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.