Posted by Marita on 21 diciembre 2011
The sand shot in golf is one of those shots that strikes fear into just about every high-handicap golfer playing the game. It is ironic that the high level and professional golfer doesn’t view the shot with any trepidation. In fact, professionals would much rather hit a golf ball from a bunker than deep rough, because they have greater control of the ball when it’s in sand. But it is necessary to know how to play this shot to have a complete golf short game.
So let’s break down the difference. First let’s mention that even though professionals are very comfortable executing the shot, statistically only a few can get up and down in two less more than 60% of the time. In other words, don’t set your expectations too high. Getting out in one and two putting should be considered success.
Next, remember the biggest difference with the sand shot as opposed to all other shots: in a green side bunker you should never hit the ball first. That goes contrary to all of our thinking on ball striking, and until you really feel confident hitting sand shots that thought process will probably work against you. So your aim should be as much as two inches behind the ball, drive the club through the sand and let the sand take the ball to the green.
It all sounds pretty simple, and there really is a lot (relative to a normal shot) of margin for error. The next step can get dicey, and that’s blasting the ball out. It really shouldn’t be thought of as finesse shot, because if you try to finesse the ball out you won’t have the force of the club head necessary to get through all that sand. Most high-handicap golfers get the club head to the sand, sense its resistance and stop. And of course the sand stays where it is, and so does the golf ball.
To make sure this never happens, make sure you remain balanced in your stance (that is why you dig your feet into the sand at set-up), and then accelerate through the sand, always finishing high. Although some instruction will say to have a square stance to the ball, for me especially on shorter shots I open my stance. This makes it easier to accelerate through the ball, as you won’t lock the hips with an open stance.
One last thing to watch out for in the sand shot and you should be good to go. That is, keep your hands leading through the ball, or in other words don’t try to flip the ball out with a wrist motion.
If you look at the sand wedge loft, you will see that it is highly lofted. When you stop your arm movement and flip the club face, the loft of the club becomes even greater, almost to the point of being level to the ground. Instead of the club face taking the sand and ball and launching everything toward the green, the face of the club knifes under the ball, leaving the ball in the sand.
This is just a starter’s course on sand play. In another article I’ll elaborate on the different types of sand shots and how they all should be played a little differently. But if you can master these points, you should always have the confidence to get out of the sand every time.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 16 diciembre 2011
The game of golf is one of the most popular leisure activities. Simply put, golf is really a game played using various golfing clubs on a customized golf course consisting of either 9 or 18 holes. A player begins from a teeing area and by having a swing or numerous swings puts the golf ball in to the hole. Between the teeing area and the hole are a variety of obstacles and diverse terrain types. Due to the varying conditions of exactly where a player would likely hit his / her golf ball, there are actually a variety of different golf clubs that he / she can use. These can consist of a driver, a putter and various golf irons. These types of clubs generally have got specific functions and provide the golfer with a number of choices for their next shot. Because of the fact that there are a great number of golf clubs, a player will need a golf bag to help keep all these clubs in order.
Purchasing a bag is vital when playing golf; this allows the player to be able to carry all of the required equipments that he/she would require to complete a round of golf. It’s used to carry your entire clubs as well as other paraphernalia. As a whole, a golf bag will make your golfing experience a lot more pleasant and comfortable although it doesn’t always impact your score. For this reason it is vital to acquire a bag that best suits you as well as your requirements. When selecting a golfing bag, the very first thing to consider is what size of bag you’d probably use due to the fact that you will find 3 various sizes of golf bags.
The very first size is what is known as the staff or tour bag. This really is usually used by professional golfers that are paid by an organization in order to promote their name and the brand of golf bag. The next is what is known as the cart bag. These kinds of bags are smaller in size in comparison to the staff or tour bag and aren’t intended to be carried; instead it is placed onto a golfing cart. The last of the three sizes is definitely the most versatile of the three, simply because it may be carried or even placed onto a cart. This bag is known as the golf stand or carry bag. These kind of bags can be quite heavy and may weigh from four pounds upwards prior to placing all your equipment and clubs into it.
Dependent upon the player and also his / her requirements, any of these golf bags would be suitable. In order to figure out which of the three bags would suite the player’s requirements, he/ she needs to initially think about their playing style; would they generally walk or ride a cart on the golf course. Then the player should consider if he / she generally carry their own golf bag or has someone who can carry the bag. Essentially, a player should initially decide their own golfing habits; this is actually the most significant factor to contemplate prior to buying a golf bag. As soon as this is determined, the golfer can purchase the most appropriate bag that will best suit their needs. This will help make the game of golf a lot less difficult and more comfortable for the player.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 12 diciembre 2011
If you would analyze every round you play, stroke by stroke, I would bet you give away at least two strokes per side for no good reason. It doesn’t have anything to do with how well you hit the ball, but with how well you play the game. Here are ten good ways to prevent throwing away strokes.
1. Recovery shots off the tee shot – if your course has heavy rough or lots of trees, you can waste several shots per round just chipping the ball back into the fairway. On a course like this, leave your driver home.
2. Playing over water – Bad things happen when you play over water if you don’t have to. Figure the longest club in your bag that you’re sure you can get in the air. If you have to hit a longer club than that to clear the water, go around or lay up.
3. Nutrition and hydration – Around the fourteenth hole, we can get tired. Prevent that by having a sip of water on every tee and eating a snack on about every third tee.
4. Hitting when you’re not ready – If you feel anything about the shot you’re going to hit that is off, step away and gather yourself. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself saying in about four seconds, “Why did I hit that? I knew I wasn’t ready. ”
5. Getting angry – You’re not as good as your good shots, nor as bad as your bad ones. Accept what happens and move on.
6. Playing with the distance you want, not the distance you have – If 155 yards with a 6-iron is a good shot for you, and you’re 153 yards from the pin, don’t hit six! Take out the five, grip down, and put a smooth swing on the ball. The extra club in your hand takes the pressure off and you’ll hit a better shot.
7. Two short shots in a row – At the professional level, the short shot takes the place of the approach putt. At the amateur level, the short shot is meant to get the ball on the green. Getting the ball close to the pin is secondary. Whatever it takes, get your first short shot on the green, two-putt close at least.
8. Not aiming your greenside chips – When the ball is close enough to the green that you truly can give it a run at the hole, line up the shot like you would an approach putt. This avoids hitting your chip hole-high but four feet to the left and gives you a chance to leave the ball tap-in close or even sink it.
9. Ignoring contours around the hole – When the ball gets near the hole, it won’t be rolling very fast, and will thus be greatly influenced by contours, much more so than in the early stage of its run. On a thirty-foot putt, the roll from six feet in is what makes the difference.
10. Not taking lessons – Don’t hit from the rough very well? It’s not hard to do. Do uneven lies give you fits? They shouldn’t. Can’t hit the chip from 30 yards? Simplest shot there is. Get a list of shots that give you a hard time and have a pro show you how to hit them. I don’t understand why so many golfers won’t do this. I just don’t.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 9 diciembre 2011
Golf is the royal one in the field of outdoor sports. The most appreciated thing in this royal sport is the swing as it is the most unnatural, explosive and complex movements made by the club.
According to the sports medicine institute laboratory, golf swing consists of some basic different phases in it. Those are initial setup, gripping, backswing, transition period, downswing and the follow through.
There are many software packages to analysis this golf swing using different parts of the human body such as hips, trunks, shoulders and arms. The basic purpose of this analysis software’s is to determine the body movements, different acting forces and power consumption during the different stages of golf swing and to correlate the efficiency of a golfer depending upon these factors.
The forces acting on various limbs and muscles during a swing may vary person to person depending upon his body fitness, skill levels and physiological factors. But usually the forces acting on different parts of body are sliding forces, lateral bending forces, twisting or torsion forces and compressive forces. Analysis shows that the trunk muscles take minor part during the backswing but play major role during the rest of it. A professional golfer uses a less effort while coiling and uncoiling process while completing a swing. Whereas the compressive forces are almost eight times the normal body weight. The key factor about the forces is the ability to pass momentum from one part to another part of the body while the forces are acting. This procedure is commonly known as kinetic linking and to become a professional golfer you have to develop this ability through proper training.
The act downswing needs the speed to move your arms and to deliver the perfect strength on the club to hit the ball. The spinal and trunk muscles play a major role as the golfer needs to transfer his total body weight to his left foot.
The other important thing is joint flexibility. To deliver a better swing in a fluid manner and to reach a long range better joint flexibility is the key factor. When the shot is complete i.e. during the follow through movement the joint flexibility needs to be much better.
Latest researches shows that a professional golfer posses the better quality of less sliding, lateral bending and twisted forces.
To obtain the greater benefit from the swing actions you must have the strong leg, greater muscles, body flexibility and better movement coordination.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 5 diciembre 2011
According to the National Golf Foundation there are now over 16 thousand golf courses in the United States making up about half of the worlds courses. If you laid all of these courses together they would be the approximated size of the country of Costa Rica. The problem is that Costa Rica of golf courses needs a lot of water to keep itself green, hence the term greens. Audubon International, an organization that provides education and assistance needed to practice responsible management of land water and wildlife, estimates that average American course uses over three hundred thousand gallons of water per day. Courses in the dessert like Palm Springs, California use up to a million gallons of water a day to keep their fairways green. To put this in perspective, the amount of water that one golf course in Palm Springs uses in one given day is equal to what a family of four will use in four years. Multiply that by fifty, the number of courses in Palm Springs, add a drought to Southern California and you can began to understand why people have become concerned.
With water supply shortages happening around the globe and water rationing becoming mandatory in some counties across the United States, there are a number of course designers, owners and managers that are starting to work on conservation which has become an integral part of a courses architectural work.
In 1995, eighty-one people got together in a conference room at Pebble Beach for a three day conference to discuss what could be done to make golf more eco-friendly. Those present at the conference were representatives from the golfing community as well as leading national and local environmental groups. At the time no one had any idea if the conference would get anywhere or if these guys would even talk, however sixteen years later, after five national conferences and a handful of smaller meetings, they are still talking. As a result improvements have been made, guidebooks, reports, and educational videos have been published and the effort, which has become known as the Golf & the Environment Initiative has open the door for positive changes in the game.
In an attempt to preserve the valuable wildlife habitat, as well as water conservation, land use has become a significant issue. Golf course designers like Arnold Palmer have long held an environmentally friendly position throughout the design and construction of his golf courses. Palmer has worked closely with golf course construction companies like Outside the Lines, that adhere to a least-disturbance approach that focuses on every opportunity to incorporate unique existing site features into the layout of the golf course.
Golf course superintendents and grounds keepers around the world have found practical ways to approach water conversation in an attempt to make golf more eco-friendly. Over the years a number of courses have gone green by being less green, as they are being returned to their natural state. Recently, innovative golf course managers have been converting highly maintained out-of-play areas to native species. Native species are more drought tolerant requiring little to no watering efforts as well as cut back on the use staff time, and less expense for over-seeding and other turf management supplies.
Other conservation efforts include computer controlled irrigation systems that conserve water by accurately following the current weather conditions. Systems like these can help determine hour by hour how much water the course needs. Some courses have even added water features such as lakes, rivers, waterfalls and ponds that help collect water and reduce the amount of turf coverage drastically. Realistic lakes and water features also help create challenging hazards for the golfers and enhance the natural beauty and land use of any course as they attract colorful birds and other wildlife.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 4 diciembre 2011
Creating more lag in your golf swing is important if you want to maximize your power and distance with your golf shots. Lag comes from creating and maintaining a good wrist set in your golf swing. If you have lag in your golf swing it also means your release is delayed and closer to being correct. Really high handicap or bad golfers will generally not have much lag in their golf swings. This is important to fix if you want to improve as long as you are working on things in the right order. Once you’ve learned a proper grip and other basic fundamentals, adding a good wrist set will really give you extra power and you’ll be able to hit longer and straighter golf shots.
The first thing that is necessary for improving lag is to have a correct grip. You want to make sure you are holding the club in your fingers as opposed to up too high in the palms. It’s also important to have a proper amount of grip pressure. Holding the club too tightly will inhibit your ability to set your wrists well and it’ll be difficult to generate power. A correct amount of grip pressure will be not too tight, but not too loose. Hang on to your club securely but don’t grip it so tight that it’s a death grip.
On your backswing, it’s important have a good takeaway that is on plane or on the correct swing path. Then, you simply want to allow your wrists to set. You will feel like you are almost flicking the club head up as your hands stay low. Once you’ve completed your wrist set, you should be about half way into your backswing. You are now in a great loaded position where there should be a 90 degree angle between your right forearm and your club shaft.
Once you’ve made it to a good position halfway back in your backswing, you can now simply turn to the top of your swing. You should be in good position with everything working together. You don’t want to just lift your arms or the club up without your body turning. The arms and body need to work together so you stay in good swing sequence. Then, at the top of your swing there should be a strong angle between your right forearm and the club shaft. This angle is the same from when you set your wrists in the halfway back position. You simply just maintain that angle as you move to the top of your swing.
Now, the key on your downswing is to maintain that wrist set or wrist angle as long as possible. You want to swing your arms down but not release your wrists or use your hands. You pull down with your arms while holding your wrist angle. This gets you in the slot as you approach impact to hit the golf ball. At impact, you’re simply getting everything coming through together similar to the position you were in at your setup. Your hands will lead slightly as you compress the golf ball if you’ve held your wrist angle correctly.
Then, as you swing your club head through the ball and towards your target, your release will occur automatically without needed to worry about it. And then your wrists will reset or re-hinge as you swing through and complete your follow through. This re-hinging on the follow through pretty much happens automatically. It is a reaction from your backswing and downswing as the club accelerates through the ball and continues on your follow through. Many parts of the backswing and follow through mirror each other as in the case with your wrist set in the backswing and your re-hinge on your follow through.
golfers world | golf tips
Posted by Marita on 14 noviembre 2011
Golf mentally is the toughest sport. There is bound to be lots of opposition to this statement as each sportsperson defends how hard it is to compete in their particular sport at high levels. Let me keep it to ball sport comparisons for this exercise though.
Comparing ball games
One of the reasons golf is harder than games like tennis, baseball, basketball, football or even cricket is because you have more thinking time as the ball starts from stationery. If you have to hit or catch a moving ball then it’s more instinctive and you do it quickly. There is only time for one thought and no time to change your mind or look for a better alternative. No time for your muscles to react to anything except the way you first thought of. You hit or catch the ball a certain way and muscle memory takes over to help you do it.
When you play golf you have as much time as you want, following players allowing of course, to size up a variety of shots and possible landing places. The choices depending on the lie of the course, the distance and even the weather. Having got a variety of options in your head then the wise choice would be to pick one route and go for it.
What are you thinking?
What usually happens to the untrained mind is that all possible combinations are still running through your head when the ball is struck. This means that the shot in the mind and the muscle memory to execute it may not line up. If you also add in other distractive thoughts then unless the muscle memory is operating correctly then the ball could end up anywhere.
Distractive thoughts can be anything related to the game or anything at all. Game related thoughts are usually repetitive or stress related. Examples are: I always hit the ball too much to the left here. If I miss this shot I will not be leading any more. Got to get this or it will be my turn to pay at the clubhouse. Non game related thoughts could literally be anything but are usually to do with suddenly remembering things about work or home.
Other stationary ball games
There are other games where a ball is struck from a stationary position. Snooker, pool and billiards for instance. You can also take as long as your opponent will let you to work out your shot too.
The biggest differences here are the distances involved and the course you are doing it over. The distances being shorter means very little deviation over five foot compared to over one hundred feet. The table is always flat whereas a golf course is forever changing.
Plus, if it is a competition game, then there is usually more money involved in golf. That’s always good for a nice bit of distractive stress.
Ok, we know what should NOT be happening. So what SHOULD be happening.
The expertly trained mind will purely automatically go through a well rehearsed sequence that will pick a shot then shut out everything except getting the ball in the hole. Sound simple doesn’t it?
Once it is rehearsed and committed properly to memory, it is simple. That is exactly how the top professionals do it.
I can hear you saying what about technique? What about deciding how to take the shot according to conditions. What if x, what about y, etc., etc.,?
Down to mental practice
Well, all that will come with on course experience and practice. What I am talking about is mental practice to keep your mind on just one thought to enable you to put your physical practice to best use. The better you can use your mind then the more useful will be your physical practice will become.
The way to control your thinking is also through experience and practice. The great thing about that though is that you do not have to be on the golf course to do it. Nor do you have to limit your practice to only certain times. You can practise almost anywhere whenever you have a bit of time to spare.
One thought. One vision
How you practice is through the use of visualization. This can be enhanced through the use of hypnosis if you wish. There are quite a number of hypnosis programs for sale on this subject but if you want good results then it will be better if you choose a program that is being presented by someone that really knows about golf as well as hypnosis.
It is also advisable to get a program by someone whose voice you like too. I found that some voice tones are not soothing and just plain irritate to such an extent they become a distraction rather than a help. However, what irritates me might be perfect for you. Listen before you buy.
What hypnosis and visualization does for you is to take your mind through situations many many times. So many times that it becomes second nature to react the way you do. And of course, in your visualization your shots always go perfectly.
Visualization, hypnosis and practice shots with the experts
One way I discovered to really get the best out of hypnosis was to read or watch a professional golfers tip then go into a hypnotic state and mentally rehearse that tip over and over till I had it down perfect. It took a few sessions. Back out on the course and the only thing I could think of was the way I’d visualized it earlier. No more mental distractions. Golf mental games became golf success reality.
Many golfers do not realize they are practicing to fail. There are two very big secrets to practicing your golf shots that you ought to know about. To discover the first secret click on this golfing mental link.
golfers world | golf tips
