Some of my swing problems come from the fact that I don’t get to a full finish in in the follow through, like you might see players on TV doing. Intuitively, you might be wondering why the finish is important. After all, once the ball is struck nothing else you do matters, right? Wrong.

The golf swing is a complex system that involves your body, a golf club, and a golf ball. How you perform is directly related to your flexibility, stability, strength, and technique. If any of these areas is deficient, your swing will be deficient. Mistakes trickle down into subsequent segments of the swing. Problems in the finish indicate that something probably went wrong prior to that.

To achieve maximum power, the club head needs to be accelerating when it meets the ball. If you’re not achieving a full finish, then chances are that you haven’t built up as much club head speed as you might have otherwise. That or you’re bleeding off stored power as your body resists that speed, knowing that it can’t achieve that full finish position. It’s important for the chest to stay ahead of the hands through impact, or you’ll end up in the chicken wing position after having hit a weak shot. If you’re not doing that, then that means you’re not achieving maximum club head speed because your hips are probably lagging behind.

If things are going right, then a nice finish position is simply a side effect of doing things correctly as opposed to something you have to consciously accomplish. The power you’ve generated through rotation of your hips, torso, and shouders pulls you around and puts you into that complete finish.

To achieve a full finish you need to have the flexibility and stability to get most of your weight on your left side as you come through the ball. Your hip turn leads the way through impact. You finish with your hands over your left shoulder (for a right hander) and your belt buckle and right knee facing the target (or even facing a little left of the target). If you have trouble getting to this position and staying there, it’s a sign of a lack of flexibility and/or stability.

In my own case, I’ve identified several deficiencies in my flexibility and stability that I’m targeting with stretches and strengthening exercises:

• Hip flexibility/rotation - I have no trouble with my back swing, but I have a lot of trouble achieving that finish position. My left foot normally spins out, when it should be mostly in the same position it was at impact with my body turning around it. That means my hip flexibility is a problem.
• Lack of stability in my ankles - This is a serious problem for me. It keeps me from keeping that finish pose after a good swing. I tend to fall out and lose my balance because my strength and stability lacks.
• Lack of flexibility in my lower back - I’ve lost some range of motion and it’s keeping me from making a full finish and really getting my belt buckle facing the target.

If you don’t get into a good finish position, it might be something you can practice on the range and improve easily. If you can’t get into that good finish position at all or can’t maintain it, you’re probably like me and you have some physical limitations that you should be targeting with stretches and exercises. I’ve talked about it before, and I can’t hype it enough: check out the Titleist Performance Institute website for lots of information on evaluating problems with your mobility and strength as well as an extensive exercise library with exercises that target virtually every part of the body. If you target these problem areas and develop an overall fitness routine, you will not regret it.

Doing a pre-round warmup is important for shooting better scores and preventing injuries. This is something I need to get better at. Too often, it’s tempting to just check in at the pro shop and head right to the first tee. To perform optimally, we need to prepare our minds and bodies for the rigors of the game.

Physical Warm up

Getting the blood flowing and stretching out the muscles gets us loose and prepared to swing the golf club at peak speed and efficiency. This equates to power and consistency right off the bat. If we don’t stretch prior to the first tee, then it can take several holes to loosen up and get into a good swing groove. Trying to jump right into full swings also increases the chance for injury in muscles, tendons, and ligaments that are cold and tight. This can result in sprains, strains, and tears.

At the very minimum, it’s good to hit some balls at the range before teeing off. Start with some half wedges, focusing on slow, steady swings. As you loosen up, gradually increase the intensity and swing length until you’re making full swings. Try to hit a couple of balls with each club, progressing from wedge through driver.

Ideally, it’s also good to do some stretching exercises prior to that. Here’s a good pre-round yoga-based stretching routine that should only take a few minutes to do and will help to make sure that the major muscle groups are nice and warm before teeing off.

Mental Warm up

The mental warm up is just as important to the physical warm up for shooting better scores. A good way to start is by putting on the practice green for a bit. The point is to get a feel for the speed of the greens and to dial in your stroke. Make some longer lag putts. Then, try and build some confidence and fine tune your stroke by putting some three-footers.

Hitting some balls doubles as mental warm up as well as physical warm up. The idea is to put together some solid shots. Get a feel for where the ball is on the club face and try to make sure you’re catching the sweet spot. Do some fades and draws to get a feel for them. Get an overall feel for where your swing is and what your tendencies are. That’s the point where you should be putting together your course management plan. If you’ve been slicing the ball, it’s not time to work out the slice, it’s time to plan your round to make it work for you. Finish up with several shots with the club you’ll be hitting on the first tee to build a little confidence with it.

Next time you head out to the course, try and get there half an hour early (at least) and get yourself mentally and physically prepared. You’ll shoot better scores. It’s something that I’ve noticed in my own game and as I said at the top, it’s something I need to get better at. Give it a try with me.

I saw a great tip on an recent episode of Playing Lessons With the Pros on the Golf Channel. I want to say it was the Craig Stadler episode, but don’t hold me to that.

It was a great technique for getting out of thick green-side rough. Often, if you try to make a normal pitch or chip shot in that situation, the club head can get hung up and any number of things can happen, including the possibility of hitting it fat or thin, skulling it, or flubbing it a few yards. The rough will tend to grab the hosel and turn the face closed causing problems with shot trajectory, direction, and distance.

What you can do in that situation is use a sand wedge and open the face and play it sort of like a little splash shot out of the sand. When you lay the face open a bit, the bounce of the club gets the leading edge moving through the grass better with less chance of the rough grabbing the hosel and shutting the face down. There’s also less chance of the club just digging into the rough and staying there.

As you swing through the ball, resist letting the face close as you would for a normal shot. Keep the face open through impact, like you would for a sand shot. Remember to aim a little left to compensate for the open club face, and prepare for the shot to splash out and run more than it would from the fairway at the same distance, due to the lessened spin.

Above all, be sure to take several practice swings in similar rough near your ball to get a good idea of how the shot is going to feel as the club passes through the rough.

The SkyCaddie SG4 is the latest generation of GPS-enabled golf range devices produced by SkyGolf.

I’ve had my eye on the SkyCaddie for a few years since I saw an earlier generation model featured on an infomercial on the Golf Channel. Today, I finally went ahead and bought one and gave it a 9-hole test run this afternoon.

Features

• The SkyCaddie uses GPS satellites to give accurate yardages to the green from anywhere on the course.
• There are thousands of pre-mapped courses that can be downloaded (with a paid subscription) to the unit by connecting it to a PC with the supplied USB cable. On each hole, you can get yardages to front, middle, and back of the green from anywhere.
• Yardages continually update as you move around each hole.
• Measure the distance of any shot by pressing two buttons prior to the shot and then one button when you arrive at the ball.
• IntelliGreen feature shows an outline of each green with an arrow indicating your angle of approach.
• Cursor can be moved around the IntelliGreen display indicating the yardage from where you are to any pin placement on the green.
• Courses not available for download can be manually entered. The process is simple and takes just a few seconds on each green.
• Courses in the SkyCaddie database that are “Four Star” were professionally mapped and have additional yardages to targets like hazards including the distance to clear. It can show lay-up yardages, trees, mounds, and other course features. Also, the SG4 tells you the distance left to the green from these targets.
• Courses that haven’t been professionally mapped can be shared with others online through the SkyCaddie course database.

Conclusions

After one round, I’m absolutely thrilled with the SkyCaddie SG4. I’ve had my eye on one for a long time, and I wasn’t disappointed. Since one of my goals is meticulous stat keeping, I’ve been struggling trying to document my shot lengths for each club manually, and now the SkyCaddie comes along and does it without any trouble whatsoever. I’m also thrilled that I don’t need to wander around looking for sprinkler heads to get approximate yardages anymore. The actual SkyCaddie unit itself feels well-made, but obviously I haven’t had it long enough to comment on it’s durability. After I give it 6 months of heavy use, I’ll post a follow-up. But right now, it’s a thumbs up.

The Good

• Accurate yardages from anywhere, so far as I can tell. None of the yardages the unit gave me seemed off. But I intend to do some cross checking with my laser range finder next time out, and will report back if there are any discrepancies.
• The added target information on the “Four Star” courses is great. Even without that, though, the yardages to front, middle, and back of each green plus the ability to measure shot distances is a huge benefit.
• If you don’t want to pay for a subscription to be able to download course information from the online database, you can manually add your own custom courses
• Getting up and running out of the box was a breeze. I had no problems whatsoever. The unit is extremely easy to use. After playing around for a bit at home and after playing a few holes on the course, I was pretty familiar with most, if not all the features.
• Yardages continually update so when you need a distance, you get it instantly. I was a little worried that getting readings would take a few seconds each time, but it turned out that wasn’t the case at all. I was even wearing it clipped to my belt a little to the right of my buckle with my shirt over top of it and when I unclipped it to get a reading, there was no loss of communication at all and the yardages were instantly waiting for me.
• The unit is a very manageable size. It’s got no protruding antenna like it’s predecessors. The unit measures 4.7″ x 2.2″ x 1.3″ (about the size of one of the modern cell phones with all the e-mail and other capability, though maybe not quite so wide).

The Bad

• The price is steep. I paid $349.99. That’s pretty high, and for many people it would be hard to justify that price. I was in that boat myself, which is why I’ve been coveting it for two or three years. But I came into a few extra bucks recently, and given my overall golf goals, it seems like a good investment.
• There is a subscription fee. While it isn’t required, not subscribing deprives you of some nice features. For instance, you wouldn’t be able to download any course information from the web. You’d be forced to map out your own courses (minus the IntelliGreen capability). Aside from that you can use it to measure shot distance, but that would be about it.
• There are three tiers of membership. The lowest tier includes only courses in your state (for people in the U.S.). The middle tier includes courses all over the U.S. and the upper tier includes courses all over the world. I’m not sure how it’s delineated for people in other countries. Also, the tiered memberships vary in the number of user-defined coursed that can be stored online in the “SkyVault”. I chose the lowest tier membership because I typically play in New Jersey. That was $29.95 per year. The middle and upper tier memberships are $49.95 and $59.95, respectively.

So far, I have to say that the good definitely outweighs the bad. If you’re a serious player who relies on yardages but is sick of having to hunt down sprinklers and then pace off to your ball, then you’ll love this thing. The cost is the only real down side that I can see so far. If that’s not an issue for you, then I’d say definitely give it a try.

Most people know that the teeing ground consists of a rectangle whose width is defined by the two tee markers and whose depth is defined by two club lengths back from the markers. Too often, I see people just going right to the center of the tee markers and hitting their drive without consideration for their typical shot shape and to the shape of the shot they intend to hit on that hole.

One of my favorite course management tips: tee up your ball after careful consideration of the shot you’re about to hit.

For example, assume your typical shot is a slice. If you tee up the ball on the right side of the tee (close to the right marker) and aim for the left side of the fairway, you have a lot more room for the shape of the shot you typically play. If it does what you expect, you’ll be in the middle of the fairway. If it unexpectedly goes dead straight, then you’re on the left side of the fairway. And if it slices more than usual, then you’re on the right side of the fairway.

The same is true if your normal shot is a hook. You’d tee it up on the left side and aim for the right side of the fairway.

Now take all that one step further, and use that knowledge to set you up in the best position for your second shot. If the front-right of the green is guarded by a pond, then you want to try and get your ball into the left side of the fairway so you have a look at the green with little or no water to worry about.

One important note: when trying to plan ahead, don’t hit a shot where you end up in trouble if you strike it perfectly, even if that’s a rare occurrence. Using the example of the slicer, if you want to end up in the left side of a fairway that’s guarded on the left by a water hazard, don’t tee up on the right side of the markers and aim out into the water, expecting it to come back to the left side of the fairway. You’ll be penalizing yourself for hitting a good, straight shot.

Next time you’re playing, consider your typical ball flight and pay close attention to where you choose to tee the ball, and you might just save a few strokes.