2024 July

If you can eliminate mishits and stupid shots I guarantee that you will break 90 during every round that you play. It’s really easy, just chose the correct club and keep all of your shots in the fairway. Hitting greens in regulation and misjudging your putts are the primary reason why its NOT EASY to break 80 or 70 . Weekend Warriors should be focusing on the elimination of Mishits and Stupid Shots to break 90.

The more time you spend practicing and playing golf with the proper swing, the better will be your chance of eliminating mishits. You may not see pros mishitting shots on TV as the producers focus on the perfection of the low scoring leaders. The higher scoring laggards are make their share of mishits and struggling to recover from the rough.

Mishit Elimination
By mishits, I’m referring to hooking and slicing your ball as well as missing the center of your club face (for toe or housel hits), topping it and hitting it fat or thin. We all make some of these shots but our goal is to eliminate or minimize them. Why not try:
-Using a consistent shot routine to improve your mental approach to golf.
–Practice with GOLFSTR+ to learn a straight arm backswing with a flat wrist for a square impact to eliminate slices, hooks, thin and fat shots.
–Plan to hit shorter shots, so that your 3rd shot on every par 4 will chip close to the hole.
-Be more strategic to miss every sand trap and pond on the course.
–Select one club lower in loft so that you can swing at 80% with MORE control.

Stupid Shot Elimination
By Stupid shots I am referring to avoiding those shots that have a 60% chance that they will get your next shot in trouble. It really is easy to hit a chip shot out of a poor lie or to aim a safe shot into the fairway instead of hitting up a tree line or between 2 trees. Hitting 200 yards over a pond is often a poor decision. You can always recall the poor shots that you should never have tried at the end of each round. Why not finish rounds shooting under 90 and enjoy the success of playing smart.

Don’t get frustrated and follow a poor shot with a Stupid Shot. The same thing holds true for putting. Ben Hogan said, “A shot that goes in the cup is pure luck, but a shot to within two feet of the flag is skill”. Be happy with your close misses and make sure that you sink the next putt.

It really is difficult to decide to make a recovery shot where you know that it may cost you a stroke. Unfortunately, a Bad Decision is most likely going to add a lot more strokes to your score. YOU are not a pro. Eliminate stupid shots to keep your score under 90 or even 80. And practice with GOLFSTR+ to eliminate mishits with every club in your bag. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

We all love to watch the Major Golf Tournaments for the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Of the 4 Majors, The Open Championship at Royal Troon is by far the most challenging because of those crazy pot bunkers, wild greens, the spiny gorse bushes, the ocean winds, cold fog & rain and that out of bounds railway track on the 11th hole.

What can we learn from the 2024 event to improve our games? Avoid the major golf courses in Great Britain? They are a challenge for the pros so you just may not enjoy playing there. Playing the forward tees will help but that won’t get you out of trouble.

World Class Golfers Missed the Cut
It is amazing how many top golfers missed the cut at +6. Seeing the names of the rejects will reinforce how hard this course was: Bryson DeChambeau (+9) Rory McIlroy (+11 with only 3 birdies and 10 bogeys or worse after 2 rounds), Tiger Woods (+14), Wyndham Clark (+16). Ernie Els and John Daly each dropped out after their first rounds shooting 82.

Golf Tips
I could not believe how Rory and Tiger both hit a booming slice OB on the #11 railway hole. So many other pros make the same disastrous slice. These are pros and they know how to hit a slice and how NOT to hit a slice especially in a heavy wind. How could this possibly happen? Guess that explains why all golfer have occasional surprising slices.

Could it be nerves? I don’t think so as they were on their eleventh hole.
Could it be the wind? It certainly made the slice worse, but their swing caused the slice.
Swinging hard for distance was the cause: They were both hitting 300+ yard drives so they had to make a 100% swing. Let that be a lesson to all of us. The harder we swing, the easier it is to leave our club face open and pound a screaming slice. [Rory hit a duck hook for his provisional and Tiger hit a beautiful straight recovery shot.]

Don’t get greedy in bunkers, especially pot bunkers. Take your penalty gracefully. Always take enough club to get out of the bunker or even hit out sideways if you don’t feel you can clear the front lip. NOTE: A new PGA rule allows the option to remove a ball plugged in a bunker lip and place it on the line of entry outside of the bunker with a single stroke penalty.

Practice with GOLFSTR+ to improve your straight shots if you plan to take on Royal Troon or any of the other wonderful courses in Britain or Ireland. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

Golf is an impossible game played with clubs that swing in an arc on terrain that is rarely flat, so how can SQUARE create perfection? As it turns out SQUARE is the new buzzword in golf. And that is why it is so difficult to figure out. We all struggle to create an impact with our golf ball in the split second when our club face is exactly square to the ball.

When you watch a high-speed video of a club impacting a golf ball, you can see that the ball is partially flattened during the point of impact. That flat surface controls the direction of your ball. So your swing path on the flattened surface of your ball is the critical factor in creating a square impact on your ball.

Setup Perfection
Ideally you should setup with a perfectly square alignment (shoulders, hips and toes) on a flat surface with no prevailing wind. Your setup position will create straight hits by using a swing that allows you to follow-through in the direction of your club face. Tiger Woods can actually feel the face of his club throughout his swing as if it’s happening in a super slow motion.

You will never hit enough golf balls to duplicate the emotions and feel for your swing that Tiger and so many other professional golfers do. But you can learn to setup with your ball in a proper position and hold your club in a square position to your ball so that you can execute your swing to your identical square setup position with the following adjustments:

• Adding draw or fade spin only requires a slight adjustment for your club face direction but your impact should still be square to your ball.
• Identify the best ball position for your natural swing with each of your clubs. Impact the ball before taking any divot or starting your upswing with your driver (off your leading toe).
• Adjust for wind speed by selecting the correct club to compensate for distance.
• Modify your stance and shoulders to offset the slope of the ground that you are standing on.
• Putting is so much easier if as your slow swing is easier to control to impact your ball squarely on the center line of the face of your putter.
• Choosing the correct target line for each putt is the most critical issue but a SQUARE impact is still the key factor for putting perfection.

Don’t let one hand overpower your swing and cause an early rotation of YOUR SQUARE club face. Build confidence in your swing by practicing these tips with GOLFSTR+ at the driving range. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

Stubbing a chip has got to be the most frustrating shot in golf next to missing a 3 foot putt (the way Rory McIlroy did at the US Open). We cover so much ground with our driver and irons and then waste so many shots when we try to finish our hole with a weak short game. Why is this so difficult? Sort out the right technique and you will save 10 to 18 strokes by hitting more one putt greens on every round.

Choose the Right Club for the Right Job;
Mid to High handicap golfers get frustrated hitting fat chips that often only dribble up to the green, so as an easy fix you may choose a putter to make your short approach shots. Choosing a putter to hit from off the green is the loser’s choice.
a. The grass surface is typically rough so you can’t control the direction with your putter.
b. Your mind is tuned into swinging your putter on the faster putting surface of the green . It’s extremely difficult to change your mental outlook when putting from off the green. You will most likely putt short or well past the hole.

When you are off the green use the right lofted wedge to clear the rugged grass, land on the green and roll to the hole. LEARN to use a wedge by practicing and using the right technique.

When pitching from off the green and especially on an uphill lie, practice for consistent success and to learn the flight and roll out for each of your lofted clubs.

Technique for Pitching Success up to 25 Yards:
At address, center the ball between your feet, position your chest forward of the ball (don’t think weight forward), think chest forward, allow your shaft to tilt forward and lift your club head slightly off the ground. From there, you should feel like you’re making an extended putting stroke.

Practice by keeping your leading wrist flat using GOLFSTR+. Buy one today for 5 more swing fixes at www.GOLFSTR.com

Today I received 2 blogs from amazing golf instructors who made opposite recommendations for your backswing and both claimed that you will get longer drives. As it turned out, they both may be correct, but I will bet that more Weekend Warriors will benefit more from a limited backswing than a longer, faster backswing.

Hank Haney recommends that you will hit your drives longer if you take a longer, faster backswing (even with a bent leading elbow) and a faster downswing. His logic is that your longer backswing will allow you to make a faster downswing. You will gain 2.5 yards for every mile per hour of impact speed. This fact has been proven under test lab conditions with “Iron Byron”, an electronic driver testing machine.

Danny Maude’s blog helped a student gain about 40 yards by limiting his straight leading arm backswing and generating a square clubface hit on the ball for a huge gain in yardage by eliminating a banana slice. The slice was killing his distance. The limited backswing allowed his student to control his drive directly up his target line for a lot more distance.

The problem with a longer faster backswing and downswing is that mid to high handicap golfers who try to swing faster will inevitably swing across the ball causing a horrible slice and send more balls into never-never-land. You will find that you can hit more balls in the fairway and longer than your normal attempts if you swing with a flat wrist, straight arm and a limited backswing (at about 1/3rd of a John Daly swing.)

As your confidence improves you will gain a lot more distance as you increase rotation of your hips and shoulders in your backswing. Then you can increase the speed of your backswing to build in wrist lag at the top and catapult your clubhead in the downswing to add even more speed AND DISTANCE ( as recommended by Hank Haney).

Practice this limited backswing technique with GOLFSTR+ and enjoy controlling longer straighter drives and hitting more fairways. Then you can add more rotation and speed for more distance with your future confident swing. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com