Archive for March, 2010

The Most Important Golf Lesson

Posted on Wednesday, 31st March 2010 in Golf Beginner, Golf Swing, Golf Tips

When I watch inexperienced golfers players hit the ball I find that they are usually mis-alinged to their target. Typically, they aim way too far out to the right.  The reason they aim to the right is because the inexperienced player has the tendency to hit the ball with their arms which causes the ball to pull to the left.  This means that they are compensating for a flaw in their swing by just aiming their body out to the right instead of fixing the actual flaw.

What this boils down to, is that the inexperienced players’ bad swings make the ball go on target and their perfect swings make the ball end up in the trees, or bunker on the right of the target.  So, they are seeing their good shots as bad shots and bad shots as good shots.  If this is the case, the inexperienced player will never want to fix their swing flaws.  If they don’t fix their flaws they will never reach their golfing potential.  This is why I call alignment the most important lesson in golf.

Check Your Alignment

In order to find out if you are a player that has swing flaws, you must check your alignment.  To do this, all you have to do is pick out a target and do your normal set up.  Once you feel like you are ready, lay a club down at your heels or toes.  Then, step back about 10 paces behind the ball to see where you are actually aimed.  If the club you placed at your toes or heels is parallel left of your actual target, you have properly aligned yourself.  If the club on the ground points to the right of your target you are mis-aligned.

If you find that you are mis-aligned, you must learn to square up your stance.  To do this, simply find a target in the distance that you want to hit the ball to.   Take out 2 golf clubs that you rarely hit (ie. 3 iron and 4 iron).  Take the first club and lay it down directly at the target (you will have to step back a few paces to check this).  Place the second club parallel to the first club on the ground.  Now, take away the first club that is pointing at the target.  You should have one club on the ground that is parallel to the left of your target.

Once you have the club on the ground parallel to your target line you have a guide to help you align your feet, knees, hips and shoulders squarely.  If you aim your body squarely to the club on the ground and you hit the ball to the left of your target you have just found out that you are pulling the golf ball which means you are trying to hit the ball too hard with only your arms.  If you hit the ball to the right of the target from this square alignment you are sliding your body too much laterally through impact which is causing the ball to fly to the right.

Learning that you are mis-aligned can be quite shocking at first but don’t think of it as a bad thing, think of it as a good thing.  It’s a good thing because you now know that you have a swing flaw and you can get on the road to fixing it so that you can play even better golf in the future.

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Transform Your Game Literally Overnight

Posted on Wednesday, 31st March 2010 in Golf Fitness, Golf Tips

The golfing tip I would like to give in this article is that by working on improving control over your body, you will in effect also gain more control over your mind.

This is simply because the mind gains more confidence so the body will be better able to perform whatever instructions the mind communicates to the body.

This is the single golfing tip that has the potential to transform any golfer’s game literally overnight. Many times golfers work very hard on their minds and preparing them for the ideal golf game they would like to enjoy.

In fact many business executives, who have used the power of the mind to improve their businesses or even to build huge successful businesses, fully understand the potential of the mind in improving their golf games.

Still, many of them end up feeling discouraged and puzzled when things do not work out with their golf game quite the way they do in the corporate world.

They lack the simple golf tip that the game has a physical side to be taken care of, if one is to reap the full power of a mind prepared for ideal golf.

The second part of this golf tip is that there is only one known way of gaining better control of your body and it involves exercise.

Simple weight training that is golf-specific will instantly give you much better control over your body. When you strengthen your muscles, you improve functional strength which automatically gives you more control and balance. Some people believe that weight training will cause them to lose feel.

The weight training I am talking about in this golfing tip is not a program for weight-lifters and to build colossal muscles. This golfing tip is about the weight training specific to golf that conditions muscles used in golf and builds up strength.

This kind of program rather than making somebody lose feel, in fact increases feel tremendously.

This is an amazing golfing tip that is will have a profound impact on your game.

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A Golfer Needs More Than One Golf Course!

Posted on Tuesday, 30th March 2010 in Golf Courses, Golf Tips, Golf Training

There you are, the newest member of the golf retirement community, putting to engineer that innocent looking little white ball into the black hole at last. The soft sea breeze stroking your aching back after that one wild swipe at the dodgy little Callaway golf ball when you thought no one was watching. And something else is bothering you. You know what it is, but you don’t want to acknowledge it, because you don’t know what to do about it. You don’t yearn for the latest golf swing trainer, golf cart accessory or other related retirement gift. It is something entirely different that is tap-tap-tapping away at your thoughts.

Too many greens to play, too many beautiful community golf courses whispering their names to you in that salty wind coming in from the sea. And there is only one you. With a wife that is adamant to have her say in the unfolding need for more than just the one golf course in one lifetime.

As that wise old German psychologist mentioned in quiet desperation, women are different. They are most likely aliens from a far off galaxy where there are no open green, gated golf course communities that are synonymous with heavenly pleasures. In that galaxy the rule has been laid down that a specimen from the female species will always have the need to have an own home where the specimen can indulge in home making. A serious golfer, in his advanced cosmic state, knows that it is not about the house, it is all about the green course. She will not let go. She will not understand. She will want her own home to beautify. She will want a verandah where she and her friends from that far off galaxy can sit down and drink tea while watching whales in the sea, or buffalos grazing, or soft green hills against pure blue heavens. That is what she wants, and you can just as well go and drown yourself with your beloved golf bag in that water hole at the 16th. She will not budge.

But then, to your relief, you remember that phrase of the great Chinese writer, or it could be an Australian, and you know that it is likely that you are making a mistake about this great man’s background, but what he said was something like ‘it is in the play that I’ll catch the conscience of the queen’…

Careful planning, my golfing mate, is what will save the day. Those were the words of those great and advanced guys that roamed the great plains of ancient courses long long ago. Give the specimen a house overlooking the greens. There she can buy curtains to her liking, plant flowers in clay pots, read JM Coetzee or Ian McEwan whilst listening to Mozart. And the little wifey with her specimen friends can sit on the verandah, laughing and spilling tea while they watch your approach to do something to that little white ball that once again moved for only a few inches (the English), or centimeters (the rest of the world).

The plain truth is that this ancient wisdom of golfers now swinging clubs in the pinkish clouds at days end, only provides a partial answer to the greater issue. You know that if you can’t get the swing right on this open green, there are surely so many other beautiful retirement community golf courses. Courses that will appreciate your next swing, which will be the one that Ernie Els aspires to.

The thing is, your specimen has now settled into her golf course community house overlooking the 18th hole. Since buying that piece of golf real estate for her, she happily opens the front door at your disheveled return from the game, and she always displays those bright twinkling eyes, shining with mischievousness. Now you know that she found something so great or amusing in that house overlooking the 18th hole that she will not even consider moving to a different, more lenient course.

Now, this is the moment that I will come to your rescue. I have given that game up because I do not yet want to play it in the day end pinkish clouds before it really is time to do so, on account of heart attacking golfing seizures. So I would rather sell you and your specimen a house at a gated, retirement golf community estate of her liking. At the same time I would suggest that you get your specimen’s best friend to maneuver her golfing husband to one of the other beautiful courses. Doing so, you can explain, they can visit each other, go to art galleries, coffee shops, mesmerizing shopping centers and they can even sit on the verandah overlooking the very first hole, laughing their buds and their butts off, …so long as you and your golfing friend can have another go at another course where nobody can possibly know your real handicap.

Just don’t turn your eyes towards all the verandahs of all the other houses in the gated golf community, with all the other specimens rolling and reeling in laughter over their little cups of tea.

It will only prolong that fight of dwarfing inches towards the shrinking little black hole of redemption.

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