If you slice, it’s probably because you’re not closing the clubface fast enough through the hitting zone. To improve your ability to deliver a square clubface (relative to your path), make practice swings with your hands split apart on the grip.
Separating your hands like this makes it easier to square the face through impact and keep the handle pointing at your belly button as the clubhead slings out toward the ball. Make sure to brush the grass aggressively. If you can recreate the feels in the drill on real swings, you’re money.
The key to generating ball speed is creating width in your takeaway. I see a ton of recreational golfers who struggle to create a full turn or rotation. That problem starts during the takeaway. Many golfers just pick up their driver and turn their shoulders. In order to create maximum speed, you have to create maximum width. This is something I work on a lot.
Try taking the club back almost as far as you can, creating that width. Naturally, you body will want to turn with you.
So much of the swing happens at setup, well before you ever hit the ball. This is why the best players in the world are constantly working on setup because they know one small error at address can lead to an off swing.
All great players have a 3:1 tempo.
This means their backswing is 3 times as long as their downswing. Regardless of if your swing speed is fast or slow, your tempo needs to match this 3:1 speed for full shots.
If you need any more motivation about managing your anger on the golf course, use this quote that Tiger Woods told his son. “Son, I don’t care how mad you get. Your head could blow off for all I care, just as long as you’re 100% committed to the next shot. That next shot should be the most important shot in your life. It should be more important than breathing.”
Golf is the only sport where you don’t practice on the course.
The best golf tip is ever is to master your tempo. So many players rush their swing on the way down or on the way back. This throws everything off and makes it difficult to shoot consistently low scores.
Even if your swing isn’t perfect, if your tempo is a consistent 3:1 speed, you will hit the ball in the middle of the club more often than not.
The worst golf tip I’ve heard is “keep your head down.” The truth is, you don’t need to keep your head down. If you keep your head down too long, you actually don’t rotate as much on the downswing and it can lead to all kings of swing issues.
Instead you should think about chest down, not head down. Your head needs to rotate up and through on your downswing to maximize power.
If you want to break 80, work on the short shots twice as much as your long shots. If you have 90 minutes to practice, spend 30 minutes putting, 30 minutes with wedges, and 30 minutes at the range.
Have a plan for every shot. Make sure you have a strategy for each hole.
Under pressure, I do use one simple swing thought: I pick a spot a foot in front of the ball and hit over it — hard. That takes my mind off the outcome of the shot and keeps me in the process.
Grip the club as if you were holding a baby bird. Not so tight that you squeeze the life out of it, but supple enough that bird does not fly away.
Here’s the secret: Gravity creates constant acceleration. If you swing the club downward, it automatically accelerates.
The problem is that most people stop the club when it hits the ball.
Don’t hit at the ball; swing through it. Here’s the fix: As long as your follow through is at least as long as your backswing, you’ll accelerate through the shot.
Many players cast the club at the top of their backswing like a fishing rod, losing their wrist cock before their hands get halfway down. Here’s the secret: Your hands don’t do anything during the golf swing except hold the club. Ben Hogan put it this way: “The hands consciously do nothing but maintain a firm grip on the club.” The key word is consciously. Casting means you’re consciously flinging your wrists. Here’s the fix: Keep your wrists and forearms as relaxed as possible during the swing. Your wrists will cock when you change direction at the top of your swing, and the weight of the club will keep them cocked until your hands get down to waist level.
The golf swing is a smooth pendulum-like movement. It does not contain any jerks or sudden rapid accelerations.
Practice swing. Generally, the golfer focuses on the swing, the rhythm and feeling. Some may watch the club head pass through the field of vision and may feel the whoosh of the club. All the time the focus is on the process.
Hitting the ball. Suddenly the focus is moved. The golfer becomes conscious that the ball is to be hit and most often the maximum distance. This means the outcome has become the focus rather than the process. The golfer has moved ahead of themselves.
Possibly the most common of all golf swing faults, the reverse pivot occurs when the golfer fails to transfer weight from the right to the left side on the downswing. In other words, he hangs back on the right side, giving himself no chance to release the club by rolling over the arms through impact.
Cure: weight shift 2-step drill.
A push slice happens when the clubhead is traveling directly down the target line or slightly inside-to-outside at impact, while the clubface is pointed right of this path. The rightward sidespin causes the curve.
One more bit of encouraging news: With an inside-to-out clubhead path, you’re just a square clubface away from turning your slice into a draw.
A proper golf swing is a complex combination of motions, and slight variations in posture or positioning can make a great deal of difference in how well the ball is hit and how straight it travels. The general goal of a player making a full swing is to propel the clubhead as fast as possible while maintaining a single “plane” of motion of the club and clubhead, to send the clubhead into the ball along the desire path of travel and with the clubhead also pointing that direction.
Many high-handicappers overlook the transition, which causes a rushed downswing. The pause may only be for a split second, but it is critical in allowing your lower body to fire on your downswing.
Shallowing your golf swing essentially means getting your club into a more horizontal position during your downswing. If you have a shallow golf swing, you’ll likely find your ball striking improves due to the angle of attack that you’re taking toward the ball.
Many golfers are too steep during their downswing. The main cause of this is starting the downswing with the upper body instead of the lower body.
As a result, the downswing is rushed, and the angle of attack is inconsistent. Additionally, the lower body is not utilized, which can result in a loss of speed and power.
When taking practice swings, be sure to have a nice easy tempo and emphasize a pause at the top of your swing. This will allow you to fire your hips, generate power, and put your club into a shallower position.
It sounds simple, but anyone who has played the game of golf will tell you that training your mind and body to trust the loft of the club takes some time.
You can play a punch shot with a hybrid in the rough because the clubhead glides through the grass unlike a long iron which gets tangled.
Outside of the rough, a punch shot is easier to play with an iron - like a 3, 4 or 5 iron. It’s easier to keep the ball low with a long iron, but a hybrid is designed to help increase the height of your shot.
When paired with an open clubface, it’s swinging over-the-top and cutting across the ball that causes a big slice. To combat this and to get your swing moving more from in-to-out, Trevino wants you to take the club back along the target line, then letting your arms drop inward.
“Don’t feel like you pull with the left arm alone,” he says. “Swing the club through with both your arms, and keep your head behind the ball.”
A large sweet spot will improve the quality of your misses, but no matter how large the sweet spot is, a miss is still a miss. Any time you miss the exact center of the clubface, you’re going to lose something. That’s why there’s a trend among the best putters away from the large, forgiving putters. When a great pro like Phil Mickelson misses from 10 feet, he wants to know immediately if it was his stroke, a misread or if he missed the center of the clubface.
Research shows that sound has more to do with feel than feel itself. By far it’s the No. 1 source of feedback. I can give you three identical-looking putters with varying face thicknesses so they impart different sounds, and after testing them there’s a 99 percent chance you’ll tell me one of them is clearly the best in terms of feel. If I gave you a set of earplugs, had you hit putts and then asked which was the putter you loved so much, you wouldn’t have a clue.
Even touring pros miss an average of 6 GIRs in a round, making chip shots and other close-in strokes typically made with wedges that much more important.
The range won’t help you when hitting the ball above/below your feet, uphill/downhill slopes.
Distancing out half and 3/4 wedges should be part of any range sessions.
There is no real substitute for lessons with a pro if you want to see the best results in the shortest time as they will be able to spot your faults.
Always make your practice have a purpose. Also when you are practicing you need feedback, either film it or use some props to make sure you know how you have achieved a repeatable outcome rather than just thinking that shot looked nice.
Just never hit another ball on the driving range without aiming the shot at a small target and using your preshot routine. I hope I have emphasized how important this is.
Then I work on hitting types of shots stuff like choking up on clubs to take off distance, opening up club faces for distance control with wedges, putting the ball back of my stance for low shots and also work on fades and cuts.
I used to think that learning how to strike the ball was the main goal of the driving range, but I’ve learned that no matter how well I am striking the ball at the range, very little will transfer over to the course.
When it all boils down to it, you need to just practice with a purpose.
Must-have goals every round:
- No 3 putts.
- No green missed inside 100y.
- No double bogeys.
Practice with pressure.
I try to make my practice session emulate tournament conditions. The goal is to structure range time so it’s as difficult and mentally exhausting as possible, so that when I go play in a tournament it just feels like simple golf.
Approach each shot within 100y of the green as if it were a par-3 hole, aiming to achieve a “par” score.
How to break 80:
- Hit 10 fairways.
- Hit 8 greens.
- No double bogeys.
- 32 putts or less.
- No 3-putts.
- Keep it in play.
No bogeys on par 5s.
No bogeys within 150y.
You can already guess the problem with little lies. They blur the line, and they lead (pretty quickly) to big lies. The worst kind of little lies are the ones who make to yourself. Once you’re willing to lie to yourself, you’re also willing to cheat at golf, and after that, it’s all downhill.
The biggest development was a “par rating” system that assessed the average good score of a scratch golfer on every course, which made the handicap more portable. It also made clear that a player’s handicap was intended to reflect their potential rather than average play.
Changing a habit from cognitive to autonomous is not easy and takes tremendous amount of time and dedication. Doing drills is just scratching the surface. Taking it from practice to the course is another level of deep understanding that varies from player to player. There is no fast track but correct repetitions applied over time helps. Bravery by the player to take it to the course and not get frightened by the attempt to change to improve their golf skill also helps. While in this process it is important to remember that results do not matter. Things that you do every day that lead you in the direction you want to go matter more.
I’m glad I brought this course, this monster, to its knees.
The mark of a great player is in his ability to come back. The great champions have all come back from defeat.
To be consistently effective, you must put a certain distance between yourself and what happens to you on the golf course. This is not indifference, it’s detachment.
Forget your opponents; always play against par.
Correct one fault at a. Concentrate on the one fault you want to overcome.
Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.
Never let up. The more you can win by, the more doubts you put in the other players’ minds the next time out.
Winning is not always the barometer of getting better.
You can always become better.
I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.
There is no king of golf. Never has been, never will be. Golf is the most democratic game on Earth. It punishes and exalts us all with splendid equal opportunity.
As my father taught me, and he drove home that point, he said, “Just remember something. You don’t need to tell anybody how good you are. You show them how good you are.” And he drove that home with me. So I learned early not to brag about how good I was or what I could do but let my game take that away and show them that I could play well enough.
Some players are wonderful hitters of the ball, but they can’t figure out ways to get out of trouble. 80% of the time, there is a way. You just have to know how to look for it.
I putt like I did when I was a kid. When you’re a kid, you’re not scared of anything.
What do I mean by concentration? I mean focusing totally on the business at hand and commanding your body to do exactly what you want it to do.
Why hit a conservative shot? When you miss it, you are in just as much trouble as when you miss a bold one.
It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He’s aware of where he is and what he’s doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.
I probably have a club in my hands 360 days a year.
Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety.
Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.
I don’t believe in luck. Not in golf, anyway. There are good bounces and bad bounces, sure, but the ball is round and so is the hole. If you find yourself in a position where you hope for luck to pull you through, you’re in serious trouble.
Crises are part of life. Everybody has to face them, and it doesn’t make any difference what the crisis is.
Success depends almost entirely on how effectively you learn to manage the game’s 2 ultimate adversaries: the course and yourself.
He had a lot of talent, but didn’t have much dedication, wasn’t organized, didn’t know how to learn, didn’t know how to comprehend what he was doing, didn’t try to learn how to get better.
The best way to cope with trouble is to stay out of it as much as.
Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20% of the time, you’re the best.
In 1979, when I was 39, I had such a bad year, I thought it was all over. Thankfully it wasn’t.
I’ve wanted to design golf courses ever since I was a kid. I suppose it comes from the way I’ve played the game. To find the proper way to play any hole, I’ve always begun by asking myself what the architect has tried to do with it.
Whether it’s pool or Ping Pong, I can’t stand to have my kids beat me. And when they beat me, they just needle the devil out of me. That’s fine. I’d rather have that than let them win a shallow victory.
I learned early in my career, where you get so wrapped up and so excited, that all of a sudden you don’t think. So I worked very hard to keep myself suppressed. And that’s one of the reasons I wasn’t gregarious with the gallery.
You know I need that cockiness, the self-belief, arrogance, swagger, whatever you want to call it, I need that on the golf course to bring the best out of myself.
There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls.
Numerous golfers are guilty of using their legs too much on the backswing and not enough on the downswing. In most cases, this long, out-of-control swing is a result of overusing the lower body on the backswing.
Focus your attention on the outsides of each hip. At address, one side is pointing towards the target and the other is pointing in the exact opposite direction. As the swing begins, you want to slowly move to point your front hip bone down into the ground. It won’t point directly down at your golf ball, but it will be a shift from the original position that was pointing towards the target. You’ll also notice that the back-hip bone moves to point slightly up in the air.
Another way to think about this movement is to imagine the shaft of a golf club running directly through your waist. You want that club to get to the point where it is pointing down into the ground a couple feet in front of your golf ball and into the sky on the other end. This movement will allow you to coil your upper body around your spine, creating torque, which is unleashed on the golf ball for more power.
Seve Ballesteros believes the backswing is about gathering energy. That’s why his motion flows slowly and smoothly, building to an explosive downswing. That’s also why he wants the sensation of pausing at the top, as an end to the process of winding up. But, of course, he never really stops: In fact, when he thinks he’s pausing, his lower body already has begun pulling toward the target.
Rose Zhang:
Eliminate mistakes before you start: I always check my alignment and grip. I want to see my hands matching up with the orientation of the clubface at address. We call it a “neutral-grip position.” That means the palm of my right hand and back of my left hand are facing my target, just like the clubface. When everything is matching, it makes it easier to square things up at impact.
Stay fluid and wide: To take the club back correctly, my lower body stays quiet, and the first few feet of the swing are controlled by a coordinated rotation of my upper body and arms. The mistake is to start back only with your arms. It’s important to maintain width like I do. You want to see the clubface outside my hands at this point in the backswing. Think to yourself, start wide and stay wide.
Get the slack out of your swing: My tendency is to take the club back with my hands too high. These extra movements — the slack — have to be eliminated if you want to put the middle of the clubface on the ball with consistency. Your best chance at hitting the ball solidly is to feel like you’re nice and wound as you reach the top. You should feel comfortable and in control at the top.
Shift, then unwind smoothly: Before I come down into the ball, I want to get most of my weight into my front side. The goal is to rotate around my left leg like it’s a post. As you unwind, try to accelerate smoothly with the club. When I start my downswing, I make sure there’s no rush. If you start down fast from the top, your timing and tempo will be off and you won’t be accelerating as you hit the shot.
Leave some in the tank and strike a pose: As long as it’s a full swing, my tempo and effort are the same whether it’s a wedge or a driver. Another thing to think about is your finish. Players like Tiger and Rory make that a huge emphasis. Why? When you finish in balance, fully unwound, it means you made a good swing regardless of where the ball goes. If you swing at 75%, you’ll find it much easier to do that.