Golf Tips, Lessons and Strategies

Those who don’t actually play golf have trouble calling golfers athletes. They look at some of the finest players, and see that they aren’t exactly in the kind of condition that we associate with great athletic feats. In addition, they rarely have big biceps, or other outward appearances that we would expect. That’s because the golfer uses a different set of muscles.

In golf, the muscles that matter the most live in your abdomen. And not just your stomach muscles, but the muscles in your inner abdomen, once you can’t even see, or even know that you have. In particular, the muscle known a the transverse abdominal muscle, which sits just below your internal oblique muscle. Its job, in a nutshell, is to compress the ribs, and other innards, which in turn, provides stability to your pelvis and spine. A healthy and strong transverse abdominal muscle will provide support and balance to your posture and swing, which is the most critical element of good play. If you cannot trust your body to stay straight on the ball, then your swing has little hope.

Luckily, not only is it an easy muscle to strengthen, it’s also an easy muscle to use in every day life. The abdominal muscles that one normally thinks of, the so-called six-pack abs, are created through crunches, leg raises, or other normal work on the belly. The transverse is exercised simply through deep, controlled body movement called a vacuum stretch, which is very similar to just breathing in. It is a component of the Yoga position the “cat stretch” which can be done on all fours, or standing up.

To perform the stretch, you stand up straight (or on all fours for the Yoga version) and draw your belly button up and in towards the spine. You can do this while reaching overhead, or while holding onto weights. The goal is to increase how far you can draw it in, and the duration you do so. Both of these are measures to determine how strong your muscles are getting, the more you can bring it up and in, and the longer you can hold it, the better range of motion and the better stability the muscles can impart. This is the active method of stretching it. The passive way is to draw in your belly button, and simply tie a string around your abdomen with about ¾ to 1 inch of slack from this position. This will force you to keep the muscles drawn in for long periods of time.

The next time you look at golfers, notice that it’s the muscles you don’t see that are making the difference. Washboard abs, big arms and the like may add some distance to shots, but what really matters in golf is stability. And that comes from much deeper inside.

From an early age, everyone who touches a golf club learns how to putt. Children play mini-golf, or play on the carpet at home, trying to putt a ball into a glass. So why is it that so many people have trouble when they get to the course, and are faced with a simple putt they’ve handled hundreds of times before? I’m talking specifically about those putts inside of 12 feet (4 steps!) away from the hole, with very little break. The kind of putt that if you could do it in your sleep, you’d probably hit it a large percentage of the time. Sadly, we don’t play in our sleep, and our conscious mind gets in the way more often than it should.

Over the past 20 years, there have been lots of ways that golfers, professionals and amateurs alike, have used to try to combat this problem. There’s been the long putter, that comes almost up to your neck, the big headed putter, heavy weight putters, and lots of other pieces of equipment meant to make it so that you can properly focus – or properly trick your mind – into making the putt.

If you aren’t interested in buying new clubs, another strategy you can try is to putt “cross-handed.” That is, instead of having your off-hand (your left hand, if you are right-handed) on the top, you cross them, and have your right-hand on the top, and your left hand on the bottom. This grip is sometimes known as “left-hand low.” Doing this has a couple of advantages, and a couple of disadvantages.

On the plus side, by moving your left hand to the bottom, it has the affect of closing your front shoulder a little. This will prevent you from opening your shoulder too widely when you strike the ball, something that can lead to pulling off the shot, which will give you a mis-hit. Conversely, because your right hand is on the top, you can’t use it to “turn the club over” by rolling your wrists, which is a natural inclination to do, similar to a baseball swing. If you hold the club this way, you just have to concentrate on taking it back, and following through. The position of your hands will prevent you from pulling off, or turning the club, two of the main problems you face on short putts.

On the down side, it takes a lot of practice to get an understanding of how hard you are hitting the ball. Since you don’t hit other clubs this way, it can take some time to figure out speed and distance using this grip. This is why, to start, you should stick with shots of 12 feet or less – the shorter the distance to gauge, the better.

To start this grip, you should do the opposite of what you normally do. First, grip the club with your right hand at the top of the shaft, with the pinky finger either hanging off the top, or right at the top, whichever is more comfortable. With just the right hand, line up the putt keeping the putter the normal distance from your midsection. Once you have that, place your left hand on top of your right, with the left pinky overlapping the right index finger. Make certain your forearms stay in proper proportion, and stay on the shot. If you have the shot lined up, this stance will prevent you from doing anything other than hitting the ball straight. Your arms will work against each other, to keep either from getting out of alignment.

For shorter, straight, putts, this is an ideal way to strike the ball cleanly and straight. Next time out on the course, give it a try, and see what kind of results you get.

One of the pithy golf sayings is “You drive for show, and putt for dough.” That is, while your driving may look pretty, it’s the short game that makes all the difference. A professional golfer, playing a standard par-72 course will only hit 18 shots off the tee, or 25% of his shots. The remaining 75% are approach shots, chips and putts. Your average weekend duffer who shoots 100 will be even more, with over 80% of their shots taken from somewhere other than the tee. So, in order to improve your score, you must focus on the shots you hit most often.

There are lots of errors you can make while chipping, but they basically break down into two kinds, hitting the ball “fat” and hitting it “thin.” Both involve hitting the ball with in the wrong place – or not hitting the ball solidly. When you hit the ball fat, it tends not to go very far, if it goes anywhere at all. This is caused by hitting the ground before the ball, which virtually eliminates any club speed you generated in your swing, and causes you to get so far under the ball that you lose whatever aim you had. When you hit the ball thin, also known as skulling the ball, you take too much care in attempting to strike the ball cleanly, and you hit the top of the ball, causing it to lose whatever loft you intended to put on it, and go much further than you wanted.

The primary cause of these mis-hits is swinging the club you are chipping with at an uneven speed. Often, players, aware of the importance and difficulty of chipping, will take a normal backswing, and then slow down as they approach the ball in order to better guide the club. Ironically, by doing this, the shooter is actually losing the ability to better control his club, as the slowing of the velocity of the swing will throw the shot off balance. In reality, you want to do the opposite. Take a slow, shorter than normal backswing, and accelerate through the ball, just like a normal shot.

Unless you are trying to clear a hazard, like a trap or water, you want the ball to travel less than half the way to the hole in the air, and roll the rest. Your mind is telling you that you have a shot of 100 feet, but in truth, you want to focus on hitting it less than 50, and allowing the ball to do the rest of the work. Taking a normal backswing, or even a swing back to your waist, may be too far. There is little need to hit the ball hard, you just need to get it going.

Watch some of the best in the game, like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Justin Leonard, and see how far back they swing. Watch how the ball comes off their club and approaches the hole, you’ll see that most of it is roll. So shorten your backswing, take a normal stroke, and watch the ball run.

Many people approach golf the same way they approach other sports that have “sticks” like hockey, baseball or tennis. They view the club as an extension of their arm, and therefore, hang on to it as if it were their arm. They squeeze it so hard that their knuckles turn white, and the blood runs out of it. In some sports, this may be correct. In golf, it most certainly isn’t. The easy thing to say is that you should grip the club tight enough to maintain control over it – but no tighter. Easy to say, but hard to explain.

For normal shots, you want to have a medium grip on the club with your top hand, strong enough to maintain full control over the club throughout the entire swing. With your bottom hand, you want to hold on a little bit looser, but not so loose that you risk having the club turn over in your hand during your swing, or worse, that you find yourself re-gripping the club mid-flight. If you hold it too loosely, you may lose your control of the face of the club, causing you not to hit the ball where you intended. However, if you grip it too hard, you’ll lose speed and power on your swing.

Another thing to keep in mind is the effect the tightness of your grip will have on your arms. If you are holding onto the club extra-tightly, then your forearms and shoulders are also clenching more than they should. This is going to lead you to have a swing that’s less fluid and less flexible than you need to hit a quality shot. As long as you can maintain control of the club and the face throughout impact, you are probably holding the club tightly enough.

As with everything in golf, there are exceptions. If you have a shot where you need to bear down, say you are in heavy rough, or in a deep sand trap, then gripping harder might be called for – though it comes at the expense of club speed. If you are in a position where you need to let the ball fly, or you have a wide opening ahead of you, and a small miss is okay, then gripping looser may serve you well, you’ll get better speed, just less control.

“As tightly as you need to, but no tighter” is an easy thing to say, hard thing to do. Out on the course, though, remember you want to maintain a loose enough grip to speed the club through the striking zone, while not losing it on the way through. Unless called for, don’t squeeze too hard.