Tips for the struggling duffer

Pulled up to the range yesterday. And while I was sitting in my car, finishing up on a phone call, I looked out at a sea of horribly frantic swings. People just completely lost. Swinging out of their shoes just in case they hit it or just mis-hitting the ball with glancing blows, over and over and over. I usually don’t pay much attention to everyone else, but this time I did.

I'm not a swing coach by any stretch, nor am I an expert. I struggle with this game too. But, not on such a basic level. It seems to me that there are a lot of these struggling golfers and they all have similar, very basic issues. These problems could be sorted out in minutes!

So, In the odd chance there is a guy or girl out there reading this who is struggling to just play basic golf, here are some very widely accepted tips to build a decent game around:

1) Feel a good grip: It Should be closer to 90* across the base of your fingers, not up through the middle of your palm!! (Seriously, you have no chance if its up the middle of your palm or close to it.) Feel the gip stay like this (across fingers) throughout the swing.

2) Set up: Comfortable, steady, ready and relaxed. Don’t get robotic and rigid, you are a human. Set up comfortably, let your arms hang and clap your hands together, now tilt your spine to the right a little so your right hand slides down a little lower than your left.

3) FEEL the club's 'sweet spot' SWING back and THROUGH the ball. This one is huge. Focusing on this fixes many issues. The sweet spot is the club head's center of gravity. It’s usually right in the middle of the face. For some drivers and fairway woods, it may feel like it’s about an inch or two behind the middle of the face, inside the club head. Try waggling the club around to see if you can feel it. You want to feel it match up with the ball as you SWING THROUGH. When you do, its a feeling and a sound like no other. The ball flight is so much better. Remember that feeling and seek it repeatedly.

4) The Swing:

ROTATE:

Just rotate your body and club around a steady spine. That’s basically how to execute a golf swing.

CLEAR, POST & PULL:

Clear your left hip back. And Post on your front leg. This is to brace for the next thing:

PULL: Like you and the target are playing tug o war with your club. Even in a little swing, the club will pull you forward down the fairway a little and the centrifugal force disappears You need to pre-open your hips and pre-brace your leg so it wheels around. Picture a baseball player swinging a bat: his weight braced up in front leg, leaning back so the force of the swing whips around him like a wheel. There is a lot of easy speed there.

5) If it’s going right (which it often is):

A) See #1.

B) Feel your left wrist Bowed throughout the entire swing. (get ready to see it go wayyy left, back off on this a bit when it does)

C) Feel the club head roll PAST your hands, a little to the right of your target.

6) Finally, probably the biggest one: chill out!! It’s a game of leisure for god’s sake. You can get pin high distance on just about every par 4 in two strokes with very little skill or effort anyway. Just grab your favorite fairway wood or hybrid and make smooth swings using the sweet spot. Establish the ability to to that first, then work the speed into your swing later.

All in good fun and with good intentions.

I kind of enjoyed putting this together. I came back and fine tuned it it during the day. I really think these would help some people.

What do you think about these? Lets hear what you have to say. Maybe some input from the instructors out there? What would you change, add or remove in this list? Remember, this is not the blueprint for a perfect game. This is just a list of simple things to help all those horrible golfers get out there and swing a little better (Putting and wedge game aside). All of these are written to address common issues that have simple fixes. Especially #1, #3 and # 6.

Geez-I gotta ask op- did you mean the title to be "Ode to our friend" Or do we really owe him something?

The problem is that most kids are raised playing stick and ball sports, i.e. the sports resembling golf the most. 99% of the time, unless it's ice or field hockey, these youngsters are taught incorrectly how to swing. Most are taught by volunteers that were never taught themselves. They use just their arms. The general perception is swing up to get the ball airborne....whether it's on a tee or off the ground. Arm swing back and arm swing through.

No problem right? Wrong. Tilt them over and it all goes down the toilet...try telling them they also need tilt away from the target and all their collective brains explode because all that computes is the fact that the club head will end up in the ground behind the ball because their brains looked at the problem from a different perspective since they were young.

Geez-I gotta ask op- did you mean the title to be "Ode to our friend" Or do we really owe him something?

Thank you.

Geez-I gotta ask op- did you mean the title to be "Ode to our friend" Or do we really owe him something?

 

Thank you.

Yeah, Ode..... I didn’t realize it until after posting. It doesn’t look like I can change it.

Someone reading this Probably wants to give me 6 tips on basic spelling and grammar.

The problem is that most kids are raised playing stick and ball sports, i.e. the sports resembling golf the most. 99% of the time, unless it's ice or field hockey, these youngsters are taught incorrectly how to swing. Most are taught by volunteers that were never taught themselves. They use just their arms. The general perception is swing up to get the ball airborne....whether it's on a tee or off the ground. Arm swing back and arm swing through.

 

No problem right? Wrong. Tilt them over and it all goes down the toilet...try telling them they also need tilt away from the target and all their collective brains explode because all that computes is the fact that the club head will end up in the ground behind the ball because their brains looked at the problem from a different perspective since they were young.

I found this hilarious and completely accurate, learning how to play baseball and hockey first certainly steepened my learning curve.

I had a head start because of not only playing a lot of baseball until I was about 16 I did my fair share of swinging a pick axe digging ditches etc., swinging an axe chopping wood and swinging an 8 pound sledge hammer splitting wood etc.

You don't do any of those things very long and "just use your arms". I bet you look at someone that has chopped down many trees taking one down leaving a short stump there would be a lot of great golf swing components.

Don't get me wrong. Still suck at golf.

I had a head start because of not only playing a lot of baseball until I was about 16 I did my fair share of swinging a pick axe digging ditches etc., swinging an axe chopping wood and swinging an 8 pound sledge hammer splitting wood etc.

 

You don't do any of those things very long and "just use your arms". I bet you look at someone that has chopped down many trees taking one down leaving a short stump there would be a lot of great golf swing components.

 

Don't get me wrong. Still suck at golf.

Haha dont get me wrong, I do too. I agree, It is a lot like squaring an ax up to a tree. Maybe some of the basis of the good golf swing comes from exaustion or weakness (lazyiness in my case). It seems like the younger a kid is when he starts, the more he gets it as an adult. Maybe its because he/she learned with clubs that were so heavy compared to thier little bodies. When I was a kid, I couldnt whip and jerk my dads 8i around with my hands and arms like you see some of the grown ups doing.

I find increasing my right wrist bend to be easier to do than bow my left wrist. Just more intuitive for me.

It is obviously difficult to describe to a virgin of how to make love. Or more difficult yet to have a virgin write a script for a movie love scene.

I despair imagine myself trying to verbally describe in details a good golf swing that I myself believe to convince another person, on top of my belief may be wrong or incomplete and my advice could be more harmful than helping. Having said that, I'd like to contest the OP's suggestion - "Just rotate your body and club around a steady spine. That’s basically how to execute a golf swing." that this is more harmful than helping.

In a proper human 3-d swing, the spine moves substantially, traversing and tilting! Such spine motions add kinetic energy to the club, see Sadlowski's swing for an extreme example of such motions. They are essentially actions in the coronal plane of the addressing torso where as the turning of the torso around the spine is in the transverse plane of the torso. So, a good golf swing is to rock and roll, rocking the spine and rolling the torso around the spine. The gist is the counterbalancing of the mass of the torso against the mass of the club with the arms as linkages, feeling the tension in the arms from the pull and counter pull, of the momentum flowing back and forth between the torso and the club throughout the backswing and downswing. So forget about the steady spine!

I agree with #6.

I am really bad at golf but I walked by this little par 3 course the other day by my house and saw a woman hosel shank the ball like 6 times in a row. In those 6 swings I think she moved the ball all of 8 yards forward... Also also about 8 yards to the right too. I felt bad more than anything... She's out there trying her best and spending her hard earned money on leisure to play a sport she just cannot currently do.

But I'm also baffled those folks even have the mind to walk on a course... at least get a few lessons so you can enjoy yourself a bit. Also it's a bit rude to the people behind you if you end up holding them up because of that.

I find increasing my right wrist bend to be easier to do than bow my left wrist. Just more intuitive for me.

Ahh right! Im a lefty. With righy clubs. A result of having only righty clubs avaiable in the garage as a kid. So I guess that's why I see it that way. I heard somewhere Hogan was lefty too. Might be why he had all those supination of the left wrist ideas. Cup the right wrist is probobly more relevant to the majority of the population.

I tend to have weird and unique ways of talking about the golf swing. Left handed people are often right brian dominant (not sure if that is pseudo science)

I've definitely noticed more and more that I see and feel the swing in a different way than most. For better or worse.

I am really bad at golf but I walked by this little par 3 course the other day by my house and saw a woman hosel shank the ball like 6 times in a row. In those 6 swings I think she moved the ball all of 8 yards forward... Also also about 8 yards to the right too. I felt bad more than anything... She's out there trying her best and spending her hard earned money on leisure to play a sport she just cannot currently do.

 

But I'm also baffled those folks even have the mind to walk on a course... at least get a few lessons so you can enjoy yourself a bit. Also it's a bit rude to the people behind you if you end up holding them up because of that.

The shanks! Had them at the end of walking 18 once. Last hole, it was something like Hosel, hosel, good shot, hosel, good shot, 3 putt! It was pretty baffling. I was seriosuly scared to play again.

But I worked it out on the range. Just tried to step back a litte and hit out of the toe a bit more. Focused on #3 really. Then it all came back.

#3 fixes everything really... Hosel rocket. #3 Hitting it fat. #3 thinning it over the green... #3. Cant hit your 4 iron... #3

if you just use your arms to hit a baseball you will also suck at hitting a baseball.