| |
| |
|
Golf Information |
|
|
|
Golf Lessons From A Beginning Golfer?
Would you rather hear what you need to learn from someone who is already an accomplished golfer? Would a few hours with Jack Nicholas REALLY help your game? "Just do what I do, it's easy!" Or would you rather learn from a beginner, who understands the struggles, the small improvements and remembers those early changes that lead to greater success? It almost makes sense, doesn't it? The best coaches are often mediocre players, and the worst coaches were stars, who had everything come easy to them. Natural ability is hard to teach to others! As a beginning golfer, I have noticed some dramatic improvements, though, and wanted to pass them along to other beginning golfers. First, the drive. To many of us starting out, it seems to be all-important. I have had instructors tell me that if you can hit the ball 150 yards, that you can work your way down any length of hole in about 3 shots, chip on and putt in, and play bogie golf without ever hitting a John Daly type 300 yard plus drive. As beginners, all we see is the big drives, the pressure, people watching us tee off, and understandably we want to be able to pound the ball! What I've learned is that you can cut back on the swing to almost a half swing, hockey slapshot type thing, and increase the accuracy, with a small reduction in distance, until you are more comfortable with the swing. Also, a friend helped me with the description of coming "inside-out" with the swing. While that sounds complicated, imagine holding your back hand (I'm a left handed golfer) tight to your body and swinging through the ball and outwards after contact - straightened out my ball flight and increased distance. Lessons seemed to boil down to getting into the same position, and swinging smoothly and evenly making sure the club is flat at contact - try swinging at the driving range - not to hammer the ball, but try swinging with virtually NO effort, then 20% 40% 60% etc. Get comfortable with a straight line of whatever distance, and KNOW how far each club will take you. If you need 100 yards, say, it doesn't matter if you get that with a pitching wedge or a 5-wood, as long as you can get it accurately there! Pitching (from under 100 yards) and putting are the majority of the strokes, the easiest area to improve your game, and if you've ever played with a senior, they can be outdriven from the tee, but play so solidly from there onwards, with straight, accurate shots - you can't beat them! Makes you rethink the wisdom of working on that booming drive, huh? The majority of time should be spent practicing the 100 yard and shorter shots - which inadvertently improves the overall stroke and technique, and makes the drives better over time! Practice shooting 10, 20, 30 etc yards, and have the short chip down pat. Then work on putting - NOT trying to sink the putt, just to get the ball to within a club length of the hole - from ANYWHERE on the green. When you have mastered the ability to get the ball close like that, then work on the short 2 footers - almost from the start you'll find that you can get the majority in. THAT's the secret - the drive doesn't matter, the next shot is OK, but the one that gets the ball TO the green is crucial! Then if you can putt to withing a very close area of the pin, and make THOSE easy putts - you're a bogie golfer - TA DAAA! Wait, there's one more thing - the mental part of golf. If you have a certain ability, how come you see flashes fo greatness on some days, and flashes of needing to break your clubs on others? Same guy, same equipment, different results? THAT is the mental part of golf - and it becomes more and moe important as you master the basic strokes and techniques. At the beginning stages of golf, you are thrown off by worrying about what others think - it feels like people are watching your drive, partners are evaluating your game, people are seeing if you can play golf well, etc. The answer to this is that everyone started off as a beginner, and VERY few people can play below 90s golf. Basically, we all suck! Take the pressure off of yourself for the first 20-50 games, and you will have the routine ingrained, the swing will be solid, all will work fairly well - under pressure or not. Relaxation, and realizing that golf is a game against YOURSELF, are the keys. You can't play a real tournament against another golfer until you shoot in the 70s - so don't let that enter your head - try playing alone - you can - very early or very late - or with total strangers as a walk on. Over time, you WILL get better - visibly, noticeably. Try playing a few days in a row, or a series of days either playing golf or practicing. Practice makes perfect - especially the short game that is ignored by the majority pounding shots into the darkness at driving ranges - work on the touch, the feel, the magic ability to get 25%, 50% or 75% shots, to control the distance. Most of all, relax and enjoy the walk, the scenery, remember the things that went WELL - and move on from the ones that were duffed, hooked into the trees, or when you putted back and forth across the green like a madman - they all happen - to ALL of us - even Tiger Woods (every now and then). The trick is to concentrate on making the NEXT shot, the NEXT hole, the NEXT practice or game - be your very best. There's no going back and reshooting that shot that went into the water! Forget about it and calmly, confidently move on. Your best games, your best shots will occur when you have a calm, confident feeling, feeling that you are just repeating what you've practiced, and easily accomplished in the past. Look at the grin on Tiger's face as he sinks a putt and pumps his fist - this game can be FUN!! Andrew Larder, Golf Better
MORE RESOURCES:
Golf - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How A Golf Trainer Can Take Your Game To The Next Level Having a golf trainer in your corner to give you guidance, motivation and ongoing, cutting-edge golf fitness information will put you leaps and bounds above your playing partners and competitors.An experienced golf trainer will be able to diagnose your current level of fitness, physical limitations and prescribe the right program for you in which you will make the most of your time and money. The One Lever Golf Swing Involves Chipping And Putting The one lever golf swing involves chipping and putting. To improve you one lever golf swing these are the two areas to work on. Why Golf Training Products Don't Work For Most The mere mention of golf training products is bound to cause trouble for you with many golfers. Garages right across the country are loaded with the stuff and yet the games of those who enthusiastically purchased the golf training products have hardly improved. A Golf Fitness Exercise Program Will End Your Frustration On The Course Even as you read this article, golf fitness exercise programs continue to positively revolutionize the games of many golfers around the country and indeed around the world. A golf fitness exercise program plays a major role in helping many golfers achieve consistent and good results on the course with their swing. Picking Your Golf Equipment Picking Your Golf Equipment Looking for quality golf equipment but not sure you want to spend a ton on it? Are you new and starting out and need some new golf equipment but don't know where to begin? Finding the right golf equipment may seem like a challenge, but it really does not have to be. In fact, if you know what you need, your task could be quite easy. Finish Your Round of Golf with Birdies All the major tournaments, especially the U.S. How To Achieve The Golf Club Swing Speed You Desire The golf club swing speed is what will determine your driving distance and ultimately your scores.This is the reason why virtually every golfer desires to increase their golf club swing speed as much as possible. Golf Swing Tips Will Not Work By Themselves Golf swing tips are rampant! Golfers can't get enough of them. But are they working?or are they adding to the confusion and frustration of your game? Many qualified instructors will tell you to stay away from all the golf swing tips in the golf magazines. Golf Fitness Evaluation Is The First Step Towards Improving Your Game Golf fitness evaluation can be an invaluable tool in helping any golfer to assess where they currently stand and thus help them reach a decision of what they can do to improve.It is now an accepted fact amongst golf experts that an improvement in golf fitness almost always means an amazing improvement in the quality and standard of play by any golfer, whether in the junior level or a senior citizen, and irrespective of whether they are male or female. GPS Golf Balls Are Almost Here As GPS technology gets better and better and smaller and smaller it will be able to be used for many things? For instance at the World Series a baseball hit into the third level will be able to be recorded by GPS as to exactly how far it was hit and it's trajectory to formulate where it would have actually landed had the stadium been flat. Thus we will be able to tell who was the greatest homerun power house of all times, perhaps even who is on steroids based on their body mass, speed of pitch, GPS data and 'haptics' (body movement and form). Golf Training Uses Flexibility, Strength, And Power When it comes to fitness training for your golf game which is most important: flexibility, strength, or power? Flexibility advocates stress the importance of being able to swing a club through a full range of motion completely uninhibited of physical restrictions. Strength training advocates claim that building muscle will enable you to hit your drive farther. Golf Strength Training Exercise Is Not Body Building Despite many reassurances, some amateur golfers still dread golf strength training exercises.The problem would appear to be the presence of equipment like dumb bells in this sort of strength training. What Should I Know About Biomechanics of the Golf Swing? If you've read some of my articles in the past, we focused a lot on training the body to help you provide more power, consistency and accuracy to your golf swing.Today, we are going to get a little more scientific. Warm Up With A Back Exercise For Golf Let's face it, if you are a passionate golfer who likes to hit the links whenever you have the opportunity, at some point in time you are likely to be faced with lower back pain. Fortunately, there are some great exercises that will help you work through lower back pain, and also prevent it from occurring in the first place. The Top 10 Life Lessons from Golf Golf is an amazing mirror of life. Yes, other sports provide life lessons as well, but golf happens to be my favorite sport and the one I understand the best. How A Female Golfer Can Quickly And Easily Improve Distance And Accuracy? Female golfers, like their male counter parts are looking for quick and easy ways to improve their distance and accuracy. I wish I had the "magic bullet" to accomplish this overnight, but that's not possible?even if you see it in an advertisement. 10 Ways to Increase Your Energy Instantly with a Golf Performance Diet A golf conditioning program should always be accompanied by a solid golf nutrition plan. In essence, what you eat determines how you play. Getting To The Core Of Your Golf Swing At some point, almost all of us struggle with efforts to improve our golf game. Many will try videos, books, hours with a teaching pro, the newest club, and swing after swing to no avail. Sit Up Straight! It Will Help Your Game What does it take to reproduce the perfect golf swing? Precise coordination of muscle contraction and relaxation, muscle balance and body awareness are all required to recreate a good swing. A prerequisite to these necessary components is good posture. Have You Played Chicago Golf Courses? When most people think of Chicago, they usually think of a big city, lots of tall buildings, maybe Oprah. That's accurate, but did you know that Chicago is the home to dozens of golf courses?Chicago was designed as "Urbs in Horto", the City in the park.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
