Chin Up

If you're driving the golf ball poorly and not very consistent, let me give you these two golf swing instruction pearls. They go hand in hand.

And I promise you this will help you find out if your problem with your driver is in the backswing.

For you to become a really good driver of the golf ball and consistent, the shoulders have to turn. The only way they can turn in the backswing is if you have your chin up and not down.

Most mistakes that I’ve seen with amateur golfers in their difficulties of driving the golf ball is their posture.

Their head is too far down. The only thing your shoulders can do is go up in the air. You won’t have the ability to swing the golf club around you. You won’t have the chance of your shoulders turning.

So, the best golf swing instruction I can give you is, the next time out, after you’ve addressed the golf ball, gone through your routine and you're almost ready to swing the golf club back, simply lift your chin up in the air an inch or two. And don’t forget that your shoulder should turn in the backswing.

If you have your chin up, the shoulder can turn around it. From there, you can really let it fly in the downswing.

Again, chin up, not down, promotes the shoulders turning in the backswing.

Try that the next time out and I promise you it’ll help you.

Thanks.

Golf is for backward Americans: They talk nothing but golf at the office and nothing but business on the links.

STOP PUSHING!!!!

Try this:

Tee up a ball, and take your stance with your feet 12 inches apart. Try hitting some drives like this. The narrow stance will make your lower body less likely to turn too aggressively on the downswing. You want to feel your arms swinging down and releasing past your body.

A good release keeps the ball from going right. If the arms and wrists are tense, they block the natural rotation and release of the club. To release tension, hold the club up in front of you, and make circles in the air using only your wrists. If your wrists are loose it will be easy to do.


" Now that I'm wealthy enough to afford lost balls," complained an older golfer, I can't hit them far enough to loose them."

Timing is Everything!

Let’s spend a couple of minutes talking about one of the three most abused and misunderstood golf swing fundamentals, timing. It’s an important term but it’s misused a lot. So, let me explain to you what timing is, and then it’ll draw you a lot closer to understanding when you're struggling.

Timing is your ability to swing your arms and hands back to the golf ball as your hip turns out of the way. And the reason it has to turn out of the way is so the arms and hands can pass your body and wrap around you. That’s the definition, no more, no less.

Now, I have gone to the golf course many days where I’ve hit the ball beautifully, solid, straight right. So, my timing was off a bit because my body was turning out in front of my golf club and that was sending it off to the right.

Now, the correction would be to slow the bottom half down and speed up the top part. There have been days where my timing has been off because the arms and hands were quicker than the bottom.

How do you correct that? Speed up the bottom and it’ll catch up with the arms and hands, and that will help that.

Now, how do you fix your timing? That’s probably the most difficult question in the game of golf. How do you get your timing back? I believe that if you can’t hit your pitching wedge, you probably aren’t hitting your 5 iron and your 5 wood and your driver.

So, I love to send people out to the practice facility to hit thousands of pitching wedges and work on their golf swing fundamentals. That, to me, is the easiest way to find your timing.

Now, let’s say that your favorite club in your golf bag is your driver and you're driving the ball beautifully. Then go hit a thousand drivers. Or maybe it’s a 5 wood or a 5 iron. Whatever club you're struggling with, stay way away from that one.

Go to the club that you're doing well with. And if you're not doing well with any of them, then go to a pitching wedge.

Now, the next question most difficult after that: How do you know when your timing’s off? I believe that your timing is off when your miss/hit pattern is not consistent. One’s fat, one’s thin, one’s top, one’s good, one’s to the left, one’s to the right. That’s a great indication that your timing’s off.

Find your favorite club and go to the practice tee and hit ten thousand of them and remember when you hit the golf ball to think of the golf swing fundamentals.

Thanks and have a great day.

"Idiot! Your ball hit me in the eye! I'll sue you for 5 million dollars!" I said fore' I'll take it!

Are you Postured?

Of course, when you’re learning how to play golf there’s a million different ways to address the golf ball because there’s millions of different people that play the game. But there are some absolute musts that you have to try to do to try to get in different positions at address.

Now, bad posture would be where the knees are too straight: no bend at the hip and the back is too straight. This doesn’t work, I promise you. This posture, you probably would hit a lot of pop-ups with your driver and hit the ground a lot with your irons.

The complete opposite would be where the knees are flexed too much and you're bent way over at the hips and you slouch your shoulders. This doesn’t work either. This one creates hitting ground behind it and topping.

So, there’s somewhere in the middle where one of these postures has to be about right, so let me give it to you.

Slightly flex your knees. Put two index fingers on your hip bones, and tilt over your belt buckle or tilt over your waistline. But don’t let the shoulders slouch. Keep the shoulders back.

From here you can then turn and the golf club will be on plane.

If you try this when learning how to play golf, I promise you, this will help you.

Thanks.

"How should I hit this put, caddy?" Try to keep it low, sir.

Lead Tape?

There are two reasons golfers add lead tape to their clubheads. One reason is a good one, and works; the other reason is a myth and does not work.

For the bogus one first: Adding lead tape in an effort to change the center of gravity of the head (to make the ball fly higher, lower, more to the right or left) simply will not work. The CG has to be moved at least a quarter-inch for the golfer to notice a flight change in the ball with the same clubhead. To move the CG by a quarter-inch requires no less than the addition of 10 4-inch-long strips of half-inch wide lead tape, all placed in the same area of the head toward which the CG movement is desired.

The right reason for using lead tape is to increase the swingweight of the club; i.e., to increase the feel of more weight or "heft" in the clubhead.

For that purpose, one 4-inch-long strip of half-inch wide lead tape will increase the swingweight of any club by one point, as in from D0 to D1.

Most golfers will detect a difference in the headweight feel of a club when the swingweight is increased by 2 or 3 swingweight points, but only the most sensitive feel players will ever note the difference of 1 swingweight point.

When should you think about experimenting with adding lead tape to the clubhead? If you sense that you can't feel the presence of the clubhead in the swing, if you feel that you fight being "too quick" with your swing, of if you are experiencing a fairly high incidence of shots hit off the heel of the face, adding lead tape to increase the swingweight very well could help improve the problem.

"What's wrong with my game, caddy?" Lifting your elbow too much sir. On the 19th.