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Correct Golf Swing

August 10, 2010 By

Much is made about the “perfect swing.”  The unfortunate thing is that it does not exist. Watch tour pros for any length of time and you will find that there are a wide variety of swings on the tour, and all of them work well enough to make those guys a lot of dough. Tiger has a swing that can best be described as ‘violent.’ Then you have the smooth, still swing of Earnie Els. But there is one thing that ever correct golf swing has in common, and that is the moment of impact.

Click Here To Learn How To Correct Your Golf Swing

Yes, you need to address the ball properly and have a grip that isn’t goofy. And you need to take the club back on relatively the right path. You certainly can’t open your hips way too soon and all of those hundred other tips you’ve heard, but the most important thing is to do the right thing with your hands when you strike the ball. You’re far better off hitting the ball 200 yards right down the middle of the fairway than you are smashing it 300 yards with a wicked slice.

Let’s start with your grip.

Interlocked, overlap, all of that doesn’t matter as much as getting your grip neutral between your hands and then weakening that grip the closer you get to the green. Let’s start with the hand neutrality. Take a sheet of paper and hold it between your palms. That’s the idea of keeping your hands neutral in relation to each other. You will never strike the ball with any consistency if one hand is open and the other closed. Your palms should always be facing each other so that they can turn through the ball in concert.

Next, the further away you are form the cup, the stronger your grip needs to be.

That doesn’t mean to hold onto the club like grim death. What it does mean is that you need to open your hands more so that you can turn them through the ball with more or less ferocity at the point of impact. Grip a club and look at the “V” created between your thumb and forefinger. A strong grip will point that “V” toward the right shoulder (for right handed golfers) while a weaker grip will move the “V” more toward pointing at your chin. The stronger your grip, the easier it is to turn your wrists at impact, which generates more speed and distance. But you don’t want to use a strong grip and a wicked wrist flip  for your sand wedge, save it for your driver and long irons.

So now we get to the moment of impact.

Regardless of swing plane and other mechanics, studies have shown that the one thing that all tour pros have in common is the three inches on either side of the ball – that “moment of impact.” Every single swing boils down to what happens in that six inches. The head of the club may move as much as 12 feet during the entire swing, but those six inches are the only ones that matter. In those six inches, the club head should go from about 6-9 degrees open to 3 degrees closed through the moment of impact.

So what does that mean to you? How does this help you to make a more correct golf swing?

Because it’s all in your hands. Most players don’t know how to “open” the club face on the back sing and then “close” it through impact. But the cool thing is that if you can learn that, it will help more than anything else you can do with the rest of your swing. So let’s go back to our piece of paper.

Grab a piece of paper between your palms and pretend to make a golf swing with it.

A the top of your back swing you should be able to read something written on the side of the left hand (again, right handers here) and after impact you should be able to read something on the other side. To get the feel for this, hold the paper out in front of you with your left hand on top, then flip it so that your right hand is on top. That’s what you’re trying to do through the moment of impact. On your back swing turn the paper one way, and through the ball try to “flip” it over so you can read the other side.

When the club face strikes the ball a few degrees open but closing fast the ball will go straight where you are aiming it. If you hit it to the right you will know that you either aimed right or didn’t flip your hands at the right time.

Ever spend entire rounds having no idea what you were doing wrong?

If you concentrate on your hands you will always know what you did wrong, as well as how to fix it. So go ahead and get a few pointers on the erst of your swing, but work on those hands and you’ll find that you will strike the ball better than ever before.

The correct golf swing for you is the one that lowers your score – you can work on making the tour later.

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

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Improving Short Game

August 10, 2010 By

The short game (short irons and putting) accounts for most of your time on the golf course. That’s why going to the driving range is only going to help so much. Guys out there like to practice having the biggest, longest drive off the tee, but their score may be suffering due to the fact they don’t practice their short game as much.

Sure having a great drive is sexy, and it can lower your score, but with a bad short game, those guys who spend all day at the driving range with their new, flavor of the month drivers who don’t have a short game worth talking about are going to have higher scores than someone with a moderate drive and a good short game.

Click Here To Learn How To Improve Your Short Game

So, the number one rule for improving your short game is practice.

Try to find a driving range that has a chipping green with bunkers. Not all of them have this, especially the ones you see on the side of the highway while going to work. Also, make sure the range has clear yardage markers from 50 to 100 yards. Some ranges only start posting yardage at 200.

The second rule is to know your clubs.

That doesn’t mean going out and buying the brand new clubs as advertised in Golf Digest, nor does it mean being able to talk about the graphite shaft’s particle density or the whether the club has titanium plating.

Know YOUR clubs.

Know how the clubs you have right now in your bag handle for you.

For example, how many yards does your nine-iron shot go? What about a five-iron? When practicing to improve your short game what you’re going for is not the same thing as on the driving range, where most golfers just want to see how far they can hit the ball with their big drivers.

What do you practice for when improving short game?

What you practice for is a 100 yard shot. Start with this because it’s an easy distance to judge and it’s a common shot to have to make in an actual round. Most golf courses have markers for 100 yards from the green. For some golfers, a 100 yard shot would be made with a pitching wedge, for others it may be a seven iron. Find the club and swing you need to consistently get a 100 yard shot.
After you find that club, practice that swing six thousand times. Well, practice it as much as you have time for. Save that swing in your muscle memory so that you could do it in your sleep. It is your benchmark. On the course you should feel confident knowing that you can hit the ball exactly 100 yards if you need to.

When that swing is saved to your muscle memory, go up one club. From a pitching wedge, move to a nine iron, from a nine iron to an eight iron, and so on. Use the same swing, and see how much farther the shot goes. For most golfers, this isn’t very much. Twenty five or fifty yards. Make mental, or even better, written notes on how much each club increases distance.

If you practice like this, you will be able to not only judge the distance to the green, but place a shot right on it consistently. Then you can show your friends who have the long drives that getting the ball on the green will lower your score much more.

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

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Correct Golf Grip

August 10, 2010 By

Let’s begin by restating that golf is a game and perfection is completely impossible. And I don’t just mean perfection in golf, but perfection in anything is impossible. In golf, perfection is something much further away from impossible. What you are really trying to do with golf is mitigate the impact of the mistakes you are most certainly going to make in every single swing.

Let’s be honest here – even swing machines end up putting golf balls in groupings. You could make a machine that would toss a basketball into the net from 60 feet away every single time, but you simply can’t come close in golf. Wind, grass, bugs, beer, moisture and a plethora of other things can change in a fraction of a second and two identical strikes from a driving machine can end up fifteen yards apart.

Click Here To Learn How To Correct Your Golf Grip

As a result there is also no such thing as the “correct” golf grip, if you mean by that one of the three grips which is best. There are a few little things every kind of golf grip needs to do as well as some things it needs to not do, but it doesn’t matter if you use the interlock, overlap or baseball grip in the end.

The hard and fast rules of the grip is that the left thumb must go down the shaft, the grip is neutral with the palms facing each other, is medium pressure. The rest of the things you’ve heard are merely checks to see if you are doing those things properly. You know, the “v” made by the index finger and thumb of your right hand need to point at your right shoulder? All that tip does is give you a tool to tell whether your right hand is where it should be instead of too far over the top of the club or too much underneath it.

Perhaps the best way to look at gripping a club is to take a sheet of paper and hold it between both hands. That’s what you are actually trying to do with your golf grip. Each hand needs to be exactly facing each other. Neither hand should be open or closed in relationship to the club shaft. Neutral grip, neutral pressure and you at least have a chance at not making mistakes with your hands.

In the end the correct golf grip is the grip that makes you feel comfortable during the swing and at impact. The one hidden gem in golf is knowing the the club face hits the ball, not the swing. Your hands have a lot more to do with that than your shoulders and hips. By getting your hands in a comfortable and neutral grip, you are far more likely to open and close them properly as you come through the ball than if your grip is wonky for some reason. Always remember that piece of paper, you can’t grip it too hard sandwiched like that, and your hands should always be facing each other. That one tip will fix your grip.

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

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Improving Golf Swing

August 10, 2010 By

The beauty of golf is that there are always skills to improve upon.  The very same pro’s who you see winning millions of dollars on TV, spend countless hours between tournaments working with the most expensive coaches in the world.  Everyone, regardless of skill level, has weaknesses in their game and swing mechanics.  But we can always learn about common mistakes and work on improving our golf swing.  With some education and practice, anyone who is committed can take their game to the next level.

Click Here To Learn How To Improve Your Golf Swing

Stance

Stance is extremely important in golf. As you may have heard before, PGA (Professional Golfer’s Association) actually stands for Posture, Grip and Alignment. A stance in golf is very important because it involves two of these three keys for a successful swing and a lower score. If you’ve ever played golf before, you probably are aware of how important your stance is, but what you may not know is that you can actually alter your stance for specific shots.

Why would you ever do this?

Of course if you’re one of those golfers who always has a perfect swing, your ball is either in the fairway or on the green at all times, so your stance would never need to be altered if you’re behind a tree or in a sand trap because that never happens to you.

Yeah right.

Even the pros end up in the rough, in the water, or behind the trees. It’s just the nature of the game. In fact, one could argue that being able to play perfectly round after round would make golf boring to play. Unless you’re an advanced robot with a programmed, perfected swing that’s perfect every time an in any condition, then that is not you.

There are several situations you may consider altering your stance, but to start we’ll look at how your stance should normally be.

- Your feet should be a little wider than shoulder-width apart.

- Your knees should be slightly bent

- The ball should be aligned in the center of your stance, far enough away that you can reach it with the club comfortably.

This is the standard golfing stance.

What if you are on a steep hill? What if there is a tree between you and the green? What if you’re in the sand?

If you are on a steep hill, you should alter your stance so that your feet are much closer together. Depending on how steep the hill is and how far the shot needs to go, the alignment of the ball should be outside of the feet (to the back if you’re on a decline, to the front if you’re on an incline). What you’re trying to accomplish through altering your stance this way is that the overall swing should be very similar to what you would normally do. Improving your golf swing is just like science, you should try to isolate one variable at the time, change it and nothing else, and then proceed.

You can actually hook or slice on command by changing your stance. This will help if you have an obstacle in front of you you are trying to avoid. Of course, practice will help you get the feel for how MUCH you should alter your stance for this type of swing, but as a rule of thumb, move the ball forward in your stance for a hook and back in your stance for a slice. The point is to have the club impact the ball at an earlier or later point of the swing than normal.

An alternative to moving the balls alignment in your stance is moving your feet forward or backward. Keeping the standard stance and moving your left foot back (for right-handers) is called an open stance. This is how you can purposefully hook the ball to the left around a tree that’s in your way.

Moving your right foot back (for right-handers) has the opposite effect, creating a slice. This is called a closed stance

This is also one way you can try to improve your golf swing. If your shot always hooks, try using a more closed stance, or if your shot is always a slice, try using an open stance. This doesn’t work 100% of the time because there are many other variables that go into a golf swing, but it might work for you!

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

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Improve Your Golf

August 10, 2010 By

The best way to improve your golf game is to remember that it is just a game after all. We all tend to take things a bit too seriously, even our hobbies, and turn them into something akin to another set of chores. So don’t stress yourself out too much on improving your golf, but I can give you some tips that will most certainly help you nonetheless.

Click Here To Learn How To Improve Your Golf Game

The number one thing that will improve your golf game is not new clubs, not a bunch of lessons and not five hours of practice on the driving range – it’s what I call expanding the cup. Getting a lot better at draining putts will have the biggest impact on your score, far more than any one aspect of a round. Here’s how to make the cup look a whole lot bigger in just a few easy practice sessions.

Take four golf balls and a ruler or measuring tape, you can also trace this out on a piece of paper if you like and just cut it out and place it on the floor. Place the first two balls six inches apart to form what is going to be the base of a triangle. The third ball goes six or seven inches above the line between the other two balls. If you’re doing this on paper you will draw an arc between the top ball and the other two and remove everything in between.

This area represents the true size of the golf cup. A round object will fall into a hole when it’s centerline crosses the threshold of that hole – unless other forces keep it from doing so. the reason a whole bunch of your putts are rolling right past the hole is that they are going too fast to simply fall in. If you putt too fast, angular momentum overcomes gravity and keeps the ball rolling.

The area between your three golf balls represents an area between which the ball will always fall into the cup. All you have to do is practice putting a ball so that it comes to rest anywhere between the other three. The cool thing is, it’s a really big area to hit, the only thing you’ll have to work on is speed, which is the real key to great putting.

If you get to the point where you can get your putts to stop in this much larger semi-circle, you’ll be surprised at just how much your putting will improve, just a week or so of practice on this technique will have you draining putts you were missing just a few days ago from all over the green. Using this larger target zone is how we expand the cup, and improve your golf game.

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

Filed Under: Improve Your Golf

Golfing Tips

August 10, 2010 By

When it comes to golfing tips you are certain to find thousands. Some will seem simple while others will be painfully complex lessons on physics. While there is certainly some truth in the fact that a perfect swing has about a hundred moving parts and you should be doing them all properly, that doesn’t mean that you can’t play pretty good golf without a magnificent swing. There really are some simple things you can do to improve your golf game while you work on your pursuit of the perfect swing.

Click Here To Learn How To Improve Your Golf Game

It may not sound like much of a golfing tip, but the one thing you really need to realize about golf is the the club head hits the ball, not your swing. All the swing does is add speed to the club head. That’s it in a nutshell really. Hitting the ball straight is impossible, even with a perfect swing, if the club head is not in the right location when it contacts the ball.

A good swing can definitely help you get the club head in the right spot, but you can also begin by concentrating on the head itself while you work on getting your swing right. There are really only three inches that make any difference in every single golf swing – the inch and a half on either side of the ball.

Good golf shots are made when the club goes from a few degrees open to a few degrees closed as it moves through the ball. Even trickier, the face need to be just a hair open when it actually first touches the ball. About three degrees open at impact is just about right. Now, this all happens in the course of milliseconds, so there is no way of knowing if you’ve done it right except by watching how the ball flies.

If your ball goes right and then further right it means that not only were you open more than three degrees at impact, you also didn’t close it at all – that’s what makes a slice. If the ball goes left and then further left, a hook, it means your club face was closed at impact and then closed even more as you rolled your wrists.

It is this flick of the wrists right as you strike the ball that determines if your shot will be straight or not. If you concentrate on getting your club face open and then closing it right as you hit the ball, you will be able to tell right away whether you were too late or early in regards to the club face and will know exactly what to do on your next shot to fix it.

We don’t have time to talk here about exactly how to do that, but an easy way to see it is to take a sheet of paper and put it between your hands. As you bring your swing back, you have to turn your wrists so that you could see something written on the side where your left hand is located (for right handed golfers, that is). As you bring your swing down, the only thing you should see at impact with the ball is the edge of the paper between your hands and after impact you should be able to read something on the other side of the paper.

By thinking about the club face like that piece of paper you will begin to gain a lot more control over each shot you make. Your wrists control your club face, and your club face makes all the difference in every single golf shot. You don’t want to extend this to putting, of course, where you want to keep everything as still and neutral as humanly possible, but for almost everything else it can really improve your control.

If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret.  Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf.  They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.

Click Here To Visit The Golf Swing Secrets Website

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