Shot Shaping
17 05 2010Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ball flight, golf, golf instruction, swing path
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, video
Hip Turn
28 03 2010Have you ever hit balls at the range next to someone who made an awesome sound when they hit the ball? That sound is compression. It makes other players turn and watch because obviously this is a great ball striker. The player has made his divot past the ball and transferred the energy efficiently from the clubhead to the ball. Distance control is one of the keys to scoring. Great golfers don’t always hit the ball accurately but they often hit the ball pin high which means they are making solid contact. Proper hip action on the backswing plays a major role in compressing the ball.
A common swing thought is to transfer your weight to your right side on the backswing. Unfortunately, most players sway their hips back to do this causing fat and thin contact. The key is to allow your hips to truly turn, not sway. Think of your belt buckle as the center of your hips. If your hips turn around this center, your right hip will actually move towards the target during the backswing. This does not mean you are reverse pivoting as your spine angle should not tilt towards the target during this movement. In order to make sure of this, make sure your head is still or even moves a little away from the target during the backswing.
The focus of this video is the hip turn on the backswing but compression will only occur if you move your hips correctly on the follow through. The downswing should start with a slight bump of the left hip towards the target. You will hit the ball even longer if you can get this bump to happen before your upper body completes its backswing turn. This will set up the proper kinematic sequence for the downswing. Like any sport where you hit a ball with a stick, the movement starts from the ground up. Proper hip motion on the backswing will help you set up this efficient downswing sequence. If you do, you may just be that guy on the range who causes heads to turn.
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Tags: golf instruction, hip turn, swing path
Categories : full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, video
Consistently Good Alignment
23 03 2010I want to be more consistent!” I hear this from so many of my students. Consistency is almost impossible in the game of golf. Even Tiger can shoot 62 one day and 72 the next. Is that consistent? The bottom line is that we are human, and our bodies are different every day. We do our best to swing consistently, but it does not always happen. That is what makes the short game so important, as it helps us make up for full-swing mistakes.
The one place I think a golfer can be consistent is what he does before he hits a ball. The way I look at it, poor aim and alignment is a mental error while hooking or slicing is a physical error.
You should practice alignment like you would practice your swing. If you go to a tour event, you will see all kinds of alignment aids on the ground on the practice tee. Tour players are so good that they can make their balls go to the target even with poor aim and alignment. Unfortunately, they have to alter their swings to make this happen, which eventually leads to poor swing mechanics. Setting up correctly matches up with good swing mechanics, and now you are well on your way to better golf.
It is important to realize that on the golf course, we tend to aim and align ourselves based on our ball flight tendencies. If you are a right-handed golfer who hooks the ball, you will tend to aim right. If you are right-handed golfer who slices the ball, you will tend to aim left. In short, correct aim and alignment does not guarantee good swing mechanics, but it helps! My recommendation is to spend some of your practice time with an alignment aid so it becomes more second nature on the golf course.
The players with the best alignment tend to be the straight hitters. Annika Sorenstam and Fred Funk tend to be good aimers. They also tend to hit a very straight golf ball. Spend some time with your teacher learning how to swing on plane and square up your clubface at impact. Hitting it straight will lead you to better aim and alignment as well. I’ll never guarantee consistency, but I’ll guarantee that improved aim and alignment will lead to better golf.
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Tags: alignment, consistency, golf instruction
Categories : full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction
Swing myths
9 03 2010How many times have you heard keep your head down? Don’t do it! What I am saying may sound like heresy but all you have to do is look at tour players and see that they release their heads on their follow through. What do Annika Sorenstam, David Duval and Robert Allenby have in common? They all release their heads before impact. They are actually looking at the target before they hit the ball. They are not even close to keeping their heads down. They do maintain their spine angles but releasing their heads makes their bodies explosive through the hitting zone. I am not saying you have to exaggerate as much as these players but realize that every tour player is looking at the target on the follow through. If you cannot see your ball flight immediately, your head is down too long.
How many times have you heard swing slower? If you swing slower, your ball will go shorter! I have been teaching for 15 years and almost every student has asked me for more distance. You cannot hit it farther by swinging slower. If you have a technical fault in your swing, slowing down is not going to fix it. Fix the mistake and then speed up your swing to get distance. Don’t confuse slow with smooth. Ernie Els and Vijay Singh are smooth swingers but they are not slow.
How many times have you heard to hit down on the ball? This advice may be the reason 90% of golfers slice the ball. While good ball strikers do compress the ball, it is a function of having a forward leaning shaft and their weight shifting correctly through impact which creates a divot that is past the ball. If you look at the spine angle of a tour player from the face-on point of view, you will see that every one of them has a spine angle leaning backward away from the target. This is the same spine angle you would create if you were going to throw something up in the air. Golfers misinterpret hitting down on the ball by swinging down steeply which creates deep divots, pulls and slices. Try swinging up on the ball and you will become a drawer of the golf ball.
Before taking any swing advice from friends or golf professionals for that matter, always ask the following question. Will this advice help my ball flight and impact? If so, go for it but beware of swing myths!
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Tags: golf instruction, myths
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, mental game
Wrist position at the Top
28 02 2010Be careful about taking swing advice from your fellow golfers. One of the tips I often hear golfers giving is to flatten your left wrist (for right-handed players) at the top of the backswing. Does this apply to you? Well there is only a 33% chance it does. If you are slicing the ball, flattening your left wrist will help. Do not take this advice if you are hitting it straight or hooking the ball as flattening your left wrist will close the clubface and make the ball go more left.
As you can see in the video, the position of the left wrist at the top of the backswing has a lot to do with how you grip the club. If you have a strong grip, your wrist should look cupped at the top. If you have a neutral grip, your wrist should be flat or slightly cupped at the top. If you have a weak grip, your wrist should be flat to slightly bowed at the top.
I look at the golf swing as a recipe of many different ingredients. After we pour all these ingredients into our pot of boiling water, we are looking for the end product to be a solid golf shot with the desired ball flight. As an instructor, I love the challenge of putting the puzzle together to help my students achieve their desired results. Every piece of advice I dole out has an effect on the quality of the shot. I never give advice to make something look prettier or because it is the latest swing fad. I give advice to help your game and it has taken years to learn the cause and effect of each ingredient.
So are you willing to take advice that may or may not be correct from a “helpful” friend? I feel like I have invested a lot of time, effort and money on my golf swing. I will only take advice if the person can give me a good explanation of cause and effect. Find a teacher you trust and stick to the plan. If you do, your recipe will turn out delicious!!
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Tags: back swing, golf instruction, wrist position
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, video
Sequence, The Key to Power
15 11 2009I 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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Tags: golf instruction, increase distance, power, swing sequence
Categories : full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction
Impact, the Moment of Truth
16 08 2009I 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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Tags: golf instruction, impact position
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction
Your Eyes Affect Your Swing Path
11 08 2009Hitting 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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Tags: alignment, golf instruction, swing path
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction
Great golf in the wind
19 07 2009Let’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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Tags: golf instruction, low ball flight, wind
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, mental game
Your Wedge Game
3 07 2009How 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 are 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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Tags: golf instruction, wedge
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, pitch shot, short game
