Training Aids

Ask any teaching pro what is the number one golf fundamental to work on constantly and consistently, and they’ll reply “alignment.” That’s why Sight Ball is such a simple and effective sight for sore swings.

Sure, there are plenty of alignment tools to add to your practice arsenal, but few involve the ball itself, beyond that little putting stripe or line either built into the cover or drawn on with a Sharpie. Sight Ball takes those alignment marks into three-dimensional territory, giving golfers a variety of ways to incorporate it into their routines, with every club in the bag.

Harry Briggs, Sight Ball’s inventor, developed the acronym “F.A.S.T.” for Focus, Accuracy, Stance and Training. That about covers it.

Each ball is marked with six bold red “targets” of circles at each “pole” of the sphere, with crosshair-type lines at right angles within them. This allows a quick-glance reference for any element of alignment — ball position at stance, club face to target line, center of club face to center of the ball, feet to target line, etc. — and a consistent way to check those positions as you work on different shots.

Golf Tips testers came up with several ways to put Sight Ball through its versatile paces:

• Place the ball with one “target” pointing directly up, and you’ve got an apt focus point for maintaining a steady head and spine angle through the swing
• Align four crosshairs to your target, square the face to them, and you’ve got a failsafe check on whether you’re opening or hooding the club at address
• Keep the face and those lines at right angles whether you’re employing an open stance for pitches and chips, a slightly closed toe line for draw bias or a square toe line for most full swings, and your eyes won’t lie to you.
• On the practice green, use Sight Ball to better read breaks, align the putter face to the chosen target line and work on center-face strikes to and through the ball
• Another putting plus: Use the top “target” to make sure your dominant eye is properly positioned directly over the ball so you’re getting an accurate sense of direction with each stroke
• Transfer the mental image of spot-on alignment with the Sight Ball to your regular in-play ball — or, put a Sight Ball into actual play during your round. One or two approaches from the fairway or pitches or chips around the green will tell you whether your alignment is still off-kilter

Briggs sells Sight Ball in packs of three for $7.50 or six for $15, and if you’re really serious about practicing full swings with it, you can even buy a bucket’s worth (36 balls) for $70. Just have your shag bag handy because you don’t want to lose ’em.

www.sightball.com

Like many millions of Americans who live north of a certain latitude — or in my case, above 4,000 feet — winter golf is a dicey proposition unless we head for Florida, Arizona, Mexico, the Caribbean, Hawaii … you know, those balmy locales that infiltrate our dreams through the long, cold nights.

Sometimes we get little to no snow from December through February. That’s good for golfers, bad for green lawns and thirsty populations when spring and summer finally roll around, especially in the arid West. In my hometown of Reno, winter is mixed bag — a few years of drought quenched by an El Niño onslaught or two, which fills the reservoirs upstream. On average, golf is playable year-round, and when snow does fall, it melts within a couple days.

Then there are winters like this one: One cold storm after another leaving a few stubborn inches of white stuff on the fairways and greens for days or even weeks at a time down here in the valley (elevation 4500 feet), while just a half hour away in the Sierra Nevada, snowfall is measured in hundreds of inches. A couple hours south of here, in the ski mecca of Mammoth, 11 feet fell over Super Bowl weekend alone. There may be no complete rounds of golf played at that mountain community’s 27 holes until July.

Truth to tell, I haven’t hit a golf ball on an actual course since a glorious mid-December jaunt to Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. Sure, I knocked a few test shots into the nets at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, but thanks to a packed schedule, didn’t even bring my own sticks to squeeze in a round.

So what’s a snowbound hacker to do, besides sit in front of the 55-incher and pine for Pebble Beach (which, it turns out, may get some nasty weather during this week’s AT&T), any given track in Palm Springs or, of course, sun-splashed Torrey Pines? How to keep off the rust out of your swing and stroke?

By making the most of the great indoors, that’s how.

I’m not breaking any new frozen ground for my fellow cold climate warriors, but I do have a couple favorite (and affordable) indoor golf accessories to keep the winter fires burning, or at least at a low, hopeful smolder.

PHIGOLF SIMULATOR AND SWING TRAINER CLUB

When British company Phi Networks sent me a sample of this app-based virtual golf system, summer was at full steam and I was playing plenty of the real thing. Now I’m happy it’s right here at the ready. It’s easy to set up on your phone, easy to stream to your TV and an absolute joy to use and play with. The training club also happens to help you groove your move with its weighted head.

PhiGolf’s 10 gram portable motion sensor, mounted on an actual golf club or the swing trainer club, detects club head speed, swing path, tempo, face angle, attack angle, and estimated carry distance, allowing you to adjust and coach your own swings. Record and analyze your golf swings in 3D on the app. Connect your smartphone to your big screen wirelessly or by using an HDMI cable for an even more immersive virtual golf experience. PhiGolf offers 7 game modes to make your golf practice more fun. Includes Stroke Play, Driving Range, Nearest to Hole, Approach Shot, and Putting. It’s a video game with serious golf learning cred — and welcome winter doldrum-killing qualities.

www.phigolf.com | Check the price on Amazon!

PUTTOUT TRAINER AND MAT

Shaped like a cross between an oversized shoehorn and a space-age ski jump, PuttOUT is designed to help build pressure putting skills and confidence, particularly from those crucial par-saving distances of four to 10 feet.

The device’s action zone is a plastic parabolic curve that gives immediate feedback on both distance and line; after rolling up that concave six-inch-or-so slope, bad putts are rejected back toward the golfer somewhat sideways, while on good ones on the same line they arrived, assuming a perfectly flat putting surface. And you get a great distance benefit, too: each successful putt is returned the same distance it would have gone past the hole if it had missed — great feedback for getting the pace just right with that 18-inch-or-less comebacker the desired result.

But the feature that really puts PuttOUT in the must-have column is its “micro target,” a small hole revealed when you pull down a rear panel. Knock the ball toward that hole with perfect speed and line and it will “stick” there as if by magnetic magic. Then you’ve got a natural target to shoot at with a second ball, and a third.

Make your system with the PuttOUT Mat. It runs around 10 on the Stimpmeter and offers consistency in a way that just any regular carpet can’t. Built-in alignment marks and “pace targets” make working on those crucial 3- to 6-footers a snap. The PuttOUT mat makes what could be a boring exercise somehow fun — providing a great opportunity to practice every aspect of those strokes that make up nearly half of your average score … once the snow finally melts. The PuttOUT folks are also working on a mirror and gate system to help your putting practice even more — with some full swing applicability, too.

www.puttout.com | Check the price on Amazon!

A putting mat is a putting mat is a putting mat, right? Just toss a carpet remnant on the floor and go to town? Well, yeah, you can go that route as the days shorten and you start to make your indoor practice plans, but the U.K.-made PuttOUT Putting Mat really is different, especially when used in concert with its companion product, the PuttOUT trainer — one of the most effective tools we’ve come across to get speed and line talking to each other.

At any rate, to be the best putter you can be, you’ve gotta roll hundreds of putts. With its built-in alignment marks, the PuttOUT Mat provides a reliable base in terms of surface smoothness (we’d say it runs around 10 on the Stimpmeter) and consistency in a way that just any regular carpet can’t. And its “pace targets” make working on those crucial 3- to 6-footers a snap. We recommend teaming it with the PuttOUT trainer but even using it alone is quite effective.

Most of all, the PuttOUT mat makes what could be a boring exercise somehow fun — providing a great opportunity to practice every aspect of those strokes that make up nearly half of your average score. It’s available in green and gray, rolls up easily and is stored in an included nylon case.

CHECK THE PRICE ON AMAZON!

Lots of people will tell you how important posture and set up are in golf, but not many people offer a viable solution on how to achieve it.

The normal suggestion is to modify your existing set up; an instructor might tell you “more hip bend,” “head up,” “shoulders back.” The problem is that it’s really difficult to actually feel what the right position is without someone else giving you that feedback. The result is that all too often your best golf posture is attainable in a golf lesson, but really difficult to achieve on your own.

This can be frustrating, you can’t always ask for someone to watch you and it’s impractical to drag a mirror along to the driving range. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something light, portable and easy to use that gave you that feedback on your golf posture every time?

GravityFit have the exact solution for you, it’s called the TPro and it’s been designed specifically to help golfers get into their best golf posture every time.

There is some pretty complicated science behind how and why this works: “Gravity sensory information is specifically related to how the sensation of gravity is picked up by receptors in joint structures and leads to an increase in tone or springiness of the muscles of the trunk working more statically to provide proximal stability or a firm and flexible anchor for whole body movement.” I’ll give you a summary that’s easy to understand.

Essentially, in order to make sure we are in great posture every time, we need feedback. The most powerful feedback is called kinaesthetic feedback, or touch feedback. Essentially it gives the user a literal feel for what they are supposed to be doing.

The TPro provides this feel to your upper back and shoulder blades, which ensures you have just the right amount of curve in your spine and activation in your upper back muscles. The pressure from the green spikes in the middle tell you if your spine is in the correct position, the paddles on the side give awareness of your shoulder blade positioning and the green or yellow tubing provides a stimulus that strengthens the key stabiliser muscles in and around your shoulders and upper back.

This new technology is being used on a daily basis by the PGA Tour professionals; Cameron Smith, Jonas Blixt, and Harris English, amongst others. The high performance programs in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Belgium along with US colleges and many other professional and amateur players also use it to regularly to train their best golf posture

You shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that it’s only for elite players though; the beauty of this equipment is the intuitive simplicity of its application. I’m passionate about the high level players I work with using the TPro to help train their golf posture and I would love to see the general golfing public benefit from it too.

The application to golf posture has obvious carry over to smoother swings and sweeter strikes, but improving your posture also has an arguably more important benefit; helping to protect your spine and joints. Osteoarthritis and spinal injuries are becoming more prevalent in modern society as we live longer and move less. Improving your posture means giving your spine and joints, especially shoulders and hips, the best possible chance to stay healthy. If they are being held in a better position, they will move more freely and with less discomfort.

For more information on GravityFit’s TPro and their other golf specific product offerings, check out www.gravityfit.com/golf. Be sure to use the coupon code GolfTipsMag for a special 15% discount.