Life is full of ups and downs, good and bad, but it wouldn’t be fun any other way.
It is a smart dummy who surrounds himself with good people. This book was taken to the next level by Kevin Cook. Very good people.
To be honest, I’d trust an Octoberfest-addled polka fiend with my beer before trusting McCord with any kind of instructional manual, but this thing is a For Dummies book, so it might just work.
To be a serious for a nanosecond, I must say this book is the best guide for new golfers that the world has ever known. I hope reading the following pages will at least help you correct the most common error in golf, which is taking the game — and more importantly yourself — too seriously. Just remember, you are meant to suck at golf. Anyone who doesn’t is a freak of nature.
Yours with deep reluctance,
David Feherty.
Although my buddies on the PGA Tour will probably read it just to see if I can construct a sentence, I like to think that I have something to offer even the best golfers. The guys I grew up with at San Luis Rey golf course will check out to see whether I’ve used any of their funniest lines.
The best advice I can give you is to take the game slowly, make prudent decisions, and never hit a shot while contemplating other matters. Golf should be played with total concentration and a complete disregard for your ego. Try a monastic existence, at least for the duration of the round.
Determine how thick the grip on your clubs should be. Grips that are too thin encourage too much hand action in your swing; grips that are too thick restrict your hands too much. Generally, the proper-sized grip should allow the middle and ring fingers on your left hand to barely touch the pad of your thumb when you hold the club. If your fingers don’t touch your thumb, the grip is too big; if your fingers dig into the pad, the grip is too thin.
If you have a tendency to slice the ball, you can try smaller grips that help your hands work faster. If you have a tendency to hook the ball, you can use bigger grips that will slow down your hands and help you beat that hook.
Five minutes into every lesson, you’re going to have doubts. The pro will change something in your swing, grip, or stance, and you’ll feel weird. You should feel weird. What you’ve been doing wrong has become ingrained into your method so that it feels comfortable.
Changes rarely work in 5 short minutes. Give them at least a couple of weeks to take effect. More than 2 weeks is too long; go back for another lesson.
Don’t be afraid of sounding stupid. Again, your question won’t be anything the pro hasn’t heard a million times before.
5 areas you can address to help your golf game:
- Balance.
- Control.
- Flexibility.
- Posture.
- Strength.
If you’re deficient in one of these areas, you may develop some bad habits in your swing to compensate.
Golf is all about dealing with adversity. If you can keep your head and make a good swing despite the jerk, you’ll be a tougher, better golfer tomorrow.
The fixed point in your golf swing should be between your collarbones and about 3 inches below them.
Physique and flexibility play a major role in how you swing a golf club. If you’re short, you’ll have a flatter swing — more around your body. If you’re tall, you must either use longer clubs or bend more from the waist address so that your swing is more upright. Most tall players develop upright swings.
Take a tennis ball in your hand and squeeze until it hurts. Repeat this exercise for 5 minutes with each hand. You’ll notice gradual improvement with your wrist and forearm strength, which will help you avoid wrist injury and arm fatigue — and will add yards to your drives.
To build momentum and swing speed, ladies generally rely less on muscle and more on a longer backswing.
The farther your thumb extends down the shaft, the longer your swing. And the opposite is also true. Short thumb means short swing.
In every single one of those rounds, I saw someone misaligned at address. Sometimes that someone was me! Aiming properly is that difficult.
What makes aiming so difficult? Human nature is part of it. Getting sloppy with your aim is easy when your mind is on other things. That’s why discipline is important. Taking the time and trouble to get comfortable and confident in his alignment is one reason Jack Nicklaus was as great as he was.
In golfing terms, getting into the zone means clearing your mind so that your body can do its job. The mind is a powerful asset, but it can hurt you, too. Negative thoughts about where you ball might go are not going to help you make your best swing.
Perhaps the best way is to focus on the rhythm of your swing as opposed to mechanics or possible screw-ups. By rhythm, I don’t mean speed. We’ve seen fast swings and slow swings and a lot in between, and all can have good rhythm.
Waggling is a rehearsal of the crucial opening segment of the backswing.
Waggling can set the tone for the pace of the swing. In other word, if you have a shot, fast swing, make short, fast waggles.
In golf, you don’t want to start from a static position. You need to a running start to build up momentum and to keep your swing from getting off to an abrupt, jerky beginning. Waggling the clubhead eases tension and introduces movement into your setup.
If either tendency gets to severe and develops into a full-blooded slice or hook, you should stop playing. Go get a lesson. Such severe faults tend to be obvious to the trained eye. One session with your local pro should get you back on track.
Greg shifted the plane of his swing a little to the outside on the backswing, and then shifted to the inside on the downswing to achieve his particular curve of the ball, a draw.
Bruce shifted the plane of his swing a little to the inside on the backswing, and then shifted to the outside on the downswing to get his particular curve of the ball, a fade.
If a player’s favored shot is one that bends a great deal in the air, the swing plane is tilted either to the right or to the left to compensate for the ball’s flight. But if you’re trying to hit straight shots, one consistent plane is the way for you.
No other part of golf induces as much heartache and conversation as putting. Many fine strikers of the ball have literally been driven from the sport because they couldn’t finish holes as well as they started them. Why? Because putting messes with your internal organs. Every putt has only 2 possibilities: You either miss it or hole it. Accept that and you won’t have nightmares about the ones that “should” have gone in.
Putting is the most individual part of the game. You can putt — and putt successfully — in myriad ways. You can break all the rules with a putter in your hands as long as the ball goes in the hole.
The answer is way beyond my feeble intellect. Try not to think too deeply about putting.
All you need to know is that MOI putters resist twisting on off-center hits. That means that your bad putts turn out better than they would otherwise. How much better? MOI putter might make a 4ft difference on a 22ft putt.
The putting grip isn’t like the full swing grip. The full-swing grip is more in the fingers, which encourages your wrists to hinge and unhinge. Your putting grip’s purpose is exactly the opposite. You grip the putter more in the palm of your hands to reduce the amount of movement your hands make.
One of the biggest cases of missed putts is the breakdown of the left wrist through impact. When the left wrist bends through impact, the putter blade twists. The twisting causes the ball to wobble off-line, even if you’ve got an MOI putter. That’s why you should maintain the bend of your left wrist from the address position all the way through the stroke.
And the sand tells a tale: Most courses are designed so that water runs past a bunker and not into it. Take that insight into account when you line up a putt.
All of a sudden, every short putt he hit meant something. All short putts counted. And when he got to the golf course and was faced with a short putt, he knew that he had already made 100 of then under a lot of pressure. (A $100 in those days was backed by real gold.)
Bowlers use this same kind of alignment strategy. If you’ve ever bowled, you know about the spots that are a few feet in front of you on the lane.
One of the best ways to develop a touch for the speed at which a putt should roll is to imagine things happening before they really do.
Slow greens break less, so you have to hit the ball harder. That initial burst of speed will keep the ball from breaking as much.
Uphill putts act like slow greens. Your challenge is to figure out how much uphill slope you’re dealing with.
Hagen stood on the 1st tee knowing that he’d probably hit at least 6 terrible shots that day. So when he did hit terrible shots, he didn’t get upset. Hagen simply relied on his superior short game to get him out of trouble. That combination of attitude and dexterity made him a feared match player. His apparent nonchalance and his ability to get up and down “from the garbage” put a lot of pressure on his opponent.
A golfer with a good short game is one who gets “up and down” above 50% of the time.
Although a good short game can erase your mistakes and keep a good round going, many amateurs tend to look down on golfers blessed with a delicate touch around the greens. They hate to lose to someone who beats them with good chipping and putting.
Sure, you can tell who is the better player, but the amateur at least looks competitive.
The gap in quality grows on the approach shots, again on wedge play, and then again on the short game. In fact, the closer the players get to the green, the more obvious the difference in level of play.
Practice, and only practice, makes you better. Try all sorts of clubs for these shots. Sooner or later, you’ll develop a feel for the short game.
Even the best players try to avoid pitch shots. They’re “in-between” shots. You can’t just make your normal, everyday, following. You’re stuck making a half-type swing — which is never easy, especially when you’re under pressure.
Bull trap! If sand play were the easiest aspect of the game, all those articles and books would never be written in the first place. Everyone would be blasting the ball onto the putting surface with nary a care in the world.
Sometimes, aiming for a bunker actually makes sense — on a long, difficult approach shot, for example. The pros know that the “up and down” from sand can actually be easier than from the surrounding (usually long and thick) grass.
Watch your playing companions when they get a little nervous; you can see all sorts of unfortunate events.
The root cause of most faults is your head position. Your cranium’s position relative to the ball as you strike it dictates where the bottom of your swing is. The bottom of your swing is always a spot on the ground relative to where your head is positioned.
In general, slicers use too much body action and not enough hand action in their swings. Golfers who hook have the opposite tendency — too much hand action, not enough body.
The push is a shot that starts right and just keeps going. This shot happens when the body does not rotate through to the left on the downswing, and the arms hopelessly swing to the right, “pushing” the ball in that direction.
Pulls are caused when your shoulders “open” too fast in the downswing. For the proper sequence, your shoulders should remain as close to parallel to the target line as possible at impact.
Choose the direction you’re going and then put your feet, knees, and shoulders on a line parallel to the target line. Be very specific with your alignment.
Ball position can play a major part in poor direction. If the ball is too far forward, it’s easy to push it to the right. If the ball is too far back in your stance, it’s easy to hit pushes and pulls.
In most cases, a short swing comes from too little shoulder turn. Turn your left shoulder over your right foot at the top of your backswing. If you can’t, lift your left heel off the ground until you can.
How can you back up the ball like the pros on the tour?
The more steeply you hit down on the ball and the faster you swing, the more spin you generate. People who play golf for a living hit short irons with a very steep angle of descent into the ball, which creates a lot of spin (along with the extra swing speed a pro generates). We also tend to play 3-piece golf balls with relatively soft covers — balls that spin more than the 2-piece ball most people play.
We also play on grass that’s manicured and very short so that we can get a clean hit with the club off these fairways. All this helps a bunch when you’re trying to spin the ball. The bottom line is that we’re trying to control the distance a ball goes. I don’t care if the ball backs up to get to that distance or rolls forward to get there.
When you try to hit a ball out of long grass, the grass gets between the clubface and the ball. The ball then has no backspin and goes off like a Scud missile, and direction can be a concern. But the real problem is that, with no backspin, the ball can take a longer voyage than you expected. The lack of backspin means less drag occur while the ball is in the air. That’s a concern when you’re trying to hit the ball a certain distance.
Because golf is a game of mistake management, you’re going to get into trouble at least a few times in every round. How you cope with those moments and shots determines your score for the day and, ultimately, your ability to play well. Never forget that even the greatest rounds have moments of crisis.
Adjust your aim when you’re on a slope. Off a downslope or when the ball is below your feet, aim to the left of where you want the ball to finish. Off an upslope or when the ball is above your feet, aim right.
As far as ball position is concerned, play the ball back toward the middle of your stance if you’re on a downhill lie, or forward, of your left big toe, from an uphill lie.
Landing on a divot may cause quiet muttering beneath your breath, but don’t panic. To get the ball out, first set up with the ball farther back in your stance to encourage a steeper attack at impact. Push your hands forward a little, too. You need to feel as if you’re really hitting down on this shot. A quicker cocking of the wrists on the backswing helps, too. I like to swing a little more upright on the backswing with the club (take the arms away from the body going back). This allows a steeper path down to the ball.
Depending on the severity and depth of the divot, take a club with more loft than you would normally use.
If the wind is blowing hard enough to be a nuisance:
- Widen your stance to lower your center of gravity. This automatically makes your swing shorter (for control) because turning your body is more difficult when your feet are set wider apart.
- Swing easier. I always take a less-lofted club than normal and swing easier. This way, I have a better chance of hitting the ball squarely.
You can often tell a good player from his reaction to misfortune. He’ll blame his equipment, the win, a bad yardage, whatever. On the other hand, less-secure golfers take all responsibility for bad shots. Whatever they do is awful. In fact, they really stink at this stupid game. That’s what they tell themselves — usually to the point that it ruins their next shot. And the next. And the next. Whatever they perceive themselves to be, they become.
I recommend that you hit no more than a dozen drives. Getting carried away with this club is easy. And when you go overboard, your swing can get a little quick. Remember: You’re only warming up. Focus on your rhythm and timing — not on the ball.
It’s better to be in a spot where you ca hit the ball cleanly than in a tough spot — even if the clean shot is longer.
How a player reacts to 1st-tee jitters is an individual thing. You just have to get out there and do it and see what happens. Common symptoms: Blurred vision. A desire to get this over and done with as soon as possible. Loss of reason.
The most common mistake, however, is doing everything twice as fast as you normally would. By everything, I mean looking down the fairway, standing up to the ball, swinging.
The association has an esoteric system of “course rating” and something called “slope” to help them compute exactly how many strokes everyone should get. In all my years in golf, I have yet to meet anyone who either understands or can explain how the course rating and slope are computed, so I’m not going to try. Be like everyone else — accept both and go with the flow.
For $50-$100, you can have someone who is used to being screamed at and blamed for everything.
“Limited success” was a nice way of describing my playing career. The tour was a vast, empty wasteland of setbacks and spent money. I was serving out the rest of my sentence with no chance of parole.