Golf Tips

open your mind!

Having the best equipment, playing on a top course, or having endless knowledge about the golf swing will never yield success in the game if the golfer doesn’t know how to use their mind on the course. Things like anxiety, emotional reactions and distractions can all cripple a golfer’s ability and keep them from success. Overcoming these obstacles is the key to lower scores, and the only way to do that is to “clear your mind.” To improve, you have to keep your mind “open” to new techniques and instruction. It has often been said that a beginning golfer tends to be more open minded to instruction than an expert golfer, who tends to view instruction with a skeptical and closed mind. A great many golfers come to a lesson with so many…

release your head: posting up

I often hear one player on a range telling his or her pal to keep your head down. It seems to be the amateur fix-all battle cry. This is not only incorrect but also damaging to any player hoping to create longer, straighter golf shots. When you see a boxer throw a punch, you don’t see them stay on their back foot while their head hangs back. When a world-class tennis player rockets a serve at 100+ mph, they don’t finish on their trail foot with their head falling backward! Great racket, bat and club motions employ a concept called weight transfer or pressure transfer. These athletes move into the impact area because they want to create a powerful strike. Same thing goes for your golf swing. If you don’t learn to…

zen golf and good breathing

Breathing is something we do naturally without even thinking about it. But it is very important to the way we play golf, especially when we are dealing with anxiety or pressure during our golf game. And in these challenging times, being able to use our breathing to reduce stress off the golf course as well is an extra bonus. To illustrate the way breathing and tension relate to each other, here is an exercise in two parts. For the first part, take your golf stance and close your eyes. For a few seconds, think of a situation that you are afraid of or that causes you anxiety when you anticipate dealing with it, like a tee shot with a long carry over water. Now check on your breathing—is it deep and…

fairway woods: 3 different shots

I felt this tip on utilizing fairway woods was worth sharing, so I put together three shots golfers might face in their round. Hitting On The Fairway Certainly one of the most frustrating things in golf is to hit a well-struck drive only to top your second shot 50 yards down the fairway with your wood. So let’s tackle this scenario first. Common faults: • Improper set-up• Poor ball position• Sweeping like a tee shot The fix: • Set up with your weight balanced evenly between both feet.• Position the ball just opposite the logo on your shirt.• Use a neutral hand position that is even with the ball; don't forward press.• Choke down on the club slightly, which helps control the shot.• Unlike in a tee shot, you swing down and through the ball to…

the 3 most used clubs

During my early 30s, my heart was led by an unfulfilled childhood dream to play on the PGA TOUR, while my head was stuck in the reality of paying the bills as a full-time PGA teaching professional. As time would tell, reality and responsibility of paying the bills prevailed, and I reluctantly put my playing dreams aside. Although my dreams did not come to fruition, I got to meet and talk to many of the greatest players in the world and watch how they honed their skills while I was teaching at the Grand Cypress Academy of Golf in Orlando, Florida. One of these players was Dicky Pride, who won the 1994 FedEx St. Jude Classic. I remember one conversation as we were both escaping the Florida heat standing at the…

weedon's way

Back in 2014, London golf pro Reeves Weedon was watching a television interview in which Jack Nicklaus gave his thoughts about the modern golf swing. The Golden Bear, one of the game’s longest hitters, lamented that rhythm had been sacrificed in the quest for power and, in doing so, swings such as the X-Factor had created a generation of players, including Tiger Woods, who were prone to back injuries. “A lot of the swings are far more violent at the ball,” he observed. “The game is far more an upper-body game today, and we used to play more from the ground up. I only had one operation when I played, and that was for a knee injury I got playing tennis.” Weedon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d been working on a…