For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere in areas where golf is seasonal, we’re coming to the point where the season is winding down. In the northern United States (at least in the east) the beginning of the end really starts when kids get back to school. Then it slows down more and more as the days get shorter and cooler as winter looms. I wanted to have one last game improvement push before the season winds down. Let’s try to drive those handicaps a little further down, look to cross those scoring plateaus, and try to meet any other goals that were set for the season. Here’s how it’s going to work: starting Wednesday, I’m going to do a series of five posts covering every aspect of golf each day. Each post will contain a tip, drill, or some other information to help you (and me) improve in all the following areas: Putting Short Game Recovery Iron Play Driving Sand Play Mental Game Course Management Fitness I’ll break up the posts

I played a practice round yesterday with my brother who hasn’t picked up a club in months and who only plays a couple of times per year. At the end of our round, we were trash talking about golf (like we do about everything) and somehow we ended up with a closest to the pin bet. The bet was to flop the ball to the pin on the 9th hole just off the cart path from the rough. It was about 20 yards, with the green about five or six feet below the ball and the hole cut on the near side. Knowing that I had this one in the bag, I boldly laughed him off and told him to go first. And he proceeded to sink it. You’d be amazed what that does to your mental state. It’s like a fog of despair envelops you. I could hear C3PO in my mind telling me, “The odds of successfully making that shot are 3,720 to 1!” (sorry, but I’m a Star Wars geek). After stopping

Golf is one of those sports that almost anyone can take up and take great enjoyment from. At the same time, while the point of the game is simple, the implementation is extremely complex. It’s easy to pick up a club and whack a ball. But getting it where you want it to go in the fewest strokes is a skill that few ever master. There are plenty of pitfalls for a new player taking up golf. These are eight things that come to mind. Not understanding that to get the ball up in the air with an iron, you need to hit down on it. This is one of the most fundamental techniques to good ball striking. But it’s not intuitive for a beginner to understand that hitting iron shots with a descending blow will get the ball up in the air. Consequently, it’s easy to try to help the ball in the air and end up “scooping”, or trying to hit it on the upswing, causing thin contact (or fat contact depending on

And now for something completely different… One thing that I find interesting outside of golf is personal finance and personal productivity. In my quest to be a pro, I can’t just look to improve my golf game without improving myself overall at the same time. So, I sort of follow a handful of blogs in those categories. In many parts of the blogging world, blog carnivals are run, where every so often a blog hosts and the various blogs in that category submit articles that get linked up in a big “Here’s what’s happening in the world of <whatever>”. I’m mentioning this because a good carnival citizen is encouraged to link back to the carnival when an article is submitted. This week, I submitted my post about 7 Ways to Improve Your Golf Game on a Budget to the 114th Carnival of Personal Finance hosted at The Simple Dollar, an excellent personal finance blog. If you’re interested in personal finance, check it out. It’s always a great collection of posts on the various aspects of

Well all know that the best way to improve your golf game is through hard work. We also know that golf is an expensive hobby (and/or lifestyle, if you prefer). Between the cost of clubs, balls, apparel, accessories, range time, lessons, club fittings, and instructional aids and videos, it’s enough to go broke and that’s before we even step on the course. Many times, players who play only occasionally can’t justify the expense, or simply don’t have the money to do all those things. It can get frustrating to know that you could improve so much if you only had money to throw at the problem. I say that it’s possible to transform your game for under $100, with the real investment being time. Let’s see how: (Affiliate links ahead) Scoring happens from within 100 yards. Forget all the shiny new drivers and hybrids and learn how to score from within 100 yards. For this, I turn to the master. Pick up copies of Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible and Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible. Pelz