Archives for November, 2022

Tips to Sharpen your Game (#8, Tips 26 -27)

This is the eighth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”.]

26/ Know Your Cover Number: There are lots of numbers that come into a pro golfer’s consideration whenever they set their sights on the green. But there’s one above all else that reigns supreme: It’s the yardage to the front of the green, which pros call the “cover number.” “The COVER is a number players know they absolutely need to hit their shot,” says GOLF Top 100 Teacher Boyd Summerhays, who teaches Tony Finau. “It’s really important.” When your COVER NUMBER is paired with the distance to the back edge, it illustrates the size of your target zone.

You should know the distance that each of your clubs will cover when you execute a great shot. Unfortunately your perfect shots occur less than 50% of the time. Why not up your club and hit with 80% of your power to ensure that you reach the green or roll out to the center of the green.

27/ Improve Your Green Reading: Is it better to over-read putts or under-read them? Mark Sweeney, the inventor of the groundbreaking green-reading system Aimpoint, found that it is better to err on the side of over-reading putts. Putts rolling downhill keep rolling and take longer to lose their speed. In the example below a putt that has been over-read (above the hole) by 12 inches will trickle down to about six inches above the hole. A putt of the same speed that has been under-read by 12 inches will take more of the slope and keep rolling all the way out to 36 inches.

When putting across the slope of a green, you will end up closer to the hole if you over-read your putt on the high side of the hole. Putts rolling downhill will roll a lot further than putts rolling across the slope of the hill.

Golf is a game of perfection, but you will never improve your scores if you don’t apply the basic swing to improve the consistency of your hits. Practice with GOLFSTR+ for all of your swings to limit wrist and elbow bends where you should not be bending. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

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Tips to Sharpen your Game (#7, Tips 25 a to d)

This is the seventh in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”.]

25/ Know What To Do When You’re In Trouble: You’ve done your smart preparation, but some-how things still aren’t going according to plan. Don’t worry, it happens. Golf is a game of misses. So you should try to minimize your misses and take your medicine and make a good recovery shot. Stay calm. Following are 4 solution to avoid a blow-up hole:

You already lost 1 extra stroke when you made your last rotten swing. Take your medicine and get out of trouble before you lose a lot more strokes.

25a/ Try variable training: “It may sound counterintuitive, but one of the best things you can do when you’re struggling to hit the sweet spot is try to hit misses,” says GOLF Top 100 Teacher Mark Durland. “The next time you’re struggling, try intentionally to hit shanks or shots off the toe. This kind of ‘variable training’ will help your brain get a better sense of the club face when it’s time to hit the center.” [I don’t really understand how this tip will help but I don’t make these up. However, we should give it a try to see what happens in a non-competition game.]

25b/ Eat something: You may simply be running out of energy if you’re playing poorly. Sugar and carbs will spike your energy the fastest but fade fast. Higher-protein snacks will last longer. Drinking water throughout is essential. Weight Watcher’s former head of nutrition says golfers should choose a blend of everything but try to stick to a 2-to-1 protein-to-carbs ratio (a protein bar and banana or apple), with up to 10 glasses of water per day.

25c/ Time your tempo: If you’re playing in the wind, one of the first things to go is your tempo. First brought to light in their pioneering book Tour Tempo, John Novosel Sr. and Jr. say good rhythm can come at different speeds, “but the ratio should always stay 3:1, meaning your back- swing should be three times slower than your down- swing.” If it’s not, your tempo is out of sync. [LOVE THIS TIP!]

25d/ Don’t be a hero: As Tour statistician Mark Broadie writes in his book Every Shot Counts, PGA Tour players average 3.8 shots to hole out from 100 yards when they’re in the trees. Hitting a 60-yard recovery shot vs. pitching out directly sideways gains you ONLY about 0.2 of a stroke, from 2.8 shots to 2.6 at best. At worst, you’ll hit a disaster shot and make a big number. Play stress-free and get the ball back in play. [I love this tip but find it the most difficult to execute.]

We all get in trouble over the course of a round of golf. The person with the lowest score is most often the golfer who hits the smartest recovery shots to ensure that their next shot is an easy success. Improve your swing with every club by practicing all 6 swing fixes with GOLFSTR+. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

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Great Tips to Sharpen your Game (Series #6, Tips 21-24)

This is the sixth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”.]

21/ Plan for Your Shot Pattern: In golf, we deal with luck in terms of shot patterns (according to Scott Fawcett, Founder of DECADE GOLF). Think of your shot pattern like the spray of a shotgun blast: Some pellets may end closer to where you were aiming, but others may veer off slightly, and you never know which one ends where you want. This fact is what makes golf so darn hard. That’s why you should plan around your typical dispersion pattern for each type of club and distance. Instead of trying to hit your approach shot inside of eight feet, choose a target that results in a safe location for an occasional birdie putt. You would be stunned at to know how many PGA Tour players aim away from a hole, as you should to stack the deck in your favor.

22/ Count Down Your Swing: Dr. Matthias Grabenhorst, who has spent his life researching the subject of human reaction, published a study last year that showed humans tend to react best to events a few seconds into the future. Instantaneous reactions are often clumsy, but a little head start can go a long way. Dr. Bob Christina of UNC Greensboro, wanted to see if that held true for golf. They took a group of 32 golfers and found that those who counted backward from four (as in “four, three, two, one”) before hitting shots performed the best in terms of accuracy. Those who decided on their own when to hit their shot often stood over the ball for a lot longer and fared much worse.

23/ Understand “Spin Loft”: As defined by TrackMan, it’s the measured angle between the loft delivered by the club at impact and the angle of attack into the ball—the larger the number, the more the ball will spin. When hitting driver, it’s optimal to generate the lowest spin loft number as possible because that’s what fuels distance. So you should be driving into the ball with a positive angle of attack. For shorter shots, a higher spin-loft value is key for shot-stopping power into the greens.

The total angle of your club face and swing impact angle add up to your launch angle. Use that angle to add spin and stopping power when your ball hits the green.

24/ Practice the Money Putts: Sinking an 8-foot putt is a “money putt”. Sink more of them and play like the pro golfers who sink 53% of them. Golfers shooting in the 80’s sink 33% of 8-footers and golfers shooting in the 90’s sink 27%.

Tip# 22 suggests that you count down from 4 to start your swing. I believe that it helps you focus on the countdown in order to ignore any other thoughts. To help me avoid other thoughts I count my cadence. When putting I count “1,2 “ where 2 starts my downswing. For every other club I count “1 and 2”, where thinking “1 and” forces me to take my time to complete my backswing AND wrist lag. At the count of “2”, I start of my downswing. Practice with GOLFSTR+ Training Aid for 6 swing fixes. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

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Great Tips to Sharpen your Game (Series #5, Tips 17-20)

This is the fifth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”. These nuggets of knowledge are designed as a quick reference to help you as they have helped so many other golfers.]

17/ Don’t Try to ‘Fix’ Your Miss. Narrow it: For decades, conventional golf wisdom has bemoaned the terrors of the “two-way miss.” Lou Stagner, the data lead over at Arccos Golf, is here to tell you it’s not so bad—and he has an army of statistics to prove it. Stagner puts forward Dustin Johnson as a prime example. Lauded as one of the statistically best drivers of his generation, DJ’s drives have missed left 2,203 times and 2,238 times to the right, almost an exact 50-50 split. It’s a trend that holds all the way down through the Tour. While it is true that it’s beneficial for players to have a preferred shot shape (DJ’s, for instance, is a slight left-to-right fade), the statistics simply don’t bear out that players use it to eliminate one side of the course. “As a player, you’re better off trying to narrow your biggest left miss and your biggest right miss,” says PGA Tour coach Shauheen Nakhjavani.

18/ Pay Attention to Posture: As human beings, we’re hardwired with an innate instinct to balance ourselves in order to avoid falling over—and, potentially, hurting ourselves. It’s what helps us take our first steps, but, sometimes, it can throw your swing out of whack.
For the average male golfer, your head encompasses about 8 percent of total body weight; your trunk about 55 percent, your arms about 12 percent and your legs make up the rest. If you’re not in a balanced setup position to start, your body will attempt to balance itself during the swing—and it won’t be pretty. That’s why GOLF Top 100 Teachers like the middle of a golfer’s foot, kneecaps and armpits to form a straight line with each other when viewed from down the line. That’s the position of optimal balance at setup because it “stacks” your heavy body parts in one line. The official term is “joint centration.”

19/ Know Where Your Clubface Is Pointing at Impact: Where your clubface points at impact, has the greatest influence on what direction the ball will start its flight pattern. For a right-handed golfer, an open clubface (relative to the target) will result in the ball starting right of the target, and if the face is closed, the ball will start left of the target. According to TrackMan, around 80 percent of the ball’s starting direction is dictated by where the clubface is pointed at impact, with the remaining percentage caused by the direction the club is traveling (club path). Configuring the clubface with club path at impact will help you create a more consistent ball- flight, shot after shot.

Understanding your swing and club face direction will help you understand your ball flight. [RED Arrows are the swing direction, BLUE is for the club face direction]


20/ Determine YOUR Most Effective Hold: How you place your trail hand (right hand for right-handed golfers), plays a huge role in how you square the clubface at impact. Placing your right hand in a “stronger” position— more on the side of the club—tends to result in a more passive orientation, with a slower clubface rate of closure. The opposite is true if your trail hand is more on top of the club, in a “weaker” position. There’s no right or wrong way: Different golfers will do better or worse depending on what hold they’re predisposed to.

Golf clubs are swung in an arc so the skill to hit perfectly straight shots is all about knowing and trusting your swing for each type of club as your body weight is transferring throughout every swing. Practicing with GOLFSTR+ with every club in your bag is a good way to learn and trust your swing. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

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Great Tips to Sharpen your Game (Series #4, Tips 13-16)

This is the fourth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”. These nuggets of knowledge are designed as a quick reference to help you as they have helped so many other golfers.]

13/ Manage your Expectations: One of the keys to happier golf is to be realistic with your own expectations. Just like playing at Online casinos, you should pay attention to your successes and learn from your weaknesses to overcome your frustrations. Unfortunately, too many golfers have expectations that are wildly out of whack with the reality of their game. A great way to work on this is to keep track of the basic stats from your own game as you play. Keep your personal score card on every round with a tick when your drive lands in the fairway, a tick when you hit a GIR and add the your number of putts for each hole. Add-up your results for each round and track your progress.

Do you know that from 150 yards, a scratch golfer hits the green only about 60 percent of the time and hits Greens In Regulation 61% of the time? Don’t expect to reach these target numbers.

14/ Find Your ‘Center: Yes, it’s important to “load” on the backswing and shift your weight forward on the down- swing. But 3D motion-capture systems reveal both happen earlier than you might expect. GOLF Top 100 Teacher Shaun Webb and coaching partner Mike Granato, co-founders of Athletic Motion Golf, have used the GEARS system to demonstrate that pro golfers have fully shifted their weight to their trail foot halfway through their backswing, but by the time they reach the top of their swing, weight is already beginning to shift toward their front foot.

By the top of the backswing, pros reverse this move off the ball and shift back to just slightly forward of where they started at address,Webb says. “That’s how you should complete your backswing: by BY SHIFTING SLIGHTLY TOWARD THE TARGET.”

This golfer is already shifting his weight to his leading foot as he reaches the top of his swing transition.

15/ Practice With Pressure: “I try to make my practice sessions emulate tournament conditions. The goal is to structure range time so it’s as difficult and mentally exhausting as possible, so that when I play in a tournament it just feels like simple golf.” Justin Thomas

16/ Optimize Your Launch and Spin: Now that you appreciate the importance of the loft- and-spin relationship, allow us to introduce you to the Optimal Launch Conditions chart. This
is what good club-fitters determine as they’re helping dial-in your driver specs. Everyone’s ideal loft and spin numbers are slightly different, depending on their ball speed and angle of attack. The closer you can get to matching these numbers with your gamer, the less distance you’ll be sacrificing.

Yes, this is pretty complicated so wouldn’t you be better off depending on a Professional Club Fitter to sort out the clubs that fit your swing?

We all need the right clubs to match our swing and swing speed, but you also need to practice the correct basic swing to improve your game. GOLFSTR+ gives you 6 swing fixes in one Training Aid. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

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