Posture

I gave two hours tuition to some juniors at the club yesterday and I was reminded of how important posture is in how well you play golf.
You must be balanced when taking your posture. Your weight cannot be too much on the heels and not too much on the toes. A great exercise for helping you to get into the correct posture position is as follows;

1. Take your normal grip on the club with your feet hip width apart for an iron shot.


2. Hold the shaft of the club parallel to the ground with the butt of the club pointing approximately at your belt buckle. Let your arms hang out from your body.


3. From there bend forward keeping your legs straight until the club head touches the ground. When you do it be sure to let your bottom go backwards. Your weight will go on to your heels.


4. Now flex your legs and your weight should move to the balls of your feet.


5. There is a great way for you to check you are in a fairly good position and that is to hang your golf club down from the centre of your shoulder. It should brush your knees when just left hanging straight down. See below. The picture is taken from David Leadbetter's book "The Golf Swing".

Work on your posture. Different shapes and sizes of people will look different, but if you use this exercise you will have a great chance of being in a good position.

Cheers

Maurice

Perfecting pitches

There's a difference between the finish and follow-through positions, and understanding that will make you hit better pitch shots. A pitch swing should end at the follow-through position, defined as the point past impact before either the left elbow or both elbows bend. The finish occurs when the club's through-swing momentum ends naturally.
On most pitches, you shouldn't swing to a finish position because the ball will fly too far. You also cannot decelerate to reduce the distance, because you'll likely hit it fat or thin. But by swinging to the follow-through position, you can still accelerate through impact and regulate distance.

Another great little article by Bobby Clampet. Click here to go to the article.

Have fun working on it.

Cheers

Maurice

Basic Ball Flight Laws

When I teach I concentrate on helping people control the ball. I have a video for you to watch that will help educate you about controlling the ball. The video is with Martin Hall who is rated as one of the world's best instructors. He is also a Golf Machine Authorised Instructor.

There are two major factors you need to be aware of when attempting to control the ball. They are your swing plane or the direction your club travels through the shot and what your club face is doing when you strike the ball. In my experience and you will see on the video that the most destructive problem in the golf swing is the inability to control the club face at impact.

The link will take you to a site where Martin Hall makes contributions. To watch the video you will need to click on the fourth link down from the top of his site. It is called Learn the Ball Flight Laws.

Click here to watch a great little video.

Cheers
Maurice

Making It Too Important

Why do we treat a game as though it is a life or death situation. We get nervous when we do not have anyone's life in our hands. We are just playing a game. You must keep golf in perspective. Realise that when you stand on the first tee that there are more important things if life than that one golf shot you are about to play.

If you are a nervous person then you must focus on your breathing. Learn to belly breathe, think about some good shots you have played in the past and stand up and hit the ball. If it goes down the middle, it goes down the middle. If it goes in the trees, then you find it and hit it again. You won't be struck down then and there for hitting a bad shot. If you hit a great shot, be sure to celebrate the fact. Don't do what a lot of people do after they hit a good shot and say "about time I hit one like that". Say to yourself, "how good was that, that felt great", be sure to feel those emotions of a great shot. If you hit a poor shot always ask yourself. What can I learn from that? Don't do what most people do after a bad and say "you useless git, why did you hit that". If you ask yourself the question about what you have learned, you stand a greater chance of improving. If you talk in a destructive manner all you do is succeed in destroying your enjoyment and your confidence.

• Keep the game in perspective, there are more important things than golf in life.
  
• Learn to belly breathe.
• Celebrate the good.
• Learn from the bad.

Cheers
Maurice

Narrow Your Focus

Something that I would encourage all golfers to do when playing is to narrow down their target area when taking aim. What I mean by this is to not just aim for the fairway or the green. Pick a spot in the distance. For example when standing on the tee, pick out a branch in the distance to aim for. When going for the green, don't just aim at the green, pick a spot behind the green. For example a branch or the corner of a building. If you can go at the pin, aim for the top of the pin or the bottom. Make that target area as small as possible. If you do this you will hit more fairways and more greens.

I don't know about you but, when I am playing well all I see is what I want to do. When I am playing badly all I can see is the trouble. If you get into the habit of only seeing what you want to do you will have more chance of achieving it.

I remember a story about one of my hero's Ben Hogan. It goes something like this. Hogan played a new course and did not know where to go. On this particular tee he asked his caddie, "where do I hit it here". The caddie replied, "at that tree down there". Hogan replied "what part of the tree", the caddie said, "that small branch on the left side of the tree" and Hogan said "what part of the branch".

Narrow that target area down. It works..

Cheers
Maurice

Swing Plane Practice

If you want to be able to produce a great take away in your back swing, then buy yourself a red laser pen. They are fairly cheap being priced at about £5. The exercise I will tell about now will guarantee an on plane start to your golf swing.

• Go into a slightly darkened room.
• Facing the wall take your posture standing about a club length away from the wall.
• Hold the pen as though you are holding it like a club.
• Point the red laser where the wall meets the floor.
• Slowly start your backswing making sure the laser light moves along where the floor meets the wall.
• Only do this for about 3 or 4 feet.
• Keep practicing this and you will have a perfect start to your backswing.
• You will be on plane.

Cheers

Maurice

Swing Plane

We hear so many things about the swing plane. I will attempt to do my best and explain what swing plane is. There are a lot of versions of swing plane. As a Golfing Machine Authorised Instructor I work with geometry.

The definition of being on plane is:

Whichever end of your clubshaft is pointing at the ground it must point at the plane line (target line), when the shaft is parallel to the ground it must be parallel to the plane line (target line). The full length of the clubshaft must be on the plane.

If you are confused by that, do not worry.

Below are some pictures that will make the definition clearer for you.

The dowel in my hand is the clubshaft and the dowel on the ground is the plane line (target line).

The picture above left is me at set up with the base of the shaft pointing at the dowel on the ground which is the plane line (target line).The picture above right shows my clubshaft parallel to the ground and parallel to the dowel on the ground (target line).

In the picture above it is half way back. Again you can see the clubshaft pointing at the plane line (target line). This is on an angled or inclined plane.

Again the picture on the left has the clubshaft parallel to the plane line (target line) and the picture on the right shows the clubshaft pointing at the plane line (target line).

You must have the correct information to improve your golf!

This information I have given you concerning plane is not anyone's opinion. It is the law of geometry!

Please be aware there are some companies advertising very expensive swing plane machines. In my view these machine are geometrically flawed and they do not adhere to the principles above. BEWARE!