Golf

General

• If possible, don’t think about form when on the course

  • Some players have swing thoughts when performing, some don’t

  • Those that do only have 1

    • (you normally have 3-5 😬)

  • So, sometimes it can be ok to have a really simple one (“take dead aim”)

  • Otherwise, too many swing thoughts and you’re not even trying to hit the ball anymore

  • If you want to perform, you’re probably best just trying to instinctively hit the ball straight and on a good club path

    • Caveat: If you don’t practice that much, a swing though might be ok to make sure you don’t fall back into bad habits (i.e. keeping head completely still)

Tempo’d Swing vs “Power” Swing

• In golf there are two main types of swing

• The “power swing”

  • Used when you’re trying to get the maximum distance out of your current club

  • Full backswing

  • Hips lead, and shoulders/arms/hands lag behind

  • This lag is where the power comes from — it’s like a whip

  • Imagine that at the start of your swing, there is an elastic band attached to a wall behind you and your left hip

    • The backswing creates tension, pulling on the band

    • The downswing is the band “snapping” — you whip your body forward

    • This is where power is generated — the more lag/snapping, the more generated power

• The “tempo’d swing”

  • When power isn’t your main concern, use this swing

  • There is no lag on the downswing — the hands, arms, shoulders, and hips are all basically turning together

  • The shorter you can keep this swing, the better — it’s easier to control when it’s shorter

  • The tempo is like putting tempo (equal time for initial backswing as the full downswing)

  • Use this swing for putting, chipping, pitching, most punch outs (I think..?)

Putting

• There is no “oomph” in putting

  • No power

  • Tempo’d back and forth

  • You don’t slow down or speed up to hit the ball — you just follow your tempo swiftly and confidently, and let gravity do it’s work

• Tempo can be measured in a lot of different ways, depending on where you count the beats

  • Count on start and at contact

  • Count on start, end of backswing, and end

  • Count on start, end of backswing, contact, and end

  • Idk, hard to remember the bpm for these, but I think that’s the gist of it

  • Here’s the forum topic where everyone discusses the difference, and what the pro averages are

  • Each swing back and forth should take the same amount of time

    • The start (middle) to back is slower, but has a head start

    • It should take the same amount of time to go from middle-to-back as it does for back-to-finish

• To practice tempo, there’s some drills you can do

  • Basically, practice hitting the ball with a certain backswing

  • If you hit it the same distance, that means the tempo was consistent

• Power is controlled by backswing length

  • As a baseline, take the front of the putter back to the end of your right foot

  • Then adjust from there

• Grip

  • There’s 3 basic ways to grip a putter

  • The most popular one is the one you currently use — called the Reverse Overlap

    • Left pinky goes over, and on the right index finger

    • But you found it more comfortable just over the right pinky

  • Putting grips depend on hands — so it’s not a one size fits all

  • You decided on the above modification to the Reverse Overlap because it fit your hand better

    • What you’re looking for in a putting grip is that the club feels one with the hands

    • Whatever grip is the most comfortable and “fits like a glove”, that’s what you want

• Follow through should be about the same length as the backswing

  • Maybe just a bit further

• A problem you struggle with is finishing the swing too early

  • This causes you to pull up and get bad contact or pull the club-head to the right (and therefore hitting it to the right)

• Advanced tip: Look at the blades of grass

  • If they’re coming at you, the ball is going to go slower

• Greens are slower in the morning, then speed up

  • This is because it’s wet in the morning from the dew, but then gets drier and drier

• Distance to aim for

  • If you think you can make the putt (e.g. within 10 feet), aim a few feet past the whole

    • This distance will vary depending on how well you’re putting

    • If you’re not putting well, you might just go for the 2-putt from 10 feet

  • If you’re further and are just going for a 2-putt, just instinctively aim for the hole

    • This will probably be -.5 to 1 feet past the hole

• All you should be thinking about when youre actually putting is the line and the speed. You cant be thinking about your form whatsoever

Drills

• Circle around hole with 6-8 tees

  • 3ft away (putter length)

  • 6ft away (2 putter lengths)

• 20 ft away, try to get within 3 ft

  • (circle of tees 3 feet from hole is the target)

• Warmup

  • Take 3-4 balls

  • Hit them slightly uphill with “base” putting backswing

  • Same thing downhill

  • Helps you get tempo down, and see how fast the greens are for the day

• Some guy on YouTube has a “pro’s drills” session you can search for

  • It’s super legit, if you can find it and have time for that volume of drills

  • He tracks it in spreadsheets and everything

Form

• Head shouldn’t move forward or towards back foot at all during the swing

  • This is something that you really struggle with. Once you stop thinking about it, you tend to revert back

  • You doing this causes issues with slicing and bad contact frequently

Angle of Attack

The angle of attack is the angle at which the club is going down or up when making contact with the ball

• For driving, angle of attack is slightly upward (about 2-4°, if I remember correctly

  • Some pros actually hit it very slightly downward (their power is enough to make up for it)

• For most other clubs, the angle of attack is downward

• I think angle of attack is roughly even for hybrids (but I should check on that). That one irish or whatever YouTube guy has a video on how to hit a hybrid

Ball Position/Stance

Some people recommend not thinking about ball position, but more think about feet position. Follow this:

1. Start with the ball in between your feet, feet together

2. Take a small step (1-2 inches with your heel) with your left foot

   1. While doing this, flare the left foot out 25% (that’s 25% of 90°; 22.5°)

3. Take a larger step for your right foot. The longer the club, the longer the step

   1. For wedges and short irons, about an equal step. Ball should be right in the middle

   2. For longer irons, a few inches more

   3. For woods, an inch more

   4. For driver, an inch more

For more detail on this process, refer to Hogan’s 5 lessons book. He even has a visual for it

Chipping vs Pitching

Chipping

The whole idea of chipping is that you’re hitting down on the ball, which will deloft the club head. So you deloft, get more roll out of it.

This has the result of being more about the “run”.

Go with a chip when you want a shorter, more controlled swing and/or want to or can afford to roll it

How to Chip

1. Put the ball just off of your back foot

2. Open stance up (45°)

3. Lean forward

   1. Note: Make sure you’re leaning towards your target when doing so. Sometimes you have the tendency to lean towards your opened up left foot instead, and then you pull the ball

4. Hands forward

5. Take a tempo’d swing

   1. Almost like a putter swing, if possible — the shorter the better

   2. If you can, limit movement to your arms. If you need more power, can turn the hips slightly to (whatever feels natural)

   3. There should be no lag in your swing. Just a tempo swing

6. Make sure you don’t pick your head up

   1. This is a common mistake you make — you start looking at the ball path too quickly, which ends up in you skulling it

   2. A tip for this: keep your eyes on the back (right) side of the ball for a beat/second after you hit it. Then you can look up

Bump and Run

• There’s some kind of “Rule of 12” when it comes to deciding what club to use for a bump and run

  • Google that if you want to try that, otherwise you can just use a “favorite chipping club” for all your chips

Pitching

The idea behind pitching is a controlled, tempo’d swing where the bottom of the swing is right at the ball. It’s for short term situations where you need the full loft of the club

How to Pitch

1. Ball in the middle of your stance

2. Hands in line with the ball

3. Tempo’d swing

   1. Cock hands basically as soon as possible — on backswing and and follow-through

   2. Again, no lag — you’ll move your hips as the swing progresses, but your hips are always going to be inline with your shoulders and arms

You should have a distance for each angle the club gets to — one for 10, 20, 30, and 40 yards

• Dave Pelz has a video on YouTube about this — just look it up

References

• Ben Hogan’s 5 Lessons

  • This is as close to reference material as you can get

  • Go here if you want to review the fundamentals

• Harvey Penick's Little Red Book

  • More awesome reference material. Really short chapters that are to the point

Notes

Links