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Do you sometimes have difficulty getting the ball in the air, or you hit “worm burners”, or low shots but you do not understand why. Let me shed some light on this for you.

Most people think, like I used to think, that in order to get a golf ball off the ground, you need to try swinging up on the ball, or try to lift it off the ground. Actually these actions produce the opposite result desired. Swinging up produces an opposite reaction, a downward reaction of the ball. In contrast, swinging down on a ball, or hitting the ball on the downswing, produces the opposite reaction, the upward reaction of the ball. The is one of Sir Issac Newton’s Laws of Physics states, ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’. So if you hit down on the ball the ball will go up.

Another factor that comes into play is the golf club. The clubs are designed to achieve a degree of lift according to the loft of the club. The loft of a four iron is less than the loft of a nine iron. The four iron will get the ball in the air enough to allow it to go longer where the nine iron will get the ball a lot higher for closer shots you want to land softer.

The only club you should be hitting on the upswing is the driver because there is so little loft.

Once I understood the principle, a light bulb went of in my head and I was able to start the process of improving my golf game and lowering my golf scores.

I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

We all love to play the game of golf, but sometimes it can be a very frustrating game.  It took me many years to really enjoy the game of golf and end my frustration (well at least most of it).

Here are a 5 things you can implement to enjoy golf more.

1. Don’t play the blue tees.  Unless you are at least a 10 handicap or lower, don’t make the course harder for you than it has to be.  If you are shooting in the 90’s or triple digits, it makes no sense to play the more difficult course. Play the white tees and remove the extra stress of trying to hit those longer shots.
2. Improve your lie.  When you are having a recreational round of golf, there is no reason you should be playing the strict rules of golf. It is okay to bend the rules to improve your lie.  Play winter rules all the time.
3. If it is your honor, take it.  You just birdie the last hole, it’s your tee, you earned it, take it, it’s okay. You can then challenge yourself to get another one.  You will be pleasantly surprised at how often you can have two birdies in a row.
4. Play different games.  Don’t just play match play all the time.  Mix it up and make it fun.  Maybe you can compete with your golf buddies by what I call categories.   Some examples would be:
   • Most fairways hit
   • Least amount of 3 putts
   • Most 1 putts
5. Lower your expectations.  If you are an average golfer that play just on the weekends or maybe only twice per week and you don’t practice as much as you should, how can you honestly think you are going to improve. You can’t honestly think that your game is not exactly what it should be. Just enjoy the game itself, don’t be so hard on yourself when you’re not playing well.

You can enjoy the game of golf again.  You just have to think outside-the-tee-box and have fun.

You can produce more power with your golf swing in just 3 simple moves.

A great article by Anthony Renna called “Three Moves for More Power”, gives you three keys to generating power in the golf swing and three quick drills you can do right on the range to help generate this much wanted power in your golf swing.

The 3 keys for generating more power are:

1. Maintaining good posture
2. The ability to internally rotate around your hips
3. Have good separation of upper body from lower body

The 3 drills are:

1. Hip Hinge Drill
2. Hip Twisters
3. Back Lunge with Rotation

In his article, Anthony even shows you pictures of how to do the drills.

I think you will love it.  Go to http://golf.lohudblogs.com/2009/03/30/tip-of-the-week/.

I have found these drills to be helpful for me.  Let me know what you think of these drills.

Here’s To Better Golfing!

- Rick

I’m often asked about what is the easiest way to lower your golf scores.

And with my great level of knowledge I amaze the person with…

“Take fewer strokes!”

You may think that my answer is a bit sarcastic and not giving you the true secret to shooting lower scores with the answer, but the truth is I am.

Think about it for a minute.  It is a lot easier to make par or even a birdie  putt if your approach shot is 5 feet from the whole rather than 30 feet.  I know you would agree.

Striking the golf ball properly and consistently is the difference between your ball ending up on the green where you were aiming or having to try and pitch it close because your shot went 10 yards away from where you were aiming.

If you want to be as consistent as the pros you need to learn the same secrets that they have learned.

I’ve come across a system that will greatly benefit you and help develop a consistent golf swing.

You can check it out …

www.GolfSwingImprovements.com/ConsistentGolfSwing

Casting the club from the top of the swing (arms straightening prematurely) is one of the most common power leaks for the amateur golfer.

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.

In contrast, the downswing in the picture was initiated with the core of the body and the feet. Notice how deep the right elbow is and the relatively extreme angle that’s created between the clubshaft and the right forearm. This “lag” stores tons of power.

To learn this move, try letting your arms stay loose and initiating your downswing by shifting your weight to your left heel and rotating your stomach and hip in a counterclockwise direction.

Also, the grip you use can have an effect on your ability to create lag, depending on the flexibility of your wrists and forearms. For most amateur golfers, the interlocking grip can interfere with flexibility, so try the overlap or the 10-finger grip you see here.

For more awesome tips you can check out The PurePoint Golf Full Swing DVD.

Have you ever looked at the hole while lining up a putt, looked down at the ball, then looked up at the hole again and to your suprise the hole seemed to move?  I know I have.

Putting can be frustrating at times.  Sometimes putting seems so easy that the ball tracks to the hols on line as if it is being pulled by a string.  Other times the ball breaks in the opposite direction from what you read!  Like I said, puttng can be frustrating.

I have recently learned that I am right eye dominant.  I also recently learned how eye dominance affects your putting.

Because I am right eye dominant,  I am predisposed to aiming to the right with my putter.  I then swivel my head and look across my body at my target, effectively throwing my left eye out of the way so that my right eye can take over.  This is something that I will have to be aware of for as long as I play golf.  The left eye dominant people that I work with usually have the opposite problem.  They aim left of their target and then use their left eye to focus on it as they look away from their bodies.  Please understand that these are general statements.  I have seen left eye dominant people aim right and vica-versa.  But to be honest, I have never paid much attention to any of this, even though it makes for interesting conversation.  I am more concerned with how to aim properly.

So What Does  All This Mean?

Golfers who are right-eye dominant tend to see the hole to the right of its true location. The reason is that they set up with their right eye too far inside the ball and the target line. Initially, they push their putts to the right. Then they adjust their stroke accordingly (outside to in) and then pull their putts to the left on a regular basis. (The opposite is true for those who are left-eye dominant if the left eye is out of position.)

You can read your putt’s break and hit a perfect stroke, but still end up missing it because your eyes deceived you. Learn which of your eyes is dominant to account for this optical illusion.

About 70 percent of the population is right-eye dominant, which puts the trailing eye (that’s the one farthest from the hole) in the driver’s seat when putting. If this eye is not positioned properly, your view of the hole becomes distorted, lessening your chances of holing out. Not sure which eye is your dominant one? Take the following test.

The Test To Determine Your Eye Dominance

1. Take a toilet-paper tube and fix it over the ball so that both eyes can see it in the center of the tube.

2. Close your left eye. If the ball remains in the center of the tube (top photo), you’re right-eye dominant. If the ball jumps out of the tube and out of your line of sight (bottom photo), you’re left-eye dominant.

To set up correctly, follow this routine

For more putting help with your straying eyes I recommend you check out The Pro’s Edge – Vision Training for Golf!

Good luck and happy putting!

Today I am going to share with you some tips that can improve your golf game that don’t involve swing a golf club.  How can you improve your golf game without swinging a golf club?

Great question.  The answer is course management.  Course management is the art of limiting the damage of your golf shots.

One of the greatest models of course management was Jack Nicklaus.  Jack would rarely hit a wrong shot at the wrong time.  Nor did he gamble and hit low percentage shots.  You might can tell, by being one of the greatest golfers to date, that his apporach worked.  So lets do what successful golfers do.

Jacks philosophy can be summed up this way: 1) find the easiset way and 2) avoid danger.  Yes, that’s it.  It sound so simple doesn’t it?

Lets look at each of these two ideas and build a foundation for you to follow to help lower your scores.

Finding the Way

A golf course can sometime look like an obstacle course in which there are easier ways to get to the greean and there are more difficult ways to get to the green.  One key point of scoring well , even on days when you are not playing your best, is finding the easiest way around the course.  By determining the easiest way around the course you will generally take fewer shots.   This method will not help you shoot in the 80’s if you are playing bad but it will limit those higher scores that can raise your handicap and shatter your confidence.

Avoiding Danger

Learn to avoid potential disasters and your can lower your scores.  Every round you play has critical shots ans those critical shots, if hit poorly can radically affect your scores.  Critical shots can include your drives, approach shots, chip shots and putts.   Whichever they are, you can be assured that they will cost you strokes when misplayed.

How you assess these shots and deal with them makes the difference between good scores and bad scores.

Basic Course Management Strategies

Let’s now look at four basic management strategies that can help guide you around the course to achieve better scores.

1. Carrying Over Water
If you’re not certain you can carry over water with anything but your career best shot, don’t try it. It’s not worth the risk. Play it safe and lay up instead. Then try for a pitch and putt. You have a chance at pulling it off, and even if you don’t, the worst that could happen is dropping a stroke. Failure to carry the water is doubly damaging. It can affect both your score and your confidence.

2. Playing Long Holes
When playing long par 4s where you know you can’t hit the green in two, decide from where ideally you’d like to play your third shot to give you the best chance of making par. Don’t force your drive and don’t force your second shot. Keep the ball in play. Remember while a par is better than a bogie, a bogie is better than a seven. Every shot counts.

3. Approaching the Green
You don’t always have to attack the hole with your approach shot. It’s sometimes much easier to hole out with two putts from the center of the green, no matter where the hole is, rather than have to get up and down from a green side bunker because your approach shot was just a fraction or so off line or a foot or so short.

4. Safety First
Sooner or later we’re all going to get into trouble. You may find yourself in deep rough or up against an obstacle. Whatever the problem, the golden rule is safety first. Concentrate solely on getting back into the fairway in a good position to hit the next shot, and you will minimize the damage down by your original miscue.

Base your course management strategy on these two key principals,  find the easiest way around the course and avoid danger, and you’ll see your scores and golf handicap quickly improve.

If you would like an excellent resource for handling any trouble you might meet on a round of golf and hit solid shots from even the most Godawful situations, you should check out the Trouble Shots DVD. 

Good luck and have fun.

We all know that golf is not an easy game to play and most of us do not take the time needed to practice to improve our golf game.

The majority of golfers that play the game do just that, play the game.

They never practice and then try to go out and through the course of a round try to figure out their swing problems so they can improve the next time they play.

However, if you want to improve your golf game, you really need to practice in between rounds.

The best way to improve your golf game is to go to the practice range as much as possible in between rounds.

Repeatedly hitting golf balls will help you to develop your golf swing so you are not having to do this on the golf course during your round.

I have some advice to keep from wasting your valuable time at the practice range.

First you need to set-up your hitting area. Place a golf tee three inches behind your golf ball and three inches in front of your golf ball. Next place a long iron at your toes and parallel to the tee you placed in the ground.

Now it is time to take some practice swings within your hitting area. The idea here is to make sure the clubface is going straight over the tees when making contact with the ball.

I also recommend you focus on a high follow-through after striking the golf ball and also make sure your belt buckle or belly button is facing the target.

Also at the practice range work on your pitching and chipping. Most amateur golfers do not usually hit the green with their approach shots.

You should really focus on hitting shots that you would normally hit during your round of golf. For instance, if you seem to land in the bunker during your rounds, I highly recommend your practice your sand shots at the practice round.

Lastly, you should always finish your practice at the range with putting. Most of my golfing buddies never practice putting and it shows when we play. You should use three balls when practicing your putting and try hitting the three balls from the same spot to get a feel for the speed and lie of your putts.

I know these tips will help you the next time you are at the practice range and will eliminate any wasted time with your practice.

P.S. Don’t forget to practice your putting at the end of your round. Here is a great resource for Precision Putting.

P.S.S. Don’t Waste Another Minute Practicing and check out…Full Swing Drills.