Golf Stories From Around The Web

Swing Thoughts And Images Stuck To Your Driver

Any golfer worth his or her salt wants to improve their golf game, and one method of achieving this target is to use the mind to visualise shots before playing them. I recently read about a site that is selling swing thought stickers. It has long been acknowledged that using mental imagery in a positive way definitely does help us improve our golf game. So what better than to have a reminder of a golf thought right in front of your eyes, on the driver, just where you can’t miss it, or forget about it. I can see this idea being most beneficial when our thoughts become distracted, perhaps by a missed putt, or some other idea taking over the mind.

What do you think? Would you buy a sticker to place on your driver head to remind you to do something before you start to swing the golf club?

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Why Are We Seeing So Many Golf Injuries?

Well, it seems that golfers are suffering minor injuries to the neck, wrist, knee, and so on at a younger age now than in former years. One reason that could explain this phenomenon is the trend to fitness training for golf, in particular the emphasis on building muscle to hit the ball longer, and the onset of this trend dates back a decade or so.

“From what I can assume, the goal was to make golfers more athletic, and there was no better example than Tiger Woods. However, one of the first golfers I remember falling foul of this was David Duval. He was a very good player, a little overweight by modern standards, but this did not affect his swing nor his performance.

Then one day he appeared on the golf course looking like a blonde Arnold Schwarzenegger, with bulging arms, no gut and a swagger that was soon to vanish from our TV screens for a few years. Why? Because this new, fitter, leaner body ruined his swing.

Duval disappeared from the PGA scene until a few years later, when he had returned to his former ‘overweight’ self. Lo and behold, his swing had returned, and he once again began to play better golf.

So what happened? You have to realise the golf swing is designed around your body. If your physique alters, your golf swing has to alter as well. Look what happened to Vijay Singh. Around 1997 he won nine times on the PGA tour, was number one in the world (beating Woods) and was top money earner for the year.
Then he fell into the trap. He was persuaded to start a fitness programme and started hitting the gym.

Have you heard much of Vijay since then? Me neither. The first thing to go was his putting, which is common when you add bulk, as this will affect the finesse parts of the golf swing first. And as all good golfers know, when your putting is poor, it adds pressure on your driving and fairway game, and a vicious cycle begins.

Let’s come back to Tiger Woods, who at a tender age had knee surgery and has had physical problems since. This can be put down to too much work in the gym, not too much golf. I remember watching a video of him playing as a new pro on a plane trip overseas. He was lean, almost skinny, but had a lovely backswing and a fluid movement through the ball. There was perhaps a third of the effort he now uses to hit a golf ball.

Watching Tiger these days is painful. He puts enormous effort into something that can be effective with so much less. It is almost a matter of slowing it down to a blur. All this I believe is due to him getting bulkier, and believing it will help him hit the ball further. However, bulkiness comes at the expense of flexibility. He has lost so much rotation flexibility in the hips that he has developed a classic reverse pivot.

This type of action puts excess strain on the knees, which become victims of the lack of hip range of motion, and the knee will eventually pack up, as was the case with him. Over-exercise or incorrect exercise will cause soft tissue tightness, which in turn can cause weakness, and this results in the body needing to compensate. Somewhere down the line, some part of the body will give way.

If you want to play better golf, get out of the gym, get on the driving range and the course and train your muscles for playing golf, not for lifting pathetic weights in a manner that you will never use on a golf course.”

This last paragraph, sums up what has gone before makes sense doen’t it? Have you ever been injured after fitness or muscle building exercises at the gym, and had to stop playing golf for a period of time afterwards?

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