they drop their arms to start the downswing. It’s a move I callthe smallest most important movein golf.

Because there is no ball in this practice swing, there is no hit instinct, so the forward swing of the arms helps to shift the weight simultaneously in a drop/shift motion. This is one of golf’s non-negotiables, and every good player does it.

But when the ball is there, things change. The arms move first, independent of the weight transfer. And with a head start toward impact, the arms beat the weight transfer, leaving a weak, slapping action in their wake.

What to do? Here is a drill that will help get things started down together from the top of your swing.

Looking in a mirror, swing to the top, then stop and pose. Check out your arms and feel the weight in your trail hip socket. Then shift your weight to your front side and drop your arms simultaneously. Stop when your lead arm points down your back leg and check that out. You should be able to lift your back foot off the ground. Use a 5-iron and a ball when you do this, but don’t actually hit the ball.

Do this 60 times a day for three weeks and you will deposit the move in your motor memory.