Golf Instruction

March 2007 - Posts

• Total Recoil

  By Steve Wakulsky DLGA DIRECTOR OF TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION WORLDWIDE David Leadbetter Golf Academy, Champions' Gate, Orlando We've all been in this situation: you go after a tight pin, closely guarded by a bunker, and wind up just short in the protecting bunker. The ball ends up just a few feet from the hole, the result being you have little green to work with. Worse still, the ball has plugged. As you know, trying to stop a ball from this situation is very difficult. Played the traditional way, with a square clubface and a fairly steep swing that strikes the sand a couple of inches behind the ball, the ball pops up and out with topspin and runs across the green. So let me show you a novel approach to dealing with a plugged ball – one that features a unique ‘recoil' action at impact. With a little practice, mastering this shot can help you to avoid disaster, give you unprecedented control over the ball and turn a potential dropped shot into a smart up and down. Wrists hold the key to the action There's nothing too much out of the ordinary at the set-up. As you can see, I have the ball fairly well back in my stance, the majority of my weight is supported on the front foot, and my hands lean in towards the front leg, leaning the shaft towards the target. I have created the conditions for what is, essentially, a hands-and-arms swing, the early and full wrist hinge being the most noticeable feature of the sequence. Create a steep angle of attack In order to have the leading edge of the club strike down into the sand at the exact chosen entry point, it's essential that you generate a fairly steep angle of attack with a very lively and involved wrist action. In the backswing, this gets the club head working up quickly up above the hands. Note that the upper body itself has not really been involved at all in making the backswing – in other words, there is no rotation of the trunk. This is all about you using the wrists to generate the upward (and much of the downward) momentum. Thump and recoil From the completion of the backswing, it's again all wrists as you unhinge to deliver the club head sharply into your chosen spot in the sand. The arm speed is not as important as the wrist action and the natural unhinging of the wrists that sets up the strike. There is no follow-through at all: quite the opposite, in fact. The beauty of the recoil method is that it enables you to control the distance you land the ball. And the faster you recoil the club head, the shorter the distance the ball will travel. For most sand conditions, a square clubface is ideal, but an open clubface will work well in particularly soft, powdery sand. It's all about the angle of attack. Spend some time in the practice bunker developing your feel for the recoil method. It will feel a bit strange at first but you will be amazed at how easy the shot is and also at how softly you can have the ball pop out of that awkward lie. Whereas with the standard technique you are resigned to the fact that the ball will come out hot and run on, suddenly you have a sense of control. This is not a trick shot but a very real and useful skill to have in your armory. Posted Mar 30 2007, 03:00 PM by Steve Wakulsky with no comments Filed under: Golf International, Short Game, Swing Tips, Steve Wakulsky

• The Fundamentals Of Putting - The Grip

  By Harold Swash This article is extracted from a series of folding pocket lessons for leading international golf coaches called Pocketshots™. Visit www.dizzyheights.com for more details on the entire Pocketshot™ series. Introduction Harold Swash has more than 40 years of experience in the golf industry as a coach, golf club designer and inventor of putting training aids and the 'Yes C' groove putters. He is a leading authority on putting and instructor to many of the world's top professional and amateur golfers. He has coached 8 of the 12 players on the winning European Ryder Cup team, and we all know how good they are at holing putts. The Grip – Using the Lifeline You must ensure that the grip is aligned through the lifeline of both hands, with the palms of both hands parallel to the face of the putter blade. Do not hold the putter low in the fingers as you would a normal club. If you do even the slightest break of the wrists in your putting stroke will produce an error in clubface alignment. With the lifeline grip even if you do break your wrists during the stroke the face of your putter is more likely to remain square to the target line. Checking the Grip This is a good exercise to test whether your grip is correct. Take your address position and then stand up straight and lift your arms up so your forearms are parallel to the ground. If you have a correct lifeline grip the shaft of the putter will also be parallel to the ground. If you grip the club in the fingers the shaft will point upwards. Alternative Grip Left hand low or right hand low? It doesn't matter if you putt with your left hand below your right or vice-versa, which is more orthodox, as long as you hold the club in the lifeline. Next week, Setup & Stance For further information about golf instruction, training aids and the C groove putter visit www.haroldswashputting.com. For more informationabout C-grove putters visit www.yesgolf.com. We recommend you use one of these great sites to keep track of your improvement: www.strokeaverage.com and www.golfscoretracker.co.uk. Published by Dizzy Heights UK Limited.© Pocketshots™ and Dizzy Heights™ are trademarks of Dizzy Heights (UK) Limited all other trademarks are acknowledged. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part or in any form. Posted Mar 30 2007, 11:09 AM by Pocket Shots with no comments Filed under: Putting, Pocket Shots, Harold Swash

• The Fundamentals Of Putting

  This article is extracted from a series of folding pocket lessons for leading international golf coaches called Pocketshots™. Visit www.dizzyheights.com for more details on the entire Pocketshot™ series. Introduction Harold Swash has more than 40 years of experience in the golf industry as a coach, golf club designer and inventor of putting training aids and the 'Yes C' groove putters. He is a leading authority on putting and instructor to many of the world's top professional and amateur golfers. He has coached 8 of the 12 players on the winning European Ryder Cup team, and we all know how good they are at holing putts. My Philosophy. Putting is probably the most important but least practiced area of the game for most amateurs. You will use your putter more than any other club in your bag, anywhere between 40% and 50% of the strokes in one round of golf are putts. The theory and exercises in this lesson have been used by tour professionals and leading amateurs to improve their games. You may not be able to swing a driver like the Pros but you have got a much better chance of developing a solid putting stroke, that gives you every chance of putting like one. True Roll – My Guiding Principle. The guiding principle that governs my teaching is the need to develop a true roll on the ball. The quicker a ball starts to roll after impact the better chance it has of staying on its intended line with its intended pace. My views on the mechanics of the stroke, such as the stance, posture, stroke plane and the grip, are all geared to help you achieve a true roll. Objectives. By the end of this lesson you will have learned (or for many of you re-learned) the basics of a good putting stroke. You will have the essential information you need to rehearse and then execute the perfect putt. Remember most golf tournaments are decided on the greens! Practice regularly. Trust your stroke and your scores will tumble. Good luck and do let us know how you get on. Fundamentals. I call the basic principles of putting the 'Four Fundamentals'. 1st Fundamental. The blade of the putter needs to be square to the target at both the address and strike position. 2nd Fundamental. The blade of the putter needs to be square to the path through the hitting area. 3rd Fundamental. The putter blade needs to have a slight upstroke through the hitting area. 4th Fundamental. The putter blade needs to have a smooth acceleration through the hitting area. 1st Fundamental The blade of the putter needs to be square to the target at both the address and strike position. If you setup with an open or closed face at address, you will find it difficult to square the clubface at impact and will subsequently hit the ball off-line. 2nd Fundamental The blade of the putter needs to be square to the path through the hitting area. If the blade is open or closed to the path of the stroke you will put hook or slice spin on the ball. If you do, then on the ball's first contact with the ground it will try and spin off-line. When putting on slow greens with thicker grass any degree of side-spin will deflect the ball much more easily than on a fast, smooth putting surface. Therefore, we need to make sure that we keep the blade of the putter square to the path of the stroke. 3rd Fundamental The putter blade needs to have a slight up-stroke through the hitting area. The correct ball position is critical to achieving the desired strike. With the hands slightly ahead of the putter through the strike you develop the correct plane of strike that will hold the ball truer to its target line. 4th Fundamental The putter blade needs to have a smooth acceleration through the hitting area. How hard you hit the ball determines whether or not the ball takes any break you may have read. You need acceleration (not deceleration) through the ball. Strive for a rhythmic stroke and a smooth acceleration through the hitting area. If you decelerate as a right-hander you will tend to leave putts left of the target or even short. The easiest way to control the speed of the putter head is to use the bigger muscles (shoulders) to lead the stroke. Next Week The Grip Is The Life Line Of Putting For further information about golf instruction, training aids and the C groove putter visit www.haroldswashputting.com. For more informationabout C-grove putters visit www.yesgolf.com. We recommend you use one of these great sites to keep track of your improvement: www.strokeaverage.com and www.golfscoretracker.co.uk. Published by Dizzy Heights UK Limited.© Pocketshots™ and Dizzy Heights™ are trademarks of Dizzy Heights (UK) Limited all other trademarks are acknowledged. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part or in any form. Posted Mar 23 2007, 10:45 AM by Pocket Shots with no comments Filed under: Putting, Pocket Shots, Harold Swash

• Stay Relaxed And Create Width

  Looking at Collin Montgomerie's backswing sequence, the first thing that strikes you is just how relaxed and comfortable Monty is over the ball. Out on the course you can spot him a mile off – he has this distinct, easy posture. There are no false positions. He stands to the ball with a straight lower spine and a gentle curvature of the shoulders. One of his foibles is to hover the club above the ball and adjust his hands a couple of times before he settles, and in doing that he is simply reaffirming the lightness in his grip – Monty himself reckons he has one of the lightest grips in golf. What he is doing here is getting comfortable over the ball. This is not a 'high tension' position. You often here a player talk about being 'athletic', or 'keyed up' at the set-up, but that kind of language suggests tension in the body. Which stifles motion. Colin is totally relaxed, ready to create a swing. The objective as he then starts the club away is to keep it as low and as slow as he can those first few feet back. He makes a wide sweep with the clubhead, and, as he does so, his thoughts are focused on trying to get his left shoulder and his right hip as far behind the ball as possible. He plays the ball relatively far back in his stance for the simple reason he has this lateral slide in the hips that enables him to get behind it. With the wide and the slide he loads up his backswing like a catapult. Late 'setting' loads the wrists. The second part, or completion of his backswing is very interesting. Having already established the width and the slide [of the hips] behind the ball, he lifts his arms and cocks the wrists. And there's a tremendous amount of wrist *** taking place in the space of the final two frames you see above (the arms have traveled only a short distance while the clubhead has reached the extent of its journey, beyond the horizontal). It's actually very hard to do this. There are few players who have Colin's flexibility, and who are able to extend the left arm so fully, the wrists fully hinged to achieve the top-of-the-backswing position. This late setting of the wrists is idiosyncratic to Colin, and not something anyone would necessarily recommend. But for those of you who perhaps *** your wrists very early, narrowing the swing, we would point to this action and suggest using this image of Monty's backswing to help you work on taking the club away from the ball on a wider arc in an attempt to encourage this later hinging or 'setting' of the wrists. Looking down the line confirms the two-dimensional nature of Colin's action: from that tall, easy posture, we can see that he takes the club straight back in line with the target (left). It's a wide takeaway, and he makes no attempt to take the club behind him on the inside. Colin doesn't see a third dimension of swinging the club behind his body – to him it's a case of taking the club straight up and then swinging it straight back down and through the ball. Posted Mar 16 2007, 02:50 PM by Golf International with no comments Filed under: Golf International, Swing Tips

• What Hogan Really Did

  By Luther Blacklock To make short work of hammering a nail the hammer needs to be close to the ideal line of the strike and be dead on it at impact. Not quite so clear – but equally true – is the concept that the ideal Swing Plane for the golfer is one inclined at an angle to the ball. To support this we also have the benefit of hindsight; by looking at images of golfers throughout history we can discern that the 'Lost Fundamental' has been under our noses (literally!) for decades. While the golf ball and clubs have changed dramatically, and differing techniques have come and gone, the human body has not changed during the few centuries that golf has been played. Plane History If we look at any golfer of note (in any era, with any club, any shot), the down-the-line view at the very top of the backswing reveals one defining point. If you draw a line from the ball to the butt-end of the club, that line will always run through the top of the sternum (or the 'hub' of the human 'wheel') to within an inch or so. Despite the difference of plane between, say, Bobby Jones' upright swing with a hickory wedge to Ian Woosnam's swing with a driver, the Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane (OBSP) can be tracked through this same point every time. It is a very narrow band because a shifting of the club to various planes will only create a tiny variance compared to the Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane's hub. To clarify, any golfer's swing will vary its plane in sympathy with the length of the club; naturally, a driver will demand a flattish swing plane while a wedge dictates a more upright one. So, the angle of the Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane will vary from person to person and from club to club. However, the Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane (OBSP) will always run from the ball to the butt of the club at the top of the backswing. Study the sequence above. The butt of the club is clearly below the OBSP at address. During the backswing the clubhead tracks the OBSP and gradually the butt of the club raises to lie in that plane at the top of the backswing. The golfer then delivers the clubhead to the ball, whereafter (ideally) the clubhead continues to track the ideal swing-plane. During the downswing and impact the butt of the club can live between the original shaft plane at address or it might rise to meet the OBSP. Then, for a nano second, the butt of the clubhead might be pulled back to the OBSP in the follow through. Posted Mar 09 2007, 02:46 PM by Luther Blacklock with no comments Filed under: Golf International, Swing Tips, Luther Blacklock

• The Law Is Plane

  By Luther Blacklock The concept or application of a swing plane is indeed a 'Principle'. A man striking a fence post into the ground will swing the hammer up and down in a vertical or perpendicular 'plane'. He can choose to address or stand around the post in any one of 360 degrees – that is his 'Preference'. If he strikes the post with a glancing blow then he is inaccurate and, consequently, less powerful. When the hammer is swung up and down in a vertical 'swing plane' that blow is the most accurate, the most powerful and the most efficient. When the head of the hammer strikes the post centrally and downwards in that vertical plane it is functioning in its Optimum Swing Plane – that is a 'Law'! We can utilize the Swing Plane as we choose, or as our talent permits. As necessary, we can alter the angle or direction of our swing plane according to our 'preference' or need. But, be it fence post or golf ball there is always the potential to swing the hammerhead or clubhead in an Optimum Plane – it's a physical law. The choice is 'plane' – Picture me using a hammer to strike a fence post into the ground; ideally I want to swing the hammer-head up and down in a constant plane – one that delivers the most efficient transfer of energy. 'ROBOT' PLANE – the Constant Optimum Plane Sequence A: Straight up, straight down. A true vertical plane – the simplest and most efficient transfer of energy in this case. The most accurate blow is also the most powerful blow, but in golf this template is impossible for the human body to utilize. THE 'FURYK' PLANE: Erratic, all over the place Sequence B: The hammer is swinging up in various random planes before – with great flair – shifting to the ideal plane through impact. World-ranked No. 4 Jim Furyk is perhaps the most obvious example of a player who displays this type of swing plane. Another great players in this bracket would be Ray Floyd. THE 'HOGAN PLANE': Up in plane, then a shift to a glancing plane Sequence C: This is what Ben Hogan advocated with his pane of glass theory – the idea that you swing back in plane, and then shift to a shallower delivery plane in the downswing. In other words, a 'plane shift' to the inside path which, as Hogan concedes, delivers a glancing blow that would send the ball to the right of the intended initial line of flight. This is what Hogan felt but not what he did in reality... What Hogan Really did we'll save for next week. Posted Mar 02 2007, 02:44 PM by Luther Blacklock with no comments Filed under: Golf International, Swing Tips, Luther Blacklock