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A Leap from the Lion’s Head

August 29th, 2010

I thought I would share a lesson I had the other day.  This particular lesson was with a high school player that drove in from Niagara Falls (about 2 hours away) that I had met a couple years ago when I was teaching his older brother.  He is entering his junior year in high school and plays to a 2 handicap which he reached early this summer.

He mentioned that he was playing the best golf of his life 3 months ago and all of a sudden he was unable to hit the ball.  He mentioned that he had just shot 51 for 9 holes a day earlier.  He had been working with a pro from the Niagara Falls area that had helped him get down to this low handicap but was unable to help him get out of this funk.

I asked him to hit a couple shots and his issue was quite apparent.  I asked him to tell me what he and his coach were working on.  He told me they could see in his video that his head was falling down and back to the right in his downswing.  He also mentioned that he hadn’t been able to hit it solid anymore.  They saw it but couldn’t make it go away.  His issue was not that his head was moving back and down.  That was the result of his issue.  His issue was a poor weight shift that never moved back to the left, poor pivot which led to a flip.  Every shot he hit was very thin and he couldn’t hit the ground.  Some tops and some shots with decent results but 15 yards shorter than he had been doing.

We did a couple things which led me to give him a drill that would take away the reward for doing something the wrong way (mainly his flip).  I gave him an 8 iron and asked him to hit a standard pitch shot but I placed a bucket behind the ball.  The bucket was placed in a place that would force him to have weight left, rotate his right shoulder down and forward and not flip just to be able to strike the ball.  This drill I first saw used by Martin Hall and then by Brian Manzella.  I use the drill regularly.  He struggled with the drill immensely. I mean he couldn’t even hit the ball. Wiffs, tops, hit the bucket on the way down.  Everything but a solid shot.  After a while, he asked me if I could do it so I obliged and he was shocked at how simple it looked.

He kept trying and I could see the frustration growing on his face.  At this point, I thought for sure I had lost him.  He looked like he had turned off and was ready to go home.  This was a player that had been shooting par 3 months ago and now couldn’t even hit the ball with a little speed bump in the way.  He had been balancing these 3 errors with a bunch of timing and after it was put under pressure or if he didn’t practice all day, his swing crumbled like a game of Jenga.

After he had gone home, I mentioned to another student that was there that I didn’t know if he would stick it out.  Did he have enough faith to take “A Leap from the Lion’s Head”?  Any of you familiar with Indiana Jones movies will know the reference.

As it turns out, I received a call today from him saying he was hitting better than he ever had.  He had gone home and worked on the drill and was able to bring it the course.  Apparently, I had read him wrong. I thought he was going to give up but he showed me.

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Posted in Practicing, Teaching Techniques

Improve Your Putting

June 29th, 2010

I’ve used this Putting Station for years and had always planned on writing a blog post about it so here we go.  First here’s a picture of the station:

Improve your Putting

Improve your Putting

Here’s how to set this up.  If you don’t have one, go down to Home Depot or Lowes or any hardware store and get yourself a chalk line and some chalk.  That is what I used to create the red line on the ground.  You can snap a line for a straight putt or a braking putt but it’s best for this station to use a straight putt.  The two tees by the ball create a gate for the stroke to keep your contact in line with the sweetspot and helps to reinforce good aim.  They should be positioned just outside the toe and heel of your putter.  Line on the putter and line on the ground should over lap.  Make sure there is line showing beyond the back edge of the putter( it makes it much easier to line up that way).  If you don’t use a line,  intersect the line with the leading edge of your putter.  One thing this picture does not show is the putter.  The putter and ball should begin even with the first set of tees.  So, at address, the putter is right between the gate with the ball just in front of that.  The picture above is just of the tools needed for the putting station and not an accurate depiction of where the ball should go.

The other two tees a few inches in front are just beyond the width of a golf ball straddling the line.  These tees should be quite close to the width of the ball.  These tees are used to test your face angle control.  Only putts starting exactly on the line with a square face will propel the ball through the gate and on its way.

Work on this station for putts within 6 feet.  It can be used beyond that but I don’t recommend it.  You want to practice makes and distance control.  This station should be set-up in a way that every ball that gets through the second gate with decent speed goes in.

This will really show you how well you are managing the face of the putter.  That’s where the money is made.

FACE and PACE.

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Posted in Practicing, Putting

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Practice versus Competition…There is only ONE game!

April 15th, 2010

One of the questions that comes up again and again from players I coach is..’Andy, how do I take my practice game and make it work in competition?’

Now of course, this tells me that at some level, the player believes he/she has two games. The reality is that you only ever have one game, so for me, my answer is always the same.

‘It’s not a case of taking your practice game into competition, it’ more a case of allowing your competitive game to evolve into your practice’.

I’m sure you’ve all been watching bits and pieces of the recent Masters coverage or indeed like me, sat and immersed yourself in hours of viewing. For me Tiger Woods summed up perfectly the concept of developing one game with the quote ‘It’s all about how seriously you view your practice’. This to me illustrates precisely why Tiger can come back to ‘competitive golf’ and compete at the highest level. The media belief is that he has to be rusty because he’s only been practising; Tiger’s belief is very different because his ‘practice’ is largely a mirror image of competition. He only has one game; the practice ground is an extension of the golf course.

So my question for you is ‘How has your way of practicing differed from your competitive play until now?’ Take a few moments to get a sense of how that is for you. I’d like to offer you a suggestion based on what I sense is going on for the majority of players I meet. If you hit 50 balls in a row with the same club, you get real good at hitting 50 balls in a row with the same club! Chances are that most of the ‘good shots’ occur in the middle third, surprisingly the difference with the middle third is that you’re hitting them with no real conscious awareness. In other words, your unconscious is running the show and in charge of your golf swing. Isn’t that amazing, or is it just me!

Part of the challenge that player’s experience in ‘competitive’ play is that their focus changes. Now it becomes not about hitting shots with unconscious clarity, it’s about having to ‘really concentrate’ because its competition and it’s more important! Very quickly player’s start gauging the ‘gap’ between what they have accomplished on the range with what they are producing on the course. Frustration, doubt and disappointment flood through the open door and the vicious circle continues to revolve. Poor performance on the course means I have to get back on the range and work harder!

The way you perform off the course has to be streamlined; cut out the aimless hitting with no purpose; don’t keep relying on the repetition of same shots to find a rhythm. Assign part of your time off the course not as ‘practice’ but ‘rehearsal’. If you’re working on swing changes or in a transition period with your swing, sure a percentage of your range work will require an element of repetition to speed up the skill set process. You should also allocate a percentage of time on the range for rehearsal; mimicking exactly what you want to reproduce on the course.

Because here’s the thing, your body does not know its practice; it does not know its competition; that distinction does not exist outside of your head. Perhaps you’ve created a belief that competition is harder, that it means more and you can’t make the mistakes you have in practice. Perhaps your expectation level increases, or decreases, or maybe you just get fearful of the whole competition situation. But it’s all golf right?

Setting up an expectation that competition is different to practice is one of the key factors which gets in the way of playing more consistently on the course. Many club players practice in a way which has zero relevance to how they play, is that really a strategy which is going to work? Of course, if you are someone who hits 50 shots in a row on the course, in competition, with the same club, disregard everything I’ve said! You’ve got it nailed!!

For the rest of you, take a long hard look at how you structure your golf away from the course. If it’s nothing like how you play from 1st tee to 18th green, time to make a change. Of course, it requires you to get real honest with yourself and take back some ownership. Is your practice nothing more than a way of passing an hour or so, 3 times a week and then trying to convince yourself you’re working real hard? If it is, then be prepared to carry on playing inconsistent golf for the foreseeable future.

I know you want to change this aspect of your game because otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, instead you’d be out hitting more aimless shots until the sun drops in the sky before trudging off home with more questions than answers. Is that you?

And now you don’t even have to use ‘it’s all I know’ as a hurdle. Drop me a line if you need suggestions as to how you make your range sessions more competitive.

(Disclaimer: Only get in touch if you’re serious about getting more consistent in competitive play)

There is only ONE game…..YOUR game

www.progolfmindcoach.co.uk  Free Report waiting for you.

info@progolfmindcoach.co.uk  For all your questions, thoughts and ideas.

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Posted in Mental Game, Practicing, Tournament Golf

What if the ideal golf game just doesn’t exist?

March 25th, 2010

 

And so I prepare myself to be shot down in flames, which is great because it means you the reader, will be bringing new insights with you.

There’s no such thing as an ideal golf game…..daring statement to make?

Perhaps! However for me, even in a world where golf instruction worldwide promises you the IDEAL golf swing ( either in the form of following 5 simple steps, signing up to elaborate DVD or audio programmes, or indeed downloading 100+ videos ) pursuit of an ideal golf swing will forever be a false claim.

Because here’s how it seems to me until now. I’m guessing we all understand what the horizon is; that ‘line’ where sky meets land. You’ll also know that it doesn’t exist in the real world, it’s merely a mental frame set up in our heads to help us make sense of that place in the distance. If you doubt that’s true, walk to it and tell me when you get there!  These mental frames, or ‘Ideals’, are a necessary part of our thoughts which help us make sense of the world around us and in that respect, are very much an asset.

BUT, in gauging progress and forming opinions as a result, it’s a pretty lame idea! Just as you can never walk to the horizon, so can you never attain an ideal golf swing.

Sure you can have a very effective swing, a swing which gets you great results and bring much reward, but it will never be ideal. And yet so many players find themselves wrapped up in the idea of achieving that distant dream. Their language reflects the belief whenever they describe their current work in progress. ‘Ideally, I need the swing to look like X’ or ‘my ideal score is to shoot Y’. More damaging is the fact that no matter what achievement s are secured, if it’s not ‘ideal’, constant self judgement  can  play out as we focus on the gap between what we are and what we believe to be ideal. That gap will always be there, just like the distance to the horizon, no matter how far we walk.

As a mental performance coach, I remind my players that it’s great to have well formed goals, standards to aspire to and to look for ways to improve your current skills base. What isn’t so effective is to set up goals using an ideal as the destination and then striving to get there. You’ll forever come up short in your expectation, opening the door for frustration and disappointment to flourish.

So if you are a reader who believes you’ll be happy when you’ve hit the ideal score or swing the ideal way, perhaps it’s time to revisit your goals and assess where you are, rather than where you want to be.

Is this posting ideal, certainly not, is it good based on my current skill level, I believe so. Will I have improved as a result of constructing this….certainly that’s possible.

So to come full circle, I believe that the ideal golf game remains just an elusive idea. Having said that, for all of you who have attained the ideal game, I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts!

Send any thoughts/feedback to info@progolfmindcoach.co.uk.

Visit www.progolfmindcoach.co.uk for a FREE INNER GAME REPORT

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Posted in Golf Lesson, Mental Game, Misc., Practicing

Golf Lesson – Flipping

March 3rd, 2010

I define flipping as an instance when players really stall the pivot and accelerate the unbending of the right wrist.  For some people, that will get the clubhead passing the hands and for others it complicates contact.  As many of you know, I coach college golf at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY.  I also give golf lessons at Webster Golf Club as its Director of Instruction.  The most common plateau causing element of the swing I see is flipping.  This year I have 11 players on my golf team and 7 of them flip it.  They have decent swing but have such a hard time creating consistent impact alignments because of the flipping.  This condition also caused me to plateau at a certain level and once I got rid of it, my level of ball striking immediately became more consistent.

Here are some video and pictures to show you what I mean:

Hands Even or Behind ball

Hands Even or Behind ball

Hands in Front of ball

Hands in Front of ball

This player is a very good player that can shoot par or better at times than all of a sudden shoots 80.  This part of impact is an imperative, to quote The Golf Machine.  Being able to keep your left wrist flat and right wrist bend as you pivot through impact will greatly help your ability to control your angle of attack into the ball, your spin rate and your low point control.  It’s these things that drive the good player crazy because they do it one shot but not the next or one day but not the next.  Without reasonable repeatability is these areas, it is impossible to control spin, trajectory and distance.

I’ll go into drills to help with removing the flip in a future post but for now practice chipping while keeping your left wrist flat and right wrist bent while using your pivot to hit the ball.

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Posted in Golf Lesson, Practicing, Teaching Techniques

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