Improve Your Golf

The best way to improve your golf game is to remember that it is just a game after all. We all tend to take things a bit too seriously, even our hobbies, and turn them into something akin to another set of chores. So don't stress yourself out too much on improving your golf, but I can give you some tips that will most certainly help you nonetheless.

The number one thing that will improve your golf game is not new clubs, not a bunch of lessons and not five hours of practice on the driving range - it's what I call expanding the cup. getting a lot better at draining putts will have the biggest impact on your score, far more than any one aspect of a round. Here's how to make the cup look a whole lot bigger in just a few easy practice sessions.

Take four golf balls and a ruler or measuring tape, you can also trace this out on a piece of paper if you like and just cut it out and place it on the floor. Place the first two balls six inches apart to form what is going to be the base of a triangle. The third ball goes six or seven inches above the line between the other two balls. If you're doing this on paper you will draw an arc between the top ball and the other two and remove everything in between.

This area represents the true size of the golf cup. A round object will fall into a hole when it's centerline crosses the threshold of that hole - unless other forces keep it from doing so. the reason a whole bunch of your putts are rolling right past the hole is that they are going too fast to simply fall in. If you putt too fast, angular momentum overcomes gravity and keeps the ball rolling.

The area between your three golf balls represents an area between which the ball will always fall into the cup. All you have to do is practice putting a ball so that it comes to rest anywhere between the other three. The cool thing is, it's a really big area to hit, the only thing you'll have to work on is speed, which is the real key to great putting.

If you get to the point where you can get your putts to stop in this much larger semi-circle, you'll be surprised at just how much your putting will improve, just a week or so of practice on this technique will have you draining putts you were missing just a few days ago from all over the green. Using this larger target zone is how we expand the cup, and improve your golf game.

How to Putt

You may have heard me blathering on about the fact that getting really good at putting is the real key to shaving huge chunks of points off of your score card. It's the truth, but I haven't revealed exactly how to putt, but I mean to solve that right this very minute. It is certainly true that getting really good at putting will do more to improve your scores than any other single thing you do, but the real trick is that putting is all in your head.

Now, there is some form to putting, but you can find all that advice in other places. I'm just going to help you get your head wrapped around the process properly. Putting isn't really all that hard once you understand the physics behind putting a round object into a round hole. It turns out that the hole is really an awful lot bigger than you think, and all you're trying to do is get it close.

So let me rephrase myself a bit. Even though putting is all in your head, one of the things your head needs to be good at is speed. The speed of your putts will be the key factor most of the time in a hit or a miss. The problem is that most tips about putting get the speed all wrong.

Most people will tell you that you are trying to putt the ball a few inches past the cup. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. Without going into why that is so silly let's just give you the real speed. You want to putt the ball just fast enough so that it will stop at a point that would be right in the middle of the hole. No faster, no slower. You want the ball in the hole, and it will get there far more often if you putt it in such a way that it would actually stop in the hole and not somewhere past it.

Oh, but I'll leave my putts short! Nonsense, you see, this is where physics takes over. A round object near an edge of any type will roll off the edge when its center approaches the edge. If the ball is moving too fast, angular momentum will overcome this tendency to fall. If the ball is almost at a stop, all you have to do is get just a bit of the ball, as much as half into the edge of the hole and it will quite naturally plop right into the cup because of gravity.

Therefore, the hole is actually much wider when it comes to getting the ball to fall right into it than the hole itself. A golf cup is actually as wide plus another width of the ball on either side. So you can practice your putting by doing this: Place one ball one inch behind the cup and another ball on either side a little more than half a ball width from the sides. Then just move this target areas to a location where there is no cup. That is the area you are trying to hit. If you can putt a ball so that is ends up inside of these three balls without touching them, you will vastly improve your putting.

You will see that it is really easy to keep from hitting the ball hard enough to touch the ball on the back side of the cup when you are trying to keep from doing so. Later, place your practice area back around a cup and do a few more strokes. Your eyes and mind will begin to see the hole as much larger, and you will find your ball falling quite gracefully into the cup more often than ever before.

Using these tips when it comes to how to putt will also mean that you never have that six or ten foot putt coming back when you have tried to keep some "speed" on the ball and just went way past the hole instead. Putt slower and let the ball find it's own way to fall into the cup and your putting will improve dramatically in a very short period of time.

About Golf

It's fun, it's hard, it can be thrilling or relaxing or even completely maddening. Playing golf and talking about golf consumes hours and hours of people's time the world over. And it's no wonder, either. Golf is addictive and fun and runs the gambit between hilarious and teeth grinding, it all depends on your approach and personality.

So let's talk a bit about making golf more fun. For you type A folks, I'm not sure you're really out to have fun since fun is generally and directly associated with winning, but improving your golf game will certainly make it more fun. And while golf is incredibly difficult to master, otherwise we would all be on the pro tour, that doesn't mean you have to be Tiger to enjoy yourself and be relatively successful.

The best way to improve your overall golf game is start short and then go long. If, although it should certainly be when, you practice, be sure to spend most of your time on the putting practice greens instead of on the driving range.

By working on your putting, chipping and pitching you will be in a far better position to score lower each round than if you spend all your time hammering away with your driver. Even pros only hit roughly 60% of fairways with those big drives, and so you can't ever expect a high percentage of your shots to end up going perfectly straight off the tee.

But if you get to where you can chip within five feet and make more than half of those five foot putts you can probably shave as many as ten or fifteen strokes off your round. The key is working on those five foot putts enough so that you rarely two putt and almost never three putt.

Most shots in golf happen within 100 yards of the pin. You won't, or shouldn't, use your driver or long irons more than 10 times in an entire round. But you will use your putter on every single hole, the less you have to use it, the better your score will be at the end of the day.

So when it comes to getting better at golf, start short and spend most of your time working on your short game. You will have a lot more fun, and yes, you will win an awful lot more often if that sort of thing is important to you.

Golfing Tips

When it comes to golfing tips you are certain to find thousands. Some will seem simple while others will be painfully complex lessons on physics. While there is certainly some truth in the fact that a perfect swing has about a hundred moving parts and you should be doing them all properly, that doesn't mean that you can't play pretty good golf without a magnificent swing. There really are some simple things you can do to improve your golf game while you work on your pursuit of the perfect swing.

It may not sound like much of a golfing tip, but the one thing you really need to realize about golf is the the club head hits the ball, not your swing. All the swing does is add speed to the club head. That's it in a nutshell really. Hitting the ball straight is impossible, even with a perfect swing, if the club head is not in the right location when it contacts the ball.

A good swing can definitely help you get the club head in the right spot, but you can also begin by concentrating on the head itself while you work on getting your swing right. There are really only three inches that make any difference in every single golf swing - the inch and a half on either side of the ball.

Good golf shots are made when the club goes from a few degrees open to a few degrees closed as it moves through the ball. Even trickier, the face need to be just a hair open when it actually first touches the ball. About three degrees open at impact is just about right. Now, this all happens in the course of milliseconds, so there is no way of knowing if you've done it right except by watching how the ball flies.

If your ball goes right and then further right it means that not only were you open more than three degrees at impact, you also didn't close it at all - that's what makes a slice. If the ball goes left and then further left, a hook, it means your club face was closed at impact and then closed even more as you rolled your wrists.

It is this flick of the wrists right as you strike the ball that determines if your shot will be straight or not. If you concentrate on getting your club face open and then closing it right as you hit the ball, you will be able to tell right away whether you were too late or early in regards to the club face and will know exactly what to do on your next shot to fix it.

We don't have time to talk here about exactly how to do that, but an easy way to see it is to take a sheet of paper and put it between your hands. As you bring your swing back, you have to turn your wrists so that you could see something written on the side where your left hand is located (for right handed golfers, that is). As you bring your swing down, the only thing you should see at impact with the ball is the edge of the paper between your hands and after impact you should be able to read something on the other side of the paper.

By thinking about the club face like that piece of paper you will begin to gain a lot more control over each shot you make. Your wrists control your club face, and your club face makes all the difference in every single golf shot. You don't want to extend this to putting, of course, where you want to keep everything as still and neutral as humanly possible, but for almost everything else it can really improve your control.

Pitching the Right Way

There are so many different swing types and situational shots in a round of golf. It's no wonder that people struggle with them. The reality is that golf is one of the hardest things to master in the world of sports, but that certainly doesn't mean you can't get a whole lot better at each of the individual shots. Pitching is one of those things that can really improve your scores in a round of golf if you learn a few simple techniques.

Pitching is a half or quarter swing shot that is highly dependent on your distance from the pin. It is different from chipping in that you want to get a little more loft on the ball in flight and have it land and "stick" a little in most cases.

When you chip, you're using a putting motion to get the ball up just enough to clear the rough and then roll toward the hole. Pitching is trying to get the ball up and over so that it lands without rolling too far past the hole. That's what makes pitching pretty tricky.

When you chip and putt you want to make sure that you keep your wrists neutral throughout the swing so that you don't strike the ball, it's more like a shove. But pitching is a bit more like a slap and you'll need to bring your wrists into play.

While you can get lots of pitching advice, the real key to each shot is to eliminate as many variable as possible for each type and focus on one or two things you can control. That's what makes driving the ball so difficult, there are just so many variables in a full, powerful swing that the number of potential mistakes get compounded.

So to make a good pitch begin by bringing your arms and hands back much like you would in putting or chipping, with everything neutral, your shoulders and hands forming a triangle. Near the top of the stroke allow only your wrists to bend, and don't worry about opening the club face as you would in a full swing.

Bring your hands down toward the ball and snap your wrists back into place right at the ball, as though you were driving a nail. The face of the club will do the rest of the work. Don't worry about coming through the ball, a good, smart rap is what you're trying to get.

By pitching with this simple wrist snap, you'll see that the ball just hops rigt up into the air. The rest is just figuring out how much of a back swing to add to the wrist snap to get it to travel the proper distance for each shot. But by using the same technique for every pitch, you'll soon get a good feel for distance.

Correct Golf Grip

Let's begin by restating that golf is a game and perfection is completely impossible. And I don't just mean perfection in golf, but perfection in anything is impossible. In golf, perfection is something much further away from impossible. What you are really trying to do with golf is mitigate the impact of the mistakes you are most certainly going to make in every single swing.

Let's be honest here - even swing machines end up putting golf balls in groupings. You could make a machine that would toss a basketball into the net from 60 feet away every single time, but you simply can't come close in golf. Wind, grass, bugs, beer, moisture and a plethora of other things can change in a fraction of a second and two identical strikes from a driving machine can end up fifteen yards apart.

As a result there is also no such thing as the "correct" golf grip, if you mean by that one of the three grips which is best. There are a few little things every kind of golf grip needs  to do as well as some things it needs to not do, but it doesn't matter if you use the interlock, overlap or baseball grip in the end.

The hard and fast rules of the grip is that the left thumb must go down the shaft, the grip is neutral with the palms facing each other, is medium pressure. The rest of the things you've heard are merely checks to see if you are doing those things properly. You know, the "v" made by the index finger and thumb of your right hand need to point at your right shoulder? All that tip does is give you a tool to tell whether your right hand is where it should be instead of too far over the top of the club or too much underneath it.

Perhaps the best way to look at gripping a club is to take a sheet of paper and hold it between both hands. That's what you are actually trying to do with your golf grip. Each hand needs to be exactly facing each other. Neither hand should be open or closed in relationship to the club shaft. Neutral grip, neutral pressure and you at least have a chance at not making mistakes with your hands.

In the end the correct golf grip is the grip that makes you feel comfortable during the swing and at impact. The one hidden gem in golf is knowing the the club face hits the ball, not the swing. Your hands have a lot more to do with that than your shoulders and hips. By getting your hands in a comfortable and neutral grip, you are far more likely to open and close them properly as you come through the ball than if your grip is wonky for some reason. Always remember that piece of paper, you can't grip it too hard sandwiched like that, and your hands should always be facing each other. That one tip will fix your grip.

How to Find Your Handicap

What I really need in my life is more math. I hope you can detect the sarcasm in that. It's fine to have to do a little addition after a round of golf (we all know most of us fudge our score anyway so it's rather addition in general) but complex things involving variables doesn't excite me all that much. But unfortunately, calculating your golf handicap takes a little bit more than adding 4, 5, and hopefully not very many sixes.

In order to even attempt calculating your handicap you're going to have to stop cheating. I say that with a smile, but you really have to be fair to the rules of the game to calculate a true handicap. The next part is to play five rounds without fudging the score - ouch, I know, but it has to be done.

I know that most of you are perfectly honorable and the previous step will be no problem, it's also why I have no idea what my handicap is even though I know how to calculate the thing. But even with five rounds worth of relatively accurate scores - all from a single course, you can then do the following.

-Take each of the five score totals

-Subtract from each the rating of the course on which you played

-Multiply those numbers by 113

-Divide by the slope of the course

-Take the lowest one and multiply it by .96

-have another drink

And that's all there is to calculating your golf handicap. You can get the rating and slope for each course from the scorecard or the pro shop. In order for your handicap to be "official" you will need to register it in some way with the course, most locations will have a computerized system of some kind for this.

Once you know your golf handicap you'll be ready to take over the world, or brag or maybe take up another hobby. Well, probably not the other hobby bit, golf is way too much fun even if you're not all that great at it. Believe me, I know.

How to Grip a Golf Club

You have a stick, you have a ball, you grab the stick and whack the ball - easy right? With golf, not so much. There are so many different bits of physics involved in a golf swing that it's actually staggering if you study it at all. So many levers and arcs come into play. But the one thing that can certainly help all of those other variables is if you know how to grip a golf club. But first things first.

There are several acceptable places to put your fingers when it comes to gripping the club. In reality, they are all the same, and they will only vary by about and inch or so. But each one will be more comfortable for certain people and, therefore, will lend itself better to improving how often you bring the club face into good contact with the ball.

The first grip is the interlock grip where the pinky of the right hand and the index finger of the left hand are crossed. This is probably the most popular grip because it makes turning your wrists over feel a lot more fluid.

The next grip is the overlap which puts the hands in a very similar position to the interlock. In this grip the pinky of the right hand rests in the gap between the index and middle finger of the left, but on top instead of in between these fingers. This grip is great if you find you grip your clubs way to hard, it will soften your grip considerably.

The last grip is the "baseball" grip where each hand is in its own spot on the club. They should be right next to each other, of course, but none of your fingers will be interlocked or overlapped.

In each grip, the thumb of the left hand should be pointed down the shaft and you should keep medium pressure on the club. Too hard and you will make one set of mistakes, too loose and you may notice yourself spraying balls to your right a lot as the club face opens at impact.

All your grip needs to do is put your hands in a position where you feel comfortable opening your club face during your swing and closing it at impact. This "flick" in your wrists is where a great deal of your potential power and control lie. Plus it's a lot easier to master than the perfect golf swing. Getting your grip solid by learning how to grip a golf club can help you master that little trick.

How to Play Golf

how to play golf

People try to make golf something far too serious most of the time. In every field of endeavor there will always be those individuals that are naturally gifted, not to mention competitive, that will push the limits of what is possible. So let's begin by recognizing that it's not very likely that you will end up on the pro tour no matter how hard you try. With that in mind, there are a few things you can do when it comes time to learn how to play golf that will make the whole process a lot more fun.

First, understand that everyone goes through a few stages while they are learning to play. Let's call the first one the duffer stage. You're spraying balls all over the place and probably hitting the grass more than anything else. Just roll with it and remember that during the duffer stage you're just trying to learn how to bring the club face into solid contact with the ball, we'll worry about direction later.

Once you are striking the ball a little better you can begin to work on making it go in the right direction. This is where working on your swing will come in. There are some very good instructional programs out there like AJ Golf that can take the work and the worry out of learning to strike the ball and the fear out of practicing your swing. There's a lot of physics involved in golf, and it's going to take a while to master them.

The third stage is where you make a number of good shots every round, but are hindered by a few bad ones as well. You may feel at this point like you are really close to playing par golf but just can't get over the hump. The only remedy for this stage is practice, and a lot of it. You know roughly what to do most of the time, you just need the muscle memory and confidence to do it on the course.

The last stage is where you are playing very nearly par golf. There is that last stage past this one, the playing on the tour stage, but most people are perfectly content to stick around par and just spend time on the course. Golf is certainly a lot more fun when you get to this stage.

So don't fret about trying to leap all the way to par golf in a single month. It's probably not going to happen anyway. Learning how to play golf is going to take some time and a lot of practice, but the good news is that you can get a whole lot of practice in practical situations right on the course itself. It's always good to chip, putt and drive for a little while as well, but just remember that it's a game, and a very fun game as well, and give yourself time to master some of the little things that will go a long way toward making you a better golfer in the long run.

Chipping

It seems like the more you work on your golf game, the more there is to work on. That's what makes the pros, well, pros. They seem to be able to hit the ball well from any lie and any location on the course and still be able to get a good shot out of crud that would just make us mere mortals look pretty pathetic. When it comes to chipping, there are a few tips you can work on that will drastically improve your ability to get the ball up near the pin with more consistency.

In the end, golf is all about getting the club head in contact with the ball in such a way that the ball ends up in contact with the ground at just the right time and rolls to a stop at the right spot - preferably in the hole. Easier said than done right? It's really not as difficult as you are probably making it. Chipping is really a lot like putting once you know what you should be doing.

Unlike a pitch, where you need to get the ball up and over something, chipping is the art of getting the ball just airborne enough to clear the fringe of the green and then roll it to the cup. As a result, you only want to get the ball up enough to clear the rough and let it drop and roll on the green instead of trying to pitch it up and land it near the pin.

You'll see a lot of pros using a seven or eight iron to chip for this very reason. All you do is use something much more like your putting stroke (fewer variables to mess up) and kick the ball out of the deep grass up onto the green. What you're shooting for is to chip the ball in the air the first 25% to 30% of the way and then let it roll the rest of the 70% of the distance.

By eliminating your wrists and hands and keeping them "quiet" you eliminate an awful lot of chili-dipping and other things that may haunt you at this point. Just move the club face through the ball just like you do when you putt and let the club do the work of getting the ball up just a little bit and then gravity and momentum (physics) does the rest.

Chipping is not about getting the ball on the pin, it is about putting the ball on a line toward the pin and letting it roll there all by itself. By chipping to roll the ball to the hole, you will eliminate a great number of bad chips where you overshoot the hole and leave yourself a 50 foot comeback putt on the other side.

Golf for Beginners

This is a hard one. Why can't you ask me something easy like how to build a house? Really, golf is one of those things that would seem like it's pretty easy - you just swing this thing at that little ball right? But in reality it requires a set of muscle memory skills that rivals any activity in sports. No, it doesn't require great strength or dexterity, but it does require consistency and precision on the very highest level.

Now, don't let me scare you off about golf. It's a heck of a lot of fun, even if you're not all that good at it. And really, anyone can learn to be fairly good at golf. Just keep in mind that there are some things that are easier than others when it comes to golf, and if you're serious about learning how to play golf you're going to have to learn it properly from the start. If you already started wrong, it's never to late to do it right.

The first thing most people do is the one thing you should never do. Don't go buy a new set of clubs, grab the driver and a bucket of balls and go flail around like a wild monkey attracting a mate. It's bad enough once you have some idea about what you're doing trying to learn to swing your driver, it's completely out of the question for the neophyte. Instead you need to buy a putter and go to the practice putting green for a while.

That's right, one club. We'll build the rest of the set later, and believe me, the driver will be last. Start with the smallest and easiest bit of the swing and work your way up to the big guns. It's a little like learning to fly in a glider first before hopping behind the seat of a jet. Besides, drive for show, putt for dough. Putting is where you will really take the biggest number of strokes off your game.

I once knew a guy that was just painful to watch from the tee box. And not just his driver, but all of his long and medium irons as well. He put his hands so far forward that everything he hit looked like a 2 iron and only went about 200 yards. That's pretty good for an 8 iron, but it shouldn't go that far, anyway, what I'm saying is that he was god-awful until he got within about 100 yards. From there on in, he was a freak. He always seemed to chip within a few feet, and I don't think I ever saw him three putt. As a result, he could play almost par golf even though it looked like he was driving with hoe or a shovel.

So when you are learning golf, just leave your driver at home for a few months. Take a putter to the practice range for a week, then add an iron and chip from the fringe and putt for another week. Then back up and chip from 10 yards, from the fringe and putt for the next week. Every week, move back another ten yards and get really good from short range first. The hole will begin to look about the size of a basketball hoop and you'll know that from then on all you have to do is get it relatively close and then it's over. 

Online Golf Tips

You actually might want to be a little careful when looking for golf tips online, and yes, that includes me. You just never know how good the information is if you are getting it for free. Golf is hard, so it's a pretty safe bet that getting really good at golf is going to take more than a little time in a chat room to master. But, even though you don't ahve to listen to me there are a few tips you can keep in mind to help you dig through all the hype and muck and really improve your golf game.

First, the way to get a whole lot better at golf faster than anything is to begin at the hole and work your way back to the tee. We all want to step up to that first box and hammer a 300 yard drive right down the middle, but the reality is that the drive even escapes Tiger from time to time. Even pros only hit about 60% of fairways, so even the best of the best only hit it completely straight off the tee a little more than half the time. Quit killing yourself to try to hit monster drives and start with putting.

Most of your shots on the course will be putts, chips and pitches. The vast majority of your round will be made within 100 yards of the green. So it really doesn't make sense to spend the vast majority of your sweat and tears getting your driver tamed. Just use your driver to get it within a reasonable distance of the green and then use your killer short game to really score.

Even on your mid irons, there is no big advantage to taking a full swing. Your job on the golf course is to get it onto the green as fast as you can and then putt it in. If you can hit a decent 3 wood and get it to about 150 yards out and then have a nice 7 or 8 iron onto the green you're looking at a birdie. You can par an awful lot of holes if you make good, safe shots onto the green and then can putt out of your mind. Putting first, everything else just sets up your putts.

So there it is, the one golf tip you can go out and start using tomorrow and it has nothing to do with the perfect swing. You don't have to even have a very good swing to play pretty close to par golf. All you have to do is get good at the short game, where the swing isn't so hard to master, and you can lower your scores dramatically almost overnight. That perfect swing tip? Good luck with that one.

Playing Golf

Playing golf is one of those things that might appear at first glance to be a little dull to those whose athletic pursuits tend toward the more dangerous or sweaty. But when you look at the number of professional athletes from other sports and listen to them talk about golf, you begin to realize that it is simply a pursuit in athletics that is really far more than it appears to be at first glance.

What becomes obvious when you watch guys like Michael Jordan, one of the best athletes ever and arguably the greatest basketball player in history, playing golf you begin to understand just how difficult it is for even one of the best athletes ever to master the intricacies of golf. With his physicla skill set, you would think that if golf was really easy he would just go right onto the tour. Recently, another athlete with hall of fame credentials, Jerry Rice, has announced his intention to play golf professionally, but his debut was a little inauspicious.

With that out of the way, you can begin to get a grip on the fact that it's not just pudgy white guys out there wandering around drinking beer and tearing up grass. There is something so difficult about golf that it is something that very few folks ever completely master. That is why, at least until the rise of a guy with freakishly good skills - Tiger came along, you never saw very many guys dominate the game over time. Hogan, Palmer and Tiger, those three guys  are basically head and shoulders above everyone else where other sports might have an entire hall of fame full of dominating players and a phenom or two comes along every ten years or so.

So, playing golf is both the easiest thing in the world to start doing - just grab some clubs and start whacking away toward that flag over there - but also the hardest sport in the world to master. But you'll never know just how much fun the challenge can be until you give it a try for yourself and find out why it is perhaps the most popular sport in the country.

Improve Your Swing Part 2

Improving your golf swing makes perfect sense, it's also one of the hardest things in the world to learn how to do properly. The perfect golf swing is to sports what flying a fighter jet is to flying. Most of us end up in the realm of the single engine prop plane, and reaching the heights of going mach two and four G's is way out of reach.

But just because only a handful of players in history have had what might be called a 'perfect' swing (Ben Hogan comes to mind) that certainly doesn't mean that you can't move your way up the ladder quite a bit. You don't have to be stuck in the golf equivalent of a hang glider forever, hitting somewhere in the high 90's. Almost anyone can approach scratch golf and par with some attention to a few key items.

While there isn't enough time in 500 words to even begin to describe the perfect swing, or even 50,000 words, there are some things that you can do that will begin to let you know what you should work on right away to improve your golf game. You have probably heard them before, but maybe it's about time you listened, eh?

First, 90% of golf shots happen within 100 yards of the green. And yes, that even means those of you who are hacking away at the ball and shooting in the 100's. The very first place you should begin working is your short game. Putting, chipping and pitching are far easier to master and control than the full tilt swinging driver shot, and will take more strokes off of your game than thousands of hours working on your power game.

Next, most of your shots from greater than 100 yards don't even have to be full swing. You can take an awful lot off your swing and still hit the ball within about fifteen yards as far as you would with a monster swing when you are working with intermediate irons such as 6-9. There is really no need to try to hammer the ball with your irons, just get it up and on the green and then let your killer short game take over and get the ball in the hole.

So that leaves you with perhaps 10 to 20 shots a round where a full swing will even come into play. Sure, it's important for that swing to be pretty good, but it also gives you time to work on that swing while you get a whole lot better at golf overall. The perfect swing is one of the hardest things in sports to master, but the good news is that you can learn how to improve your golf swing and still improve your entire golf game even more by getting really good at the shots that don't require a full swing at all.

How to Improve your Swing

There is perhaps no more asked question in all of sports than how to make a golf swing. You hear it all the time on golf broadcasts, how perfect this guy or that guys swing is. Arnold had a classic swing, Ben Hogan and the names go on and on. But what in the world is a perfect golf swing and how can you learn to do it?

The answer is far more complex. There just isn't a motion in sports where more things can go wrong. Just think about that for a minute. You are taking a three foot level to which there is another lever attached at a right angle and swinging it through a full arc at nearly 90 miles per hour (for pros anyway) at a round object just a little larger than one inch at a target perhaps two hundred yards away. Are you kidding me? Throwing a football seems simple by comparison.

Most sports rely on sheer strength and agility. These two things, combined with a bit of quick thinking while processing information lead to good performance. More power can be a little help in golf as well, but they are not nearly as important as the swing. You can be a beast of a man and still not hit a golf ball worth a hoot where you might simply wreck people on a hockey rink. The golf swing is so fast that there isn't time to think about anything, you just have to get your swing into a groove and do it.

This speed means that you are going to need to break your swing down into smaller and slower parts so that you can get muscle memory to do the rest of the work in that single second. In an entire round of golf you will only be actually doing anything for about 2 minutes total. The total time the ball is in contact with the club is less than one second. There simply isn't time to adapt to what you are seeing and feeling like you can in basketball. The only thing that comes close is batting in baseball.

So when it comes time to learn how to golf swing you're going to have to get good instruction and realize that there is no such thing as a quick fix. It's one of the hardest things in sports to learn because it has so many things that can go wrong and it happens so fast it's crazy. 

Improving Short Game part 2

What you practice for is a 100 yard shot. Start with this because it’s an easy distance to judge and it’s a common shot to have to make in an actual round. Most golf courses have markers for 100 yards from the green. For some golfers, a 100 yard shot would be made with a pitching wedge, for others it may be a seven iron. Find the club and swing you need to consistently get a 100 yard shot.

After you find that club, practice that swing six thousand times. Well, practice it as much as you have time for. Save that swing in your muscle memory so that you could do it in your sleep. It is your benchmark. On the course you should feel confident knowing that you can hit the ball exactly 100 yards if you need to.

When that swing is saved to your muscle memory, go up one club. From a pitching wedge, move to a nine iron, from a nine iron to an eight iron, and so on. Use the same swing, and see how much farther the shot goes. For most golfers, this isn’t very much. Twenty five or fifty yards. Make mental, or even better, written notes on how much each club increases distance.

If you practice like this, you will be able to not only judge the distance to the green, but place a shot right on it consistently. Then you can show your friends who have the long drives that getting the ball on the green will lower your score much more.

Improving Short Game

The short game (short irons and putting) accounts for most of your time on the golf course. That’s why going to the driving range is only going to help so much. Guys out there like to practice having the biggest, longest drive off the tee, but their score may be suffering due to the fact they don’t practice their short game as much. Sure having a great drive is sexy, and it can lower your score, but with a bad short game, those guys who spend all day at the driving range with their new, flavor of the month drivers who don’t have a short game worth talking about are going to have higher scores than someone with a moderate drive and a good short game.

So, the number one rule for improving your short game is practice. Try to find a driving range that has a chipping green with bunkers. Not all of them have this, especially the ones you see on the side of the highway while going to work. Also, make sure the range has clear yardage markers from 50 to 100 yards. Some ranges only start posting yardage at 200.

The second rule is to know your clubs. That doesn’t mean going out and buying the brand new clubs as advertised in Golf Digest, nor does it mean being able to talk about the graphite shaft’s particle density or the whether the club has titanium plating. Know YOUR clubs. Know how the clubs you have right now in your bag handle for you.

For example, how many yards does your nine-iron shot go? What about a five-iron? When practicing to improve your short game what you’re going for is not the same thing as on the driving range, where most golfers just want to see how far they can hit the ball with their big drivers.

Improving Golf Swing

The beauty of golf is that there are always skills to improve upon.  The very same pro's who you see winning millions of dollars on TV, spend countless hours between tournaments working with the most expensive coaches in the world.  Everyone, regardless of skill level, has weaknesses in their game and swing mechanics.  But we can always learn about common mistakes and work on improving our golf swing.  With some education and practice, anyone who is committed can take their game to the next level.

Stance

Stance is extremely important in golf. As you may have heard before, PGA (Professional Golfer’s Association) actually stands for Posture, Grip and Alignment. A “stance” in golf is very important because it involves two of these three keys for a successful swing and a lower score. If you’ve ever played golf before, you probably are aware of how important your stance is, but what you may not know is that you can actually alter your stance for specific shots.

Why would you ever do this? Of course if you’re one of those golfers who always has a perfect swing, your ball is either in the fairway or on the green at all times, so your stance would never need to be altered if you’re behind a tree or in a sand trap because that never happens to you.

Yeah right.

Even the pros end up in the rough, in the water, or behind the trees. It’s just the nature of the game. In fact, one could argue that being able to play perfectly round after round would make golf boring to play. Unless you’re an advanced robot with a programmed, perfected swing that’s perfect every time an in any condition, then that is not you.

There are several situations you may consider altering your stance, but to start we’ll look at how your stance should normally be.

1)      Your feet should be a little wider than shoulder-width apart.

2)     Your knees should be slightly bent

3)     The ball should be aligned in the center of your stance, far enough away that you can reach it with the club comfortably.

This is the standard golfing stance.

improving golf swing – part 2 (372 words)

What if you are on a steep hill? What if there is a tree between you and the green? What if you’re in the sand?

If you are on a steep hill, you should alter your stance so that your feet are much closer together. Depending on how steep the hill is and how far the shot needs to go, the alignment of the ball should be outside of the feet (to the back if you’re on a decline, to the front if you’re on an incline). What you’re trying to accomplish through altering your stance this way is that the overall swing should be very similar to what you would normally do. Improving your golf swing is just like science, you should try to isolate one variable at the time, change it and nothing else, and then proceed.

You can actually hook or slice on command by changing your stance. This will help if you have an obstacle in front of you you are trying to avoid. Of course, practice will help you get the feel for how MUCH you should alter your stance for this type of swing, but as a rule of thumb, move the ball forward in your stance for a hook and back in your stance for a slice. The point is to have the club impact the ball at an earlier or later point of the swing than normal.

An alternative to moving the ball’s alignment in your stance is moving your feet forward or backward. Keeping the standard stance and moving your left foot back (for right-handers) is called an “open stance.” This is how you can purposefully hook the ball to the left around a tree that’s in your way.

Moving your right foot back (for right-handers) has the opposite effect, creating a slice. This is called a “closed stance”

This is also one way you can try to improve your golf swing. If your shot always hooks, try using a more closed stance, or if your shot is always a slice, try using an open stance. This doesn’t work 100% of the time because there are many other variables that go into a golf swing, but it might work for you!

Putting Grip

About half of the strokes in a round of golf take place on the putting green.  Therefore, putting should be an area that you focus much of your time when practicing.  And that's just what the pro's do!  Many will focus as much as two thirds of their practice time on just putting.  One of the most common questions golfers have is whether or not they should adjust their putting grip.

There's many different ways golfers go about gripping a putter.  While there are different kinds of putting grips, one thing they all have in common is the goal of maintaining stability in the front wrist so that it stays straight during the follow through of the stroke. 

Golfers who are struggling on the putting green can see remarkable results simply by changing up their putting grip.  First, we need to ensure that you are holding the putter in your hands properly.  The putter should be flat and diagonal across the palm of the hand.  The shaft of the putter should run in a straight line with the forearm - imagine the putter shaft as an extension of your forearm.  Once you know you are holding the putter properly, there are several popular grips you can try.

1.  The most popular putting grip is commonly known as the Traditional Overlap grip.  To do this simple grip, put your left hand on the top of the grip and your right hand just below.  Then connect your hands by lifting your left index finger and wrapping it over the fingers on the right. 

2.  In the Two Fingers Down grip, place the palms over the grip and then point the index fingers of each hand straight down the shaft. 

3.  The claw is an unusual but very popular grip among golfers who find themselves struggling with the Traditional Overlap and are looking for a way to get their hands working together more fluidly.  Grab the putter as you normally would with your top hand - thumb on top, fingers wrapped around the bottom.  Then place your bottom hand underneath it with your palm facing down and let the club lie on the fleshy webbing between your thumb and index finger.  Wrap your fingers over the top to help stabilize. 

4.  In recent years, the left below right grip has gained popularity.  This grip is basically the reverse of the traditional overlap putting grip.  If you are right handed, you would place your right hand at the top of the shaft and your left below it.  Then link your hands by hooking your index finger of your right hand over the fingers of your left hand. 

5.  Another new style of putting is called the box grip.  To do this putting grip, you want to have your palms on the shaft side-by-side keeping the shoulders level as you position yourself over the ball.  Place your left hand at the top of the putter grip and point your index finger down the side of the shaft.  Place your right hand next to your left and an inch lower, again with your index finger pointing down.  Your hands should now form a box-shape.

Try experimenting with these different grips if you are having trouble on the greens.  You will probably find that one of them naturally corrects a problem with your form you didn't even know existed.  Your putt should be smooth, comfortable, and most importantly, straight!

Learning Golf

Learning golf is really a lot of fun if you approach it the right way. Unfortunately, very few people use anything like that sort of approach. We tend to be impatient and competitive, and golf seems, well, pretty simple. Hit a ball with a stick right? It's just like when you were a kid, just hit the little white ball down that way and then whack it into a hole. Plus, it's just a bunch of old guys who can't play other sports. Not so much, golf, while not physically demanding the way football or rugby might be, is still incredibly difficult to master. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun learning golf.

the way to being is at the most important bit and work your way out from there. And what is that most important part? Putting. Start five feet from the cup and work your way out to 400 yards. Ever single hole will have you putting once or twice, while you will use that big, expensive driver on fewer than half the holes (if you're smart, that is). You will be a much better golfer overall if you get good at putting first and then work on driving later. Unfortunately, nobody does this. What you typically see is someone buying a huge set of new clubs and getting a bag of balls and pulling out the Big Girtha and hammering away like they think they can even hit the ball at all. No dice, it will just lead to a ton of really bad habits and frustration.

So the first, and only, club you should buy is a putter. As a matter of fact, you can start learning golf without buying a single thing. Go to your local golf course and see if they have some demo putters you can try out. Then buy a small bag of balls or just a few nick and scuff balls and head over to the putting green. Place one ball an inch behind one of the holes and two more balls on either side of the cup one inch from the edge. Then practice putting from about five feet. Use one putter to putt about fifty to 100 balls then ask the pro shop for another model. You will get really good at making five foot putts (we don't have time here to explain the reason behind the other three golf balls around the hole but it helps you get your speed right, and speed is everything in putting), as well as figure out which putter feels most comfortable to you. A reverse grip is also good.

Once you have found your favorite putter buy it and a set of three short irons that fit you for height. No, not everyone can use the same clubs. If you're five foot five you need a club with a very different loft and lie than if you are six foot two. With your short irons practice shipping the ball to the hole (using a putting stroke) from just a few feet off the edge of the green and then putting those balls into the hole just like you've been working on previously. Gradually work your way further and further from the pin until you are taking full pitching wedge shots from about 100 yards.

Believe it or not, that's about 75% to 80% of the game of golf. You first shot from the tee should get you within range of that pitching wedge, and if you know how to get the ball close to the hole with your wedge and can putt well you're playing good golf even if you have never spent more than a little time working on a full swing. Since most of your short game doesn't require anything like a full swing (and you can find lots of good resources about chipping and pitching) you could very well end up being a pretty good golfer even with a terrible swing.

And that's all there is to learning golf. Start with a borrowed putter at five feet and work your way back from there. It won't take very long and you'll have a knack for the speed of your putts, which will make you deadly on the greens, and a feel for your chipping and pitching. If you have feel and confidence within 100 yards of the pin, you'll beat the daylights out of those poor saps who started trying to learn golf by banging away with their drivers. and, you'll have a whole lot more fun.

Correct Your Golf Swing

Much is made about the "perfect swing." the unfortunate thing is that it does not exist. Watch tour pros for any length of time and you will find that there are a wide variety of swings on the tour, and all of them work well enough to make those guys a lot of dough. Tiger has a swing that can best be described as 'violent.' Then you have the smooth, still swing of Earnie Els. But there is one thing that ever correct golf swing has in common, and that is the moment of impact.

Yes, you need to address the ball properly and have a grip that isn't goofy. And you need to take the club back on relatively the right path. You certainly can't open your hips way too soon and all of those hundred other tips you've heard, but the most important thing is to do the right thing with your hands when you strike the ball. You're far better off hitting the ball 200 yards right down the middle of the fairway than you are smashing it 300 yards with a wicked slice.

let's start with your grip. Interlocked, overlap, all of that doesn't matter as much as getting your grip neutral between your hands and then weakening that grip the closer you get to the green. Let's start wiht the hand neutrality. Take a sheet of paper and hold it between your palms. That's the idea of keeping your hands neutral in relation to each other. You will never strike the ball with any consistency if one hand is open and the other closed. Your palms should always be facing each other so that they can turn through the ball in concert.

Next, the further away you are form the cup, the stronger your grip needs to be. That doesn't mean to hold onto the club like grim death. What it does mean is that you need to open your hands more so that you can turn them through the ball with more or less ferocity at the point of impact. Grip a club and look at the "V" created between your thumb and forefinger. A strong grip will point that "V" toward the right shoulder (for right handed golfers) while a weaker grip will move the "V" more toward pointing at your chin. The stronger your grip, the easier it is to turn your wrists at impact, which generates more speed and distance. But you don't want to use a strong grip and a wicked wrist flip  for your sand wedge, save it for your driver and long irons.

So now we get to the moment of impact. Regardless of swing plane and other mechanics, studies have shown that the one thing that all tour pros have in common is the three inches on either side of the ball - that "moment of impact." Every single swing boils down to what happens in that six inches. The head of the club may move as much as 12 feet during the entire swing, but those six inches are the only ones that matter. In those six inches, the club head should go from about 6-9 degrees open to 3 degrees closed through the moment of impact.

So what does that mean to you? How does this help you to make a more correct golf swing? Because it's all in your hands. Most players don't know how to "open" the club face on the back sing and then "close" it through impact. But the cool thing is that if you can learn that, it will help more than anything else you can do with the rest of your swing. So let's go back to our piece of paper.

Grab a piece of paper between your palms and pretend to make a golf swing with it. A the top of your back swing you should be able to read something written on the side of the left hand (again, right handers here) and after impact you should be able to read something on the other side. To get the feel for this, hold the paper out in front of you with your left hand on top, then flip it so that your right hand is on top. That's what you're trying to do through the moment of impact. On your back swing turn the paper one way, and through the ball try to "flip" it over so you can read the other side.

When the club face strikes the ball a few degrees open but closing fast the ball will go straight where you are aiming it. If you hit it to the right you will know that you either aimed right or didn't flip your hands at the right time. Ever spend entire rounds having no idea what you were doing wrong? If you concentrate on your hands you will always know what you did wrong, as well as how to fix it. So go ahead and get a few pointers on the erst of your swing, but work on those hands and you'll find that you will strike the ball better than ever before. The correct golf swing for you is the one that lowers your score - you can work on making the tour later.

how to putt

There are teaching pros out there who will tell you that putting is all about PGA: posture, grip and alignment. And while that is certainly true, you also see all kinds of different postures and alignments on the tour. Since the same thing is true about the "swing" it brings you to the realization that there is no "perfect swing" there is only the perfect swing for you. It's the same way with putting, while posture, alignment and grip are important for putting, you'll never be a great putter until you get speed down pat.

Our PGE acrostic is all set up. Once you get the fundamentals for those down, you still have to learn how to get the ball to the hole at the right speed. Line has to be taken into consideration as well, but learning to read greens is an art. The best way to read a green? The same way the pros do. Go out to your local course before or after anyone is on eht greens with a bucket of balls and roll them toward the hole. Tour pros roll hundreds of balls by hand and make copious notes about speed and breaks. Sorry if I just burst your bubble there, but you simply cannot merely look at a green and know what the ball is going to do until you've seen dozens of balls rolling on that particular green from every possible angle. So we'll leave line alone for now.

That only leaves speed. Speed is the most important thing when it comes to putting and it it rife with more myths than you can shake a stick at. Call it our Type A personalities. There are all kinds of colloquialisms you can think of for "coming up short" that give a very negative connotation and feeling to barely missing a putt because you didn't give it quite enough 'umph.' And it's all nonsense. I've actually heard people say "I would rather  be past the hole a foot than short an inch." Blather, all of it, why not rather leave it one inch short in any direction and have a one inch tap rather than something five or ten times longer and watch that one spin the rim as well?

So here is your exercise to work on putting speed. First, start with your five foot putts. If you can be deadly from five feet you will always know you'll rarely three putt no matter how far away you are from the cup once you get on the green. If you can pitch, chip or lag fairly close to the hole, your putting average will go way up, which will drop your score dramatically over every 18 holes.

Mastering your five foot putts will require four golf balls (though more is better). Place on golf ball behind the cup - a shade less than one ball width from the back edge. Put another ball on either side of the cup the same distance form the edge. Any ball that approaches the cup that would not hit any of these three balls will go in the hole. It has to do with the physics of round objects, but no one really cares about physics facts - as long as it helps you beat Fred the next time you play.

You can actually make a little cardboard or paper cutout that will let you place these three balls anywhere there is grass or carpet, and that's the next step. Or, you can make a sort of horse shoe shape in those dimensions to practice putting into. All you want to do is get a feel for putting toward this area and letting the ball come to rest inside of it, never past it. If your ball stops in a place where the bottom is not touching your line, it would have been a putt into the hole. Kind of amazing how big that cup really is, isn't it?

Once you get your speed down without putting at a hole at all, go to the practice green and try fifty five foot putts. You will be amazed at how many just fall gently into the cup when the speed is just right. And once you actually get onto the course, you will find that  getting your speed right on your putts will leave you with mostly tap-ins for two putts and very few three putts, shaving stroke after stroke from your round.

Putting Grip

There are those who say that the grip may very well be of primary importance when it comes to fundamentals of the golf game. But if you take a close look at golf pros who are excellent putters you will find that they use a wide variety of grips for every aspect of their game. and when it comes to putting posture, alignment and consistency are more important than grip when compared to something like driving. So your putting grip, and we'll talk about what it should be like, is not necessarily the thing you should work on once you get the right idea.

When you drive the ball you need to have a good hand release at impact. this means taking a strong grip. Most people have no clue what that means. A strong grip is one that allows you to turn your wrists more at impact. When you grip the club for a drive you typically want to slide your hands a bit more to the right so that the "V" shape made between your thumb and index finger point more toward your right shoulder (if you're right handed). This grip alignment means you will more naturally move your wrists a little further through the ball at impact, and thus create more speed and distance. But it just won't do for putting at all.

Putting is all about being quiet. Move as little as possible, and only as much as necessary. straight back, straight through (although pretty impossible) is what you should shoot for. So even though there will be some minor pronation and supination of your hands through a putting stroke, these should be kept at a bare minimum. And the best way to accomplish this is with a much weaker grip.

A good way to think of every kind of grip in golf is the "hand sandwich." Take a sheet of paper and press it between your palms. Weak grip, strong grip, no matter what you're trying to accomplish, your hands should always be neutral in respect to each other. This is especially true when putting. You never want your left palm facing one direction and your right another by more than a few fractions of a degree. I've often wondered if a good teaching tool would be a putter with a flat handle would help many golfers with goofy hand placement, but since such a thing may not ever exist, you'll just have to use the piece of paper instead.

Once you've got your grip in a neutral position, weaken your grip by making the "V" shape point more toward your chin than your shoulder. This will keep you from closing the club head any more through impact with the ball. But an even better way of removing most of this pronation temptation is to use a reverse grip by placing your left hand (again, from the right-handed perspective) below your right. This makes it very difficult to pronate in either direction since the large muscle memory gets a little flustered in this position. You will find that a reverse putting grip will take you a few practice sessions to get comfortable with, but will do wonders for keeping your putts on line.