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]]>The impressive leaderboard was stacked with DLGA students taking 5 of the top 6 spots in the tour's final event of 2011.
Park, with a closing 70, finished at 9-under-par 279 to beat Paula Creamer and Sandra Gal (also coached by DLGA's Andrew Park) by two shots at sun-splashed Grand Cypress Resort to win the LPGA tour's season-ending event. Another shot back were Na Yeon Choi (Kevin Smeltz) and world No. 2 Suzann Pettersen (David Leadbetter). Michelle Wie (David Leadbetter), world No. 3 Cristie Kerr and world No. 1 Yani Tseng, trying to win for the 12th time this season, made brief runs at the championship before finishing in a tie for sixth, seven shots behind.
"I still cannot believe this," Park said. "On the back nine I was getting like nervous and then getting tight in my body. So my caddie said, 'Just keep going, keep trying to (play) like (it's the) first round. You're on the tee first time each hole, and just keep doing the same thing.' And then I said 'OK.' "
Read more: Hee Young Park wins LPGA finale [USA Today]
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The final element to making your golf swing of the day work for you is making sure your golf ball starts on the correct line. A hula hoop (or at least the ability to envision one) will really help you with this exercise.
So why the hula hoop? It's an easier way to explain the swing plane, which in simple terms is a circle that you are trying to swing your golf club upon around your body.
]]> Take note of the photo down below. The middle ball with the white shaft, no matter if your stance is open or closed, represents your personalized, standard ball position. Through trial and error, this is where you have found you hit the golf ball the straightest with the most frequency. The back ball with the yellow shaft represents a ball position on your swing plane arc which encourages a golf ball to start right. The forward ball with an orange shaft represents a ball position on your swing plane arc which encourages a golf ball to start left. What are we discovering? By changing the ball positioning we can start the golf ball on a different line! Or, if we're hitting pulls for the day, move the ball position back to help you start the golf ball more correctly on line. Get the picture?
In conclusion, our golf swing's are always going to have inconsistencies. A more mechanically sound technique will make us more consistent. But in the end, no matter the level of your consistency, you need to control your golf ball from day to day to lead to better scores. This information should help you achieve that. Good luck!
Tim Mitchell is Director of Instruction at DLGA Strawberry Farms located in Irvine, CA.
Any questions for Tim? Email him directly at tim.mitchell@davidleadbetter.com or write a comment below!
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Long before we head to the practice range or the first tee, I usually start my mental game sessions sitting down with my golfers and I try to find out as much as I can about how they feel about competition, playing against and with others, what they have accomplished in the past, and how they deal with pressure. This oftentimes leads to a fascinating discussion of past events and gives me a good insight into the psychological profile of the person.]]>
During this session, we will discuss their belief system and what it will take for him or her to get better. I will ask them if they truly believe in their talent and what they feel they need to do in order to get better. But, the most important question we will go over is: "What are you willing to do or work on in order to improve your golf game?" When I can get a positive response to this question is when we start to discuss basic and applied strategies.
So, the first question you have to ask yourself: "What am I willing to do or work on in order to improve my game?"
If you don't know where to start, you may want to start by examining your attitude or even ask some of your consistent playing partners to describe your attitude. What you may find may not always meet your taste, but at least you are getting some feedback and hopefully it will be honest and sincere. Oftentimes, when we take the time to sit back and reflect on what it is we want, we don't really have a definitive answer. But if we think about what it is we don't want and move the other way, we often get to where we want to go in the end.
So now that you've managed to process the information about your impact position with the drill from Part 1, how many of you returned your clubface to match up perfectly parallel to the two by four, and therefore have a square clubface at impact? For those of you who didn't (most of us) you can bet on having a lot of side spin IF your timing is off. Yes...even if the clubface is not square, you still can hit it straight...but it takes some pretty fancy recovery motions that can break down when your rhythm is off.
So how can you make your clubface dynamically (through motion) square to your swing of the day?
]]> Return to your impact position of the day (because it can and does change reguarly) and simply rotate the clubface in your hands without changing your regular hand positioning until the clubface is parallel to the two by four. Perhaps that was confusing. This grip change is very similar to your pre shot routine for your bunker play. Simply, you are only trying to change the clubface position without changing your hands, arms or body positioning.Like everything else in the game of golf...this information might take some tinkering to perfect. But if you utilize this information correctly and make adjustments to what your ball flight is telling you about your impact position, you can really see improvement from your day to day ball striking! Now that we've helped you fix the side spin characteristics of your shot making, let's look next at our ability to start the golf ball on the correct line. That will be addressed in our next blog!
Tim Mitchell is Director of Instruction at DLGA Strawberry Farms located in Irvine, CA.
Any questions for Tim? Email him directly at tim.mitchell@davidleadbetter.com or write a comment below!
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Golf is such an incredibly evil...oops, I meant to say difficult game. One day you have it mastered, the next day your athleticism seems better suited for folding origami figurines. The crazy and hard thing to believe...your golf swing didn't change over night into Mr. Unreliable. The most probable cause, your timing is simply off. Maybe you're a little sore from a challenging work out, or your range of motion is limited because you slept funny, or you had one adult cocktail too many the night before!
Regardless, how can you make your swing work more efficiently for your next round? The simple answer to that question is to understand impact.
]]> And to understand impact, you need to know how to slow down your golf swing to the specific point of ball contact and take a picture of that moment. That moment should open volumes of information as to why your golf ball starts in a specific direction and why it curves.So how do you take that photo of impact?!? Grab a two by four (or anything else with a flat surface) and imagine that it's your golf ball. Take your normal backswing, followed by a 5 second downswing until you strike the two by four at impact. Stop. Take note of your clubface position, similarly to the photo above. This is your first piece of information to understand what ball flight characteristics you might be facing during your round of golf. Stay tuned for Part 2's blog to understand how you can manage that characteristic and other repeating ball patterns you might face on the course during your next round!
Tim Mitchell is Director of Instruction at DLGA Strawberry Farms located in Irvine, CA.
Any questions for Tim? Email him directly at tim.mitchell@davidleadbetter.com or write a comment below!
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As a sport psychologist, one of my priorities when I work with a golfer who is having trouble is to find out why something is happening and how to correct the situation. Call me if you will a golfing detective.
It just happens to be a bit harder to detect clues that will uncover the answer for renewed confidence when you are working on one's cognitive and emotional elements versus the physical ones. That is, I cannot hook up a video camera and detect a suppressed issue that has been lingering for a number of years which affects one's movement and trust.
]]> My job is to make visible which has been hidden or unaware to the golfer. What I have to do is ask a lot of questions and hope that I can get to the source of the problem with introspection and subjective analysis. With that being said, then it is deemed logical and prudent that I ask a lot of questions for clarification and hope that the response that is elicited from the player may shed some light on the presenting issue.When I am working with a golfer (of any talent level) here at the DLGA World Teaching Headquarters at Champions Gate, I often start our session with a simple question: What are you thinking about or doing when you are playing your best golf? It may seem contradictory to the nature of this thinking game, but many players tell me that when they are playing their best golf, they aren't thinking about anything at all, or at least they are not conscious of anything. Their mind is quiet and not filled with overactive or instructional self-talk. In essence, their mind is calm and almost blank. When they feel and think this way, they simply hit the ball to the target and everything falls into place and the ball goes where they intended it to go. There is not a lot of self-talk of "do this and do that" and everything works out great. Does this sound familiar to you when you are having your best round?
I think we need to face a simple fact: Golf is a wonderful sport when we are playing well. Everything about the game seems easy and uncomplicated. Perhaps even a bit too easy. It seems that during these times we just look at the target and swing without effort our ball goes right to where we are aiming. And even when we do hit it poorly, it still ends up in a good place and maybe even goes in the hole! What is even more surprising is that when we are playing our best, it seems that we are trying our least and sometimes, not even trying at all!
On the other hand, when we are playing poorly, the game is not just hard, but it is discouraging, frustrating and just plain depressing. Even when we step into our shots with the greatest of intentions, our results just don't meet or match our expectations. And the harder we try, the worse it gets! If only we could access this feeling of simplicity and know that every time we step into the ball it will go towards the target, how much more fun we could have!
It's sad, but there is a whole world of golfers who play poorly because they don't have a clear idea of how to play golf at a consistent level. Simply put, most golfers don't know what they are doing when they are playing well. They also don't know what they are doing when they are playing poorly. In other words, their success is at best a random event. This means that when they are successful, they cannot tell you what the components of that successful experience are, let alone repeat it. This type of scattered method not only makes consistency scarce, but it makes improvement almost impossible!
Many of the golfers who I work with here at the World Teaching Headquarters have the initial motivation to improve and get better. Now, that's a good place to start, but it is not enough to just say that you want to get better, you need to take action. Action really does speak louder than words! Therefore, my task is to help golfers learn how to think about their games and to really understand what it will take to improve so when they go to the golf course, they are ready to play to their full potential. This understanding is the first step to realization of one's true golf potential and to turn that potential into applied performance!
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For example, a major problem for most golfers is that they too often become caught up in what they score or what others think of how they are swinging the club. Think about it: The first question that you are asked when you finish a round is: What did you shoot? It isn't about how you played or the quality of effort you produced but in the result or tally of your score. This produces a great deal of performance anxiety and over concern about how our game compares to others.
This over-thinking and over-concern about others and the scorecard leads many golfers into a result or outcome focus. An outcome focus creates obsessive thought patterns concerned with swing mechanics and overall scoring results. What usually happens is that a day that starts out with the best intention for fun and personal achievement turns into a quest for social acceptance that begins to feel a lot like work. This "work" concept robs enjoyment from the game and golfers end up frustrated and disappointed with a game that used to be fun!
Therefore, knowing that many players would like to improve, but don't know where to start, I am going to discuss several ideas that I go over with my players to help them to become experts on themselves. Perhaps by participating in these ideas, you can become an expert on yourself as well!
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One of the keys to hitting solid, powerful shots is to keep the clubhead lagging behind your hands as you swing down to the ball. The longer you preserve this lag, the more speed you can generate and the farther the ball will go when you do finally release the club through impact.
How do you create lag and maintain it? Think of your left arm as one lever and the shaft as another. Going back, hinge your left wrist to create a sharp angle between the two levers. Then, as you swing down, maintain that angle for as long as you can. When you release it, the clubhead will speed up.
]]> Many amateurs release the lag too soon by unhinging their wrists. A drill to prevent this is to swing back with your left arm only, and as you start down, hook a finger from your right hand around the shaft and resist the unhinging of your wrist. Groove this feel. In a normal swing, your wrists unhinge naturally at the bottom of the arc.
--Article courtesy of Golf Digest Magazine
There are a lot of differences between the golf swing of an elite player and that of the average amateur, but what are the biggest? Let's look at what most golfers want more than anything: power. My work with biomechanics researcher Jean-Jacques Rivet has proved that most amateurs don't push into the ground effectively to create leverage in their swings. And leverage leads to power.
With the use of J.J.'s data, we've found three spots in the average golfer's swing where a lack of leverage is most evident: the takeaway, halfway back and the transition. I'm going to share our findings with you and give you some drills to fix these power leaks. Follow our advice, and you'll start hitting the ball better than ever.
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1. THE START OF THE BACKSWING
Ground force in the takeaway:
Pro: 25% of body weight
Amateur: 70% of body weight
Most amateurs tend to lose leverage early in the backswing by raising their bodies, which lightens the force they apply to the ground. The pros do the opposite and apply even more force, giving them a much more stable base to coil the upper body.
DRILL
Take a wood block or similarly weighted object such as a hardcover book and place it behind your 6-iron at address. Push the block away from the target as you start your backswing (right). You should feel pressure building in your right heel as well as the ball of your left foot from the extra effort it takes to move the block.
2. HALFWAY BACK
Ground force in the takeaway:
Pro: 25% of body weight
Amateur: 65% of body weight
Even if they had good ground force at the start of the swing, many amateurs lose that grounded feeling at this point. As that pressure decreases, they stop coiling and begin to lift their hands and arms as a compensatory move to finish the backswing. Pros continue to coil all the way to the top because they're still grounded.
DRILL
Place a club on the ground and stand on the shaft with both feet as shown (right, shoes optional). Then swing a 6-iron while standing on the shaft. As you move past the halfway point in your backswing, you should feel a steady or increasing amount of force in your right heel and the middle of your left foot. Because of this force, you should be able to complete your upper-body turn just like the pros do.
3. THE TRANSITION
Ground force in the takeaway:
Pro: 45% of body weight
Amateur: 90% of body weight
As the club starts down, elite players increase the pressure under their feet -- it looks as if they're starting to squat -- which shallows the swing plane and increases clubhead lag. It's a huge power move. Most amateurs swing down on too steep of a plane and release the clubhead lag early, usually resulting in a weak slice. They often have more ground-force pressure halfway down than at impact. The sequence of the downswing should be from the ground up, but these players frequently do just the opposite, leading with the upper body.
DRILL
Set up with your feet and hips open to the target and take the club to the top. As you start to swing down (right), rotate your hips in a clockwise direction -- a feeling of closing them off to your target even more. This dynamic move will force you to push into the ground with your front leg. It also will keep your shoulders from unwinding early and will drop your arms and club onto a shallow plane. Those are keys to hitting a powerful shot that curves from right to left.
--Article courtesy of Golf Digest Magazine
JEAN-JACQUES RIVET is the sports biomechanics consultant to the European Tour.
Read More
"I took something from last week," Choi said. "I had a great experience from last week. ... I did my best last week. ... So, I learned something. And then this week, I had a great feeling about my game. I played so well this week."
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/16/2457177/na-yeon-choi-wins-lpga-malaysia.html
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To determine where the bottom of your swing is you need to know how much your body is facing the target at impact. To find your ideal ball position, get into your golf posture, without a club, and swing instinctively, only with your non target hand. Strike your golf bag and hold your body positioning at impact like the photos shown above. Take note of the following Hip and Chest characteristics to determine where your ball position should be.
-Hips and Chest Open to your body line at address equals a ball position more forward.
-Hips Open but Chest parallel to your body line at address equals a neutral ball position. (Photo Above)
-Hips Square but Chest closed to your body line at address equals a ball position more back.
It might take a while to fine tune this information, but when you do you, your game will see significant improvement with both your ball contact and ball flight. Give it a try...and best of luck!
Tim Mitchell is the Director of Instruction at DLGA Irvine at Strawberry Farms. If you'd like to contact Tim, he can be reached at tim.mitchell@davidleadbetter.com.
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LEARN FROM THE LEGENDS
Jack's Good Footwork
One of Jack Nicklaus' greatest attributes was his wonderful balance, which he got by keeping his feet relatively quiet through the hit. You get a sense of it in this snapshot of him through impact. He has a very calm look in his lower body, depicted by the way his right foot has rolled inward. His quiet feet enabled Jack to match his arm swing with the motion of his torso. This was crucial for Jack's full-swing consistency, especially with the power he generated.
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