MySmartGolf.com Blog

I have been playing golf for over 30 years. I have been teaching golf for the last 15 years. I have studied all the great golf swings and all the great teachers. There is so much information out there and we all have access to it in this age of information. So how do we make sense of it all? All you need to do is ask yourself this one question. Is this information, this technique, this tip, or this swing thought going to help me improve my impact? All great golf swings don’t look alike. All great players don’t look alike. But all great impact positions look alike! You can just hear the wonderful smashing sound of a solid golf shot. As an instructor, I don’t even have to see it. I can hear what Bobby Jones called a “true blow”.

In this video, I have explained how to achieve the desired impact position. You will know you have struck a solid iron shot when your divot is a few inches past the ball, the divot is wide and fairly shallow (Byron Nelson once described the divot as looking like a dollar bill), and the divot goes slightly left of target line for a right-handed golfer. As golfers, we have all had that wonderful feeling of hitting a great golf shot. Some golfers, especially the ones we see on TV on Sunday afternoon, tend to repeat that great impact more often.

John Jacobs, a famous English golf instructor, stated that the sole purpose of the golf swing was to achieve a correct, repetitive impact. He went on to say that the method of achieving this was not important as long as it is repetitive. Jim Furyk has a unique swing but he achieves a correct, repetitive impact. Adam Scott may have a more conventional swing but also has a correct, repetitive impact.  If you could remove Jim and Adam’s body from the picture and just see the golf club at impact, the picture would look the same. When I take a golf lesson, I always ask the instructor how the information I am receiving will help my impact and the ability to repeat it. Make this the litmus test for any information that comes your way and you will have more fun hitting “true blows”. -jz

I think back to Ben Crenshaw’s 60 foot putt at the 10th hole at Augusta National when he won the Masters in 1984. He must have played 20 feet of break and poured it right in the heart. The distance control was absolutely amazing and doing it on that great stage made it even more memorable. The key to Ben’s prowess on the green was his ability to roll the ball the proper distance. If you think about it, every putt that breaks is a speed putt. The harder you hit it, the less it breaks and the softer you hit it, the more it breaks. In short, anything other than a straight putt, the line is governed by your speed. As I have said before live by the “DIE” rule, “Distance Is Everything”.

The only thought in your mind when you are over a putt should be distance control. You should spend most of your time looking at the target to get your mind oriented to the target. Your practice strokes should be made looking at the hole. Trust that your subconscious will help you roll it the proper speed. Butch Harmon once said that touring pros glare at the target and glance at the ball while the weekend golfer glares at the ball and glances at the target. Stare that target down with the steely gaze of Clint Eastwood when he says “Make my day!” If you do, you just might make your day and make a Crenshaw like putt in the process. -jz

Let’s face it. Wind makes golf hard! In 1992, I was a rookie on the Asian Golf Tour. I flew over to the Philippines to enter my first event. I survived a Monday qualifying to get into the event and then went on to make the cut easily. I thought that there was nothing to this touring pro thing. The came the weekend and a ferocious 30-40 mph wind. I finished last of all the players to make the cut. The wind simply beat me. There’s a saying out on tour that when conditions are difficult, par goes up. Well my par went way up and both my weekend scores started with an 8 and you can’t survive as a touring professional with those numbers. A Chilean player named Roy MacKenzie was nice enough to take me to the driving range after my weekend debacle and teach me some tricks on how to deal with windy conditions. Through the years, I have added more tricks which I would like to share with you.

The first thing that Roy noticed was that I was trying to power the ball through the wind. That strategy does not work because the harder you hit it, the more backspin you put on the ball. Backspin spins the ball up into the oncoming wind and the ball balloons up into the air losing its distance. Roy and I spent time hitting smooth, slow 5 irons and I started to see a lower ball flight with less spin. The result was that the wind was not messing with my golf ball! There another saying on tour, “When it’s breezy, swing it easy”. Throw your ego out the door, take more club and swing easy. I have no problem swinging a smooth 5 iron from 120 yards. Greg Norman did it last year and almost became the oldest player to win a major.

Accuracy is always difficult when you are playing into a cross wind. The key to hitting it straight in these conditions is to always try to spin the ball into the cross wind. We call this holding the ball into the wind. If you are facing a left to right wind, play a right to left shot. The wind will counteract the spin and the ball will fly straight. Remember that as you spin the ball into the cross wind, the ball will lose some distance so adjust your club selection accordingly. Only experience will dictate how much you want to curve your ball into the cross wind in order to achieve a straight ball flight.

Hitting a ball downwind is a lot of fun because you can hit it so far. The challenge here is to control your distance and not hit it over the green. More double bogies are made from hitting it over the green than hitting it short. Obviously, you need to adjust your club selection as your ball will fly farther. Also, you want to go to a shorter club because the added loft will help you spin the ball better as downwind shots decrease the backspin on the ball. This may sound weird but sometimes, I will hit a low shot downwind because I can control the distance better than sending it up into the elements.

Lastly, I want to comment on putting. If you watch the European Tour players, they tend to have wide stances when they putt. Since they play in windier conditions, they have learned to widen their stance to stay balanced. I feel like my feet are rooted into the ground and I engage my core muscles to increase balance. It is crucial to stay steady as you putt in order to make the right contact. The wind will also affect your putts so plan your break with that in mind.

Remember, par goes up in the wind and the conditions are the same for everyone. Follow some of the before mentioned advice, and you will have fun the next time you face the wind. -jz

How important is your wedge game? Just ask Masters Champion Angel Cabrera. After hitting a tree on his second shot of the first extra playoff hole, he hit a wedge shot to about 6 feet and holed the putt to stay alive in the playoff. The rest as they say is history. The bottom line is that your wedges are important scoring clubs. They can help you birdie par 5’s and save pars on par 4’s when you cannot reach the green in two. Tom Kite made a great living on tour being a master with the wedge. In fact, he pioneered the three wedge system as he knew that wedging it the proper distance was the key to scoring.

Notice that barring a miss-hit or miss-alignment, you don’t hit your wedges off line. The misses tend to be short and long. Do you know how far you hit your wedges? Can you hit a 55 yard shot, a 68 yard shot, or a 91 yard shot? The tour players can. It’s not because they have super-human talent, it’s because they practice wedging the ball different distances. I want my students to be able to land their ball within 2 yards of their target so they have no more than a 6 foot putt left. This gives them a reasonable chance at getting it up and down. When I was a touring professional, I had 36 distances that I knew I could hit right on the number. I was excited when I had a wedge in to the hole as I knew exactly the swing that would get me near the hole. At that point, it was all about execution.

There a couple of very good methods to hitting wedges precise distances. One is to vary the length of your backswing. You can do this with several wedges to give you even more distances. This system made famous by Dave Pelz requires the player to maintain a consistent tempo.  Another system is to find a comfortable backswing position and accelerate through at different speeds to adjust your distance. Both are effective but require practice in order to achieve precise distance control. When you hear about a player having great touch with his wedge game, it means that he has great distance control. Cabrera had great touch on that wedge shot at Augusta National.

I have found that the best wedge players are the ones who trap the ball and bring the shot in on a lower trajectory with more spin. They de-loft their wedge which allows the ball to rebound off the face and produce more consistent distances. For those of you who may scoop the ball or add loft at impact, the ball tends to run up the face and lose it’s distance. Paul Azinger is a great example of a player who traps his wedges and has great distance control. Find your best way to control your wedge distances and lower scores will be right around the corner. -jz