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Steve's Golf Tips
I've been playing golf since high school, and I've never been able to break
90 until this year, 1999. In the past year, I lowered my handicap from about 25 to about 17. Here are some tips I have learned that help me with my game.
Driving
During the first 5-10 rounds this 1999
season, I could barely hit my drives 200 yards. Now, 220-240 yards is a typical good drive for me, and I can hit it 250-279 yards with a great drive. And I've kept my drives very straight. I use a Taylor Made Firesole
S-90 8.5 loft.
I'm really physically weak right now, since I don't exercise much. Thus, my driving distance is good proof that good form and weak body can still result in long-ass drives.
1. To get a lot
of power in your drives, stand far away from the ball. Bend your knees and keep the weight in the middle of your feet. In your setup, more weight should be on your right foot than your left foot, and you feet should be
pretty far apart (much wider than you shoulder width).
Standing far away from the ball helps keep your swing low and increase your club head speed upon impact. (Joe and Nhac tip)
2. During setup and impact, make sure your hands are in front of your clubhead just a bit. If
you let the club head be in front of your hands, then this will leak tons of power from our drive and make your drives shorter than they should be.
3. Use a one-piece takeaway. Don't let your wrists bend until
the clubhead is drawn all the way back away from the ball.
4. When trying to hit the ball far on your drive, never overswing your backswing. Keep the backswing slow and deliberate. If you speed up your backswing
when you try to crush the ball, then this speed will in fact work against you, making it hard to reverse the direction of your swing while maintaining control. If you keep your backswing slow and deliberate, then you
can ``overswing" on your downswing and follow-through and crush the ball.
5. Keep the left arm tense all the way from setup to backswing through the follow-through. Your body is like a coil, all wound up at the
end of your backswing. Don't left your left arm and wrist be limp and leak the power of your body coil. Keep it nice and taught. I think of the backswing as being controllled by my left arm, and the follow-through
controlled by my right arm. While you want to keep the left arm tense, don't overgrip with your left hand. (Joe tip)
6. In the follow-through, let your right arm take over, and whack the ball like you're hitting a forehand shot in tennis - lots of top-spin. If your backswing has been
slow and deliberate, and you let your clubhead come to a complete stop at the top with your left arm still tense and coiled, then whacking the ball with your right hand with a lot of top spin will make the ball fly.
Just make sure you let your hips lead your hands during follow-through.
7. After impact, make sure your hands and club head follow straight through the ball at impact. Resist your body's natural tendency to swing
up right away after impact. By keeping the club-head square all the way through and past the point of impact, this will keep your drives straight.
8. During impact and follow-through, don't let your center of
gravity shift past your hips. Although you must shift your weight from right to left during the follow through, if you let your center of balance go too far, than you ruin your pivotal base of power. I used to let my
weight go too-far forward. Now that I keep my weight over my hips, rather than past my hips, I get longer drives. This tip is from Tiger Woods.
9. Don't bend your knees during follow-through. Let rotation of your
hips and body provide speed, not bending of the knees. I was really guilty of knee-bend during follow-through last year. Now I try to get all my power from the pivoting of my body, rather than the bending of my knees,
during follow-through.
Putting
Here are a few specific tips that have helped me improve this year.
1. When you set up to putt, make sure that your eyes are directly above the ball. To test this,
get into your putting stance and drop a ball from your left eye. It should either hit the ball your are putting or land in the line between the ball and the cup.
2. For short putts, keep your backswing short and
follow through strong, just like using a cue in billiards. This promotes good velocity and acceleration at impact for short putts, reducing the incidence of pushes or pulls. (Paul tip)
3. As with any other shot in golf, visualize the correct ball path that will lead to the shot going
where it should (i.e. the putt going into the cup). Then hit the putt with that path in mind.
4. Take the putter back with your left arm/shoulder, and follow through with the put with your right arm/shoulder. The
left wrist should be stiff before taking the putter back.
Long irons
Long irons are the greatest weakness of my game.
1. When swinging at the ball, swing the club like you're hitting a forehand
in tennis. Let your right arm do the swinging during the follow-through, allowing your left hand to guide the club.
General Course Management and other tips
Here are other things I think about on the golf course.
1. When playing on a normal par-72 golf course, I just imagine turning the course into a par-3 course. In other words, on every hole, get yourself in a
position where your approach shot can reach the green in regulation. For example, on a par-4 380-yard hole, I want to hit a 230 yard drive, so that I have 150 yards to the pin. If I have done this with my drive and the
ball is in the fairway, then I have effectively turned the hole into a par 3.
Another example: Say it's a par-5 480 yard hole. I hit the drive 230 yards, so I have 250 yards to the pin for my second shot. Instead
of grabbing my 3 wood and trying to hit the ball 200 yards so that I have 50 to the pin, I should just hit my 6-iron casually so that I have 100 yards to the pin. Why? Either shot will turn the hole into a par 3 hole,
but I am much more likely to screw up the 3-wood than the 6-iron. If I could hit my 3-wood 250 yards, then I would go for the green in 2, but I simply can't do that. So the 6-iron is my correct shot.
2. Make sure
your club grips are still tacky, and your golf glove is still tacky too. If either is slick and slippery, than that will screw up your game, because you will be gripping your clubs too hard.
3. Get used to a
certain brand and make of ball and stick to it. Over time, you get used to the feel of the ball, especially for chips and putts. I currently use Taylor Made
Pro Distance 90. I like using these because few other
people use this brand, so it is easy for me to identify my ball.
4. Don't take too many practice swings before each shot. I take one. I may switch and just take one half-pace practice swing in the future. I think
practice swings tire me out for a round. That's why I don't take too many. Also, I hate when I take a practice swing, and the clubhead gets a lot of grass and mud on it. Then I have to wipe it off, which ruins my
rhythm. So I think I will change and just take one slow practice swing that doesn't touch the ground.
5. I got a 5-wood fairway wood. It's awesome. I swing it like a 5-iron, and it is very versatile. I can hit it
off the fairway, and I can use it to hit ball halfway buried in the rough. It's more reliable than my long irons.
6. In general, keep your swing as simple as possible. Wasted motion results in less strength and
wilder hits.
Looking Forward to 2000
My current handicap is around 17. I think I can reduce it to 13 or 14 next year. Here is a list of my strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths
1. Driving - average 220-240 yards and very straight
2. Approach shots of 100 to 150 yards quite accurate
3. Good chipping
4. Decent putting
Weaknesses
1. Long irons - I hit these 20-30 yards too short
2. Lack of physical strength - I should work out more
3. All sand shots - still way too erratic, although I did improve a lot in 1999. Especially bad are my 20 to 50 yard sand shots. I still don't know how to hit
these.
4. Loft wedge and sand wedge for shots from 20 yards to 80 yards. I really suck at these shots. I need to improve my feel with these wedges. More than anything, I think this comes with practice. I think my
form is fine at this point for these wedges.
If I can improve my long irons (both distance and accuracy) significantly, then I should be able to hit in the low to mid 80s consistently.
Professional golfers
do not carry their own clubs. Nor do they ride carts on the golf course. I think both of these facts help keep their scores low. For example, when I carry my clubs, in makes my back sore and tired by the end of the
round. On the other hand, when I use a golf cart, my body doesn't feel loose on the course because I don't walk much between shots. I just got a pull-cart as a compromise to carrying my clubs and riding a cart. I may
get a motorized cart in the next year or two. This would come as close to what a professional golfer experiences as possible, short of hiring a caddie. It seems wimpy and unmacho to use one of these motorized carts, but
what the heck - I' d be doing it to reduce my handicap and save my back - both good causes. |
