Spin Control Slashes Golf Handicaps

By Jack Moorehouse

Here’s a golf tip that’s proven effective more times than not: If you want to cut strokes from your golf handicap, learn to hit shots that hit the green and stick. That’s right. Learn to hit shots that stick. They can save you anywhere from one to two strokes per hole. More depending on how far away the ball bounces from the pin. If the ball really takes off after it hits, look out.

The key to hitting shots that stick is backspin. Golfers need to apply backspin to balls more than ever before. Faster greens, tighter pin positions, more forced carries, and lower-lofted wedges and short irons demand it—the USGA’s new ruling on wedge grooves not withstanding. This ruling affects both professional and weekend golfers alike. What’s more, learning to control backspin helps slash your golf handicap.

The Backspin Equation
You probably already make swings capable of producing shots with good backspin—even if you don’t do it on purpose. But just your swing alone isn’t enough. To complete the backspin equation, you must add the right type of ball and the right face grooves on your wedge. Nail these factors and your spin potential increases dramatically.

To generate backspin: (1) position the ball back of center one to two ball widths, (2) place your hands ahead of the clubhead, and (3) accelerate through impact. The more you accelerate through impact, the more spin generate and the more likely your shots will stick. Combining the right swing with the right ball and the right type of groves is how many instructors teach this skill in golf lessons.

Ball Construction Is Key
Ball construction is also a key to generating backspin. To hit backspin sufficient enough to have a ball stick, play a ball with a cover soft enough to be engaged by the grooves in the clubface. Generally speaking, urethane covers are softer than Surlyn covers. Urethane and Surlyn are the principal materials from which most covers are made.

While balls with Surlyn covers are longer off the tee, balls with urethane covers help control backspin better. They’re also more expensive balls. If some one takes golf lessons from us and they’re not using a ball with a urethane cover, we figure they just don’t know about the benefits of doing so.

Grooves Are Also Key
Your wedge’s face grooves are also key to adding spin. A high-producing wedge must have aggressive enough face grooves to engage the ball. New grooves spin more than old grooves and clean grooves spin more than dirty ones. Also, the sharper the groove edges, the better they grab the ball’s cover and produce spin. More importantly, box grooves are better than U-grooves and V-grooves and worn out grooves of any shape.

The USGA recently made a rule change that can affect your choice of wedges with box grooves. This new ruling downsizes volume and limits edge sharpness for all grooves manufactured after January 1, 2010, so they’re equal to or less than the previously approved V-groove dimensions. If you’re an amateur, you have a choice of which grooves to play until at least 2024. On the other hand, if you buy a wedge manufactured after last January, it must have grooves with spin performance at or below V-groove levels.

If you want to hit shots that stick, learn to add backspin to your ball. The keys to adding backspin are using the right setup and swing, a ball with a urethane cover, and a wedge with the right grooves. These keys affect all shots that hit the green. Getting shots to stick when they hit can chop two to three strokes from your golf handicap.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Golf Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

View the original article here

Trusting Your Swing Cuts Golf Handicaps

By Jack Moorehouse

Concentrating on your mechanics while swinging usually leads to disaster. Thinking about how to hold your hands, make a good shoulder turn, or execute one of the other golf tips we pick up from magazines, newsletters, or golf lessons leads to topped shots, shanks, pushes, and other bad shots. More importantly, thinking about your mechanics causes you to ignore critical swing elements like rhythm and tempo, which contribute greatly to accuracy and consistency.

A great way to stop thinking about your mechanics while swinging is to build a swing you can trust—one that lets you focus on rhythm, tempo, and timing. How do you do this? You do it by ingraining key moves at critical swing points—like your set-up, downswing, and follow-through. Ingraining these moves enables you to forget about your mechanics and focus entirely on the task at hand. Improved focus leads to better shots. Better shots lead to better scores and better golf handicaps.

Let’s look at five key points where can ingrain moves that build trust in your swing:

Set-up
Setting up incorrectly generates swing faults that lead to bad shots. So you always want to set up correctly. For example, if you set up so that you’re reaching for the ball with your arms disconnected from your body, you’ll tend to take the club back to the outside. To build trust in your address position, set up your arm hang so that the club swings back automatically on plane. You can do this by bending from the waist so that when your arms hang down your triceps rest against your chest.

Takeaway

What you need to do with your takeaway, as I’ve said in hundreds of golf instruction sessions and golf tips, is start everything back in one piece. To help execute a one-piece takeaway correctly, try lightly brushing the grass behind that ball. When you keep the clubhead low to the ground like this, it makes it easy to stay on plane and create proper width in your swing. You may not actually hear the clubhead brush the grass during your takeaway, but keeping low helps builds trust in your takeaway and your swing.

Backswing
Your backswing is the source of many swing errors. If you could eliminate your backswing, you fee yourself of many swing errors. Obviously, you can’t eliminate your backswing. But you can build trust in it. To do that, you need to let the club swing freely to the top. You can do this by turning your back hip pocket behind you so that it feels like your clubhead and torso are moving back together. They should arrive at the top simultaneously.

At The Top
The top position is another key point where you want to build trust. But there’s some dispute as to where the toe of your club should be pointing when you reach the top. Some say it should be square or closed. Others say it should be pointing downward to provide the freedom to let the club go at the bottom. Most great golfers—the one’s that have lasted for years—pointed the club down and cupped their left wrist at the top. To build trust in your top position, do the same. It jump-starts a powerful release through the ball.

Impact
When you make good impact, you should feel like your back shoulder is on top of the ball. Too many weekend golfers ignore their back shoulders when swinging. To them the only thing that counts is their front shoulder. But ignoring your back shoulder produces pushes and hooks. To build trust at impact, swing the club so that it feels like the clubhead is passing through your hands at impact, not your hands trying to hold the face square at impact.

Building trust at these five key points in your swing builds trust in your entire swing. As a result, you won’t be thinking about the newest golf tips you’ve read or learned about in golf lessons during your swing. Instead, you’ll be focusing on more important things like rhythm, tempo, and timing—things that contribute greatly to better shots. Better shots lead to better scores and better scores lead to better golf handicaps. Trust me.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Golf Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

View the original article here

Trusting Your Swing Cuts Golf Handicaps

By Jack Moorehouse

Concentrating on your mechanics while swinging usually leads to disaster. Thinking about how to hold your hands, make a good shoulder turn, or execute one of the other golf tips we pick up from magazines, newsletters, or golf lessons leads to topped shots, shanks, pushes, and other bad shots. More importantly, thinking about your mechanics causes you to ignore critical swing elements like rhythm and tempo, which contribute greatly to accuracy and consistency.

A great way to stop thinking about your mechanics while swinging is to build a swing you can trust—one that lets you focus on rhythm, tempo, and timing. How do you do this? You do it by ingraining key moves at critical swing points—like your set-up, downswing, and follow-through. Ingraining these moves enables you to forget about your mechanics and focus entirely on the task at hand. Improved focus leads to better shots. Better shots lead to better scores and better golf handicaps.

Let’s look at five key points where can ingrain moves that build trust in your swing:

Set-up
Setting up incorrectly generates swing faults that lead to bad shots. So you always want to set up correctly. For example, if you set up so that you’re reaching for the ball with your arms disconnected from your body, you’ll tend to take the club back to the outside. To build trust in your address position, set up your arm hang so that the club swings back automatically on plane. You can do this by bending from the waist so that when your arms hang down your triceps rest against your chest.

Takeaway

What you need to do with your takeaway, as I’ve said in hundreds of golf instruction sessions and golf tips, is start everything back in one piece. To help execute a one-piece takeaway correctly, try lightly brushing the grass behind that ball. When you keep the clubhead low to the ground like this, it makes it easy to stay on plane and create proper width in your swing. You may not actually hear the clubhead brush the grass during your takeaway, but keeping low helps builds trust in your takeaway and your swing.

Backswing
Your backswing is the source of many swing errors. If you could eliminate your backswing, you fee yourself of many swing errors. Obviously, you can’t eliminate your backswing. But you can build trust in it. To do that, you need to let the club swing freely to the top. You can do this by turning your back hip pocket behind you so that it feels like your clubhead and torso are moving back together. They should arrive at the top simultaneously.

At The Top
The top position is another key point where you want to build trust. But there’s some dispute as to where the toe of your club should be pointing when you reach the top. Some say it should be square or closed. Others say it should be pointing downward to provide the freedom to let the club go at the bottom. Most great golfers—the one’s that have lasted for years—pointed the club down and cupped their left wrist at the top. To build trust in your top position, do the same. It jump-starts a powerful release through the ball.

Impact
When you make good impact, you should feel like your back shoulder is on top of the ball. Too many weekend golfers ignore their back shoulders when swinging. To them the only thing that counts is their front shoulder. But ignoring your back shoulder produces pushes and hooks. To build trust at impact, swing the club so that it feels like the clubhead is passing through your hands at impact, not your hands trying to hold the face square at impact.

Building trust at these five key points in your swing builds trust in your entire swing. As a result, you won’t be thinking about the newest golf tips you’ve read or learned about in golf lessons during your swing. Instead, you’ll be focusing on more important things like rhythm, tempo, and timing—things that contribute greatly to better shots. Better shots lead to better scores and better scores lead to better golf handicaps. Trust me.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Golf Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

View the original article here