Today is moving day for me, hopefully for the last time in my life.   My fiancé and I are ending a two-year project of designing and building a new home on a little piece of Earth we purchased just outside of Victoria.  The plan is this will be it til we’re pushing up daisies.

So yesterday I had a couple of the high school golfers helping me pack and move the mess of a garage I seem to always have.  It’s amazing what tinkering with golf clubs, fishing and shooting/reloading shotgun shells will do to fill up a garage.  After a few hours of work we broke for dinner and of course, the conversation went to golf and how their games were shaping up.  Both are low-80s shooters in their junior year.  Their conversation immediately went to who’s the longest hitter on the teams, and how much further they hit the ball than the couple of pretty strong girls in town.

So I asked them this:  “How many boys are there in this town of 70,000, with three high school teams, who can break 80 all the time?”  The answer?  Two at most!   I find that deplorable, actually.  I explained to them that when I was in high school in the late 60s, in a town of 7,000, with a 9-hole golf course, we had ten of us who could break 80 all the time.  I barely made the last spot on the second squad with a scoring average of just over 79!

They seemed impressed and asked how we did that, and so I had to really think about it.   First of all, we didn’t have a driving range, so all of us had a shag bag of balls and we hit them out into #9 fairway from a spot beside the putting green.  Then we had to go pick them up.  So I realized that we spent the bulk of our practice time hitting 7-iron or less, which at that time was about what a 9-iron is today.  And we didn’t hit a ton of drivers because that made the walk to pick all of them up that much longer.

Another aspect of doing that way was that we’d go out with a pitching wedge and our bag after hitting these 100+ shots, drop the bag in the most populated area and then go hit wedge shots back to the bag until all the balls were close enough to pick up.  I’ll bet that made each practice session of 100 full swings produce at least twice that many wedge shots.   Hmmmm.  Maybe there’s something to that.

But what I really realized is that we learned and practiced by playing golf, not hitting golf balls and working on our swings.  That little 9-hole course owned us every afternoon and for the full summer.  It wasn’t unusual to walk and play 36-45 holes of golf on almost every summer day, and we got in at 18 every afternoon after school.  I see these kids today hitting a bag of balls and maybe playing 9 holes.  And they’ll hit as many drivers as they can in that bag of balls.

Maybe that’s why none of them are shooting good numbers, huh?

One of the common tendencies of recreational golfers is to get too quick in their swing pace on their shorter shots.  I watch golfers almost jerk the club back and jab/stab it at the ball when they are trying to execute a short chip or pitch.  I believe this is due largely to the fact that we’ve been fed the advice of “accelerate through the ball” relentlessly by the magazines and videos about putting and the short game.

The other contributor is nervousness.  That makes our muscles tighten up and get “twitchy”, and causes us to speed up all our motions.  It doesn’t happen just in golf.

I’m a big believer that the closer you get to the hole, the slower you should swing the club.  I’ve written about the comparison of a playing a golf hole to painting a house.  The driver is like the sprayer or power roller; it puts down paint powerfully, but not with the utmost of precision.  The approach shot is the cutting in of windows and doors.  You work a little slower to gain precision.  And the short game – chipping, pitching and putting – are the trim brushes.  You work slower still, and with utmost precision to make sure the finished work is perfect.  A bad trim paint job can mess up the best of the other parts.

In my opinion, you almost cannot move the club too slowly in the short game.  This part of scoring requires precision, and all things we try to do precisely require us to slow down a bit.  You want to be precise in just how far back you take the club, so that you can accurately judge distance.  You need to be precise in ball contact so that you can get the right amount of spin you need for the shot at hand.  And you need to be precise in the swing path so that you can get the trajectory you envisioned for the shot you picture in your mind.

So, why not work just a bit slower to give all that precision a chance to happen?

Here’s a great drill session for you.  Go to the practice green with several balls and practice hitting chips and short pitches in s-l-o-w —  m-o-t-i-o-n.  This is harder than it sounds, but do it.  Take the club back very slow, feel a deliberate pause at the end of the backswing/stroke, and then come through the ball very slow . . . almost agonizingly slow.

To do this, you’ll need to keep your right hand (for RH players) more passive on the club than you ever have.  Hold and control the club with your left/lead hand, but hold it lighter than you think possible.  Engage your upper body to control the swing – it’s easier to move the big muscles slowly than the small muscles.  The downswing should feel like you are not doing anything but letting gravity bring the club back to the ball.   As you get the feel of these slow motion swings, experiment with seeing just how s-l-o-w you can hit a shot.  You’ll be surprised.

So, there’s a new tip for you to try.  I’m certain it will improve your contact consistency, distance control and trajectory control.

Let us all know how it works.

I received an email from a reader this morning that presented a good topic for today’s post.  Hayden says he’s a regular reader and has learned a lot from my posts over the years, but there was a specific shot he wanted to learn how to play.

How do I hit a low chip with a lofted wedge which really grabs and stops when it hits the green?  I watch all the pros do this and want to add it to my ‘bag of tricks.’

 Well, Hayden, learning to master this shot will take some time, but when you do it will be a good shot to have in your arsenal.  To me, this is one of three basic short game shots that every golfer must have in order to score around the greens.  The other two are the basic chip or pitch that carries part of the way to the hole and rolls out the rest, and the soft lob shot that has more height and therefore stops quicker.

But today, we’re going to dissect this shot that Hayden mentions.  The goal is to have the ball leave the club with maximum spin and a lower ball flight, hit the green with a nice ‘grab’, grab again on the second and third bounce, then end up with very little roll out.   Here is how I suggest you learn to hit this shot:

1.  This shot is best hit with a wedge of at least 55* of loft, meaning either your sand or lob wedge.
2. Your set-up posture should be with feet close together, and the ball back of center of your stance and weight favoring your left/lead side.  Your body alignment should be open a little bit, and you should have your hands at least half-way down the grip of the club, if not further.  The idea is to “get close to your work.”
3. At set-up, you should have the hands/grip ahead of the ball, but only slightly so that you do not de-loft the club excessively.  Your goal is to copy that relationship of hands ahead of the ball at impact.
4. The backswing is slow and deliberate, and relatively low.  You achieve that by turning the upper body and arms away from the ball together.  The hands will rotate going back to keep as few “moving parts” as possible, but you do not want excessive cocking of the wrists on this shot.
5. Your eyes should be focused on the side of the ball toward the hole to ensure a crisp contact with the ball.
6. On the downswing, I believe the knees move forward just a bit, and the upper torso brings the arms, hands and club back through the ball.  Again, the clubhead has to be the last thing through the impact zone.  Knees, sternum, arms, hands and clubhead . . . in that order.
7. DO NOT GET QUICK.  This shot requires you to work with patience and precision.  Your focus should be acutely on the front edge of the ball so that your club makes contact with the ball first, then the turf.  An “almost lazy” swing pace will deliver the desired results.

So, Hayden, that gives you something to work on this weekend and going forward.  Please report back in to us to let us know if this starts getting you closer to the results you are after with this shot, OK?

If any of the rest of you have specific questions you’d like answered or addressed, please send them to me with the link below.

I was fortunate growing up that I got a very early start on golf, and was mentored, tutored and taught by my father and a wonderful golf professional named Carl “Swede” Gustafson.  In the 1950s, even our little small town 9-hole course had a pro, and he was a wonderful teacher who really focused on the kids.  Later in life, I learned that he had been an assistant under Harvey Penick at Austin Country Club, which explained why so much of what we heard was remarkably similar to what we read in “The Little Red Book”.

As I’ve gone through my adult life, I’ve never hesitated to engage a golf professional when my game was stagnated or retreating, and I couldn’t figure out why.  As studied and knowledgeable as I am about the golf swing, another set of eyes is always helpful, and often just what is needed to fix what’s really broken, instead of messing up what is working.

I am in Houston this week, traveling with our sales rep there, and engaging teaching pros and fitters.  That got me thinking about why the majority of golfers will spend thousands of dollars on new equipment, golf trips, country club dues, cart rentals and green fees . . . but not engage a golf professional to help them improve their results.  Or as I see it, their return on all that investment in golf.

Regardless of your handicap, this game is increasingly more enjoyable if you are constantly improving.  Becoming a better driver and iron player sets up more birdie chances and makes pars come easier.  An improved short game technique drops your scores faster than anything.  And standing over short putts just “knowing” you are likely to make them is a thousand times more fun than shivering and thinking about missing.

So, I wonder, why don’t more golfers take advantage of the 30,000 golf professionals out there whose lives are dedicated to helping us get better?  Why are so many golfers stuck on “a number” with regards to their handicap, and not searching for any and all ways to improve?

I’d like to toss this out for dialog with all of you.  Share your highs and lows of golf instruction experiences and let’s learn from one another, OK?

Who wants to go first?

As the golf season gets underway, many of us have plans to take one or more golf trips, whether a day trip to a course we’ve never played or a full golf vacation to one of the many great destinations that we all have on our “bucket list”.  And when you go to all that trouble to take a golf vacation, you really want to have your game rise to the occasion to enhance the enjoyment.  So today’s post is to offer you some tips on how to get your golf game to be a fun travel companion.

One the biggest impacts on your scoring at a new course is getting the feel of the greens, both for the way they putt and they way they receive chip and pitch shots.  So, get to the course a little earlier than you might normally, and spend more time on and around the putting green or short game practice green.  Hit putts of various distances, maybe even make up a short putting game with your buddies to make it fun.  The same goes for chipping and pitching.  Hit shots of various types into the greens to see how they react.

When you get on the course, the key is to let yourself relax and have a good time.  This is what the trip is all about, right?  Enjoy the scenery and design values of the course.  Take in the experience, so that it can last in your memory banks.  And make sure you have fun!

Now, for some thoughts on how to score a course when you are not familiar with it, here’s my Top 5 thoughts to playing a new course:

1. Choose the right tees.  You don’t have to take it all the way back; be realistic about what set of tees will give you the challenge you want.  If your home course has firm fairways, understand that a softer course will play much longer at the same yardage.  The opposite is true, too, of course.   Don’t make this trip an ordeal because you are playing it from too far back, or a pushover because you are too far up.
2. Hit fairways.  If you have to hit 3-wood or less off the tee on some holes, by all means do so.  You’ll enjoy the course a lot more from the fairway.  If the fairways look more intimidating than your home course, don’t be afraid to throttle back a bit, at least for the first few holes.
3. Get a yardage book.  If the course offers them, spend that few extra dollars to have a “caddie” in your pocket to figure out how to play the holes.  It’s frustrating to hit it through a dogleg, or on the wrong side of the fairway, just because you didn’t know.
4.  Walk when you can.  You’ll get a much better feel for the course if you spend some time on your feet.  If they have a mandatory cart rule, share driving/walking with your buddy.  You’ll enjoy the course much more, and remember the holes more clearly when you are reflecting on your round in the months and years following.
5.  Play it smart.  Strange courses are not the place to try to blast over doglegs and drive short par fours, hit par fives in two, etc.  Give yourself a chance to score by giving visible trouble some room, and not trying to be a hero on every shot.   Middle of fairway, safe side of pin will work everywhere.

So, there you have my thoughts.  Enjoy your golf travels this season.

I want to remind you all that if you have a specific question or topic you’d like me to address in a blog post, please send it in.  There is a link below that will take you right to me, OK?

Today, I’m writing about a question from Philip, who is puzzled about backspin, forward spin, etc. and wrote:

 “I was wondering if you could do a posting on backspin versus forward spin? I find lots of info about putting backspin on wedge shots, but not much about lessening forward spin on mid and short irons.  I’ve been killing my irons lately but too much forward spin is putting off the back of the green.”

First of all, Philip, any golf shot that gets airborne will have some degree of backspin, never forward spin.  The laws of physics would prevent a ball with forward spin from getting off the ground.  The only shot you hit with true forward spin is a putt or a cold topped shot.

That said, golfers put widely varying amounts of backspin on golf shots, due to a number of factors.  What you seem to be struggling with is that your iron shots do not have as much backspin as they could or should, so you are losing control of the ability to stop these shots on the greens with consistency.   Let’s try to fix that.

Shots with short and middle irons should be struck with a slightly descending blow, and hit crisply so that the ball is compressed into the face of the club, and somewhat “pinched” or trapped into the turf at impact.  This optimizes the amount of backspin that can be applied.  Given proper impact, the other major factor affecting the amount of spin is clubhead speed.  Golfers with relatively slow swing speeds do not develop nearly as much spin as stronger players.  But any golfer can learn to hit crisp iron shots with plenty of spin to control their landing.

To improve your ball-striking to get more backspin on your iron shots, here are a couple of tips:

1.  Position the ball back slightly in your stance, more toward the middle of your sternum, so that you can catch the ball more on the downward path of the clubhead, rather than when it is moving parallel to the ground.  At address, your shaft should lean slightly, so that the grip end is a little forward of the clubhead.
2. Watch your clubhead alignment – a hooded clubface at address and impact lessens backspin.
3. To help you make a crisper, cleaner impact, focus your eyes on the forward edge of the ball – the side toward the hole.  This helps ensure that you hit the ball first, then the turf.  Your divots should be starting at a point just beyond where the ball was sitting.

A good way to check the starting point of your divots is to lay a tee on the ground on the opposite side of the ball from you, with the tip pointing at the middle of the ball.  Your divots should start an inch or two forward of that tee.

So, Philip, I hope that clears this up a bit.  In the library of about 500 articles I’ve written in the five years I’ve been doing this column, you’ll find more on this subject.   Spend some time in the archives and learn more.

SCOR Golf at Haggin Oaks, the World's Largest Demo Day

I’m writing this morning from Sacramento, CA, where we are showing SCOR4161 at the renowned Expo at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex.  This is the biggest Demo Day (rather 3 days) in the world, and if any of you are attending, please come by and say “Hi”.  I’ll be on the main stage today at 2:00 with a program I call Short Game Boot Camp.

Demo days are a strange experience for us, as most people are roaming up and down the line, hitting every driver and fairway wood they can, swinging from their heels and seeing if they can find something magical.  Truth is, they probably won’t.  Unless you haven’t bought a driver in five years or so, or just have one that isn’t right for you, the technology is so against the wall that you probably won’t find that new driver that really makes a difference.  But that bomb it mentality seems to get in the way of thinking short and testing wedges.  We’ll do our best to change that, of course.

The point is that recent tour statistics indicate that you just might be looking in the wrong place if what you are after is lower scores.  Which is more satisfying – big drives but a score that stinks, or fairways, greens and consistently lower scores?  If it’s the latter, here are a couple of recent insights into the PGA Tour this year that might be interesting to you.

1.  BOMB & GOUGE.  Ben Curtis was the seventh winner in 2012 to finish below 50^th in driving distance on the week in which he won.  He was 74^th  (269.1 yards) among the 76 who made the 54 hole cut (since more than 78 players made the 36-hole cut, a second cut was made after 54 to reduce the field to low 70 and ties for Sunday).  Nearly 40% of this year’s winners have been in the shorter hitter crowd.  Others were Luke Donald (264.1/75^th at the Transitions), Bill Hass (279.8/66^th at the Northern Trust), Phil Mickelson (272.8/58^th at the AT&T), Kyle Stanley (287.6/70^th at Phoenix), Johnson Wagner (276.4/68th at the Sony Open) and Mark Wilson (279.3/69th at the Humana Challenge).  Something to think about, huh?
2. The Importance of Sticking It Closer.  Luke Donald grabbed the top spot in the World Ranking, but has had a hard time holding on to it this year.  Is that Rory’s remarkable play or his own decline?  Donald ranks 178^th in driving distance, but . . . a year ago, Luke Donald ranked second on TOUR for approach shots inside 125 yards, averaging 15 feet 4 inches and converting birdie or better a TOUR leading 34% of the time from this distance. However, this season, Donald currently ranks 155th on TOUR for approach shots inside 125 yards averaging 21 feet 9 inches converting birdie or better 23% of the time (89th on TOUR) from this distance.

The point of my story today is that all of us have physical limitations when it comes to driving the ball.  You won’t ever approach the 300+ yard average of the bombers like Bubba Watson.  But you can work on the shorter end of the game and be darned formidable as an opponent.  Luke has proven that.

Think about it as you roam the range at the next demo day you attend.

One of the most important . . . and misunderstood and/or overlooked aspects of your golf clubs is the lie angle.  That is the angle of the clubhead and shaft that is built into each club, and it has a huge impact on the quality of contact you will make with the ball, and on the flight path the ball will take as a result.    Getting the right lie angle prescription is one of the major points of dynamic clubfitting.  And the only way it can be done correctly is to do it dynamically . . . hitting actual golf shots with your clubs.

Yes, there are some online and other methods for “fitting” that ask for your height and wrist-to-floor measurement, but that is based on a projected “typical” posture and set-up at address, and the assumption that all golfers swing the same way.  Neither are reliable at all.

The only thing that matters in lie angle fitting is how YOU set up and swing YOUR clubs.  The goal is simple – to make sure that the sole of your clubs interact with the turf properly, where the score-lines and sole of the club are parallel to the ground through impact.  If the lie angle of your clubs is too upright for you, the heel of the club will dig deeper through impact and cause ball flight to go left and lower.  If the lie angle it too flat, the toe will dig through impact and cause the opposite.  But here’s where it becomes tricky, in my opinion.

The trend to dynamic fitting over the past few years has shown (or caused?) a movement to longer and more upright golf clubs.  That’s because the typical recreational golfer makes a swing that delivers an excessively downward path of the clubhead to the ball; he or she engages their upper body too much, their stronger right shoulder and arm too much (right handed players) and they hit “at” the ball, rather than swing through the impact zone.  Dynamic fitting then shows that you “need” clubs that are longer and more upright, when what you really need is to learn a more proper move from the top of the swing through the impact zone.

Now I understand that golfers today are bigger, taller and stronger than the typical golfer of 2-3 decades back.  Few pro golfers then were over 6 feet tall, and now almost all of them are.  So, it stands to reason that clubs have to get longer and more upright, right?  Well, they have, but the typical 6’2” golf professional is playing clubs at a much flatter lie than most of his recreational counterparts of the same size.  On the PGA Tour, length and lie angles are typically shorter and flatter than what we see coming out of the fitting carts for recreational golfers.

A trip to a good fitter . . . . or two or three for second opinions . . . is a great investment in your game.  But you can also “do it yourself” a bit if you’d like.  Simply take your 6-iron and PW out to the range with a small piece of thin plywood or plastic – about 10” wide by 18” long or so.  Put a strip of masking tape on the bottom of each club and hit a few balls off the hard surface.  Then look at the bottom to see where the club’s sole was making impact.  If you haven’t been custom-fitted, you’ll probably see it toward the toe.  This is certainly not a substitute for a good thorough fitting, but you’ll probably learn something about golf clubs and your swing.

The next step is to put new tape on the sole and make swings while TRYING to move that contact toward the middle of the sole or even toward the heel.  Just think how you have to move back and through so that the sole engages the board differently.  And watch what happens to your ball flight as you do that.

I promise you it will be a fun and enlightening experiment.

There’s no question that golfers and golf fans have become enamored with “the long ball”.  Most industry advertising activity is centered around drivers and hitting it further.  Or golf balls that go longer.  Irons lofts are being continuously cranked down to give golfers the impression that this new iron model’s 7-iron is a full club longer than the others.

On television, announcers are continually talking about how far so-and-so hit that drive, or that he’s hitting an 8-iron approach from 175 or some such silly number.  Hitting 5-irons or less to par-fives has become a normal thing on the PGA Tour.  But is all this good for golf?  Or more importantly, your golf?

I’m going to say “no”, actually.  I think the overwhelming focus on “the long ball” is hurting golf participation in general and junior golf in particular.  The tour professionals are hitting the ball miles due to several factors:

1.   The equipment is certainly a factor.  Modern drivers and balls are much more hopped up, but they also get an advantage by the in-depth fitting they get from their sponsor companies, tuning launch angles and spin rates to the “nth” degree.
2. They are bigger, better athletes.  Modern tour pros, with few exceptions, have become gym rats.  They work out like any other modern athlete.  The weight room and personal trainer are in their daily routines.  Through the 1950-70s, the average tour professional was under 6’ tall – today you have a majority of them over that number.  These are big guys and . . .
3. They swing harder.  Today’s tour pro was a junior golf product of the 90s and later, when “the long ball” began to take center stage.  We junior golfers of the 50s and 60s were taught to learn to hit it solid and straight, and told that distance would come with our growth.  Of course, we were learning with cut down persimmon woods and blade irons, so that was the way to learn the game.  The modern tour pro grew up with big metal woods and cavity back irons, and has been taught to hit it hard from the start.

The problem that I’m seeing stems from that last point.  I watch junior golfers of all ages at our club, and they are all totally star-struck on hitting the ball hard.  The youngsters, age 8-12, often don’t even finish holes, they just want to go out to the range or walk a few holes and pound some drivers and hit irons as hard as they can.  The closer they get to the green, the more boring the game gets for them.  To them, hitting it far, not actual scoring, is the goal and fun of golf.  So as they get older and aren’t the longest hitter in their group of buddies, I think they’ll lose interest.   And as they get into competition and get smoked by someone who does score, they get demoralized.

I’ll offer as proof that junior golf is suffering is the situation in my own home town — Victoria, Texas.  When I was in high school, growing up in this area, there were dozens of kids in this and surrounding towns who could break 80 all the time.  In my small high school of 700 students, we had 8-10 who could.

But today, in our town of 60,000. . . three high school golf programs . . . we have ONE kid that can shoot in the 70s consistently.  ONE.  And these kids have access to two private clubs and their driving ranges, practice greens and courses.  Every day.

To me, the focus on the long ball just might be the number one threat to the game.  What do you think?