April 2009
You are currently browsing the articles from Golfswing Analyze written in the month of April 2009.
For those you are under the impression that golf is a game that is played at a leisurely pace and hence does not really require a great degree of fitness are sadly mistaken. Golf Fitness and Form is definitely an important factor to consider for a good golf game. Any sport requires proper warm-up and so does golf. Just as you see professional athletes and sportspeople warming up before any event, you will also see professional golfers going through their pre-game warm-up routines. So you can be sure that by the time the professionals step up on the course, they are ready to swing their best shots.
You may consider ‘warm-up’ as running from your car to the club and then to the course, but it is best to actually have warm-up exercises planned before you go onto course, or else you are going to be doomed to some really unsteady first few holes that are going to end in a disappointing round for you.
More importantly, you may never get a chance to improve your game if you start every game with this kind of half-preparedness on the physical front. Get into a good fitness and warm-up routine and you will be surprised at the results.
• Arrive early at the course. You need time to not only run through your warm-up routines but before that you need to change and get your act together. There is no point in feeling rushed and hurrying out to the golf course in the same mood. Give yourself enough time to not just physically warm up but also for mental preparation. Complete your warm-up routine at a leisurely pace and think about your strategy and whether you would like to try something different in your game from last time. Keep it slow and easy and learn to relax.
• Warm-up begins on the green. Contrary to what many may think, putting is one of the hardest jobs of a golf game and requires immense concentration. Your putting has to be smooth and slow to get it right every time. Spend as much time as you can warming up on the green first. This will put you at an advantage, as you are now very much aware of the speed of the greens. Further, you are starting your game not a frenetic pace trying to drive hard but at a fairly smooth pace which will not only help in your driving but throughout the game. It does not help if you start warming up at the start, because that leaves you all fired up and then once you are on the putting green, you need to suddenly calm down and focus.
To warm up on the greens, spend some time entirely focused on putting the ball, either to a tee or a coin. The best way would be to place the coin in various positions at different angles or maybe at different distances and try to connect the ball to it. This will give you an idea of how the ball is rolling and what speed you need to maintain in what position. Since putting is all about speed control rather than achieving great speed, it is worthwhile to spend some time trying to gauge the pace of the greens. If you only spend time warming up at the start, you will work just on your brute driving force which may be easier to learn but will only take you so far. Master the art of putting and speed control and you will be master of the game.
Spend another few minutes from very close to the coin or tee; say ten feet to three feet. You are usually not recommended to aim for the hole since if you see your ball miss the hole, that mental image may be enough to sow seeds of doubt in your mind about your putting ability and may at times throw you completely off your game. On the other hand, if you just practice with a coin, chances are you will make more hits than miss. The next time you are confronted with a hole, you will actually feel it is fairly big and your confidence level will be sky-high.
• Spend some time hitting the ball around the green. As you play you will realize that there are many factors that will decide where your ball heads to after landing. This means you have to know how exactly your ball will roll on landing on the green. This would require you to be familiar with the firmness of the greens. If the greens are hard, then the ball will tend to roll more on the side of the soft greens. Different types of rough greens make the ball roll in different ways. To get used to the various ways your ball may actually roll on landing, may need a bit of testing, which is why it is best if you spend some time understanding and estimating how the ball may roll and what distance it may cover of landing on the greens. Not only that you get a chance to practice shots on the greens and learn how best you can land the ball on the putting surface, so that you are as close as possible to the hole.
• Begin your full swing warm up by stretching. Before you start on any sports, you will be to told to go through some stretching exercises. Stretching will loosen your muscles thereby helping you avoid injury and over the long term can help relieve serious joint pain.
• Give enough time for your warm up. You should time your warm up routine so that at the completion of it, you have just enough time to head to your first tee for your assigned time. You do not want to hang around for a long time after warm up nor do you want to keep others waiting. If there is an inevitable delay, best use the time to practice your swings and make sure you stay warmed up.
It is important to remember that warming up is not just important for avoiding physical breakdowns but mental ones as well. As every professional is bound to tell you, being fit and warming up ensures your form to a certain degree and contributes immensely to your performance.
Written by GolfSwing on April 27th, 2009 with no comments.
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If you happen to be a senior golf player then you might enjoy a few toys that just help enhance the game a little more. Golf Cow Online has some great gifts and accessories to give that special golf or just buy the things yourself. The first thing on your list might be the Skycaddie. This is a handy gadget that will tell you were the bunkers are located and some other areas of the course to avoid. This handy rangefinder is something that will have you playing like a pro in no time. It is approved by the USGA and the R&A.
Senior golf enthusiasts will want a Speed cart to make things easier on those walk only golf courses. Since you cannot have a golf cart, the motorized Speed Cart starts up and away it goes. You can set it to go by itself for up to sixty yards without you behind it to control the buttons. You can sue it as a manual cart or as a self-powered cart that will make your day even more enjoyable. Save your energy for the golf swing, let the Speed Cart do all the heavy work. You will never need a caddie again.
If you have a few problems finding the golf ball, you might like the Ball Finder Scout. It can help you find them hard to balls that seem to disappear out of sight when you least expect it to. Never worry about losing sight of another ball. If you happen to hit the ball in water or into a wooded area, the little gadget might not work, but if the ball is even one to two percent visible, it should find the golf ball. For a senior golf player this might come in handy.
Another little compact gadget for the senior golf player is the Zelocity Pure Contact Launch and Flight Monitor. How it works is amazing, how to use it is easy. This is something that can help you improve your swing for distance and tells you how you hit with the club you are using. This is nice for making over that bunker coming around. If you know how many yards you get with that one club, you can accurately choose the right club for that specific shot. This works great for conditioning yourself and teaches you how your swing is decreasing or improving as well.
As a senior golf player, you might also want some little gadgets that have your name on them, such as golf tees, spot markers, golf balls and a hand towel with your name or initial. There are so many different accessories that can help enhance your game and some that just make you feel good about yourself. It is every golfers desire to hit the ball and play like a pro and with some help you can accomplish everything you want to as a senior golf player. Golfing is fun and some minor accessories only enhance the game you might say.
Written by GolfSwing on April 18th, 2009 with no comments.
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The absolute essential equipment of any golf game is a golf club so the more we understand it, the better equipped we will be to handle it successfully. A golf club has three parts to it – the Head, the Shaft and the Grip. A golf club has to stick to certain specifications but within those specifications a club maker tries to create golf clubs that can help a golfer improve his game by reducing swing error and allow for accurate shots.
If you look at the standard set of golf clubs, you will notice that it contains three woods (the 1-driver, 3 and 5) plus eight irons (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and a PW). You will also have a putter, which brings it to a total of twelve. Now, the rules of golf state that you can carry a maximum of fourteen clubs in your bag, which then permits you two more clubs in addition to the above. Depending on your skill levels and comfort levels, you could add another specialty wood or an iron to help you out.
Woods
The golf clubs known as woods are usually used to hit long shots. The club is a hollow wood that has a large head. Suppose the golf hole is about 400 yards or so from the tee to the green, then you would be using the woods to start off.
• Of all the woods, the driver or the number 1 wood has the lowest loft. Loft is defined as the angle of the clubface. The loft of the club decides the trajectory and thereby the distance the ball can be hit to. Usually a driver has a loft anywhere between seven and twelve. It is usually a lot harder to hit with drivers of low loft than higher lofted ones and hence you will find only fairly experienced professionals going in for drivers with lower loft. Recently though, the newer golf balls provide a lot of low spin forcing even pros to take to slightly higher loft drivers so as to get a higher launch angle. Most of them now use drivers that have lofts of 8.5 to 10 degrees though non-professionals are advised to use something which has a loft of 10 or more
• You may also want to carry the number 3 wood as well as the number 4 wood in your bag. The number 3 club has a loft between fifteen to eighteen degrees while the number 5 club has a loft between twenty and twenty-two degrees. As most golfers also carry 3 and 5 woods in their bag. A 3 wood has a loft between 15 and 18 degrees, and a 5 wood has a loft between 20 and 22 degrees. As you would have realized by now, the higher the number of the golf club, the higher the loft and the higher the loft, the shorter the club. Shorter clubs essentially mean the ball will be hit for a shorter distance. Rarely do people go for the number 7 or 9 clubs.
• You may be under the belief that since these particular golf clubs are called woods, they would be made of wood. In fact, that was the case till late 1980s. Then they realized that metal has many distinct advantages. The most important advantage that it has is its ability to precisely mold golf clubs into one, having a low center of gravity and two, having perimeter weighting. Both of these allow the golfer to hit longer distances with greater precision.
• So far we have been talking about the 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 woods. You may wonder what about those in between like 2 and 4 wood? There are woods with numbers 2 and 4 but their usage has gradually decreased. Today, most of the players prefer to take the 7 and 9 woods with them rather than 2 and 4. So much so that many actually prefer to take the higher numbered woods to lower numbered irons as improved technology has meant there is far greater precision even with woods even for smaller distances.
Irons
• The best time to use irons is when you are much closer to the green, say, at a distance of about 200 yards or less. Also remember that the closer you are to the green, the higher numbered iron you will use. Again, similar to the woods, you can find the standard set of irons being 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 irons and of course the Pitching Wedge, fondly called as PW.
• As we had mentioned earlier, there are many golfers who prefer to play with higher numbered woods like the 7 and 9 and skip the lower numbered irons. Especially for ladies and senior citizens, even for beginners, higher numbered woods offers far greater driving ease at shorter distances than the lower numbered irons do and provide almost the same degree of accuracy.
Wedges
• We have already spoken about the pitching wedge. In reality, wedges are just more specialty irons. The lowest number specialty iron is the pitching wedge that has a loft of forty-eight degrees. Obviously higher numbered irons are going to have higher lofts like fifty-two, sixty and sixty-four degrees.
• These particular golf clubs can be very helpful at certain times in your game and every player tend to keep a few of them. Their design feature is more in terms of a blade club because being close to the greens, what you now need are clubs that will help you control your shots and shape your shots better rather than just aiming for distance.
Putters
• The final but fairly important golf club is the putter. The usual course of a golf game is as follows. You tee off with a driver for a distance of about 250 yards, hit another shot for 175 yards right into the sand trap, use the wedges to get it out onto the green and then finally use the putter to gently tap the ball into the hole.
• The putter is of course used only on the green but you may be surprised at the variety of putters that are available – you can get short, long heel-toe, mallet and so on.
Written by GolfSwing on April 12th, 2009 with no comments.
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Your golf clubs can really make a difference in how well you play the game of golf. New advancements in golf club technologies make lighter, bigger, and better golf clubs available to the experienced as well as inexperienced golfer. How do you know what to look for in golf clubs?
For the novice golfer, the basic set of golf clubs consists of drivers, wedges, putters and irons. Using the proper type of golf club will help the beginner learn quickly and achieve results. Each different type of club is designed to help with swing speed and to correct faults to improve your game – and your score.
You must take into consideration the style, size, and type of material used to make the golf club shaft. One of the less expensive materials is steel. Golf clubs with a steel shaft weigh more but can be longer-lasting than other types. The steel shaft may also give you more control over those fast swings. If you choose a graphite shaft, it will be lighter than steel but will be more costly. This type of club is used for long distance shots or for slower swingers. Most golf clubs are available with both steel and graphite shafts.
Keep in mind that graphite shafts will not only be lighter and easier to handle, they will also be more forgiving if you have a bad shot. They absorb vibration and allow for a much better feeling shot. Plus, you will pick up some distance because the speed of the swing will be greater due to the lighter materials.
The flexibility of a shaft is referred to as flex, or bend. The less the bend in a shaft, the more control the powerful swinger will have. On the other hand, beginners and those with less powerful swings generally use a shaft with greater flexibility. The average swing speed is from 65 miles per hour for the beginner up to over 100 miles per hour for powerful swingers.
When it comes to selecting a golf club driver, especially as a beginner, you will probably want one with a head made out of titanium. Titanium is stronger, denser, and lighter than steel so the club head can be made larger with the same amount of materials. The advantage to having a large head driver is there is a larger “sweet spot” giving you more area to hit the ball with. With this type of golf club head, the club will be much more forgiving if you miss hit the ball or have a bad shot.
The goal when buying golf clubs should be to own the best golf clubs you can afford, whether they are name brands, used, or a reproduction of one of the name brands.
Written by GolfSwing on April 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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