At the same time, so many players have trouble chipping effectively.  Put some players just off the green with a perfect lie in the short grass and the results will be somewhere between inconsistent and disastrous.

It almost goes without saying at this point, but I have completely modeled my short game using the techniques outlined in Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible.  This certainly goes for chipping too.  To summarize his chipping technique:

• Stand relatively tall, close to the ball, feet close together, turned about 20 degrees toward the target, with the ball positioned off the back ankle.
• Around 65% of your weight should be on the front foot.
• Grip down a bit with “dead hands”.  Keep the wrists firm and quiet throughout the stroke, but not tense.
• Use a finesse swing with the upper and lower body synchronized.

The setup is quite simple, really, and the stroke is even more simple.

One thing I want to examine a bit is how close we stand to the ball.  Pelz instructs players to “crowd the ball”.  I’ve heard it said that you almost can’t stand too close.

File that away for a moment and consider another part of the technique:  keeping the wrists firm.  One good way to do that is to bow them down toward the ground a bit.  Grip a club and hold it straight out in front of you.  Now bow your wrists down, making the club head move closer to the ground.  Then, simply address the ball with your wrists bowed like that.  Notice how that helps make your wrists a little more firm, making it easier to keep them from breaking side to side during the stroke.

Have you noticed what happens when you address a chip shot standing very close to the ball with the wrists bowed slightly?  If you noticed that it orients the heel of the club off the ground a little, you win a gold star.  That’s another part of Pelz’s technique, and other players and teachers advocate that, as well.

Getting the heel up helps keep from hitting the ball fat.  With a shallow swing, with the heel coming in first, it’s easy to hit the turf first, causing fat contact.

As I worked heavily on my chipping technique this year, I started to perceive that I was hitting the ball off the toe of the club.  Contact felt very dead and in the few cases where I contacted the sweet spot, I could tell the difference.

I started to question whether I had the heel of the club a little too high and whether I was forcing myself to only be able to hit the ball with the toe of the club.

I decided to experiment a bit.

For several weeks, I worked on standing just a tiny bit further away and addressing the ball with the sole of the club flat.  I started to notice better contact with the sweet spot.  Distance control was a little better.  However, I noticed something: I was hitting more chips fat.  I neglected to realize the specific reason for keeping the heel up a little in the first place.

I went back and reviewed the Pelz technique again and gave that method another go.  Almost immediately, I realized something.  Just like with my full swing, this year, my takeaway was faulty.  I was taking it away too far to the inside, instead of straight back and through.  Exactly like with my full swing, I was then experiencing toe-hits.

After a little work on my chipping swing path, I started to make more solid contact. My distance control got better, and I started hitting more quality chips.

I learned a few important things from this experience:

• Chipping is a seemingly simple action, and it is.  But there are many ways to ruin your chances of making solid chips. Learn proper technique and practice it.
• Learning in golf is not a one-time deal. It’s difficult to absorb everything you learn, and it’s easy over time to forget why something is done a certain way. I did this with my flat-sole experiment. On one hand, it was good to prove proper technique to myself. On the other hand, I could have saved myself some time by just referring to my learning materials in the first place to brush up.
• Even after a skill is learned well, it can just as easily be unlearned without attention to technique as time goes on. I grooved a faulty takeaway in my chipping stroke over time, just like I did with my full swing. It’s always good to perform checkups on your golf swing to be sure you’re not evolving your swing in a way that will be harmful later.  Swing faults don’t occur overnight.  It’s not enough to practice a technique until you start hitting the ball well.  Techniques should be re-examined to be sure they are being adhered to over time.

I’m back on track now, but for a while there, my chipping got hairy.  If you’re having trouble, don’t be lulled into complacency because it’s a seemingly simple action.  Re-learn your chosen technique and then be sure to maintain it as time goes on.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Chipping: Simple Yet Tricky

But there are many of us that put in work to improve.  In many cases, it’s a significant amount of work.  That’s great, as well, but it’s painful to see people working so hard, all the while setting themselves back by not practicing effectively.  I’ve been guilty of it myself.

Dave Pelz is a big proponent of (and as far as I know, coined the phrase) “practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent”.  Bad practice will groove bad habits which can take years to erase.

Here are some areas where bad practice habits could hurt your game. I’ve done some of these in the past, so if any seem familiar, you’re not alone.

The Problem of Putt-Putt-Putt

I bet a lot of you are guilty of this one.  Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You grab three balls and head to the practice green.  After finding a putt you’d like to practice with a certain distance and break, you set the three balls down in a line perpendicular to the direction of the hole, maybe 6-12 inches from each other.

You step back, read the putt and then address the first ball.  You make your stroke, taking note of whether you had the speed and line correct.  You then shuffle forward to the second ball, and stroke it toward the hole, trying to adapt to what you learned the first time.  Finally, you repeat with the third ball.

All the while, you never step back and re-read the second and third putts.

Let’s pretend for a moment that the area between your three balls and the hole is perfectly flat and level, which is almost never the case, but let’s say it is.  At a minimum, you’d need to adjust your aim line a few degrees to account for the fact that you moved a little way around the circle around the hole that you’re standing on (think of spokes in a wheel – each successive one points toward the hub, not parallel to the previous one).

To illustrate that better, step forward a yard instead of a few inches, keeping your shoulders parallel to the line you putted along first.  Your second putt would finish a yard to the right of the first one.

Sure, you could shuffle a few degrees to the left as well to account for that, but are you used to aligning yourself that way?

More likely, you’d be playing some break and it wouldn’t be precisely the same for the subsequent putts from a slightly different spot.  This means that to have any chance of making those putts, you’d probably have to make subconscious compensations.  Further, that means in the best case, that you’re really not learning anything on the second and third putts, and in the worst case, you’re learning some compensations that you won’t even realize.

You’d be better of if you dragged the second and third balls over to where you hit the first one from, but you’d be infinitely better off if you go through your entire putting routine for each putt.

This seems all seems incredibly obvious, but I see it regularly.

The Power of Routine

That brings me to the power of the pre-shot routine.  The pre-shot routine, whatever yours is, is not about much more than comfort.

When the pressure is on, whether it’s a putt to win the Masters or overcome a personal scoring barrier, a long carry over a dreaded hazard, or two putts to win your league title, your body won’t comply the same way it does when you’re standing on the driving range or practice green.

Butterflies abound and maybe your hands tremble.

This is where your pre-shot routine demonstrates it’s worth.  At that moment, when you begin your routine, your body and mind fall into a comfort zone where you’re just going to do the things you’ve done a thousand times before.

If you don’t use your pre-shot routine when you practice, however, your comfort zone will be empty.  You might sort of have a routine that you kind of follow, but really it probably changes from shot to shot.  Maybe you even have to consciously think about it.

When that happens, you’ve robbed yourself of that comfort zone.

When I go to hit a shot, this is what I do:

Stand behind the ball looking at my target, envisioning the shot I want to hit.  I walk up and take a couple of practice swings about six inches away from where my stance will be, mimicking how I want to hit the shot.  Step back and then walk up to my ball and face it while still looking at the target.  I start to step forward and take my stance, right foot most of the way in, then left foot, then final adjustment with the right foot.  If I feel like I’m not aimed correctly or the ball isn’t where I want it to be relative to my feet, I shuffle a bit to get to where I need to be.  I waggle, tap the ground with my club a couple of times, move my feet a little, look at the target, look at the ball, waggle, look at the target, look at the ball, and then pull the trigger.

Every.  Single.  Time.

I do this when I practice, with one exception:  I usually skip standing behind the ball and just start at stepping into the ball because it saves a little time.  It’s not optimal, but I find it keeps me in a good rhythm at the range.

As a funny aside, I actually had to address a ball to be able to verbalize my routine for you above.  It’s so automatic that I’m not even consciously aware of all the steps.  On the course, that nearly automatic routine provides a familiar place of comfort when the pressure is on.

If you don’t have a set routine that you follow, I highly recommend that you not only develop one, I recommend that you do it when you practice, as well, so that play feels as much like practice as possible.  If you don’t do it when you practice, you’re depriving yourself of a happy place that you can go when the pressure mounts.

The Rake and Beat

I didn’t come up with that phrase, but it certainly describes many of the players I see in my regular trips to the driving range.  They dump a basket of balls, step up, beat one down range, rake over another one, and repeat until the balls are gone, occasionally pausing to switch clubs.

As we talked about above, it’s important to develop and go through your pre-shot routine so you’re prepared for pressure situations.  But the rake and beat mentality goes way beyond that.

You’ve heard me refer to this as practicing without purpose. The purpose of practice is, well, to practice. That is, to hit shots that will prepare you to play golf well. To do that, it’s very important to make practice conditions as similar as possible to those on the course.

We already talked about the importance of pre-shot routines during practice, but really, there’s much more to mixing up practice a bit.

How many times on the course are you faced with hitting 25 7-irons in a row?  I’m not saying that there’s never a time to hit 25 in a row on the practice tee.  On the contrary, if you’re working on a specific shot or swing technique, you might hit many in a row.

But, if you’re preparing to play or just keeping sharp, then practicing like you play means that sometimes you need to mix it up and do things differently. That means switching up clubs and shot types, because that’s exactly what you’re going to be doing on the course.

There are tons of ways to do this.  Play an imaginary round on the practice tee.  Pretend you’re standing on the first tee and hit the exact shot that would be called for from there.  Pay careful attention to the result and then imagine where you’d be if you had really hit that shot on the course.  Next, play the shot you’d have to play next if you were on the course.  Repeat this all the way through an imaginary 18 holes.

Or, challenge yourself to hit very specific shots to very specific targets.  Pick up a 7-iron and hit a high fade, followed by a low hook, followed by a punch, followed by – you get the point.  Do the same with your driver.  Select random clubs and visualize and hit random shots.  This will help prepare your mind to switch gears on the course since each successive shot is normally very different from the previous one.

Putting it All Together

These are just a few examples of many that show how ineffective practice might harm your game.  In a way, these things are a little more dubious than many kinds of swing flaws, because you may not be having trouble making flush contact with the ball, but maybe you can’t seem to score or you wilt under pressure.

Nonetheless, failing to adopt – and practice with – a pre-shot routine can not only affect your mental game, but it could introduce technical flaws or simply a lack of consistency in address that randomly affects the outcome of shots.

It’s a similar trap with practicing like you play.  If, on the course, you face perfect 7-iron shots from tight, level lies, then you’re golden.  But, if you need to hit a half shot, knock-down, high draw, or controlled fade, are you prepared? If you play these shots on the range, and thoroughly mix up your practice sessions (except maybe when your plan is to work on something very specific), then you probably are. If you typically hit comfortable, vanilla 7-irons for an hour, then you’re probably not ready for the challenges of the course.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Practice Gotchas That Can Hurt Your Game

We often approach it like a chore, instead of looking at it like critical preparation for what we really love to do.  You can see it clearly at the driving range.  Watch as people aimlessly beat balls down range with no target, no desired shot, and no purpose.

We tend to fall into the same trap around the practice green. Watching the U.S. Open last week, there was one shot that set all this off in my mind.

I want to say it was Sunday.  Maybe, maybe not.  Ricky Barnes hit an approach shot and missed the green to the right.  He wasn’t on the collar.  He was in that nasty, horrible, U.S. Open rough that we hope never to see on our own courses. The lie was just awful.

As he was trying to decide on a shot, Johnny Miller remarked that the way to play it was either to play it like a bunker shot or to pick the club up and just sort of drop it on the back of the ball with little or no follow through.  Sure enough, that’s what Barnes’ practice swings were showing.  He executed the shot and had a nice result, given the absolutely awful lie.

The next day, I was at my practice green and noticed that the rough was almost at U.S. Open difficulty, mainly because the crew couldn’t mow it for a while with all the rain we’ve had this month.  Naturally, me being me, I buried some balls in the nasty stuff and started executing the same shot Barnes did.  I tried it with all four of my wedges to different length pins.

I was impressed with how well I did once I knew the secret, but it got me thinking that I might lack the imagination to have tried that on my own.

Even on the practice green, we tend to fall into driving range “rake and beat” mode.  We just throw down a few balls and chip or putt them toward one of the pins with no real purpose.  We chip them off the collar where we have nice lies.  I see some people chipping out of the rough, but not to challenge themselves.  It’s just that they don’t like chipping off of tight lies because they tend to skull or chunk the ball. Hitting out of the rough gives them a bigger margin for error.

The fact is, we practice around the greens to save ourselves strokes.  When we miss approaches, it’s time to shine but we’re not faced with the same vanilla chips and pitches that we practice around the practice green.  The ball sits way down in thick rough or depressions. It might sit way up on fluffy rough. The lies might be bare. We might be faced with a downhill shot two paces off the green hitting to a pin that’s only two paces on. The pin might elevated several feet on a shelf.

I might be shorting myself when I say I might lack the imagination to try the Barnes shot.  After all, I do tend to practice from wacky lies and difficult situtions a lot.  But what is imagination, anyway, when we’re talking about golf?  Is it being able to think up crazy shots?  Or is it knowing the tools in your bag so well that you know which crazy shots are possible?  Is it knowing your tools so well that you know exactly how each will react in a given lie?

I believe imagination in golf is mostly those things.  When we think of imagination, we usually think of Seve Ballesteros.  I’m sure you might have heard how he would impress people by hitting out of greenside bunkers with a 3-iron. Was it is great imagination that let him try a shot like that?  Or did he know his tools so well that it was obvious to him that he could pull it off?

I think we can all do ourselves a favor by forgetting the dull, repetitive chips and pitches once in a while and try out the shots we never thought to try.  Practice the things we’ve seen on the course that cost us strokes in the past.  Practice in situations that we’re never going to see, just to see if our clubs are capable.

Things on the golf course rarely ever work out like we practice them on the driving range or around the practice green, when we spend our time hitting from perfectly flat tees with perfect lies, or we chip and pitch from nice spots.

If we put ourselves in those bad situations in practice, we will be able to handle them better when it counts.  That’s how we develop our creativity.  Strive to never face a shot on the course that you haven’t practiced. Figure out what your tools are capable of in your hands and your creativity will flourish.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Develop Creativity Around the Practice Green

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.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

5 Ways to Stay Sharp When Weather Keeps You Inside

The main problem is, though, that the practice tee (unlike the practice green) is not necessarily comparable to what we’re going to face on the course.  The shot conditions out there are generally different than what we experience on the practice tee.  The key is to be aware of the differences while we’re programming our brains so that we can effectively make the transition.

Lie Quality

Perhaps the biggest difference we face between the practice tee and the course is the quality of the lies we see.  On the practice tee, we hit virtually every shot from a perfect lie.  On the course, perfect lies are a not a given, even in the fairway.  We might find our balls in divots, on bare spots, in rough of varying degrees.

It’s a good idea to try and hit some of these shots on the practice tee, if possible.  If your range permits it, try and hit some from the rough.  Hit some from divots.  Try and get out of the mindset of hitting every shot from perfect conditions.  Obviously, if you’re working on swing changes, you don’t need to create more adversity for yourself by amping up the challenge.  But if you’re out there just beating balls, then working on these things to whatever degree you can will only help you on the course.

Along with quality of the lie of the ball, we should also talk about the quality of your stance.  On most driving range tees, you’re going to have a nice level stance.  On the course, you’re going to have very few.  Knowing the adjustments to make for uphill/downhill lies and side hill lies will help you on the course.  If your driving range has any spots where you can practice these shots, it will be a big help when you face them on the course.

Surface Condition

Most of us hit off synthetic driving range mats at one time or another, especially those of us in places where the weather gets cold and the grass tees need to be closed for the winter.

These mats add a different layer of complexity to the learning process, which is why I will always hit off a grass tee if given the choice.  Logically, I know that I’m not going to be hitting from a synthetic mat on the course, so I like to replicate the types of feel I’m going to get on the course when I’m on the practice tee.

An even bigger problem is, when we hit shots, our brains intuitively learn from the feedback we get from each shot.  We see the trajectory, see the divot (when hitting on grass), feel the contact with the ball, feel the contact of the club with the ground, feel our balance, etc.  When hitting shots off of synthetic mats, we may be getting mixed signals.

If you’re hitting from a grass tee and the club strikes the ground 2 inches behind the ball, it digs in and the ball hardly goes anywhere.  It’s the classic fat shot.  Do the same thing on a range mat, though, and the outcome will be totally different because the club can’t dig into the ground.  More likely, the club head will skip a little and you’ll strike the ball thin or skull it.  You might even salvage a decent shot if you don’t hit so far behind the ball.

This is where you need to learn the feel of a fat shot or thin shot.  You can’t just look at the results and make a change.  If you let it, your brain may try to make the skulled shot correction instead of the fat shot correction that it has filed away from having hit thousands of shots over the years.  Awareness that your hands and eyes tell you that you hit a fat shot, even when the results say something else is something we need to develop to effectively practice, especially from synthetic surfaces.

Wind Conditions

This is something that’s not going to differ from what we face on the course, but when practicing it pays to be very aware of what the wind is doing. We all know there can be a very pronounced effect on the ball and it’s challenging to try and make swing corrections when the wind is magnifying or even nullifying swing tendencies.

For instance, the most unpleasant condition to practice in for me is a stiff breeze coming from the right or left.  This makes it difficult to read the curvature of the ball.  Did a left to right wind turn a big hook into a gentle draw?  Did it turn a gentle fade into a big slice?

We can’t avoid practice when it’s windy (especially for those living in windy places), we just need to learn to expect what kinds of reaction the ball will have and not make unnecessary swing corrections subconsciously to try and straighten the ball out.  The effects of wind from the right or left are fairly obvious.

Wind blowing from the end of the range back at you will both shorten the distance of the shot and magnify the curvature of the ball in every direction.  A fade, slice, draw or hook will be magnified.  A high shot will go higher.  But, a low shot will stay fairly low, which is why it’s the generally accepted method of playing in the wind and why people living in windy places are usually low-ball hitters.

When the wind blows down the target line, it has the opposite effect.  You’ll hit the ball longer, for one.  You’ll also find that the shots that curve probably won’t curve as much.

The key to practicing in the wind is understanding these things so you can read your shot results and not go down the path of correcting something that doesn’t need correcting.  The same goes for lies, stances, and surfaces.  If you gain a full understanding of what your practice conditions are, you’ll be much more effective during practice time, and that means much more success on the course.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Adjusting to Practice Conditions

Nonetheless, I was able to get out for nine holes today for the first time in weeks.  I wouldn’t say I played well, but I did better than I expected.  I’d say my ball striking was much better than I figured it would be, but naturally everything was just a little off.  I wasn’t holing any putts and my short game was imprecise.

I have to keep reminding myself that the weather and course conditions play a part in all that.  In 44-degree weather, I need to remind myself to club up.  When I hit a short drive, I need to remind myself that the fairways are saturated and there’s a 1 or 2 club wind in my face.  The greens are fairly bumpy during this time of year.

I’m still confident that when I’m able to practice with regularity and get in the repetitions that I need, I’ll be making serious progress.  I made a number of swing discoveries (most with the help of my pro) this year that will help me make real improvement in the coming months.

I’m still having good success with choking down on my driver.  I hit one poor drive (the first of the day), and after that, the rest of my drives were respectable and I felt like I was really in control.

One thing I need to be doing is making better use of the winter (and what’s left of the fall) in terms of working out.  I’ve been keeping extraordinarily busy and workout time is suffering.  I need to start organizing my time a little better and make workouts a priority.  This is another downside to winter.  It’s so easy to slip out of the frame of mind of what I’m trying to accomplish, especially when late-fall and winter weather make golf seem so far away.

I’m hoping for some mild weather this winter, but maybe it’s time to think about relocating to a place with more winter golfing opportunities.  To be truthful, I’ve already been thinking about it, so saying it’s time to start thinking about it isn’t really accurate.  I don’t know what the future holds, so stay tuned.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Progress Update: December 14, 2008

Earlier this year, my pro and I identified a big problem at the start of my swing. At the takeaway, my first move was to drastically pull the club around my body way inside the target line. That put me in a poor position at the top with little hope of putting a consistent move on the ball.

Over the summer, up until the time of my unfortunate knee injury we worked on breaking me of that habit.  My pro gave me this drill to help.  It’s great because you can do it literally anywhere and you don’t even need a club.

To begin, assume your address position with a square stance and get completely into your golf posture with your hands hanging naturally.  Position your left hand exactly like you would if you were gripping a club.  Now, take your right hand and grip it around your left wrist.

From there, begin making a normal back swing turn and stop when your left arm is parallel to the ground (and across your chest).  Now, look at your left arm.  It should appear to be oriented along your foot line.  If you bring it too far inside like I was, it will appear to be on a different angle than your foot line.

Do the drill once a day for 25-50 repetitions.  It only takes a few minutes and can be done first thing in the morning, before bed, or during lunch.  My pro recommended that it be done away from the range when not in the mindset of hitting balls. 

Grooving the first part of the takeaway was just what I needed to start hitting solid, consistent shots.  If you have trouble in that area, I think this drill will help you too.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Grooving a Solid Takeaway

When I started this journey, one of my goals was to resume golf lessons. I had taken many in the past, prior to my back trouble a few years ago.

When I made the decision to try and become a pro, I had been reading, learning, and studying everything about how to play better golf. To me, it was a given that I’d engage in this continual learning and take it to the driving range and dig a great swing out of the dirt, like Ben Hogan did.

A year later, I’m still seeing my potential out there on the course, but wild inconsistency has left me floundering.

Finally, I decided that this isn’t something I can do all by myself, so I scheduled a series of lessons with the head professional at my club.

I went in there with a swing that feels foreign to me, a consistent snap hook, consistent off-center contact, and a bushel of frustration. In a half hour, with a single correction to my takeaway, he had me hitting straight, beautiful 7-irons, on-target, down the range.

I could hardly wait to get to the range over the next two weeks and groove this thing of beauty. I knew that while I was working on it, my swing was likely to get worse before it gets better. I was prepared for that.

Actually, I wasn’t as prepared as I thought. In my first full practice session, I was hitting the ball poorly. I started to try and “fix” myself. More weight on the right. Shoulders a little more closed. Stance more square. Posture more upright. And on and on. I mired myself in a geometry puzzle.

Unfortunately, in the two weeks between my first and second lessons, I was under the weather much of that time, but I managed to get in a few range sessions and nothing was improving.

I went in for my second lesson yesterday, dejected to say the least.

Within a few minutes, three minor corrections had me moving in the right direction. First, I was standing a bit far from the ball. Second, I was taking my eye off the ball a little before impact. Finally, I was gripping a bit tight. But those were just small corrections.

The real eye-opening thing came next. That, my friends, is when I discovered the secret of golf.

I was just about back to hitting the ball straight and pure. I just need more practice time to reel my swing back in. I can promise you this: there will be no angles and planes in my next practice session.

What’s the secret? Well, I can tell you that it has nothing to do with planes or angles or anything like that. I guess I can’t keep you in the dark. I’ll reveal the secret of golf on Tuesday. It’s something each of you has heard dozens of times.

Can anyone guess what it is?

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Progress Update: June 29, 2008

There is no question that a player will never reach full potential without the ability to strike the ball consistently on the sweet spot of the club.

No player hits the sweet spot every time, even Tour pros (though, their misses are much smaller and less frequent). Miss the sweet spot by just a little bit and you begin losing distance and accuracy. The more you miss by, the worse the shot result.

Many players can tell when a shot was poorly struck. But where did it miss? Toward the heel? The toe? High on the face? Low on the face?

This is where impact tape comes in. It’s nothing more than a little sticker that you affix to the club face. It is made of paper/ink that is pressure sensitive. When the club face strikes the ball, the tape shows a dark circle, telling you precisely where the ball and club face met.

So how do you use this information?

The player that gets the most benefit from impact tape, in my opinion, is the player that doesn’t even know what a solidly struck shot feels like. There are players out there that have grooved toe or heel hits for so long that those shots feel “normal”. This is especially true with the big, forgiving, modern drivers.

The best solution is to work with a pro to iron out swing issues, but if you find that you tend to hit the ball off center, then the only thing you can do is – stop doing it! It’s as simple as that. If you’re striking the ball on the toe, then set up to the ball and try to hit the ball on the heel while analyzing successive shots with the tape. Tiny differences will feel huge, but eventually you’ll get into the zone and start hitting pure shots.

The things you learn from this exercise pay dividends into the future. When you take the time to study the quality of contact, you’re not just making an immediate correction. You’re learning exactly what a toe-hit feels like. Or a heel hit. Or a thin shot. As you file this information into your brain, you’ll find that when you hit the course, you’ll have a fine tuned awareness as to where you’re tending to miss shots on the club face.

You can’t make minor corrections without knowing which way to correct.

I’m getting near the point now that I can tell how much I missed by feel alone. I still use impact tape occasionally during practice sessions, though, especially at a time like this when I’ve been taking lessons and making swing changes where I’m in the “it gets worse before it gets better” rut. It’s always good to tape up once in a while and make sure your contact with the golf ball is what you think it is.

I’ll share a little secret, too. Impact tape can be kind of expensive, so as a cheap alternative, masking tape works wonders. Just tape up the club face and go at it. You’ll be able to analyze each shot the exact same way.

Impact tape is yet another way to make the most of practice time. Give it a shot and see what you find out.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

The Impact of Impact Tape

• Short Irons – 32%
• Mid Irons – 17%
• Putting – 16%
• Pitching – 12%
• No Practice – 7%
• Long Irons – 5%
• Driving – 5%
• Chipping – 4%
• Trouble Shots – 1%
• Sand Play – 0%

I find the results to be interesting.

There are many possible ways to explain why certain aspects of golf are given more or less practice time. You can make a case that putting should get the most practice time because statistically it’s the most used club in the bag. You could make a case for short irons, pitching, and chipping because getting close enough to the pin to ensure a one-putt is quite desirable.

What surprises me is that anyone spends most of their time practicing drivers or long irons/hybrids. I’d even put mid-irons in that category.

Let’s step back and look at the purpose of practice. There are tons of theories about how to spend practice time. My personal belief is that one statement sums it all up: spend the most practice time on the things that will lower your scores the most. Seems simple, but there are obviously people that may not realize how important certain aspects of golf are. For casual players, practice time can come at a premium, so it makes little sense to spend time practicing anything that will not provide the maximum return on time investment.

Take, for example, the driver. I can’t imagine a situation where a player’s driving is so wretched that it should get the most practice time.

Don’t get me wrong – if it’s going bad, I can understand devoting a session to the driver, or even a few sessions. Remember though, I was asking in general, not for specific cases (in fairness, the poll didn’t really specify that).

If you spend most of your practice time on the driver in general, then the better plan is probably to just leave it in your bag. Long irons are in the same category. If your short game is solid and you slop it around off the tee, you can still score well. On the flip side, if your short game stinks but your driving is great, I promise you, your scoring will be bad.

Without a doubt, short game (finesse wedges, pitching, chipping) and putting should dominate your practice time. But among those categories, which is more important? As I said at the top, I think an argument could be made for either one. However, I’d make the case that while these things should top your practice time, putting is less critical than wedge play.

I’ve discussed Dave Pelz’s Putting and Short Game Bibles at length before, so you may be familiar with the two key concepts: the Golden Eight Feet, and PEI. The idea behind the Golden Eight Feet is that as players are left with putts of more than 6-8 feet, the odds of making them decreases sharply, regardless of skill level. That’s right: you’re not making many 20 footers, but most tour pros aren’t either.

Percent Error Index (PEI) basically is a measurement that Pelz devised to measure the accuracy of finesse wedge shots. Briefly, if you miss a 100 yard shot by seven yards, then you PEI for that shot is 7%. The object of short game practice is to get that PEI as low as possible.

In essence, you work on wedge play for the single purpose of getting shots within the Golden Eight Feet. Outside of that and you’re probably two-putting or worse.

If you’re reasonably adept at making short putts and lag put reasonably well without a ton of three-putts, then the work you put in on the practice green will start to show diminishing returns. But become precise with the wedges, and you’re guaranteed more birdie and par chances and when things are going bad, more par and bogey save opportunities.

That’s why my own response to the poll was “Short Irons”. It seems like a lot of you feel the same way. Statistically speaking, a good number of you disagree. I’d love to hear your ideas about allotting golf practice time.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Allotting Practice Time