Mistakes We Sometimes Make - Simple fixes for common faults

What's that thing sticking out of the back of my glove? Turn the page to find out how a tee in your glove can help you around the greens.

We all make mistakes. It doesn't matter if you're a Tour player or it's your first time touching a club, we're human beings, and we're all prone to making errors every now and then. Out here on the practice tee, I see my fair share of mistakes. And while a big part of my teaching is on full-swing mechanics, many of my students waste strokes around the green, too. In the following pages, I've outlined just a few of the common mistakes I see golfers make, and I've brought some simple fixes to help you get back on track.

PITCH IT LOW

One of the most common mistakes I see is when my students try the hinge-and-hold approach with regard to their chipping and pitching. This means, they hinge the club going back and hold that hinged position into the finish. This shot sometimes works, but it's a tricky one for beginners, and you actually create a lot of backspin that way. To hit a low-rolling pitch shot, allow the hands to release and the arms to rotate through the shot. To illustrate, I stuck a tee pointing out of my gloved hand. Through impact, I want that tee pointing down. Try it yourself and watch which way the tee points. If it's level or pointing down, that means you'll hit a low roller.

PITCH IT HIGH

Hitting a high pitch shot isn't unlike the low one, only you release the hands without the rotation of the wrists. So, again, with the tee inserted into the Velcro® of my glove, the goal in hitting a higher pitch shot is to make the same swing, only as you release the hands, don't rotate the arms.

This means the gloved hand will pronate (bend backward), but don't worry. That's necessary for applying the needed loft of the clubface onto the ball. As for the swing, it stays the same. And, by the way, creating excessive backspin when chipping is rarely a good idea. It's too unpredictable.

Reference Resource: http://www.golftipsmag.com/instruction/faults-and-fixes/lessons/mistakes-we-sometimes-make.html 

Get Long Fly Straight - Better drives come from less mind and body clutter

 
Bashing drives down the fairway is the best part of golf. So says me! A great drive sets up a low score, and when you're confident with your driving game, usually the rest of your game follows suit. Now, when it comes to lending advice on better driving, I like to keep things simple and easy to understand, and the reason for that is simple. Better drives come from less mind and body clutter. The easier you think it is, the easier it becomes. So read on, and start crushing it!

GET A POWER GRIP

 
LEFT: When you hang your gloved hand along the side of your body, which way do your palms face? For me, my palms tend to face toward my legs, with the thumb in front and the back of my hand facing 90º from my face. Where do you hang? Check right now by standing in front of a full-length mirror and pay attention to what direction the hands face. 

RIGHT: If your hand hangs with your thumbs more inward toward your body, consider that an advantage. If your hand hangs any other way, you want to make a modification to your grip so you can add more power to your tee shots. The ideal "hang" is pictured in the above photo, with the thumb inward and the back of your hand facing the golf ball.  

Reference Resource: http://www.golftipsmag.com/instruction/driving/lessons/get-long-fly-straight-best-of-2014.html

In a Hole, Golf Considers Digging a Wider One

GREENSBORO, Ga. — Golf holes the size of pizzas. Soccer balls on the back nine. A mulligan on every hole.

These are some of the measures — some would say gimmicks — that golf courses across the country have experimented with to stop people from quitting the game.

Golf has always reveled in its standards and rich tradition. But increasingly a victim of its own image and hidebound ways, golf has lost five million players in the last decade, according to the National Golf Foundation, with 20 percent of the existing 25 million golfers apt to quit in the next few years.

People under 35 have especially spurned the game, saying it takes too long to play, is too difficult to learn and has too many tiresome rules.

Many of golf’s leaders are so convinced the sport is in danger of following the baby boomer generation into the grave that an internal rebellion has led to alternative forms of golf with new equipment, new rules and radical changes to courses. The goal is to alter the game’s reputation in order to recruit lapsed golfers and a younger demographic.

“We’ve got to stop scaring people away from golf by telling them that there is only one way to play the game and it includes these specific guidelines,” said Ted Bishop, the president of the P.G.A. of America, who also owns a large Indiana golf complex. “We’ve got to offer more forms of golf for people to try. We have to do something to get them into the fold, and then maybe they’ll have this idea it’s supposed to be fun.”

Among the unconventional types of golf is an entry-level version in which the holes are 15 inches wide, about four times the width of a standard hole.

A 15-inch-hole event was held here at the Reynolds Plantation resort on Monday. It featured the top professional golfers Sergio García and Justin Rose, the defending United States Open champion.

“A 15-inch hole could help junior golfers, beginning golfers and older golfers score better, play faster and like golf more,” said Mr. García, who shot a six-under-par 30 for nine holes in the exhibition.

Mr. Rose said he was planning to use an expanded hole to reintroduce the game to his 5-year-old son, who rejected the game recently after he had tired of failing at it.

“Lately, I’ve been having a hard time getting him to pick up a club,” Mr. Rose said.
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Another alternative is foot golf, in which players kick a soccer ball from the tee to an oversize hole, counting their kicks. Other changes relax the rules and allow do-over shots, or mulligans, once a hole; teeing up the ball for each shot; and throwing a ball out of a sand bunker once or twice a round.

Still other advocates of change have focused on adapting to the busy schedules of parents and families. In recent years, golf courses have encouraged people to think of golf in six-hole or nine-hole increments. Soon, about 30 golf courses across the country will become test cases for a system of punch-in-punch-out time clocks that assess a fee by the minutes spent playing or practicing rather than by 18- or 9-hole rounds.

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The initiatives are being driven by disparate entities within the game, including the venerable P.G.A. of America, which represents more than 27,000 golf professionals. The organization has created an eclectic, 10-person task force to foster nontraditional pathways to golf. The task force has some golf insiders, but it also includes Arlen Kantarian, who led American tennis’s successful effort to reverse a decline in participation, and the Olympic ski champion Bode Miller, whose sport was revived by better equipment and cultural changes that tempered skiing’s reputation for stodgy elitism.

“Little League baseball is an example of how to introduce someone to a game with different equipment than the sophisticated players use,” Mr. Kantarian said. “We should also be thinking about unconventional golf on school fields or backyards. That might be the best way for kids and beginners to learn anyway.”

Mr. Miller said he wanted to lift the rules governing the use of juiced golf clubs or golf balls.

“A nonconforming club or ball does not corrupt the game,” Mr. Miller said. “Not if it encourages people to try a very intimidating game. That will be beneficial to golf for 50 years.”

Golf still ranks among the nation’s top 10 recreational sports activities, and given its traditions, it is no surprise that not everyone agrees with the burgeoning alternative movement.

“I don’t want to rig the game and cheapen it,” said Curtis Strange, a two-time United States Open champion and an analyst for ESPN. “I don’t like any of that stuff. And it’s not going to happen either. It’s all talk.”


For more details Visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/sports/golf/in-a-hole-golf-considers-digging-a-wider-one.html?_r=0