For any golfer who wants to play great golf
Develop great rhythm and tempo in your golf swing by practicing bunker shots
Jul 4th
Practicing bunker shots can improve your rhythm and tempo
Bunker play. What comes to mind for you? Does it fill you with fear? Do you think, “how many shots will it take to get out”?
This is one of the areas that amateur golfers practice the least. And it’s one area where the average golfer can really save a ton of strokes. So practicing bunker shots can save you shots and has a number of extra benefits.
- Bunker shots become much easier.
- Lose the fear of being in a green-side bunker.
- Help with rhythm and tempo.
- Smooth out your swing.
Stuck in a slump? It may be the best thing for you.
Jun 28th
Golf is a game full of up and downs, and I’m not just talking about saving par.
What I mean is that everyone’s “career” with golf, whether playing professionally or playing on the weekend with buddies goes though periods of highs and lows. Whether it’s missing 5 or 10 cuts in row, or shooting 10 strokes above normal for your last 5 or 10 rounds, we all go through tough times trying to get that little white ball into the cup. We all get into occasional slumps.
I’ve been on a bit of a slump myself. After shooting some of my best rounds of the year several weeks ago, I have fallen into a deep fog, where it seems like I had lost all control of my golf ball. We’ll at least until today, although the seeds of the discovery were sown a while back, but I’ll get to that shortly.
The slump seems to have come out of nowhere. My last round before the slump was a 77. I’m not yet a scratch golfer so 77 on a tough par 72 course from the back tees is just fine with me. However when the slump started it began a downward slide in scores. Before I knew it I had several 88s, a 90, and the dagger in my heart was 97 in the member member tournament yesterday.
Although I wasn’t sure how I would fix it, I firmly believe that I will. I also know that I’m not the only golfer to have gone through slumps either. Jack Nicklaus, Steve Stricker, David Duval, Davis Love III, Ian Baker-Finch and many more have gone through their share of slumps. Steve Stricker came back from “no man’s land” to world #3.
US Open: Strategy, Ball Striking and Putting will determine winner
Jun 17th
Watching the marquee group on usopen.com, you begin to get a sense for what these players are facing. This is a stern test of golf on a scale that is hard to me imagine for me not having played any conditions like that in my life.
The rough is truly punishing, the fairways are fast and the greens, well, it’s amazing these guys can keep it on there, and even more amazing when you see shots land softly.
In a sense it both magnifies their almost superhuman abilities, and yet it also shows them in ways that resemble the way we often feel as golfers. I don’t often see tour players be so uncertain, careful, and vulnerable as they can be during this tournament. And yet it also elevates them simultaneously. Great shots are even more spectacular and magnificent because of the difficult conditions.
It does feel like golf as it should be. I’m not saying that they should play open conditions every week, or that average golfers should be faced with open conditions. But watching the PGA tour week in and week out, they can make the game seem too easy. Then again TV coverage is normally skewed, showing the best players on the planet, on their best days. One of the reasons I love watching them in person is that you can follow players who aren’t playing their best and you’ll see that even if they are spraying the ball (which tour players are capable of) they manage to score well. Read the rest of this entry »
Golf Course Review: Richter Park Golf Course
Jun 14th
Richter Park is nestled in the hills of Danbury, CT. It is within driving distance of New York City, but more likely played by the residents of Danbury, Fairfield County, and Westchester County. A 6,744 yard layout from the back blue tees, Richter Park is not a monster in terms of length. It is however, 6700 yards of great golf. As the course winds around the hills it’s laid out on, elevation changes make club selection a somewhat tricky task. Combine that with lightning fast, undulated greens (sometimes severely) and you get a fair but solid test of golf. The slope of 133 seems low, as the course can certainly play more difficult than that.
Driving up Aunt Hack road toward the course, you pass the 9th hole on your right, then head into the parking lot. The modest restaurant/bar and pro shop building set a welcome that can lull you into a sense of calm. You’ll need that calm for the course as it it can quickly punish or reward you. The course does lack a driving range which is it’s biggest drawback, as you need to have your A game if you want to score well here. The practice putting green does however begin to prepare you for the test ahead. It is fast and runs pretty close to the greens on the course. It lacks many of the severe undulations you’ll face but you can at least get a sense of the speeds. Richter Park has some of the fastest greens I’ve played in any public course Connecticut. It’s not unusual to have your putt end off the green if you’re unlucky enough to leave yourself a speedy downhill putt. On this course it is a must to leave your approach shots below the hole.
Sometimes in golf we need to unlearn before we can learn
Jun 14th
The last couple of weeks have been up and down in terms of my scores, but I have learned some very valuable lessons along the way.
In my last five rounds I have two of my best scores for the season, two of my worst, and an average round. What does that tell you? It tells me that golf is a game of patience. You can’t control the outcome. You can only control your process.
Golf is interesting because you can’t force a good shot, you can only let it happen, but you can definitely do a lot of things to create bad shots. The opposite of that is what I think sports psychologists call “getting out of your own way”.
Practice unusual shots to develop creativity
Jun 7th
Lately I’ve been having so much fun practicing my short game, that I almost don’t feel like going to the driving range.
I’ll bring my bag out to the practice area and I have a sleeve where I keep 10 practice balls. The sleeve allows me to quickly pick them up, and drop balls anywhere I want to hit from. It’s been a lot of fun just trying different shots and seeing which club and shot is easiest for me to get it consistently close. Sometimes I’m surprised by the results.
For example, I picked a shot from the fringe off the green, with about 15 yards to the pin. There was plenty of green to work with so I tried everything from 9 iron to 60 degree lob wedge. I would hit a full sleeve of balls with each club, sometimes 2 or three depending on what I was feeling. Sometimes it was easier to loft it high and land it soft, and other times it was easier to bump and run it up to the pin. I found that I could get, on that particular shot, roughly the same results with the 9i, PW, 52 degree and 56 degree sand wedge, while the 60 degree was just a bit less consistent.
Once I get going it, I’m constantly picking up the 10 balls and dropping them in a new location to try a new shot. It’s really a lot of fun, but the biggest benefit is that you begin to develop feel. The more shots you hit with different clubs from different lies, the more creative you start to become.
What were the great players of the past thinking when they played golf?
Jun 1st
Ever wonder what Ben Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, Jackie Burke Jr and other great players of the past were thinking while playing golf? What would be it be like to in their heads as they prepared to hit a shot, and how would it differ from the way many players approach the game today? Eben Dennis had the chance when he was younger to spend some time those legends, and learned from them how they approached the game.
They were using their feel and imagination not thinking about their backswing or swing plane. They were artists with the club being their paint brush. They played golf and not golf swing. They understood the tools they were using like a carpenter understands his. They developed routines that would allow them to repeat how they prepared to play the shot at hand. They prepared for the golf course as if it were a chess match. As Hogan once said a golfer playing golf without feel would be like a deaf man trying to play the piano by ear. They knew the equipment was built for ease of use and respected its value.
Most from that era also learned to play during the wooden shaft era and if they swung too hard they would break the clubs so they stayed with that feeling when steel shafts came along and allowed players to slash at the ball without penalty of a broken club. They also understood as many of the best players do today that the golf ball just gets in the way of going forward toward the target instead of hitting at it like most players do. The best understood that you can control the club effectively only from your fingers and that everything supports what they do.
In short they were doing little thinking and mostly creating.
A half-day with my coach Eben Dennis
Jun 1st
On Friday, May 21st I spent a half day with my coach Eben Dennis at The Links at Hiawatha Landing.
We started out at the driving range working wedges down to the driver. During that part of the session we reviewed some of the principles of Power Feel Golf on which my game is currently based. The main concepts we went over were how control and vision create dynamic balance.
Control is partly achieved by how you hold the club. We found that I was actually holding the club with the face a bit closed to compensate for shots left out to the right. Holding the club with the face square to the target felt a little bit strange but I understood that it was the right move to make, as I have been working on simplifying my swing and eliminating compensations.
‘The Ringer’ putter and tour of KAF Manufacturing and Roll-Master Golf
May 26th
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the Roll-Master putter manufacturing facilities. During that short visit I got to see first hand how putters are designed and made. Roll-master makes the “Ringer” line of putters. The putter is unique in that it makes a bell-like tone, much like that of fine crystal, when the ball is struck on the sweet spot of the putter. Practicing with this putter provides instant and automatic feedback about your putting stroke.
At first the sound was unfamiliar to me. No putter I had ever used produced a sound quite like this one. The differences in the sound from hitting the sweet spot and hitting it off center are quite dramatic. It really is an excellent way to know how solidly you’re stroking the putt without needing visual confirmation. You can also see how you stroked it on the roll out of the ball. A well struck putt from the sweet spot rolls out straight and with a solid end over end roll. A poorly stroked putt will tend to wobble off its intended line and will have a more erratic roll.
Fore! Golf Marathon at Crystal Springs
May 24th
On Wednesday, May 19th, I played in the golf marathon for the Jack and Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation at Crystal Springs resort in New Jersey.
It was one of the best golf experiences I have had in my life. The resort is beautiful and the Crystal Springs golf course is a very challenging layout. Although it’s not as long as some other courses, you must keep the ball in play and on the fairway. And even if you manage to hit the fairway you need to be in the correct side of the fairway. There are very few flat lies on the fairways and even less of them in the rough. The rough is full of punishing grass moguls that make it difficult hit good shots to the large, but fast undulating greens. This course has some of the largest greens I have played on, but you must be in the right part of the green to have a good putt at birdie or even par.
Besides the beauty and difficulty of the golf course, the whole day was so much fun. Once I checked in with Rob Pritts of Back9Promotions, the man behind the golf marathon, we got some breakfast and an opportunity to meet some of the other golfers and participants including about 10 players from the New York Jets. I ended up playing with 3 of the Jets, 2 of them for over 50 holes of golf.
