Just Think About - Great tips for keeping it simple

ACCELERATE!

Golf can be a very complicated game. Trust me, as an instructor for many, many years, I've seen the game at its most complex levels, especially regarding the golf swing from a mechanical standpoint. But in my study and profession, I've come to learn that learning to swing well and learning to play the game well aren't anywhere near the same. Sure, we can get into the nitty-gritty of your swing on the practice tee, but that's where it should end. As soon as you tee it up, the mind should be free of distractions and complicated information.

To play better, try and think less. That doesn't mean shut your brain off completely. Instead, whittle down the tips and info you get from your teaching pro into simple, easy-to-remember bullet points for when you're out on the course. Here are some of my favorite things that you should think about the next time you play. And, again, leave the heavy stuff for the practice tee!

Acceleration doesn't mean swinging fast from the top of the swing.

At impact, the clubhead should still be gaining speed.

ACCELERATION
Here's a typical scenario that can ruin a decent round for many players. I've missed the green with my approach shot, on the far side of the greenside bunker. I now face a shot from light rough, over a bunker with no green to work with. Like so many situations in a round of golf, my expectations must line up with reality to hit the right shot and avoid a big mistake. The key here is to get the ball on the putting surface as close to the hole as possible without taking any risk of hitting it short into the face of the bunker. That, folks, would be the worst.

There's a laundry list of things you can think about on this shot. Open the face, hinge early, use the bounce, hit the toe, hit down, use your pivot, etc. Playing your best golf only will happen when you simplify the process and focus on one positive, specific thought. On this particular shot, I've found that maintaining a steady acceleration through the strike produces consistent results. Many players struggle from this area because they allow the fear of missing the shot to influence their technique. When there's fear, there's an inability to move, which often leads to deceleration and the inevitable fat shot into the sand. I would recommend you focus on steady acceleration during the practice swings and
repeat the same process when hitting the shot. Remember, one positive thought is all you should think about. In this case, it's to remember to accelerate through the shot.

Reference Resource:  http://www.golftipsmag.com/instruction/faults-and-fixes/lessons/just-think-about.html

Slice Control - Sometimes the best way to cure a slice is to embrace it

 Hitting a slice isn't all bad. If you can minimize it, then control it, a slice is actually one of the most repeatable shots you can hit. A "fade," which is also known as a slice that still finds the fairway, can produce a long drive that has just enough backspin to prevent the ball from rolling away from you and into the rough. Let's take a look at how to turn your slice into a fade with a few simple steps.

CRISS-CROSSED
BELOW LEFT: If you're crooked at the start, you're likely to be crooked at impact, as well. In this photo, my lower body is aimed right (in an effort to prevent coming across the ball—or so I think), but my upper body is still way to the left. This setup position is typical of most slicers who tend to have a big, ballooning slice that starts right and slices even farther to the right. Also typical are reverse pivots caused by little room for the hips and lower body to rotate through impact with the ball.

TOO OPEN
BELOW RIGHT: The obvious slice fix is to aim farther to the left, right? Not so. If you're a slicer, the more you aim to the left, the more pronounced your slice will be. As you can see here, my upper body and lower body are, in fact, aligned, but my clubface is still facing the fairway. This means I'm going to cut across the ball and make my slice bigger. Also, when you open up too much and don't reposition the golf ball relative to your stance, the ball effectively moves back, making the slice even worse.



Reference Resource: http://www.golftipsmag.com/instruction/slicing/lessons/slice-control-2014.html

Be The (Middle) ball - Here's a drill that will help you get better at making contact in the center of the

A very important variable to better ballstriking is "centeredness of contact." It doesn't matter how dialed in your swing becomes, if you're missing the center of the clubface at impact, you're going to have trouble controlling your distances and hitting the ball in your intended direction. Hitting it on the "sweet spot" not only feels pure, it will also help you to maximize your distance.

Here's a drill that will help you get better at making contact in the center of the clubface. Simply set up with three golf balls, and place each ball a few inches apart, with the middle ball being the ball you intend to hit. Make sure the three balls form a line perpendicular to your target line. Leave just enough room for the clubhead to pass through without hitting the two outside balls.

If this is too easy for you, here's a variation of the drill. From the original drill, move the ball closest to you forward approximately 2 inches and the ball farthest from you away approximately 2 inches. Leave just enough room for the clubhead to pass through without hitting the two outside balls. This aligns the three golf balls diagonally, which now forces you to not only make centered contact with the middle ball, but it discourages you from coming over the top and hitting the ball from too outside-in the target line and encourages you to swing the club with an inside path on the downswing. Either variation drill will help you hit the ball more in the center of the face.
 
Reference Resource: http://www.golftipsmag.com/instruction/iron-play/quick-tips/be-the-middle-ball-best-of-2014.html

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