Posts tagged "Golf Handicaps"

Making Practice Pay Off

No matter how much athletic ability or natural talent you have, you still have to practice to become good. Practicing fine-tunes your skills, develops consistency, and builds confidence. It also improves your balance, rhythm, and timing. Look at VJ Singh. One of the world’s best golfers, he practices tirelessly. Many on the tour consider him its iron- man. If you’re serious about reducing your golf handicap, you’ll practice hard, too.

But practicing has its challenges. Time is one. Productivity is another. Boredom is a third. Then there’s the challenge of taking what you practice to the course. It’s not uncommon to hear students taking golf lessons complain of being unable to transfer what they do in practice to the course. That’s a major challenge. You must overcome its challenges to make practice pay off. Below are some golf tips on how to do that.

Planning Is A Key

Most of us are extremely busy. Between our jobs and our families, there’s not much time to practice. To make practice pay off big time, we must get the most from each session. The best way of doing that is to plan your practices. Planning focuses your efforts and directs your activities. Both are key when time is a factor. Your plan doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact, it can be quite simple. Just make sure you have one.

Also, make sure plan should include objectives for each session. Quantifiable objectives work best. Try to make them course related as well, like cutting down putts per round. And make sure your plan addresses your weaknesses. We all like hitting bombs in practice. But if you hit your irons poorly, you must spend time practicing them, too. Finally, balance your sessions as much as you can, but plan to spend more time on your short game than anything else. Improving it drives down golf handicaps quickly.

Make Practice Fun

Overcoming boredom is among the biggest challenges in practice. It’s a drag doing the same drills over and over again, no matter how effective they are. Vary your practice sessions as much as you possible. Have three or four drills to improve putting and switch off between them every couple of sessions. Also, try working on different aspects of your game at different sessions. Work one session on your short game. Work the next session on your iron play. Change it up. Keep your mind engaged.

Another way to alleviate boredom is by playing games with yourself or with someone else. Use your imagination to invent games. Challenge your foursome your foursome for a drink or just for bragging rights to a putting contest. Better yet, challenge yourself to beat yourself. Tell yourself you’re going to hit five shots to the red flag. Then see how many you hit. Keep track of how many times you do it. Do this over a few months, and then see what your average is.

Work on Realistic Situations

One of the biggest challenges in practicing is translating what you work on to the course. Many golfers complain that they do well in practice, but when it comes to real-life, they fail to make the transition. One way to do that is to practice on grass whenever you can. It’s nice to hit off the mats at the practice range, but it’s not the same as hitting on grass. Hitting on grass also lets you check your divots, which can tell you a lot about how you’re hitting the ball. And practice the way you play. Practice a wedge shot, and then follow it up with a putt, just like you’d do on the course.

Also, work in some realistic game situations in practice sessions. Try chipping over a wading pool in your bag to practice hitting over an obstacle on the course. Vijay Singh hits half his practice shots under game conditions. First, he hits a couple of balls with each club. Then he places himself in a key situation and practices executing the right shot. The more of “realistic” drills you program into your practice sessions, the easier it is to make the transition to the course.

You have to practice to improve your game and develop consistency. But practicing has its challenges—like boredom and time limitations. Learn to dispel these challenges and you’ll make your practice sessions really pay off. That in turn will help you cut your golf handicap down to single digits.

Jack Moorehouse
http://www.articlesbase.com/golf-articles/making-practice-pay-off-1017537.html

Pre-Swing Fundamentals Reduce Golf Handicaps

Vijay Singh works harder than anyone on the Tour. He spends hours and hours every day working on his game, practicing every facet of it—from putting to chipping to driving—so that he can be the best he can be. In fact, his practice sessions are legendary among the world’s best players. Needless to say, his determination has paid off. He’s earned millions and millions of dollars in prize money.

While you’d probably like to spend more time practicing and playing golf, you can’t always do it. You have too many responsibilities. But hitting balls at the range or taking golf lessons from a pro isn’t the only way to cut strokes from your golf handicap. You can also do it by working on key pre-swing fundamentals—fundamentals that many a weekend player overlooks. By ingraining them, you’ll trim strokes from your golf handicap without ever picking up a club.

Below are six pre-swing fundamentals that help you cut strokes from your scores without going to the driving range:

1. Acquire The Right Mind Set

Having the right mind-set before swinging the club is crucial. It’s even more crucial when driving. Hitting a good opening shot gets you started on the right foot. So work on having a positive attitude before hitting the ball. Don’t think, “Don’t hit it in the water.” Think, “I’m going to hit it right down the middle.” That way, you’ll create positive images of successful shots in your mind. That develops self-confidence.

2. Perfect Your Grip

Many golfers—especially beginners—overlook the importance of having the right grip. These players don’t fully understand how the grip affects your swing. Since your hands are the only part of your body touching the club, how you grip it is critical. It determines clubface position. If your grip is incorrect, your clubface will mirror it and be either open or shut. The perfect grip has both hands rotated 45 degrees to the right for right-handed golfers.

3. Develop Good Posture

Posture is another pre-swing fundamental weekend golfers overlook. Golf is an athletic activity. You must be in the optimum starting position to be able to “explode” when you need to. If you’re slouched over or too straight at address, you can’t generate the kind of swing discussed in golf lessons and golf tips. In short, good posture lets you make a good pivot. Use a full-length mirror to examine your posture. Make sure you’re in the right position at address.

4. Apply Proper Grip Pressure

Work on holding the club with the right grip pressure. If you grip the club too hard, you’ll “strangle it,” preventing you from swinging fluidly. If you hold the club too loosely, you’ll lose it during your swing. You must apply the right grip pressure to strike the ball well. Good swings come from good, free-flowing pressure, not death grips. More importantly, applying the right grip pressure produces the right tempo during your swing.

5. Align Your Body Properly

If you’ve ever shot a gun, you know there’s no point in pulling the trigger if you don’t aim the gun properly. The same thing is true in golf. If you don’t aim yourself properly, you won’t hit your target. When your bodylines cross, your chances of making a free flowing swing greatly diminish. That means anything can happen. Work on aligning your body to the target line and let your swing flow. Good alignment produces a good swing path.

6. Find The Right Ball Position

All good swings start with the club descending into the ball—even when you hit driver off the tee. But playing the ball too far back or too far forward in your stance when driving throws your swing off. You’ll pop the ball up, dribble it off the tee, or hit some other type of ugly, embarrassing shot. Good ball position results in good contact. Lay a club down so the toe is against the heel of your front foot. The shaft will stick out two inches from your heel. That’s where your want to position the ball on a drive.

These six pre-swing fundamentals are as critical as any swing fundamentals you work on in golf instruction sessions or read about in technical articles offering golf tips. They are timeless. Work on them in your home or at the office as often as you can and make then an integral part of your pre-shot routine. Ingraining them will impact your golf handicap more than your think.

Jack Moorehouse
http://www.articlesbase.com/golf-articles/preswing-fundamentals-reduce-golf-handicaps-1018719.html