Quick Tips

Stroke Saver: Hinging On It

Golf would be much easier if we played on the same hole, 18 times in a row. Imagine if you only needed to hit a handful of shots, and you could spend all your time mastering them. Too bad golf is the most varied sport I can think of, so varied that I’ve played several rounds of golf while never hitting the same shot twice. This is especially true around the greens, since so many different green complexes require so many different types of shots. Out here in Arizona, elevated greens are popular, and often you have to know how to adjust your pitches so they either fly or roll the right distances.
For instance, I may have a pitch from 20 yards on two separate occasions. For the first one, I have very little green to work with so I have to hit the ball up into the air. The second 20-yarder is flat, with plenty of green between me and the hole. Let’s look at how to play each shot.

Adding hinge at the top of your stroke will speed up the hands to help hit the ball higher.

To hit the high pitch, here’s what I do. Play the ball in the middle of your stance, with slight forward shaft lean. Keep the wrists supple, and hinge the wrists so the club and your left forearm form something that looks like the letter L. Keep your weight centered as you take the club back–don’t let it shift much, and don’t keep it over your left side. As you swing down, let the hands unhinge at impact; they rehinge as you follow through. In case you’re wondering, the rehinging post-impact is important! When hitting this shot, if you think about rehinging post-impact, you’ll instinctively speed up the wrists through the shot, adding the necessary loft to hit the ball higher than normal.

Lessening the hinge of the wrists will slow the hands, helping you hit the ball on a lower trajectory.

Now, let’s look at the pitch that flies lower. To hit this shot, set up the exact same way you did for the higher shot–ball centered, weight centered and slight shaft lean (to ensure you hit slightly down on the ball). As you take the club back, I want you to keep your wrists more rigid and resist the temptation to hinge the club! This will shallow out your swing plane significantly and add a lot of width to your stroke. Think of a pendulum, and as you swing down and into impact, don’t rehinge your wrists. Instead, keep the club low and allow the body to rotate more through the shot.

Experiment with these two shots, and you’ll find that the no-hinge shot is probably a little easier than the shot with the added hinge. Experiment with different swing lengths, too, and learn how far different swing lengths go. With practice, you’ll find that knowing more than one shot from the same length is necessary for shooting lower scores.

Derek Nannen, PGA, is the Director of Instruction at the Eagle Mountain Golf Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. Visit eaglemtn.com for more information.

Long Game: Get Connected

One of the most important keys to hitting the ball both straight and far is keeping the sequencing of your swing synced properly. If your arms are doing one thing while your body is doing another, syncing your swing becomes a real nightmare. You might hit a good shot once in a while, but any chance at being a consistent ballstriker when your arms and body aren’t cooperating with each other is practically impossible. Let’s look at how to keep your arms and body connected through the downswing, as well as how to sequence the right moves in the right order.

As you can see in photo #1, my hips and shoulders are parallel to one another and my spine has some tilt at address. By aligning my shoulders on the same tilt, it makes it a lot easier for my upper and lower body to work together, and it helps me naturally shift my weight and make a big body turn on the backswing. By doing that, as you can see in photo #2, my hips have turned as far as they can, while my shoulders have turned even further. Now, folks, this is where many golfers get it wrong. The hips and shoulders turn away from the ball at the same time. It’s just that the shoulders turn a little more than the hips do. Golfers who struggle usually turn their shoulders and then their hips. Or, some even turn their hips, then their shoulders. Both instances route the club way to the inside on the backswing, which as you would guess, leads to the club getting stuck and swinging from over the top on the downswing.

Photo #3 shows the correct sequence of motion. The key is to avoid spinning the hip out as you start the downswing. When you hear of players like Tiger or Rory who have “fast hips,” it doesn’t necessarily mean they rotate their hips open at an incredible speed. No, if anything, it has more to do with how fast they “bump” their hips forward and rotate slightly open as the arms drop downward.

In photo #4, I’m at the moment of truth. You can see my hips have cleared, but not so much so that my shoulders are unable to be aligned parallel to the left of the target at impact. Had I spun my hips open too far and too soon, I’d have to swing extra-hard with the upper body and force my hands to move a lot faster than they should. Doing that is yet another reason why many golfers slice the ball so much. They spin their hips way open through the downswing, causing the hands to take over, and try to manipulate the clubhead at impact. In most cases, the hands can’t catch up, leading to a wide-open clubface at impact.

The correct thing to do is to remember that the hips do, in fact, open on the downswing, but it’s the “bump” that’s more important. Allow the left hip to bump forward and up as you swing down with the arms. The hips should rotate, but don’t force it to happen too soon. Remember the bump in the hips, and you’ll quickly see how much easier it is to sync your swing and start hitting straighter shots.

Andrew Getson, PGA, teaches at the Grayhawk Learning Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. Visit grayhawkgolf.com.

Long Game: Trust Your Decision

DECIDE!

I play in a lot of pro-ams with amateurs, and one of the most common errors I see is when players don’t make the right shot decision before they hit the ball. Often, these are the players more worried about making a perfect swing and not so much focused on where they want the ball to go. I can tell you this, when you’re out on the golf course, it’s no time to be thinking about your golf swing. Your focus should always be on the shot at hand and how you envision the ball flying through the air and landing on the ground.

COMMIT!

For this particular shot, I’ve decided that I’m going to hit a fade, and I made that decision before addressing the ball, not after! As you can see, as I approach the ball, I align the clubface where I want the ball to finish, then my shoulders, hips and feet to the left in the direction where I want my fade to start. This setup will help me hit a high fade down the fairway that lands soft with little roll. It’s just the shot I need to avoid the creek that bisects the fairway. Am I thinking about my swing at this point? No way! I’m simply setting up my body to let my fade swing happen naturally.

EXECUTE!

As I take the club back to the top, there’s no hesitation whatsoever. I’ve both decided and committed to hit a fade, and I have to trust that my decision and my setup will help me do just that. Speaking of trust, for me, hitting a fade means I have to trust that I need to make a full rotation of the body on the backswing and also on the downswing. Any hesitation of the body or hands when hitting a fade on purpose often results in a pull or hooked shot.

In this instance, my instincts took over and I did what I was supposed to, which was make a full rotation of the body, allowing the hands and arms to swing slightly from outside in, helping me to hit a nice, high fade. Remember, decide what shot you want to hit based on how the hole unfolds, commit to it, and execute your shot with full trust in your decision. Don’t hesitate!

Paige Mackenzie, LPGA, currently plays on the LPGA Tour. To learn more about her, visit paigemackenziegolf.com.

Smooth Operator

Before your next round, here are two simple drills I want you to do on the practice green. Don’t worry, they’re simple and they’re both designed to help you make smoother, more rhythmic strokes, as well as hone in on your distance control.

First, I want you to ignore the cups on the practice green and putt a ball about 15 to 20 feet. Once you do that, I want you to take two more balls, and try and roll them out to the exact same distance. This will help you develop a better idea for the speed of the green, and because you’re not fixated on a target, it will help you develop a better sense of distance control. Practice this for five minutes, and you’ll be good to go.

Second, I want you to stroke a few putts from 5, 10 and 15 feet using the same baseline stroke for each putt. Meaning, whether you’re 5 feet or 15 feet away, I want you to swing the putter from shoe to shoe and not take the putterhead farther or shorter back and through. Practice this drill, and you’ll see that your tempo increases on short putts, but your putter swing stays the same. Do that for another five minutes, and you’ll have a better day on the greens.

Andy Patnou, PGA, teaches at the TOURAcademy at the TPC of Scottsdale in Arizona. For more information, visit touracademy.com.

Stroke Saver: Seven Key Stretches

1. DYNAMIC LUNGES To help swing the club with the necessary torso stabilization, the dynamic lunge is an awesome stretch. First, place your front leg (do one leg at a time) out in front of you with your knee forming a right angle (a towel on the back knee can be used for support, if you want). Keep your back upright by pulling your navel in and lifting your rib cage off your waist. Also, place both hands over your knee. From here, lunge forward and keep your upper body vertical as you do so. Repeat this stretch 10 times, then switch sides. After just a few stretches, you’ll feel that this stretch will help you make a better hip turn in your golf swing and improve your posture, too.

2. WINDOW WASHERS One of my favorite stretches for increasing flexibility in the lower body, especially in the hips, is the window washer. Begin on your back with your feet wider than hip-width apart and your heels placed outside of the glutes. Inhale as you press your knees to one side, then exhale to the starting position. Alternate from side to side 10 times, and remember to breathe as you perform each stretch. This stretch not only is great for warming up, but it feels great during the round, too! If you hit a congested tee box, take a minute and feel free to do a couple of window washers. It helps you rotate your hips properly and stretches the quads and lower back.

3. REVOLVING SIDE-ANGLE TWISTS Another great stretch for a better rotation of the body on the backswing and forwardswing is the revolving side-angle twist. Place your right hand on the outside of your left knee and rotate your torso from the deepest part of your abdominal muscles up to the back of the shoulder. Hold this pose for seven deep breaths. To add more challenge, place the back of your right arm over your left knee. Bring your hands together and push your right shoulder away from your ear. Focus on the rotation and hold for seven breaths. Do this 10 times, then switch sides. You’ll quickly feel as though you have more room to rotate.

4. PLANK POSE Maintaining a consistent spine angle is key in the golf swing. This stretch/exercise helps strengthen not only your core, but also your hands, wrists, shoulders and glutes. Place your hands directly under your shoulders and spread your fingers as wide as possible. Draw your shoulder away from your ears and navel toward your spine before you lift your legs off the floor. Squeeze your legs together, engage your glutes and lengthen your spine. Hold for 10 breaths, relax and repeat three times. If, at first, you find the plank pose to be a little challenging, try and hold for five breaths at a time and work your way up to 10 breaths. With practice and repetition, you’ll develop added core strength for a better spine angle in your golf swing from start to finish.

5. CHAIR SQUATS Your glutes are a big power source in your golf swing. This pose will help you harness the bigger muscles in your legs and help you improve your posture. Bring the club over your head, initiating the movement from your core. Don’t bring the club behind your head, as this motion should support your best posture, not force a forward head position. Draw your navel toward your spine and inhale as you lower (press your glutes) toward the ground as if you’re sitting into a chair. As you exhale, push your lower body into the ground as you return to the starting position. This action of lowering and pressing against the ground is a perfect example of the powerful subtleties that make the pose effective. Repeat 10 times, and you’ll feel it in your glutes!

6. WARRIOR POSE A great stretch for improving your balance is the warrior pose. The goal is to keep your body in one powerful line, with no break at the waist as you move through the pose. Visualize a see-saw, one straight line, if you will. As you bring your club over your head, engage the core of your body for better balance. As you begin to lift the right leg, the upper body lowers. At the pinnacle of the pose, your body looks like the letter “T”. Repeat five times, then switch sides. You’ll quickly improve your balance and strengthen your lower body.

7. PRACTICE TEE DRILL This is a favorite stretch of mine on the practice tee, and it’s surprising how few golfers actually do it. Start by simply crossing the club in front of your body. Get into an athletic position and hinge at your hips. Inhale as you rotate to your right, exhale through. Repeat 15 times. You’ll feel looser, more supple and more ready to hit a big drive off the first tee.

As a golf fitness professional, my goal for my clients is performance-based, but the ultimate goal is the balance of flexibility and strength so my clients can play the game for a long time. Play better, play longer, play injury-free, and enjoy the game more–that’s my motto!

This series of stretches, exercises and poses targets flexibility and strength in various planes of motion.

Here are three guidelines for success:
1. Focus on your breathing. Practice long deep breaths in and out through the nose, even when working your strengthening poses. Move dynamically in each pose, inhaling and exhaling in each direction for 10 repetitions, then switch sides.
2. Pay attention to the subtle details of the pose. For example, if you slightly pull your navel toward your spine before you begin each exercise, you stabilize the torso and activate a deep power source.
3. Adherence over duration is the key. Practice this sequence every other day for four weeks. Stay with it! You’ll experience change even with the simplest effort.

Katherine Roberts is the producer of seven DVDs and author of the groundbreaking book, Yoga for Golfers. To learn more about Katherine and her fitness system for better golf, visit yogaforgolfers.com.

Get Low To Chip Better

To chip your best, I recommend you keep things simple. By that, I mean you need to trust your instincts and stop trying to watch where the ball goes before you finish hitting it! In the sequence above, notice that through the stroke, my posture stays inverted through the shot. That’s to be desired if you want to make crisp, solid, consistent contact with the ball. Also, I like to play my chip shots with my knees flexed and my hands low and close to my body. This helps me feel as though I’m more in control of the shot. Try this the next time you chip, and keep your hands as close as possible to your legs (without actually touching them, of course).

A great way to practice your chipping is to do what I’m demonstrating in the photo above. Play the ball just off the inside of your right foot, about a grip’s length away from your body. This will help you “cover” your chip shots a little better and control your trajectory and spin.

Remember, to be a better chipper, don’t lose your spine angle before the shot is finished and stay low through the stroke. By the way, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus both chipped this way in their prime. And, hey, if it worked for them, it certainly will work for you, too.

Pomp Braswell teaches at the Jim McLean Golf School at Sunridge Canyon GC in Fountain Hills, Arizona. To get more information, visit the school’s website at sunridgecanyongolf.com.

Play The Right Hand

Ideally, what you want is to neutralize either your slicing or hooking tendencies by balancing out the pressure in your right hand, which closes the face, and the left hand, which tends to open the face. If you slice, your right hand probably isn’t doing its job correctly and it’s gripping the club too lightly. Conversely, I see a lot of players who hook the ball with a left-hand grip pressure that’s too light and/or a right hand that’s too firm. It should be the other way around if you want to stop hooking it.

The key is to experiment with the correct right- or left-hand grip pressure that helps you hit straighter shots. This may mean equal amounts of pressure in both hands, or it may mean one hand grips the club more firmly than the other. Grip pressure is a great thing to work on because it’s simple, and it’s also something you can bring to the course.

If you’re having trouble hooking the golf ball, a great drill is to practice making one-handed golf swings with a firm grip pressure. Because the right hand isn’t onboard to help close the face through impact, the club will stay open at impact, helping you get a better feel for not over-rotating the face and hitting a big hook. After a few tries, make some normal swings, and remember that the right hand is just along for the ride.

Slicing the ball is never fun. A great drill to combat the slice is to swing the club using only your right hand with light grip pressure. The goal is to feel the right hand rolling the clubface closed through the hitting zone. Because of the lighter grip and no left hand in the way, you’ll quickly feel an exaggerated roll of the hands through the shot. Try it, then make a few normal swings, and remember that the left hand is just along for the ride.

Justin Klemballa, PGA, teaches at the Jim McLean Golf School at Sunridge Canyon GC in Fountain Hills, Arizona. You can get more information at sunridgecanyongolf.com.

Manage Your Weight

One of the more common flaws I see in chipping is poor weight management. Often, I see my students try to chip by emulating miniature full swings, where they shift their weight to their right side on the backswing and then over to their left on the forwardswing. Now that may be the kind of weight management you want with a full swing, but with chipping, the more stable you are at setup, impact and the finish, the more likely you’re going to make crisp, consistent contact with the golf ball.

If you artifically shift your weight back, you’ll hit the obstacle placed behind the golf ball.

To improve your chipping weight management, I recommend you keep your weight at what I call “60/40” during your chipping stroke. This means keeping 60% of your weight on your left side and 40% on your right side from start to finish. To maximize the potential of the 60/40 swing, start with the proper setup. Play the ball in the middle to middle-back of your stance, with the hands slightly in front of the golf ball. Naturally, the 60/40 swing will be a little steeper than normal, which in the case of chipping is a good thing. If you try and keep the club low to the ground, you’ll likely get caught up in the grass and hit a lot of fat and/or skulled chips. We don’t want that! Just remember, 60/40 doesn’t exactly mean placing a big majority of your weight on your left side. It just means a slight favoring of the left side. In the photos, it still looks like my weight is fairly evenly balanced, doesn’t it? If you overdo it and place too much weight on your left side, you’ll get too steep and/or you’ll inadvertently shift to your right side, again, causing all sorts of problems with consistent contact.

A great drill to practice the 60/40 swing is to take a 2×4, headcover or even a book and place it just outside your right foot in the back of your stance. Hit a few chips, and be sure you don’t hit the wood on the backswing or on the downswing. Having that obstacle not only will steepen your swing a bit, but it will force you to keep your 60/40 weight scheme throughout the stroke.

The key for better chipping is to minimize excessive weight shifting and swinging a little steeper than you’re used to. Do that, and you’ll start dialing in better chips in no time.

Frank O’Connell, PGA, teaches at Paradise Valley Golf Course in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Get more information at paradisevalleygc.com.

Push Your Putt

One of the more common putting mistakes I see from my students is a lack of acceleration through the ball. When this happens, it’s likely the hands, wrists, even the puttershaft, have lost positioning through the putting stroke, causing a lot of missed putts. Also, if you let up, decelerate or even stop at the ball (I’ve seen that, too!), you’re probably not making as many putts as you could had you accelerated through the stroke.

To help correct these problems, here’s a simple drill. Set up your putting practice station about three feet away from the hole. From here, go through your entire putting routine and get ready to make a stroke. Only now, instead of making a backstroke, then a forwardstroke, I want you to eliminate the backstroke entirely. Use a forwardstroke only and push the ball into the hole.

1 Notice the “Y” formed by my forearms and the putter. I should hold that “Y” all through the putting stroke.	2 Because I have no backstroke, I’m forced to accelerate through the golf ball.
3 I’ve pushed the ball, but the putter is still moving toward the target. This proves I didn’t decel during the stroke.	4 The “Y” is still present and I’ve made a good forwardstroke through the golf ball.

This exercise teaches you how to follow through and allows you to feel how the shoulders, ribs, arms and golf club maintain a consistent “Y” when swinging the putter. When pushing the ball to the target, you’ll notice whether the wrists break down due to the arms, ribs or shoulders stopping. If you break down, you’ll probably miss. But if you hold your “Y” and accelerate, you’ll start sinking those three-footers. Also, you should notice the target shoulder coming up as the arms push the putter through to the target. This is what you want.

Susie Corona, LPGA, is the director of instruction at Terravita Golf and Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

BALL OF STEEL

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Throw A Fastball

The golf swing is an athletic move. Many times, we can relate a powerful golf swing to other athletic motions like throwing a football 50 yards, a smashing forehand in tennis or, in this instance, throwing a 90 mph fastball toward home plate. The key here is the ability to properly shift your weight so you can efficiently maximize the amount of energy you need to swing the club powerfully through the ball.

In order to properly shift your weight, you first must load up your weight on the inside of your back leg on the backswing. To help you to achieve this move, think about a pitcher in baseball as he starts his motion toward home plate. You can see in the upper set of pictures that the pitcher’s weight is loaded up on the inside of his back foot just as it is in my backswing. In baseball, the pitcher has a pitching mound to help him accomplish this so his weight doesn’t fall too far back to the outside of his back foot. In golf, we don’t have that luxury, but there are a couple of ways to help you accomplish this. At address, simply pinch your back knee toward the golf ball so you can feel the weight shift to the inside of that back foot. This way, you can still shift weight away from the target on the backswing, but just like the pitcher in baseball, you’ll feel the pitching mound idea to properly load up that energy.

Once you understand what it means to load up, look again at the photos above and note how the pitcher’s first move toward home plate is with his front leg shifting weight toward his target while still keeping the ball behind him. This is critical in the golf swing, as well. In my golf swing, you can see a significant shift in my lower body while the club still stays behind me. Not only will this promote a powerful strike on the golf ball, but it also will help me to drop the club in the “slot” to ensure an inside-to-outside swingpath.

In the last couple photos above, you’ll see that the final thing the pitcher has to do is rotate his body out of the way and whip that ball as hard as he can to home plate. This is precisely what we do in the golf swing, as well. Now that you’ve properly shifted your weight to the target, you’re in a position to rotate your body out of the way and “whip” that clubhead through the ball toward your target.

I often hear my students say that they’re swinging too hard and need to slow the swing down. Although you do want a controlled tempo in the backswing to get properly loaded up on your back leg, I usually tell my students to swing as hard as they can if they can do it like the pitcher in baseball and have practiced the proper way to swing the club powerfully. I want my students to try and imagine throwing a 90 mph fastball toward the target with proper athletic movement so they can hit the golf ball with maximized power and efficiency.