Free Golf Training Tips – Resources, Videos and Reviews

Celebrities Get Hooked On Golf

Celebrities Josh Duhamel, Samuel L. Jackson, James Caan and former President Bill Clinton playing golf

If you’ve never played golf, perhaps you’ll never understand the attraction. But if you’re like many celebrities–whether they’ve been playing for years or just recently began to tee it up–you’ll agree that the game has an unusual appeal that can consume you.

Golf has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years, so much so that the game–long and wrongly considered a less-than-physically-challenging sport–is inspiring yoga and Pilates workouts. Celebrity golfers, who often pay personal trainers big money to help them get in shape and help them stay physically fit–say there are some definite physical benefits associated with an outing on the links.

Experts say you can get the most out of a round of golf if you walk the course, the length of which can measure about 5 miles, depending on the course. Walking improves your cardiovascular health, builds endurance and allows you to burn a moderate amount of calories. If you carry your clubs, you can get an upper body workout as well. And hitting the ball actually can improve your hand-eye coordination, which can be useful in many other areas.

Many celebrities and professional athletes have begun playing to add another level of competition to their lives and to be able to spend more time together with their families, who are joining them on the course.
Advertisement

Some players like Oakland Raiders cornerback Ray Buchanan love the sport so much that he and his wife, Sheree, built their dream home at Sugarloaf Country Club in Duluth, Ga., home of the PGA Tour’s Bellsouth Classic. Their multimillion-dollar mansion overlooks the 9th hole, and Buchanan, a former Pro-Bowler, plays two to three times a week during the off-season.

“At first, I didn’t like golf,” says Buchanan, formerly of the Atlanta Falcons. “But after a while, it was like a virus–so contagious that I wanted to keep playing and learn more.”

Sheree Buchanan, who starred as part of the “NFL wives” team in the Emmy-winning reality TV series The Amazing Race 4, just started playing golf a few months ago, in an effort to spend more time with her husband. She took up golf; he took up her favorite sport–tennis. She’s just beginning to understand why her husband loves the game so much–the competition with yourself and a desire to always do better. Eventually, the couple hopes that their four children will grow to love the sport as much as they do.

“[Golf is] still brand new for me,” Sheree says. “For us, it’s fun. He teaches me, and as long as we don’t have a lot of people [playing] behind us, it’s OK.”

Carolina Panthers wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad, who also owns an entertainment company and nonprofit foundation, says he started playing golf when he entered the NFL and “fell in love with it.”

“Golf is something that is very relaxing for me,” says Muhammad, who already is encouraging his 3-year-old son to play. “I think being able to play golf allows you to meet and associate with different people.”

But it’s not only professional athletes who enjoy time on the course. Actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith, and singer Johnny Gill also love the game. Even celebrity couples make the rounds together.it comes to golf: “We wish we had started to play when we were kids.”

Children are learning golf in school. Most schools recognize golf as a sport and have golf teams. They teach the kids the art of golfing with instructional videos and professional lessons. Parents sometimes send their children to golf schools if they express an interest in playing golf. Golf is a family sport if you want it to be. Besides learning school and at private lessons, some parents start their children off on the driving range and teach them what they know. More and more children are participating in golf and becoming leaders in the field. Look at Tiger Woods. He started early and is a young golf pro.

If you start golfing early enough in life and continue to improve your game, you can become the next Tiger Woods. It takes dedication and practice to become a pro and anyone can do it with the right teacher and determination to become the best. Golfing does take skill. You have to have distance, which comes from you stance and swing. You need to be able to judge the distance to the green while avoiding any bunkers and water holes. Trees are another obstacle to avoid. Even the bet golfers can slice a ball and send it flying off course.

Many golf courses have children’s golf leagues during the golfing season with tournaments and competitions. This helps kids improve and learn different techniques to improve their game. While playing as a child they are essentially grooming themselves for future golf tournaments and competitions. The game of golf has become a sport that kids who do not like football or basketball can play and receive credit for in school. If you belong to a school team, this counted as a credit for your gymnastics class in some states.

You can buy accessories and golf clubs for children. As a child grows, they need to find clubs that fit them better. You always need to have the right size clubs for playing golf or you could hurt yourself as well as not play a good game. To buy golf clubs, you need to visit a pro shop or even a sporting store and try the club on for size. Just because you think the club is the right size, it may not feel comfortable when you swing. The shaft flex and the grip are important factors when buying a new club. The younger you are, you can probably use a shaft with less flex than what someone older would use.

When you are learning to play golf as a child, you will spend a great deal of time learning the basics. Scoring, swinging, stance and terminology before you actually start a game. Once you have the basics, you start learning to improve your swing, how to improve your distance and the precision needed when hitting the golf ball. A child learning to golf is nothing new, it is just becoming more popular today because of other young pro’s that encourage kids to take up the game.

Golf is filled with myths. Encompassing everything from driving to course management, these myths are handed down from father to son, more or less in the pattern of golf tips about swing mechanics, others in the mould of judicious advice about how to do things. Regrettably, a lot of of these myths are pure and simple mistaken.

Below are 3 touristy myths I care to expose in my golf lessons and golf tips. One or two of them may have an ingredient of accuracy in them. The other may hold no accuracy in it the least bit.  Irrespective, each of them personify thoughts that can upgrade tallies and supercharge golf handicaps.

1.Aim at the Target
We have all heard this argument before. Perhaps even pronounced it. The instruction isn’t so much mythological as it is perplexing. The inquiry is, aim what at the target? Your clubface? Your shoulders? Your body? The instruction does not actually state.

The trouble with this myth is that it could cause golfers to misalign themselves in one of two ways, wounding his or her golf handicap.

• aiming the feet, hips, knees, and shoulders straight at the target, allowing the clubface following a line well right of the target; or,

• Taking aim to overcompensate for ballflight misplays, same as you aim left to compensate for the ballflight error of a slice (for right handers).

When aimed correctly, the leading edge of the clubface sits at a right angle to the target line while your body aligns parallel-left of the target line. This set up establishes perfect parallel alignment. This position doesn’t come naturally. So you need to work on it on the range to recognize when you’re aiming correctly on the course.

Here’s a drill I use in my golf instruction sessions. First, pick a target and lay one club down on the ground a few feet in front of the ball, but on the target line. Then, take a second club and lay it down parallel to the first but along your toe line to indicate body alignment. Make adjustments as necessary. Finally, hit a few balls and see what happens. After awhile you’ll have trained your body and eyes to accept this new alignment.

2.As the swing gets longer, it gets faster
If you’re like most golfers, you swing the driver faster than the 7-iron or 8-iron. Most of us invariably ramp up our swing speed with longer clubs because we envision hitting the ball harder and driving it farther. It’s a natural tendency, one I often see when giving golf lessons.

Unfortunately, when you ramp up your swing speed, you destroy your natural swing tempo—the total amount of time it takes to create your swing from beginning to end. That’s not good. When you start varying your swing’s tempo from club to club, you destroy the timing required to hit consistent golf shots. It’s one reason why you feel that you can hit your irons well one-day but not your woods, and vice versa.

All of us have our own swing tempo. Some of us have a fast tempo, like Nick Price. Some of us have a slower tempo, like Fred Couples. Either way is fine, as long as you keep the same tempo for each club in the bag. It’s not something you control. If it takes two seconds to hit the pitching wedge, it should take you two seconds to hit the driver. Practice consistent tempo with all your clubs and you’ll hit consistent shots.

3.Play the ball back with shorter clubs
Most of us vary ball position as we change clubs. The shorter the club, the farther back we position the ball. But incorrect ball positioning can create major problems. With the ball positioned too far forward, our shoulders tend to align too far left of forward. Since your club swings where our shoulders point, we slice. With the ball positioned too far back, our shoulders tend to close, encouraging a push or a hook.

While you should position the ball more forward for the driver than the pitching wedge, you should never place the ball farther back than center for any normal shot with a level lie, regardless of the club you’re using.

Remember, for normal shots on level lies, there are just three basic ball positions;

• Short iron: one inch left of center
• Mid-irons: two inches left of center
• Long irons & woods: three inches left of center.

In addition, always relate the position of the ball to your upper body, not your toes. Using your toes can create the illusion that the ball is positioned correctly when in fact it isn’t. For example, if you use your toes to position the ball with your foot flared out but then close up your foot, the ball seems to move forward in your stance, when it actually hasn’t.

These are just three of the more popular golf myths that exist, many of which I address in my golf lessons and golf tips. There are lots more. Unfortunately, many of them are just plain wrong.

So be wary of them. And don’t be afraid to challenge them. Even if you’re wrong, the worse thing that can happen is that you can learn something valuable about the game of golf.