We’ve arrived at day three of total game improvement week. Each day for a week, I’ll be posting a series of tips, drills, advice, and information designed to help every aspect of your game. I want us all to make one final push to get over whatever humps are in the way before the year is out. Don’t forget to e-mail me your favorite tips and drills from any of the different categories for inclusion in the post on day-six. Putting How many times have you missed a three or four foot putt? Probably too many. One of my favorite drills to groove a confident, consistent stroke is the 100-putt drill. This is the one that Phil Mickelson was shown by Jackie Burke Jr. Check back to my earlier post on repetition to read more on the 100-putt drill. Basically, you find a hole on the practice green and ring five or ten balls around it, three feet out. Then start sinking them until you miss. When you miss, start over again from one. The

This is day two of total game improvement week. Each day for a week, I’ll be posting a series of tips, drills, advice, and information designed to help every aspect of your game. I want us all to make one final push to get over whatever humps are in the way before the year is out. Don’t forget to e-mail me your favorite tips and drills from any of the different categories for inclusion in the post on day-six. Putting There are many points of view about how much speed a putt should have when it approaches the hole. Some prefer to be firm, and others prefer to have the putt die at the hole and just turn over and fall in. But what’s really optimal? Dave Pelz has determined through testing that you should give a putt enough pace so that if the hole were covered and the ball couldn’t fall in the cup, that the ball would continue on 17 inches past. Through extensive experimentation, he has found that this speed is optimal

This is day one of total game improvement week. Each day for the next week, I’ll be posting a series of tips, drills, advice, and information designed to help every aspect of your game. I want us all to make one final push to get over whatever humps are in the way before the year is out. Don’t forget to e-mail me your favorite tips and drills from any of the different categories for inclusion in the post on day-six. Let’s get to it. Putting A fun way to work on all sorts of putts in a single session is by playing the “Around the Green” game. It works best on a large practice green with several hole locations. To play, put a ball down next to one of the hole locations and putt to another. From there, putt to another location, then another, as if it were a putting “course”, until you arrive back where you started. Keep track of the total number of strokes for the “course” and be sure to hole every

My golf course sends out a nice little newsletter to members every month. This month, there was a little section called “Myths of Golf”. I thought it would be nice to touch on the myth that was listed in the newsletter (the first one down below) as well as some other ones that came to mind. Golf is no different than anything else. There is always some degree of misinformation out there that spreads through foursomes, grill rooms, across the web and even through printed material like books and magazines. These myths start for a variety of reasons and perpetuate because we don’t always bother to take the time to find out the truth (or don’t realize that there’s a “truth” to bother to find out). I’m going to try and kill some of these right here. Myth: Keep the Left Arm Straight This is the one that was listed in my club newsletter and it’s a big one. I think mostly because there’s a little truth in it, but it’s often misunderstood. Creating maximum

Like Tin Cup says, “perfection is unattainable.” That sure doesn’t keep us from trying. We golfers are a unique breed in that we’ll do almost anything to improve our games. Whether it’s new equipment or the latest swing trainer fad, we follow like lemmings. Unfortunately, to see real improvement in golf, elbow grease is what ultimately gets the job done. Not enough time to spend practicing? Don’t worry too much, because there are lots of simple things you can do to improve your game right away. Here are my top ten. Get a lesson. Yeah, I know, that’s obvious. But it’s going to be the single most important long-term improvement you can make. Get a club fitting. If you buy off the rack, you could be hurting your game. A good club fitter will match length, flex, lie, loft, etc., on your clubs to be able to milk the maximum performance out of your swing. Spend at least one hour per week working on putting, not counting pre-round warm-up (do that too). A par round