It’s been raining here in one form or another for the better part of the past week. I did manage to get out to the driving range on Tuesday, but other than that, Mother Nature has foiled me again.
For many of you, it’s tough to find time to play golf, let alone commit time to improving. With family, job, and other obligations, just blocking out four or five hours on the weekend to play is tough enough. It’s even more tough when there are violent thunderstorms or torrential downpours that turn your precious golf time into something else time.
Then, to make matters worse, it can happen for a few weeks in a row. As we all know, golf is a “use it or lose it” skill. Those of us who deal with an off season know that it takes a while to get it back in spring. The last thing you need is to lose it in the summer because of some poorly timed rain.
The first step in all this when your blocked-out practice or play time is rained out, leave at least part of the time slot open. There is a lot that can be done indoors to keep the golf game sharp.
Look in the Mirror
A full-length mirror is one of the best training aids money can buy. It’s perfect for checking swing positions that you can’t see for yourself as you hit shots.
It’s especially useful if you’re working on swing changes. You can use it to see whether the club is on plane, to check the position of your hands, or to check that your weight isn’t shifting improperly. You can inspect virtually any part of your swing. Even if you’re working with a pro, it’s great to help you see whether you’re doing the things you’ve been instructed to do.
Study Up
Rainy weather is the perfect time to find a nice comfortable spot and enjoy some relaxing reading time or even watch an instructional video.
If you’ve been thinking about adopting a certain swing or brushing up on your fundamentals, use that down time to study. Learn the Stack and Tilt, the One Plane Swing, The X-Factor, study Pelz’s short game and putting systems, brush up on the conventional swing. The possibilities are numerous. Learning about the swing, in general, is a great way to help you diagnose problems and make corrections on your own, if you’re not inclined to take lessons.
Swing a Weighted Club
Harvey Penick used to encourage his students to swing a weighted golf club.
It has two benefits. First, it definitely works to strengthen your golf-specific muscles. You can spend a lot of time in the gym trying to isolate golf muscles and strengthen them, but a weighted club does it all at once. You are effectively engaging exactly the muscles needed for the golf swing. Second, it can help your swing mechanics. A weighted club has a tendency to show you when you’re off-plane during the swing. When you’re not on-plane with the weighted club, the weight becomes more difficult to manage and you know right away when you’re on-plane again.
If you have low ceilings and can’t easily swing a club indoors, there are a number of weighted golf trainers that are much shorter than a regular club that you can easily swing indoors.
Work on the Short Game
There’s plenty of work you can do indoors on the short game. Depending on what kind of area you have available to you indoors, you might have to limit yourself to chipping or even just putting, but everyone can work on the putting stroke, at a minimum.
Dave Pelz sells a number of putting training aids, and some can be used indoors on the carpet. I have a Putting Track and I love to use it for a few minutes here and there. A rainy day is perfect to spend a little time grooving a pure in-line square putting stroke using the Putting Track.
If you don’t want to spend the money to get one, you can get a similar effect by assuming your putting stance facing a wall so that the toe end of your putter head is just off the wall. Swing your putter squarely along the baseboard, using it as a guide to help you keep the face square.
If you’re a “screen door” type putter, you’re on your own, but there’s no reason you can’t sharpen your stroke on the carpet, too.
For a little chipping practice, there are a number of indoor-safe balls and little chipping nets you can buy to work on your stroke at home. Those are great for grooving your stroke when you’re sidelined because of weather.
Work Out!
Yes, I know you don’t want to hear that one. I know how hard it is to find time to get to the gym with life being so busy. Well, the rain just freed up five hours of your Saturday, so now you have no excuse. Keeping strong and flexible, and maintaining your endurance will pay dividends on the golf course.
Even if you just devote half an hour to stretching, it will help. It will help a lot more if you devote that half hour several times per week, but hey, it’s a start.
Put it All Together
These are just a few of the things you can do to keep your game sharp when the weather keeps you off the course. I’m sure you can think of more.
But, if you’re suddenly left with five hours open on your schedule because of the weather, you can easily do all these things in that time window. None of this is going to get you on the PGA Tour, but sharpening your game just a little might give you the added boost you need to reach a milestone or to take a few bucks off of your buddies when you get back out to the course.
There’s no better time to start than a rainy day.
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We have had one of the worst starts to spring here. Snow in mid-April pushed back opening date and below seasonal temperatures has kept motivation very low. Can hardly wait for Mother Nature to cheer up.
A mirror is a great tool. You can even get someone to add tape to outline spine angle or shaft plane if you tend to use only one club indoors. Makes monitoring posture and plane easier when using a mirror.
Good luck with the weather, TP, and great tip with the tape on the mirror.
We have had rain here in Oklahoma for what seems like forever (even though its only been a little over a week). However, when you go from playing almost daily to nothing, you need some things you can do to try to stay sharp. This article gave me some things to work on in addition to simply just putting on the carpet. Thanks for the article. It was very enlightening.