Category: Golf

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Golf: My 2025 Season So Far

My 2025 golf season is winding down. It has been a typical year, with lots of ups and downs. I would say there have been more ups than downs. Nothing new on how to play the game, but there are a few changes. There was not as much traveling for golf this year. Many of the guys I play with had tough years with injuries and, in some cases, illnesses. Everybody made it through the year, but some better than others, to say the least. The best way to go through this year is to take a page from the classic western The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I would say there was enough to go around for all three.

There was plenty of good. I have already broken my record for rounds played in a year. I have played 158 rounds, which eclipses my old record by 6 rounds. Right now, we have a weather break, but things are looking up to play Thursday through Sunday this week. With any luck, this year I may make the 170 mark. I have shot my age, 75 or better, 48 times so far this year. Last year I did it only 22 times. Of course, I had to shoot 74 or better last year. I did shoot a 73 from the white tees this year. Most of my rounds were played from the gold tees. My best round of the year was a 2 under 70, the same as last year. I started the year with a 5.0 index and currently, it is 4.9. I did have a much more consistent year. The highest I went was 6.3, and the lowest was 4.5. I also won my age group in the South Park Seniors and tied for the 4th best score of the day with a 75. My driving was still the stalwart of my game. My putting was up and down, so I will still put it in the good. I have actually been putting very well lately after having a downturn with putting during October. My other big improvement this year has been my sand play. I am not great, but I am not costing myself 2 or 3 shots when I am in a bunker. The weather had its ups and downs also. It was very windy and wet in March, April, May, and the early part of June. Then we went through a blistering hot spell that left a lot of courses in terrible shape. The rain we did get in this time frame was more in the form of a deluge. Beginning about the 2nd week of August, we went through some of the best weather I have ever experienced in Western Pennsylvania. Temperatures ranged from 66 to 84. It never got too hot or too cold all the way through the 3rd week of October. We could have used more rain, but we did get just enough to help some of the courses recover. Right now, we have hit a bit of a cold spell, but milder temps are on the horizon.

Next the bad, and there was plenty of that. My iron game continues to give me problems. It was the biggest reason my handicap did not go down. My iron play was especially bad from the 9-iron on up. I would have some good days with the irons. I have pretty much given up on figuring it out. My irons now consist of just the 6-iron through the lob wedge. Even though my handicap did not change much, I did have some really bad rounds this year. It wasn’t quite as bad as last year, but I had 14 rounds between 84 and 90. All of these rounds were brought on by bad iron play and a terrible short game. My problems with my irons did not have just one issue. Sometimes I would hit them fat, other times thin, and short irons just skulled low line drives. Those three shots could occur in just one round. There were some days that I had no finesse with them at all. I would have days where I did everything well with them: hit cuts, draws, high, and low shots at will. These were the days I shot my best rounds, as long as the putter behaved.

Now for the ugly and we all know where this is going. THE CHIP YIPS. Plus I added the shank chip, which I believe is nothing than a form of the chip yips. Even my good round in the South Park Seniors had a chip shank on the 17th hole. I admit I was choking down the stretch as I was just 2 over par after 16 holes. I somehow managed to hit 2 very good shots on the Par 5 and was almost green high on the left. The pin was on the front right but the green is narrow at the front. I tried to get too fancy and shanked it right out to the middle of the fairway. From there I putted from about 20 yards short of the green to avoid another shank. I putted it about 8 feet past and missed for a bogey 6. I played 18 better than I thought I would and had a 10-footer for bird but made a horrible putt but parred the hole to stagger in with my 75. The putting yips for now seem to be under control. I will be writing about that later this week. I have tried various things when it comes to the chip yips and just go back and forth with it. Some things seem to work and then everything just goes haywire. Fortunately, at times they just seem to go away. They are there more than they are not. I may discuss them further in another blog, but I don’t know. If I have a big breakthrough, I will be writing about that.

There is still some golf to be played this year, and where there is golf, there is hope. I will do the end of season right near Christmas when the year will be ending. I will be blogging some more over the next two days. The next one will be about my favorite subject: putting. Not too sure what the second one will be; most likely something about the mental game.

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Golf: Don’t Become A Slave To Your Pre Shot Routine

All golf instruction recommends having a pre-shot routine. The pre-shot routine allows you to treat each shot the same way. The pre-shot routine lets you execute better when the shots become more important as the round progresses. Your long game, short game, and putting pre-shot routines will each be a little different. I do agree that it is very important to have a pre-shot routine. I feel, however, that many golfers will never vary their pre-shot routine no matter what the situation. They are also reluctant to change their pre-shot routine as a way to improve their game. They are very rigid when it comes to the pre-shot routine. In other words, they become a slave to the pre-shot routine. What winds up happening is that something that is supposed to help their game winds up making their game worse. I will use my own pre-shot routines for each phase of the game as examples.

For the long game, I have two basic pre-shot routines depending on how I am swinging the club. If my swing is good, I take a small practice swing. It is about 1/5 the length of a normal backswing. Sometimes early in the round, I feel a little stiff. Or I think my swing is off. In such cases, I will take a full practice swing. For both, I start out by standing behind the ball to help line up the shot. Then I take my address position at the ball. I take one look at the target. Then I will make my swing. Sometimes, I run into trouble when I take that first look at the target. I will feel I am aimed a little right. Or my stance is not quite right. If I make the final adjustment, I will usually hit a good shot. If I don’t, then the shot is usually not so good. This does not happen often, but sometimes I have to make two adjustments. In either example, this is a departure from my usual routine. When I do it, the shots are better.

With the short game my routine changes. This is the routine I use when things are going well. I will discuss later what I do when things are going very badly like with the chip yips. I stand behind the ball trying to imagine the shot I want to hit. On all short game shots, I use my practice swings to try to get a feel for the shot. I do not have a set number, but I take anywhere from 3 to 6 depending on the shot. While I am doing that, I am also trying to picture the shot. Once I am confident that I have a good feel for the shot, I take my address position. I look at my spot I want to hit 1 or 2 times. Then, I execute the shot. I do this for any shot that is going to need less than a full swing. Off topic for a moment. The high shot chip shot that helped for a while with the chip yips ran its course. I am back to normal chipping of hitting low running shots. Sigh.

My putting pre-shot routine is similar to my short game routine. I line up the putt from behind the ball. I rarely look at a putt from behind the hole. On extremely long putts, I will walk up to the hole. This helps me get a lay of the land close to the hole. I take one practice swing looking at the hole. The practice swing will be one that I would use to make the putt. Once I settle in for the putt, I focus on the line. I take only one look at it. I want to make certain the putt goes on this line. I look down at the ball and instantly stroke the putt. Sounds nice and simple because it is. As in the short game, this is what I do when things are going well. What if they are not?

Players are always looking at their swings and techniques in all facets of the game to improve their swings. They rarely look at something like the pre-shot routine to help improve their score. I have changed my routine right in the middle of a round. This change has helped turn around many a round that seemed headed down the drain. In the long game, I have completed my entire pre-shot routine from behind the ball. I do this instead of performing it from the side. I have had rounds where I do not take a practice swing. In the short game, I will take just one practice swing. This swing has nothing to do with the shot I am planning. I will remove the practice swing. I will take many more looks at the line before I hit the pitch or chip. In putting, I will take my practice swing while looking at the ball rather than the hole. I will try to make the stroke I want on the practice swing. All of these changes have helped me do better on the golf course. I achieved this without changing anything about my swing or technique. I believe that everyone should have a pre-shot routine for every phase of the game. Don’t be afraid to change it when things are not going well. You will be surprised by the results. It is not good to be a slave.

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Golf: Chipping, Going Against The Grain.

I usually have more experience with a method before I write about it, but we are having a more normal winter here in Western Pennsylvania and playing golf is definitely on the backburner. At the end of February last year, I had played 10 rounds of golf. In 2023 I played 8 rounds. So far this year I have played 9 holes, and it does not look like I will be playing the rest of this month. I started using this method toward the end of last year, so I think I have been doing this for about 5 rounds. I have battled the chip yips for about 5 years with having good spells and bad spells but mostly bad spells. This change in chipping is not so much a change in technique but a change in chipping philosophy which goes against the grain of most chipping instruction. The basic philosophy of chipping has always been minimum air time and maximum ground time. All the great short game players have advocated this method.

One of the debates in chipping has been whether to use different clubs depending on the shot you are trying to hit or use just one club like a lob or sand wedge, manipulating the head open or closed and changing ball position, depending on the type of shot you are trying to hit. I use strictly my sand wedge now for all chip shots. However, I do not manipulate the club, because I hit every shot the same, no matter what the situation. The one exception is if I have to hit a really high shot, I will open the face to increase the loft of the club. I would have to do this eventually if I used a lob wedge instead. With the 56-degree sand wedge I hit every chip shot basically the same which is high. If I have a chip shot that is just off the green 3 or 4 yards and I have a lot of green to work with I do not hit the low chip that just lands on the green and runs up to hole. Using the sand wedge’s normal loft, I will hit a high shot short of the pin and let it roll from this point. I see many advantages of using the high method even when it is not necessary. You are hitting one type of shot for every chip. The technique is the same for every shot. The difference is how hard are you going to hit the ball to fly to a spot short of the hole. The other advantage on longer chips, where the ball is off the green by 5 to 10 yards and you have more than 50 feet of green to work with is you do not have to be reading the green for all that roll. I can’t tell you how many times that I have hit a long chip, and the ball has gone in a different direction than I thought it would because I read the green wrong. By hitting a high chip, you only have to know what the ball is going to do about 15 to 20 feet short of the hole depending on the conditions of the green. This has simplified my process greatly. In the world of riding cart golf, I always take the same club out of my bag for every shot around the green. By sticking to the same technique, at least so far, I have not had near the problems with the yips, and if I do yip, the shot still turns out better than my old yip chips. This method particular helps in longer grass around the green where a less lofted club may have a tendency to get caught up in the rough.

I have not used this method for that many rounds and eventually it may go by the wayside by the 9th or 10th round this year. Even though this is a small sample size I feel it has helped me shoot better scores. If your short game is solid then naturally I would continue what you are doing. If you are having problems even if it is not the chip yips but just not getting it up a down that often when just off the green, then I would give the high shot method a try. As we finally get into the golf season I will keep you posted on how I am doing around the greens.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 4

I originally was going to do this blog under the title things we should do but don’t. I realized that all the things I was about to write about happen when we are playing the game. I am not sure I would classify these things as mental aspects of the game but more on how we process a round of golf. These are the things we need to do in order to get a round back on track, or to accept on how a round is going, and what if anything to do about it. We all have the goal to score as well as possible during a round. There is no question for most of us that is our biggest failure. How to turn around a bad start or better yet just how to avoid a bad start.

The first thing you have to do is to accept the vagaries of the game or some like to call it the rub of the green. When tour players scores vary by 6 to 7 shots on a day to day basis, then we should never get upset when that happens to us. If you start out a round by missing a couple of 4 to 6 foot putts in the first 3 or 4 holes you had better come up with a strategy to deal with that. You have to get out of the mindset that you will try and make up for the misses. You should get into the opposite mindset and begin to play super conservative. Even on shots from about 70 yards and out start to ignore the pin and get the ball on the green. Drive the ball to the widest part of the hole. If you make a longer putt or push or pull a shot relatively close to a pin and make a birdie, then you may take a little more aggressive attitude. Let the round dictate your play, not you trying to dictate the round.

You must correct mistakes quickly. What does this mean? It means that if you leave a 20 foot plus putt about 4 feet short on the first hole, your next putt of that length better be long. Sometimes that next putt may not happen for 3 or 4 holes. Maybe you miss the green on the next couple of holes but hit the chip shots real close to the hole. You could hit one of your approach shots very close to hole and make a birdie. It might not be until the 5th hole or so that you have another putt over 20 feet. Regardless, you want to hit that putt past the hole even if it causes you to 3 putt, if you knock it way past. It is the only way you are going to get a true feel for the greens. If you don’t make the adjustment quickly you may never make it, and it will certainly cost you more than one stroke.

The same thing applies to bad shots. Let’s say your opening shot either goes way right or way left. Maybe your opening tee shot is good, but your iron shot is either a big pull or push. A quick fix for this is to aim your next shot where the bad shot ended up. If you hit a big push slice on your tee shot, then on the second hole aim to the right. This should allow a little more over the top action and a better release of the club, allowing you to get closer to the middle of the fairway. What should you do if there is trouble on the right on the next hole? Take a 3 or 5 wood off the tee. Just do the opposite if your opening shot is a big pull or duck hook. If there is trouble on the left, then to avoid another big push to right, swing with less effort and aim down the middle. Do the same for iron shots also and you should correct your errors quicker with no conscious swing changes. Once you get back on track you can begin aiming at your projected target again.

Finally, you should feel that the round is going to progress naturally with no interference from you. What I mean by that is that the round should start out slowly. No matter how much you get to warm up feel that you are swinging easily and in control. In the beginning of a round your distance should be less. In the early holes take more club. If you are at a 7 iron distance then take a 6 iron for your approach. Eventually your distance will increase during the round. It will happen around the 3rd to the 6th hole. You will notice this with your driver. Then use the normal club for your iron distance. If you get off to a hot start, then this may happen quicker and eventually if some adrenaline is kicking in you may see an increase in normal distance. Do not fight this. In this case when you have a 7 iron distance go to the 8 iron. Remember to always evaluate your lie. A tight fairway lie is going to travel less than a lush fairway lie. A ball in the rough will go farther than a ball in the fairway. A ball in the rough is much more unpredictable on what it is going to do than a ball out of the fairway, so plan accordingly. Remember let the situation dictate what you are going to do. Do not try to force the situation. If you can do all of this during a round of golf, you will score much better on a day to day basis. Trust me this is easier said than done. I know from experience. Hopefully, I finally get better in doing all of this. See you on the links.

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Golf: 2024 Golf Season Put A Wrap On It

It is officially 2025 which means that the 2024 golf season is over. Since I last wrote about my season on November 6th, I was able to play another 17 eighteen hole rounds of golf to make a grand total of 152 rounds for the year, which is my all time high for 1 year, breaking the previous record by 2. I shot my age another 4 times including three 73’s to bring that total up to 22 times for shooting my age. Nothing spectacular happened during these last 7 weeks of the season. Just a continuation of my up and down play. I have developed a new short game philosophy which has lasted more than 3 rounds and seems to be working out fairly well. The last round of the year was on the 30th under less than ideal conditions with some pretty high winds and temps in mid 40’s.

What am I looking forward to in 2025? Hopefully to play more golf and continue to improve becoming more consistent. I hope this new chipping philosophy works out. I have pretty much concluded that the key to consistency is to forget about physical keys. This can be difficult because when things are going bad in a round, you try to do various things, such as getting closer to the ball, changing ball position, or making a different swing move or temp. None of this ever really works and by chance if it does it is only for a short time. The mental process is the key. Having confidence in your club selection, the line of your putt or your overall shot plan will be the thing that makes a good score. All of this is rather a moot point at the moment because it does not look like it is going above freezing for about the next 10 days. Eventually I will get out there to start 2025, maybe this will be the year, if not I know I will drink lots of beer. Hit em straight.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 3

In this blog I am going to discuss the most important part of playing the game, putting. Putting can save your round or destroy your round. This will not be a how to putt article. There has been more written about putting than any other aspect of the game. I am going to look at 2 mental aspects of putting. One that I am very good at and the other that I am very bad.

The first one is you should expect to make every putt you attempt, no matter how difficult or long the putt is. If you don’t make the putt you should feel the disappointment. You don’t need to go ballistic over it but you need to really feel disappointed when it does not go in. This legitimizes your expectations. I do not advocate trying to get the ball in the 3 foot circle on long putts. In my view the more you are trying to make the putt the closer you are going to get the ball to the hole. I make my fair share of putts over 20 feet and that is because I expect to make it every time I’m over the ball.

Now we come to the dreaded short putt. Let’s define short as any putt that is 18 inches to about 6 to 7 feet from the hole. There are two things that make short putts unique. We not only expect to make the putt but we add that dreaded word should to the process. Ah, that word should. Like we should exercise more, eat better, sleep longer and make all putts between 2 and 6 feet. The 2nd unique thing about short putts is you have choices. You can try and bang the ball in the back of the cup, die the ball over the lip, or just try to find a happy medium. Even though longer putts can go in using all 3 speeds, no one is standing over a 20 foot putt thinking I am going to bang this in the back of the cup. Most of the time on long putts you are thinking of dying the ball in the cup or just going a short way by the hole. For whatever reason we rarely think of dying the ball in the hole on short putts. There was only one tour player who advocated dying the ball on short putts and that was Cory Pavin. Getting back to the dreaded word should. Why is it so bad? Because as soon as you start thinking should, it creates tension in the stroke, which leads to disastrous results. When you combine should with the perceived importance of the putt your chances of making the putt drops to well under 50%, no matter how short the putt is. As I wrote in the beginning of the blog, I am terrible at all of this and miss more than my share of short putts. I do not have any permanent solution. For me, if I make short putts early in the round then I will usually go on to have a good day. On the other side of the coin, if I miss them early then I have a hard time turning it around. All that I see on TV, I’m not the only one having this problem.

There will be one more post on playing the game and that will be on the short game. This post may be awhile because I am working on some things and with winter I may not be playing all that much to evaluate them. If I ever come up with a short putt solution I will pass that along also. All I can say until then, is get out and play, it is the only true measure of how good your golf game is.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 2

In part 2 of playing the game let us look at the type of shots you need to execute in order to play the game, when to apply them and what to do if you cannot. There are four shots you need to do in order to play the game well. You need to hit the low shot, the high shot, the intentional draw and the intentional fade or cut shot. This is not going to be a how-to article. There are plenty of places you can go online to see how to hit each shot. There are many methods and they all will work. Each player needs to find a method that suits their game best. What this blog is going to be about is when to hit these shots, and the mindset you need to have in order to play the shots. I am going to take the shots in order of difficulty starting with the easiest and finishing up with the most difficult.

Hitting the ball low is by far the easiest of these shots. It is the go to shot on a windy day. In fact, you might want to play the low shot even when playing downwind. Most people would think that you want to hit the ball high when playing downwind. This is true when you are driving the golf ball. However, if you are trying to hit the ball a certain distance then keeping it low is still the way to go. Wind is so unpredictable you want to keep the ball down out of the wind if at all possible. If there is a bunker or a ditch in front of the green, then you will have to go high on the approach shot to the green. Depending on how far you are from the green it still may be better to hit the low shot a little right or left of the green. If the green is open in the front and you are playing on a windy day going low is the best way no matter which way the wind is blowing. You also need to go low if you are too close to trees that you cannot go over. At times when you have to go really low don’t hesitate to hit the driver off the deck to keep the ball low and have it go a fairly decent distance. Even though it is the easiest shot of the group, it is by far, the most important shot of the group. If you are ever going to reach your potential on the golf course, you must be ablet to play the low shot. Go out and find a method and then practice that method until you can hit a low shot with 100% confidence.

The high shot is the next necessary shot if you going to play golf well. Going over trees and bunkers to a green will come up every once in a while, during a round. If you are close enough to the green the high shot takes care of itself because of the loft of the club. There is more skill required if you are trying to hit a fairway wood up to about a 7 iron with some height and maintain the distance. The most dangerous of the high shots is when you are trying to go over trees. If possible, it is always better to go low around or between trees rather than try to go up, unless you have a high skill level on hitting the ball high. The high shot comes in handy but do not overdo it. Most of the time you are better off thinking low rather than high.

Next, we come to working the ball, hitting left to right or right to left. The left to right shot is the easier of the two to hit. The fade or cut shot is a great control shot and has many useful applications during the round. There is one cardinal rule, never curve the ball toward trouble. If there is more trouble on right of a hole than on the left do not hit the fade. The next rule which should be obvious, but most players do not seem to want to do this, is to aim left. If you are going to move the ball from left to right, you have got to give yourself enough room to aim the ball to the left so it will move back to right and end up in the fairway. This is the shot that you can swing fairly hard at. The harder you swing, within reason, the ball will have a tendency to move left to right. You don’t want the ball to curve toward trouble, but you don’t want to have to aim at trouble in order to allow the ball to curve back to the middle of the fairway. There will be times when the best shot to play is fairly straight.

The hardest shot to hit is the draw or the hook. There are situations on the golf course when the draw is by far the best to play. Anytime you want more distance, and the course is wide open, the draw is the shot. When you want an iron to have a little more distance the draw is the shot. A pin on the left side of the green where you can aim to the center of the green and let the ball work toward the pin. This is another shot where you must commit by aiming far enough to the right to allow the ball to work back to the center of the fairway. Draws are harder to control because they will roll further and at can easily snap into the dreaded duck hook. In the execution of the shot, you must swing easier to create the right to left movement that you want. Overall, the draw is not as intuitive as the fade. The rules are the same as they are for the fade but even more so when it comes to not curving the ball toward trouble. This particularly needs to be worked on at the range if you want to try and incorporate it in your game.

I think that anybody with a reasonable game can hit the ball low. It requires a little more skill and guts to hit the high shot in certain situations. Working the ball in different directions takes a lot more skill, time and effort to perfect. So, what are you supposed to do if you lack any of the three. Your game will have to be compromised but it does not mean that you cannot score to your full potential. Every golfer has a certain flight pattern to their normal shots. If your shot pattern is generally left to right, then you have to be more conservative when there is trouble on the right. You should never go flag hunting on pins that are on the left side of the green. If your game is off, you may need to swing a little harder than you normally would. It is the exact opposite for players who have a tendency to draw the ball. When your game is off you may need to swing a little easier. There is advantage in being able to work the ball but is not a game ender for those of you that don’t. For those of you that don’t work the ball the plan for every shot should be low, high, or normal. Always think low when the hole is tight and there is trouble on the right and the left. The final thought should be aggressive or conservative depending on how the hole sets up and where the pin is located. For players that work the ball the addition of right to left or left to right should be added. Playing the game of golf simply means playing to your strengths, avoiding problems until you reach the green or the green area. Once you are there the fun begins. It’s called putting. I will tackle it in the next blog.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 1

We take lessons, we watch videos, we get fitted for clubs, and we practice. After all that we go to the golf course and we have to play. Sometimes I believe all the things we do in preparation for playing is a subconscious way to avoid playing. More often than not after going through that process we seem to fail miserably on the golf course, and it is very difficult to improve. What is it about this game that seems to bring out the worst in our abilities? I admit I do not take lessons, and do not practice. I did get fitted for clubs, a set of irons once. I do watch instructional gold videos. Even though my game has not gotten any better I have not seen it decline either. If I could get a stroke for every time I have heard about how great somebody hit it on the range and now, they can’t hit the ball at all, I would break 70 at least 25% of the time. Today let’s look at some general things that go wrong when we get on the golf course and actually play the game.

The first problem is we are thinking about our swings rather than thinking about the purpose of the game and that is to get the ball into the hole. This immediately sets up a conflict between the body and mind. The body wants to perform a particular function, and the mind wants to get the ball in the hole. This leads to the basic problem of swinging too hard. There are other factors that lead to swinging too hard. We do not take the time to get a feel for our swing at the beginning of a round. Add to that the anxiety of trying to keep the ball in play and we get an overall tightness of the muscles which makes them harder to move and allow the club to flash through the hitting zone. On the 1st tee you must immediately get into play mode and think about where you want the ball to go. Whatever you were working on should just take over naturally. Start a round out slowly and conservatively until you get a feel for the round. Always take an extra club on the first hole. Allow your swing to have a mind of its own so to speak. It will gradually want to speed up as the round progresses and just let it do so. The main thing to remember is to stay in balance as much as you can.

When we start to play golf, we become way to conscious of our score whether it be good or bad. This mere fact of not knowing what your score is separates the men from the boys. First, we will look at the hot start. You play the first 6 holes much better than you usually do. You begin to put more emphasis on the results of each shot from that point on. You must get back in the mode that enabled you to get off to the good start in the first place. Part of that good start had to be related to making some nice putts. There is nothing from stopping you from making more. Conversely if you get off to a bad start over the first 6 holes you have to push through that and continue to think about how and where you want the ball to go. A lot of times bad starts can be related to poor or unlucky putting. Remember, all it takes is to make one putt to get the confidence back and make up some ground. You will never know when the big comeback is going to happen if you never give it a chance.

The final problem when playing the game is not adjusting to conditions and not being able to hit the shots that the conditions require. The shots themselves I will discuss in future blogs about playing. Most players think that not adjusting to conditions is only associated with conditions that are considered bad. Conditions that are considered ideal can get you into trouble if you are not paying attention. The types of conditions golfers play under are as varied as the weather. I have always been amazed at my own game when I shoot a really good score under way less than ideal conditions. It could be rain, cold or wind and I will sometimes shoot a round in the low 70’s. I often think that I don’t shoot that good a round when it is sunny, 80 degrees, and no wind. I think the reason for this is that when conditions are not that good, we start to think and plan better, and our expectations are low. When the conditions are ideal, we forget about how far a ball can roll into trouble when compared with very wet and soft conditions. Usually in the summer the greens can be faster, so it is more important to stay below the hole and avoid downhill putts. One of the toughest conditions to play in is when it is windy. All of these things add up to make the game more difficult to play, than practice. Playing the game can be very frustrating. Over the next 3 or 4 blogs I will cover certain aspects of playing the game. The main goal of any golfer should be to play to their maximum ability. It is a lot tougher than it sounds.

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Golf: Revisiting Grip Pressure, Overswinging, and Starting The Downswing.

I wrote these three articles about 2 to 3 years ago and they remain my most popular blogs, especially the one on grip pressure. The overswinging blog was titled You Cannot Overswing and the blog on starting the downswing was Maybe Sam Snead Was Right After All. Snead had a unique thought on how to start the downswing which was mostly criticized by other golf instructors. Over these last 3 years I haven’t really changed my mind, but I thought it might be time to clarify a few points in each area and even strengthen some points because there are still instructors out there that teach a different philosophy that in my view hurts the average golfer more than helps. All three subjects are what it takes to hit a golf ball consistently. A most important aspect of the address, the grip, how to make a backswing, and the first move in making the downswing. If you can do these things correctly then your chances of making solid contact with the ball increase dramatically. Unfortunately, golf instruction has some strange ideas on these subjects, especially the first two, which makes learning the game very difficult. They are not as far off on starting the downswing mainly because there are as many ways to start the downswing as there are body parts. What makes this difficult at times is that the methods used will work, it just boils down to finding what might work for you. This is different when it comes to the grip and backswing, because what most golf instruction teaches is wrong. So, let’s dive in.

There are way too many endorsers of the light grip. I saw a recent video aimed at senior golfers that said it is very important to start with a light grip. They say that your grip will tighten up automatically when you start to swing. What happen to constant grip pressure during the swing. Most of the older instruction books write about having a firm grip. The pressure points are the middle two fingers of the right hand and the last 3 fingers of the left hand. All of this light grip stuff started because some beginners take a death grip on the club. To put a number on it, let’s say that 1 is the lightest you can hold the club and 10 is the tightest you can squeeze the club. In order to grip the club with the correct firmness I would put a number around 7 to 8 depending on the shot. 8 for the driver and longer clubs and for hitting out of the rough no matter what the club. If you don’t want the club closing over out of the rough, you had better firm up those last 3 fingers of the left hand. For all short shots and short irons I would say it should be closer to a 7. It is perfectly fine to work your fingers and have some hand movement before the shot. Just before you start the swing you want to feel that the hands are firming up and ready to control the clubhead. Your hands are never going to be able to react to the movement of the swing, especially at the point of contact with club accelerating at full speed. You do not need to choke the life out of the club, no pun intended, but you do need to take full command of the club and the clubhead. There is no way you are doing this with a light grip. If you played these sports think of how you held a baseball bat or a tennis racket. Be the firm handshake, not the dead fish.

I still believe that you cannot overswing. However, you do have to do two things at the end of your backswing. Your weight should be solidly on the right foot, and you should feel that you are in balance. One of the biggest swing faults I see is that people take too short of a backswing. This short backswing is caused by anxiety in trying to hit the ball, and the odd feeling of turning away from your target. It does not help that most golf instruction talks about restricting the hip turn. This all started with what is known as the X factor. The X factor being the more you can turn your shoulders without turning your hips the farther you will hit the ball. The basic swing is a 45 degree hip turn and a 90-degree shoulder turn. This is a difference of 45 degrees. The goal of the X factor swing is to increase this 10 to 20 degrees. If you do this, you will hit the ball farther. Is this correct. Absolutely. Will you be able to play golf well into your 70’s with this method. Probably not. A big hip turn is essential if you are going to minimize the wear and tear on the body. I feel the hips should turn at least 45 degrees and you should try to turn them anywhere from 60 to 70 degrees. The great Bobby Jones had a huge hip turn. None other than Jack Nicklaus had a big hip turn. He even raised his heel off the ground to ensure that his hips were turning quite a bit. Once you start making a big hip turn you will really feel your swing loosening up and become more fluid. The only danger of making a big hip turn is that as you turn toward the 70 degree mark, there may be a tendency to throw the body toward the left side or on the left foot. Make sure you maintain the weight on the right foot at the top of the backswing, and you will be hitting the ball in an effortless way. You will not be stretching the left side of the body to its limits, causing damage to tendons and muscles. Try a big hip turn backswing and let the body heal from restricting those hips.

All right, we are at the top of the swing. Now it is time to start down and make contact with the ball. There are many correct ways to start the downswing. None of them are wrong. As a player you need to find the one that works for you. However, you don’t need to be a slave to any of them. If one of them does not seem to be working, then go to another one. Before we get to all the ways to start down, let’s look at what Sam Snead said. He said that the best way to start down was to think about pulling a rope down that was attached to a church bell. Snead was really panned for that idea because as golf instruction developed and video came into use, the lower body became king as the way to start down. The idea was to keep the hands out of the picture until the last minute when they would release for a powerful smash right at the ball, but not any sooner. What Snead did not emphasize when he wrote about this, is that the hands need to start straight down form the top. All of a sudden you see this being advocated under the heading of the gravity swing. When you get to the top drop the hands straight down. The difference is, Snead used the word pull, and now people are talking about letting the hands just drop. To me this indicates a more passive move to start the downswing, where Snead’s words of pulling the hands down is more aggressive. It is a matter of semantics but there is no question this is what Snead was telling people to do 65 years ago. There are other effective ways to start the downswing. I am going to briefly mention a number of them without any explanation. If you want to read more about them, you can look them up. They all can work. Straightening your left leg. Kicking your right knee toward the ball. Raising your left shoulder. It helps if you are thinking of lowering your left shoulder during the back swing. Bump your hips to the left before turning toward the target. Just shift you weight to the left foot before starting down. Falling into the lead foot. Unscrewing your backswing with the legs and then firing the shoulder away from the body. Moving the core forward then increasing the arm speed. Lots to choose from there and none of them are bad. However, none of them are going to give Snead’s method of starting the downswing a thumbs up. Believe me it is another effective and yet very simple way to start the downswing. It is a method you should definitely try.

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Golf: My 2024 Season

Yes, I am still playing and playing often. So far this year I have played 135 rounds of golf. Besides the Pirates taking up most of the blog space during the spring, summer and early fall, I really have not found anything knew or exciting about how to play the game. As usual, there have been times that I thought I found something that may be of benefit to my game as well as to others struggling at this game. Whatever it was, it was short lived to be filed in the trash bin like about 500 other things I thought might have some merit. Over the next month or two, golf will be the main topic of the blog as I will discuss some things I have talked about in the past. There are some ball striking views and how to play this game, I have tweaked over the years. I had a really up and down year as you will see with some of the same old problems rearing their ugly head.

The good news is that I shot my age, 74 or better, 18 times. The majority of those rounds were from the gold tees. The highlights were a 72 from the white tees at South Park. I hadn’t done that for about 2 to 3 years. I shot a 2 under 70 from gold for my low round of the year. On the other side of the coin, I had 42 rounds between 80 and 88 with the remaining 75 rounds between 75 and 79. My handicap index started the season at 5.7 reached a high of 7.1 in mid May when I had the most trouble with the yips but then took a steady decline until the end of October to 4.7 but jump up to the present 5.0. I have about 5 rounds to go in posting scores as the last day is November 14th. My driving continues to be the best part of my game by far. My iron game as been good to awful, but never great. By far the most erratic part of my game. The short game has not been bad when I do not yip. My putting has been the 2nd most erratic part of my game. Even when I do not yip I will have bad putting days. A lot of the issue is my green reading, which continues to deteriorate. During my age shooting rounds my putting was spot on. In my other rounds including rounds that I shot in the 70’s my putting kept me from having more age shooting rounds. That was the story of my year. A very inconsistent year with the yips rearing their ugly head way too many times. I will go into more depth on that in a later blog.

I consider the 72 from the whites the best round of the year. I had 5 birdies to offset a poor iron shot and chip yip double bogey on the 9th hole. I have proved the saying it’s not where your good shots go but where your bad shots go that is the key to scoring in golf. Some of my shots can be ranked up as horrid. What is amazing to me is that they can come up even in the middle of some of my best rounds of the year. I have tried a lot of stuff this year. I have not swung the same for more than 10 days tops. Our weather is looking good so the season is far from over and I will do a final post at the end of the year. As I stated before, the blog will be about golf for the next 3 months unless the Pirates do something unusual in the off season like acquire a major league player. I am going to revisit 3 of my most popular articles, grip pressure, you cannot overswing, and how to start the downswing in the next blog. I think all of those articles need a bit of an update. Stay tuned.