I was hitting balls one day with my friend and fellow teaching professional, Ron Gring, when he described a way of looking at all the key shots in golf as the nine panes of glass. This obviously refers to the image you see above, with a fade, straight shot and draw at low, medium and high trajectories fitting into the nine slots._Ê
Sergio’s left shoulder points down toward the ground and behind the ball late into the downswing. This serves two purposes: First, the steeper shoulder angle keeps the left arm close to the body and enables him to create his famous lag. Second, the closed position of the shoulders prevents the club from coming over the top.
The words weight shift can cause a lot of confusion. For starters, a weight shift isn’t something that you should forcibly do; rather, during the swing, your body weight should shift naturally as you make a proper turn. Any manipulation of weight from side to side is a mistake.
Twenty-Six Million Americans play golf, and many of them travel each year to tee it up, but only about 500,000 of them do so in Mexico. This troubled Carlos Kviat, the President of Discover Golf Mexico, a new website (www.discovergolfmexico.com) devoted to making travel south of the border efficient and worry-free. “We [Kviat and founders Marcelino Barrenechea and Luis Velazquez] detected the five most important destinations that attract the most international golfers.” In doing so, Kviat created what he calls the “first premier Mexican golf tour operator.”
If you’ve been told the key to better ballstriking is to keep your head down, odds are you’re a golfer who puts a slice on the ball. Also, you’re a victim of bad advice, since keeping your head down can cause a variety of swing (and back) problems. Keeping your head down on your backswing actually will cause your head to get in the way and restrict your body turn. This means your arms and upper body will lift upward instead of around, and you’ll swing with an upright, outside-in swing path.
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Casting the club from the top of the swing (arms straightening prematurely) is one of the most common power leaks for the amateur player. This move results from a downswing that’s initiated by the muscles in the arms and upper body, and makes it almost impossible to store energy during the downswing._Ê
We editors have spent countless hours on the practice tee at PGA Tour events, and have watched dozens of pros use training aids in their practice routines. (In fact, some Tour players believe in them so much that they either own a part of the company or are more than happy to endorse them.) Golf training aids are the real deal, and the old stigma that they make a complicated game even more difficult is long gone. If you need proof, just check out the following pages. You’ll see several models that the best players in the world use.
By now, you’ve probably seen footage of Tiger Woods snapping his 4-iron against a tree in the 2007 Masters. If you haven’t, it happened on the 11th hole when he found his ball at the base of a tree. Tiger had three choices: hit it backward or backhanded (two choices that would have probably led to a bogey) or advance it down the fairway. Of course, Tiger chose the latter, but to pull it off, he had to sacrifice his 4-iron.
If you want to control your shots more effectively around the greens, the best thing you can do is set up with a narrow stance and always remember to keep the shaft leaning toward the target. Since it’s a chip shot, you don’t have to worry about releasing the club; instead, you want to hold the face square to ensure optimal directional control. This setup position also helps to avoid flubbed chipped shots—one of the most embarrassing and avoidable shots in golf.
