On the backswing, you know when you make a deliberate effort to keep the club close to the ground, you get a wider swing arc as a result. That’s just the golf practice drill Justin Rose demonstrates in the video, only he has a neat way of getting you to do it right.

Enjoy the video.

It’s great to watch a master putter at work, and who better than Dave Stockton to share with us the benefit of his many years of golfing wisdom.  I wish I felt confident enough to line the putt up, then pull the trigger without looking at the hole again. I guess that’s the difference between a master golfer and an average club golfer like me. There are some great putting tips in the video.

Enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong. I love golf and like most keen golfers I want to improve my game and reduce my handicap. Isn’t that the ultimate goal of all fit and able golfers? I also like to read about golf swing tips that I like to think will help me play better golf, and I share what I learn on this website.

There’s only one problem with trying to apply these golf swing tips to my own game and that is age. The mind is willing but the body, as I get older, tends not to be so willing. There are a few twists and turns of the arms and torso that I can’t manage today so well as I could say five years ago. Age creeps up on us all, without exception, and that includes golfers like you and me.

There’s Always An Electric Golf Cart

So what are the implications of this? As the body winds down and complains more when we get older, the best we can do is try to keep the muscles and the mind as fit as possible. Looking after your general health is important to longevity any way. There’s a fine line between quitting walking a round of golf for the luxury of sitting in an electric golf cart between shots. You might wonder, if you opt to ride round the golf course instead of walking, what will happen to those aching limbs. Will they seize up quicker, and does the effort of making yourself walk slow down the process. I don’t have the answer to give you, though I prefer to walk for as long as I am able.

What Motivates You To Play Golf?

Underlying this is the enjoyment playing golf gives to thousands of enthusiasts who take to the golf courses around the world on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter how you look at golf, as escapism, a chance to get to know a work colleague better, as a means to make new friends, and so on. There are lots of different reasons why people take up golf. This only serves to highlight the positive benefits of golf to all who would partake in this great sport. You don’t have to be a Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy to get the most enjoyment out of the game.

To return to the original theme of this article, on golf swing tips and whether the body is going to allow you to apply what you read or see to your ultimate benefit on the golf course. That’s for your body to tell you. It makes me a little envious when I see body positions I would like to copy, such as a full body turn, but know I now cannot. Still, that doesn’t stop me enjoying my golf, and taking advantage of the golf swing tips that I can apply to my golf game, even if they are confined to putting and the short game only.

Specifically:

“When hitting a shorter club, the angle of attack has to be between 6 and 7 degrees downward and the path has to be slightly out-to-in. This means the club has to travel to left after impact.

If you open your stance and try to hit down on the ball, you will be squaring the club to your target at impact. So the driver swing is totally different than the iron swing.

When you are on the practice tee go back and forth between the driver and the wedge. You should develop the technique for both clubs now that you know what to work on.”

Playing across the ball from out to in causes the ball to fly higher, and is just the golf shot you need to clear bunkers and other hazards. You never know when this shot is likely to be useful during a round of golf and it’s a good shot to try and perfect in advance.

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My favourite swing action is with the left hand. If you are right handed, swing with the left hand only is the natural way to swing the club head. One thing you’ll notice is you can’t rush the swing. If you are a quick swinger, this drill will slow you down, dramatically I suggest. Another benefit is that you will find it difficult to over swing using one hand only. Swinging the club this way gives you a greater awareness of what you are doing throughout the golf swing, in terms of where the club is at various stages of the backswing.

Another key area of improvement in golf to look for is in building strength in the arms and hands, as this exercise targets just those muscles that golfers use to strike the ball. Timing and balance are also improved.

“There are a few things to take note of before when practising one handed:

Don’t take too many swings when first trying this. Hitting balls with one hand is fun and challenging, but if you hit too many, your arm will be sore the next day. Start off with 10-20 swings and, as your arms and hands get stronger, add more.
Grip down on the handle. Start with your sand wedge and grip down on the handle; this will make the club lighter.
Let your body finish to the target. Often a golfer will try to hit a one-handed shot and just move their arm, not allowing their body to rotate so that their chest and belt buckle are facing at the target. When practising, allow your chest to turn back and through and finish with your torso and belt buckle looking at the target.”

If you haven’t tried this method of golf practice before it might feel a bit strange at first. You might find you need to try it a few times before you get the feel of it and the swing tempo, but that’s precisely why you are doing trying it anyway.

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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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Play Golf Forever shows how to get your golf game back by overcoming lower back pain, and the book takes the reader through the different parts of the book that begins with an
“overview of low back pain, describing the causes, necessary testing, proper posture control, and medical treatments for low back pain.” The author then “focuses on the game of golf to demonstrate how it impacts the back.” The final part of the book “contains a detailed functional training program to not only treat and prevent low back pain but to improve a player’s golf swing and athletic abilities.

See why Golf Digest magazine has described Play Golf Forever as Best Golf Fitness Book for low back pain advice. Play Golf Forever is an easy to read and powerful guide to injury prevention and treatment to substantially improve performance in whatever we do. As Dr. Jaffe says, “Motion is Life”. Now we have a clear guide to do it right.”

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1. Because the driver golf club is longer than all the other clubs in the bag, you are forced to stand further away from the ball at the address position. The beginner at golf can find this quite daunting, and until you get used to standing further away with this golf club you will struggle to hit your drives consistently well.

The problem I believe is that from the golfer’s perspective, as he or she stands to the ball, we tend to think we have to put lots of effort into the swing to get the ball to travel long distances. This is a misconception, as the golfer needs to learn to rely solely on the ability of the steep face of the driver golf club combined with a smooth golf swing to deliver the drive we want.

2. The driver golf swing is meant to be to be made in a wide and smooth arc. My advice is to watch one of the top players and study how they swing the driver. Then try and copy the movement in your own swing. That would mean being conscious of keeping the arms straight as you begin the backswing.

Keep them extended as you take the club back and bend the wrists naturally until they are fully cocked at the top of the backswing, all the time remembering this movement does not have to be hurried. The aim is to have a smooth and wide arc.

3. When playing the driver you will be aware that the weight bias of your body is to your right side, and this gives the golfer an unnatural perspective on the set-up until you get used to it. It takes practice but when you start hitting golf drives consistently down the fairway you will be convinced that it is what you must do to play the driver to the best of your ability. Keep the weight inclined to the right side all the way through the golf swing with the driver.

The length of the shaft together with the steep and unforgiving face of the driver golf club make it a difficult club to play consistently well. By concentrating on the principles laid out above you will be on your way to hitting some decent drives and keeping out of the rough.

Of course, the other option is to take lessons and follow the advice of a good teaching professional. But golf lessons can be expensive. As the saying goes, “you pay your money and take your choice.”

So what exactly is golf swing analysis software? It is software, which you buy from a vendor, on a CD and run the program on your PC at home. You then use the data and feedback the software gives you to improve your golf game. You record your swing on a camera and the software for its part analyses your swing for you, by precisely measuring the key metrics of the golf swing.

These metrics are typically, the angle of the club face, the swing path, and the information it has found is displayed on the computer screen. This is obviously valuable and useful feedback for the golfer to use to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their golf swing. The information is usually available in text or graphic form. Audio feedback is also an option.

When you compare the possibilities of golf swing analysis software with golf instruction from a teaching professional you can see there are distinct advantages for some golfers who choose to use this software. An instructor cannot give you precise measurements, distances, angle of the golf club, etc. But, a good golf teacher can soon analyse golf faults and have them ironed out.

Whether you decide to buy golf swing analysis software or not, the objective is the same, and that is to help you improve your golf game.