I think of myself as a golf coach I coach people to improve their score because that is how golf is played. The guy with the lowest number of shots wins. Simple really. Can you remember the names of the world long driving champions? of course not but you know Tiger, Rory and Phil? that’s right they get it round in fewer shots than everyone else.
There are however some technique junkies out there who don’t actually improve your score but just concentrate on swing technique. Be careful these imposters talk a good game and might catch you out! Here is a list of how to spot them and save your handicap!
1. Technology
Here is an easy way to spot the technique junkies, they love showing you your faults on a computer screen, especially by drawing a line on the club at address and commenting on every deviation. In some extreme cases they even get a computer monitor right up next to the ball to really put you off!
The real Pro: Also uses technology but only to measure or show you ONE specific problem, then they get onto sorting it out!
2. Terminology
The technique junkie cant help himself, he has to quote words that you need a dictionary for! he might say things like “ah yes, too much palmar pronation” or maybe a “dorsal bending with supination”.
The real Pro: He will simply tell you that your arm isnt bending properly
3. Tanned/Pale
The technique junkie loves his computer so much that he stays indoors or in a video hut most of the time and anyway it is much easier teaching from the mat. Because of this even in the middle of summer he has a strange pale look of librarians or office workers.
The real Pro: is outside showing you how to hit shots from different lies and play on the course. This means that he looks like someone who spends time outside!
4. The shoes
It is a dead giveaway but some so called Golf teachers teach for most of the year in sneakers or even big boots! What are you thinking? How on earth can he be demonstrating and playing himself wearing stuff like that. A dead giveaway!
The real Pro: He is always wearing classically styled smart golf shoes, why? because he is always out on the course showing you how to do it that’s why he is wearing them. Ever seen a fitness trainer in Jack boots? dont think so!
5. It was inevitable wasnt it.. Standard of play
The technique junkie will hardly ever show you a lob from a bare lie or different sorts of spin from the bunker or even play golf with you! want to know why? because he cant play! you will probably beat him!!
The real Pro: loves the game and can show you any number of different shots you might need to use on the course. Oh yes he can play too, why else would he be called a golf professional!
Have you come across such a technique junkie posing as a real Golf Pro? report him immediately to the appropriate authorities and seek immediate treatment here…
In this example you can see top Instructor David Leadbetter on the course with his student Ian Poulter, hitting a real shot in a bunker. Note that David is wearing real golf shoes! 
The problem with grip sizes
It almost always amazes me how choosing the right size of grip can make golfers’ hands look anatomically correct without even changing the actual method of gripping the club. I am also pretty sure that the reason many golfers are scared of grip changes is that the proposed changes are pretty poor. Getting the right size of grip is also more involved than you might think. Here is a common problem.
The grips (whilst being Golf Pride and therefore awesome) taper quite a bit from top to bottom and for certain types of hands and even club release patterns this might be OK for you.
My experience however is that as most people have a similar sized left and right hand it makes more sense to thicken the right hand part of the grip. In this picture I have a Midsize grip in the right hand and a normal grip in the left. A mixture of both would be ideal.
It simply requires a build up of tape layers under the right hand in order to make the grip feel less tapered.
I find that particularly golfers with larger hands tend to need this build up more than others. I have even experimented with an undersize Grip on my clubs built up to a normal grip on the right hand.
Wise words from Butch
“Hit some high draws, some low draws, high fades, low fades, move the ball up and down, move it around; don’t worry about how you do it and go back to feeling it again. Quit playing golf-swing and just hit shots; just say …I’m gonna hit a low fade, and I don’t need anybody to tell me how to do it, I’m just gonna feel it”
Butch Harmon
..easy to write off for technique freaks but the reality of playing for score and not for swing!
Masters 2012 – A lesson in tactics from/for Phil
So Bubba Watson is the new and well-deserving Masters Champion, he may not be a pretty swinger nor a great advert for technical swing instruction but he can play the game and that is what it is all about as he demonstrated last night. Perhaps the shot of the tournament was the recovery on the 10th when it looked like he might of thrown it away.
Moat probably the best lesson we can learn is what happened to Phil on the otherwise innocuous 4th. His tee shot was sliced away to the left of the green, hitting the grandstand before landing deep in a patch of bamboo. As Phil said to his caddy the normal options for declaring the ball unplayable were not really an option, two club lengths wouldn’t free him from the bamboo and dropping further away would take him further into the trees. So far so good. The other option he had of going back to the tee seemed to be the only possibility. Instead Phil chose to play the ball by flipping his club over and trying to hack out right handed.
Now I am usually all for playing the ball at every opportunity and see many club golfers take drops for unplayable way too often.
Lesson 1 – If you can advance the ball into a better position, always play it. Look around for places to play to that make sense and dont cost you a shot.
Unfortunately Phil had a couple of hacks at his ball before advancing it onto some hard packed earth which had been walked on by spectators all week. Unbelievably he went for a lob with his 64 Wedge only to fat it into the bunker.
Lesson 2 – If you are weighing up whether to risk a particular shot think of it this way. Can I pull this off more than 70% of the time? if so go ahead and commit to it using your full pre shot routine just a s normal. If not, think of another option!
in typical Phil fashion he then hit a great bunker shot and only needed a tap in for a six. Even more impressive however is how the triple bogey didnt seem to affect him, he was three under and bogey free for the rest of the round!
More Gear Effect – This time from top to bottom
In my last post I discussed gear effect on woods and irons and how they might affect your performance.
If that wasn’t already too complicated today’s post goes into some more detail and we discuss why Callaway Golf’s new RAZR Hybrid might be a game changer.
Yesterday we looked at the horizontal effect of gear effect and the curvature on the clubface called bulge which counteracts this gear effect. The same is of course true of the vertical axis. There is also gear effect here too.
Roll on a Driver – Picture from the kind people at Tom Wishon!
If you strike the ball higher on the face than the centre of gravity then the same gear effect applies and the clubhead twists around it’s centre of gravity giving the ball the opposite spin. In actual fact this means that the ball simply has less spin, in order to help this work for golfers club manufacturers curve the face to launch the ball higher. This is great for you because it means you get a high launch and low spin drive. Maybe you didnt hit it just out of the middle but if it was just above the middle then it may well be the optimal mix for maximum distance. this is by the way the reason that you need to tee a ball up for more distance.
This is also the reason why manufacturers are so keen to get the centre of gravity as low as they can on a driver. Traditional wooden drivers had a metal soleplate and a lead weight directly underneath that plate. Nowadays there are materials like Callaway’s forged composite which is far lighter enabling them to put the weight wherever they like.
Think of it this way, the face is curved meaning that a 10 degree driver only has 10 degrees of loft in the centre, above the centre it mit be 12 degrees and below perhaps 8.
The opposite is of course true if you hit the ball on the lower part of the face, the ball will spin significantly more. This is why due to the roll there is less loft here helping a ball already spinning too much stay low. Having said that there are certain shots with which you dont want a low launch whatever the spin might be and it also has to be said that there are many more golfers struggling to get the ball in the air than keep it down.
That’s why Callaway have introduced “No Roll Hybrids” now dont misunderstand them the golf ball will roll when it hits the ground! Its the face that has no roll meaning that the loft at the bottom of the face is the same as in the centre and not lower. If you are hitting from a tight hard lie (which was one of the reasons for using a hybrid anyway) you have some more loft to get the ball in the air.
My demo clubs for the No Roll Hybrids are coming soon so get to your local Pro Shop and try them out!
This is a no roll face on the new Callaway Hybrid!
What is gear effect anyway?
Hitting the ball from the centre of the face is the most important ing you can do to influence the quality of your shots, they feel great from the middle too!
This may sound a little obvious but in actual fact it seems that hardly anybody really manages to do it, at least not perfectly and this could be much more important than the direction of your swingpath or the face angle at imact.
Imagine you often hit the ball from the toe, because the centre of gravity is in the middle of the clubhead it will twist on off centre hits causing the ball to spin. As the club rotates clockwise (when viewed from above) the ball spins anticlockwise and hooks. The opposite happens when you hit the ball on the heel, it fades.
The gear effect on irons is less than on woods because the centre of gravity is nearer the face therefore the spin generated is much less. There is however gear effect and it is important to know that this is what made the ball go left, not the path of the club or the face angle.
Woods have much more gear effect because the centre of gravity is further back and causes much more gear effect than irons. This is why the face of a Driver is curved both from top to bottom (roll) and more importantly from heel to toe (bulge). The bulge doesnt cause the gear effect it actually minimizes it’s effect because if the face is curved and you hit it from the toe the ball will start more to the right due to the curvature of the face on the toe actually pointing more to the right. This doesnt stop the spin but it does make the resulting shot less of a hook and more of a draw because the ball starts right and draws back into the middle.
Remember, dont automatically work on plane and face if you are not hitting it from the middle, they might have nothing to do with your problem!
A really basic drawing of gear effect:
PGA of Germany Demekratie, Mitgliedschaft und andere Fragen
Selbstverständlich verstehe ich die Sorgen der vielen Kollegen die das neue Vorgehen der PGA nicht gerade begrüßen. Es ist sicherlich auch schwer zu argumentieren dass wenn jedes Jahr mehr und mehr Pros dazu kommen würden, der durchschnittliche Verdienst senken muss und es werden Pros geben die nicht alleine durch Golfunterricht existieren können. Aber ist dieses wirklich der Fall?
Zuerst gibt es nicht unbedingt klare Hinweise dafür dass das Verhältnis von einem Pro zu seinen potentiellen Schüler tatsächlich kleiner geworden ist. Deutschlands Golfmarkt bzw. die Anzahl der registrierten Golfer wuchs bei 2.4% im letzten Jahr. Wenn heute Abend 30 junge Menschen PGA Qualified werden gäbe es über 500 neue Golfer für sie zu unterrichten. Sicher mag diese Art der Rechnung zu simplistisch sein aber deutliche Hinweise zum Gegenteil gibt es nicht.
Dieses ist auch nicht der Grund warum ich das Vorgehen der PGA unterstutze. Ich glaube auch dass es möglicherweise zu viele Golflehrer gibt, aber dieses gab es in Deutschland schon eine ganze weile. Der Grund hat allerdings nichts mit wirtschaftlichen Interessen zu tun sondern menschlichen. Ein junger Golfer heute der eine Karriere in Golf machen will zum Beispiel als Club Manager oder Schläger Fitter wird entweder nicht PGA Mitglied oder es muss zwangsläufig auch Golflehrer werden. Wäre es nicht besser solche Möglichkeiten anzubieten sodass die Golflehrer wirklich auf hohem Niveau arbeiten können und anderen der Weg ihrer Wahlgvgg aber innerhalb der PGA. Schliesslich heisst es nun PGA und lange nicht mehr DGLV.
