Keep it Square

15 11 2009

Everything in moderation is a pretty good philosophy in life and it is in your golf game as well. Opening your stance for short game shots is ok if it is done in moderation but opening it too much leads to disaster. Setting up too open leads to glancing blows, pulls, chunks and excessive sidespin on your short game shots. More importantly, it seeps into other parts of your game which leads to inconsistency.

I recommend putting a shaft down on the ground to monitor your alignment. It will give you the sense of what is square so when you remove the club, anything other than square will feel awkward. If square is your baseline, you are setting yourself up for success. Setting up square leads to solid contact due to an on plane swing. Your ball will come off with pure backspin and an absence of sidespin. You hear people talk about trying to get the ball within a three foot circle in order to have a good chance at getting up and down. I try to hole all my short game shots. Knowing that my ball will have a predictable bounce because of pure backspin enables me to give the ball a good chance of going in. I even read the green on my chip shots much like you would on a lag putt. If your goal is to hole your shot, chances are that if it doesn’t go in, it will be inside that three foot circle.

The key to scoring in golf is predictability. Whether you are a hooker or a slicer, you can plan your aim and find the fairway if you know beforehand how your ball will curve. Setting up square will give you predictability of distance control because of your solid contact and predictability of direction due to square spin. Now go practice and hole some short game shots. -jz


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Categories : Golf, Golf Instruction

Sequence, The Key to Power

15 11 2009

I have been teaching golf for 15 years and I can’t remember a student who has not asked me for more distance. The Titleist Performance Institute has studied hundreds of touring professionals and the best ball-strikers all have the same downswing “signature” (downswing sequence) to maximize their distance. The proper sequence in the downswing is hips, torso, lead arm and then the golf club. If you look at a computer reading of Jim Furyk and Ernie Els’ downswing sequence, you will not be able to tell the difference between the players. Obviously Els’ frame can produce more power that Furyk’s but they both maximize their power in the same way.

The sequence is the same in any sport where you are looking to hit or throw something with power. If you look at a baseball hitter, baseball pitcher, hockey player or tennis player, you will see the same sequence of motion. The chain reaction as one part of the body transfers the energy to the next leads to efficiency and power. When you see a great ball-striker just prior to impact, you see a significant “lag” where the handle of the club is well ahead of the clubhead. This angle is produced by the proper sequence in the downswing. When an instructor talks about delaying the hit, holding the angle or creating lag, please understand that you cannot achieve this unless your body is firing in the proper sequence.

So how do you learn the proper sequence? If you are late to golf and have played other sports, tap into that sequence. Your brain has stored the sequence as you learned the other sport and tapping into this is invaluable. If you are involved with juniors or have a kid who plays golf, keep them involved in other sports as they will gain more strength and learn the sequence there as well.  I have seen Michelle Wie hitting golf balls with a baseball bat as her Dad pitched them in to her about waist high. Her tall strong frame coupled with the correct sequence is a great recipe for power. A good drill to learn the proper sequence is to start with your feet together, take the club half way back, then step towards the target as you complete the backswing and swing through.

We all laugh at Happy Gilmore hitting a golf ball but running up and hitting a golf ball is the correct sequence not to mention a great way to train hand eye coordination. I’m not saying do this on the first tee next time you play, but it would be really cool if you did and pulled it off. If you hit it solidly, you will see distance you never saw before. -jz


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Categories : Golf, Golf Instruction

Josh Zander on golfchannel.com

9 11 2009

Josh shot three bunker videos for the Golf Channel which you can view at the following link:

http://su.pr/8WIOfK

There is also a Q&A page. Enjoy.


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Categories : Bunker, Golf, Golf Instruction

Putting In the Wind

11 10 2009

Have you ever noticed that the European Tour players tend to have wider putting stances than their American counterparts? The reason is that they are used to playing in windy conditions and they need to widen their stance to maintain balance. Putting represents 42 % of your score and putting in the wind is extremely difficult. I am writing this blog on the eve of the Open Championship at Turnberry where we will surely see the elements take their toll on the participants.

Distance control is the key to great putting and this is especially true in the wind. The speed you hit the putt determines its line; therefore, every putt other than a straight putt is determined by how hard you hit it. The first element to distance control is solid contact. Because the wind throws you off balance, it is difficult to hit the ball on the sweet spot. The way to maintain your balance in the wind is to widen your stance and engage your core muscles. You can also try standing pigeon-toed like Arnold Palmer. This will keep your hips very still. Try to feel like your spikes are rooted into the ground. You should feel like it would take a Mack truck to move you from this stance. Believe me, the wind will try! Have a friend give you a gentle shove to see if you are indeed balanced. Now you are ready to make solid contact.

The next key is to keep your head still. Don’t peek to see where the ball goes. You need to keep your head as quiet as possible to make solid contact. You will see the result soon enough. The fewer moving parts in your putting stroke will pay dividends in the wind.

Now that you are stable and your head is still, understand that the wind will affect your golf ball. Use your common sense. If you are into the wind, hit it harder. If you are downwind, hit it softer. If the wind is blowing left to right, aim more to the left. If the wind is blowing right to left, aim more to the right. Let’s face it, you are not going to make as many putts in the wind. The key is to hit the ball as solidly as possible and take into account what the wind is doing when you read your putt. Remember, par goes up in the wind so stay patient and enjoy the challenge.


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Categories : Golf, Golf Instruction, Putting

Basic Chipping, a Must-Have

7 09 2009

The basic chip shot should be a part of every golfer’s arsenal. Next to putting, it is the simplest motion in golf yet so many players struggle with it. The reason players struggle is very basic. There is no room for compensation when the stroke is so small.

The components of solid impact on a chip are correct set-up, swing plane, weight on the forward foot and a forward-leaning clubshaft at impact. If you set up incorrectly, get off plane, shift your weight to the back foot or try to scoop the ball, your contact will suffer and there is no time for recovery as the motion is so small. Use the technique I demonstrate on the video and you contact will be solid. Once you make solid contact, it is just a matter of time before you get really good at distance control.

Students often ask me whether it is better to use one club or several clubs when trying to achieve the correct distance. The answer is they both work. If you want to learn one length swing, select different clubs to make the ball go different distances. A more lofted club will produce less roll and a less lofted club will produce more roll. If you are more advanced and have good hands, take a sandwedge and alter your swing size to vary your distances. Whether you like to chip with one club or with several is up to you but you better make solid contact if you want to get it up and down.

Distance control or “touch” as we call it in golf is the key to scoring. The best chippers have habituated the motion that creates the proper impact so when they are on the golf course, all they think about is hitting the ball the correct distance. Don’t get down on yourself if you hit it solidly and have poor distance control. This is just a sign that you need to shift your attention to the target and less on the technique. This is when short game becomes a lot of fun.

If you really struggle with chipping and cannot get the basic motion down, consider using a hybrid or fairway metal around the greens. There used to be a club called a chipper. A chipper was a putter length club that had about 8 iron loft on it. In short, you could use a putting set-up and motion to chip the ball. These days, you can grip down on your hybrid or fairway metal and you have the old-fashioned chipper in your hand. This is a good temporary solution but understand that if you struggle with chipping, chances are that your impact position on your full swing needs improvement. Fix your chipping and you will be surprised how much you improve your ball striking. Now your score is really coming down!  -jz


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Categories : Golf, Golf Instruction, chip shot

Impact, the Moment of Truth

16 08 2009

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


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Your Eyes Affect Your Swing Path

11 08 2009

Hitting a golf ball straight and solid is very difficult to do. Ken Griffey Jr., an all-star baseball player and seven handicap golfer, stated that golf was harder than baseball because you are not only worried about hitting the ball solidly, but also where it goes. He went on to say that he doesn’t care where the baseball goes after he hits it solidly. As golfers, we have to play our shots to right and left field even though we prefer to hit the ball to center field.

As you can see in the video, your eyes have a significant influence on both the solidity of the hit as well as the direction. I like to get my students to align themselves correctly and that means getting their feet, knees, hips, shoulders and eyes parallel to the target line. When observing a student from face on, I am looking for a stacked set up. You can think of your body as a set of building blocks. You want your feet to provide a nice foundation and then you want to get your knees, hips and shoulders to stack up as you move on up the chain. The last link is your eyes. If you can get your eyes level, it gives you the opportunity to swing with balance and on plane.


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Categories : Golf, swing

Distance Control, the Key to Great Putting

31 07 2009

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


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Great golf in the wind

19 07 2009

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


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Your Wedge Game

3 07 2009

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


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