The number one request we get at the Academy is for more distance off the tee. Since most of our clients use a driver not fit for the specifics of their swing, the solution often involves a search for a new driver. Unless they are here with us, this usually means demo days and launch monitors, indoors or out, with people whose job it is to sell you a club and not necessarily find the best fit for you. These fittings are typically number searches. Hit a number of drivers and find which one produces results closest to ideal launch, spin, and speed numbers. While this method is better than no information at all, there are some critical issues often overlooked, especially, in this era of interchangeable weights and shafts.

Make sure when you analyze launch numbers of a new driver, that you know exactly where on the club face you strike each shot. Why? Most important, regardless of ability, you never want to use the results of a mishit golf shot to fit a club, even if you like the results better than your current driver. This is a perfect example of “you get what you settle for”. What if with a little more knowledge and investigation there are better results available? What we need to find is the best location to strike the ball to produce the best results. This wasn’t a great concern in the old days; the woods were small enough that there wasn’t much room for error. You either hit the sweet spot and you knew it or you missed the shot. With the oversized heads of today there is the “in between” factor. Reasonable results that assume this is as good as it gets. But is that all there is?



With all the different options and set ups available with the modern drivers, you can’t assume that the best place to strike the ball is in exactly the center of the face. The drawing is an example of a typical fit. The red mark is the center of the clubface. The yellow mark is where we find the best combination of low spin and best ball speed. Why it is located here and not in the center requires a long explanation and it might not be necessary to know the science behind the reason. Suffice to say that how the driver is designed, the components that are used and the way the driver is set up are all contributors. So knowing why it is not at the center isn’t important, knowing the location of the true sweet spot is critical to our success. Let’s assume using the example above, we find the best results at the yellow mark, but we assume it is located on the red. While impact (green) is just off center (red) the assumed hotspot, you are ½ inch off the best location (yellow). A ½ inch miss with the most forgiving club ever made will still be less than a good strike. Acceptable, maybe, but if more distance is the issue, we are a long way from successful. The moral of the story is if the person fitting you to a driver can’t explain how to find that yellow spot find a different fitter.

Hands - Important and Overlooked

If you are an avid reader of golf instruction and golf swing advice like me, you will be hard pressed to find anything written about the function of the hands in the golf swing. You can find volumes of material written about what the golf club should do, but very little about the importance of the hands and their role in what the golf club does. The popular trend in instruction is to assume that your hands are reactive to the shoulders, torso and legs, rather than the traditional thought that the hands are proactive with the shoulders, torso and legs serving a supporting role. Every day I am more convinced that this “modern method” is wrong. Here is my argument why.

The golf ball goes where the face of the club tells it to go. Where the face of the club is pointed and how fast it is moving provides the majority, about 85%, of the information needed to determine where the golf ball goes. The only connection to face of the club is the grip of the golf club with the hands. So the hands provide about 80% of the information needed to control the flight of the ball.

Where the body is positioned, how it turns and reacts to the club during the swing, determines the direction the club moves through the ball and how fast the club will move. But these mean nothing unless the club is controlled by the hands. For example, your body can create speed, but if the club is not firmly attached at the hands the speed is wasted. The body will also create a direction the club will travel, but again, because the face controls direction, without control by the hands you can have a perfect path and the ball going in the wrong direction.

The hands are easily the most proactive part of your body. It is silly to think they would take a subservient role in the golf swing when they are the only point of attachment. Try this analogy. I am trying to drive a screw with a screw driver by holding the screwdriver with my hand and walking around the screw. What if you were trying to speed up the operation? You would be reduced to how fast you could run around the screw and still hold on to the screw driver. Now picture a simple turn of the hand and wrist.

Make some small golf swings and focus only on using your hands and arms to swing the club. Find a grip that will let the club easily swing all the way through to the finish. You will find it works best if you use hold the club in your fingers rather than the palms of your hands. Finally, do whatever you can to strengthen your fingers during the offseason, especially your top or lead hand. This will go a long way to improving your golf game.

Favorite Tips of all Time

I have been very fortunate in my golf career to spend some time around some really great and talented players. Without exception, they have all been very generous with their time and expertise. Often standing on the lesson tee, something will trigger my memory of a conversation with a certain player that pertains to what the current player and I are working on. So I thought I would share my favorite advice in the hopes it will help you as well.

“Feel the ground with your feet.” The first things to go when you are hitting the ball poorly are your tempo and balance. This used to happen to me on a regular basis. The pro I worked for at the time asked me if I could feel the ground with my feet. When I told him yes, he asked me to swing the golf club and not lose that feeling. I hit the ball better right away.

“Control the clubface with your right hand.” Great players control the face of the club and with that the shape of the shot with their right hand. Of course, it is the left hand for lefties. They use the palm of their hand to control the clubface. If your palm is facing up at impact you will slice. Going to toward the target at impact and the ball goes straight. If the palm rotates over so the palm is facing toward the ground the ball will go right to left. Most golfers, when things go bad, skip the most important fundamental of the swing, to control of the clubface. By connecting the clubface to your right hand mentally, you have more control and more predictable shots.

The last one is the hardest to for my students to believe, but when used the most effective. The difference between people who putt well and those who struggle is that players who struggle steer the putter through the ball to the hole in an effort to control the direction, while the great putters swing the putter with no sense of direction. That is the tip. Swing the putter with no sense of direction. Let your body alignment and posture dictate the shape and direction of the stroke and not by steering the putter where you think the ball should go. To prove this try the following drill - regular readers of the column have read this before – aim the putter, take your stance, close your eyes and swing the putter. You will find that your direction improves immediately.

The next time you play a round of golf try to follow these three simple suggestions. Don’t worry about mechanics or if you are doing anything right or wrong. If you stay connected to mother earth, control the clubface with the bottom hand, and swing the putter with no sense of direction you might have one of the best rounds of your life.

Understanding Bad Golf Scores.

It recently occurred to me that while we have discussed many of the questions asked at the United States Golf Academy, I had avoided one of the most frequent, “How can I have a great round one day and be terrible the next time.” Obviously, there is no easy answer for that one. There could a million different specific reasons, but the consideration of why someone can’t play to their potential on a consistent basis is something that can keep you up at night.

As a younger man I wanted to be a tournament player first and foremost. I worked very hard on my game, but did not have the success I hoped for or felt I deserved. After hearing me complain over and over, a good friend, who was very knowledgeable about tournament golf, sat me down and gave me three things to consider as I tried to understand why I was not playing up to my expectations.

The first point he made was that you cannot play the game when you are mad. It is one thing to complain about a bad result or misfortune, but if you are still thinking about it by the time you reach your next shot, the emotions will eventually catch up with you and result in some poor golf shots, which will make you angry, which will result in more poor golf shots. Eventually, you get out of the rut because you are too exhausted to care, but by then it is usually too late.

Second, he told me you can’t play scared. When you pick a golf club and a target you have to believe you are going to hit the ball as planned. If you play scared or assume a miss, you make timid swings that lack confidence. A full swing with confidence is always better than a scared swing, even if the scared swing produces a reasonable result. If you have always played scared you will never know how good you can be.

The final point he made was, “Is it possible you are not happy with your score because you have overestimated your ability?” You especially have to understand the difference between skill and luck. The tendency is to over-estimate your ability. In my case it was too many better ball games where I made a lot of birdies, but forgot the other scores that didn’t count. Another example, if you play in a lot of charity scrambles your team score is a lot lower than your individual score would have been. In addition, you might hit some good shots, but you don’t have to string them together. In the end you have a false impression of how you played for the day. This false impression often leads to taking the game for granted and avoiding the areas of your game that need improvement. I guess honesty is the best policy in golf as it is in life.

Making the Game Easier

My job description as Director of Instruction for the United States golf Academy is pretty simple. Answer questions about golf. This week I was asked the ultimate question for someone in my position. “Why is the game so ____ hard?” (I will let you fill in the blank.) This is an instance where the answer to the question might be more complex than the solution to the problem. Hundreds of thousands of pages have been written describing the challenges of playing golf. I have written a few myself, and I have come to the conclusion that while it is important to understand the details of hitting a golf ball, it is also easy to become lost in an attempt to apply them.

Part of the problem, when attempting to describe the golf swing is that the description of the problem is offered in mechanical details. Wrist this way, hand that way, head stays here, shoulders do this, and feet placed there, all static descriptions of moving parts. These are important, but not more important than understanding the principles of motion. Balance , Rhythm and Tempo.

Balance. When your body is in motion your mind is constantly sending signals to all parts of your body to accomplish one thing. Keep you from falling down. So if your mind has to make an adjustment to keep you from falling down and that movement doesn’t match the best way to swing a golf club, the result is a poor strike and probably lousy results. More players have balance issues than mechanical issues.

Rhythm. I describe rhythm like a musical beat. Some swings are two beats, one the club goes back, two the club goes forward. These are up tempo swings like Ben Hogan or Tiger Woods. Others have three beat swings. One back, two on the transition from backswing to forward swing, three down and through. These swings are typical slower and longer, like Payne Stewart or Sam Snead. We all have a natural rhythm and our best results come when our golf swing matches it.

Tempo. Tempo is the amount of time it takes to complete your swing. Your goal as a player is for the time to be exactly the same for every swing. Too many of us change our tempo or time depending on how hard we think we need to hit the shot. The best players vary the length of their swings slightly using the same amount of time. For example a full swing at full speed takes 2.5 seconds. A ¾ swing at a slightly slower speed still takes the same 2.5 seconds. Keeping the time the same is what helps us control how fast the club is moving. We naturally relate to time so this is easier to achieve than it sounds.

As I wrote in the beginning, the explanation was more complicated than the solution. Make some swings with your eyes closed. Find a swing in balance, using your natural rhythm and tempo and see if this doesn’t make your game a little easier.

Distance Control for Putting

I was fortunate to be part of a team that introduced a game improvement technology called PuttLab to the United States. PuttLab is an ultrasound device that attaches to your putter and measures in great detail every movement of the putter during the stroke. Using this information, we can help players build a more functional putting strategy, based on personal tendencies, rather than forced body positions or concepts. We recently completed the first phase of a study, using PuttLab data compiled from students of the United States Golf Academy over the past three years. We made some fascinating discoveries about how people putt. One however was eye opening and was the only one that has applications for everyone.

We have the ability to measure the time of the stroke to 1/1000 of a second. The time is then broken into three categories 1. Time of the backswing. 2. Time of the forward swing to impact, or the time when the putter starts forward toward ball to impact. 3. Total forward swing or the time from the start of the forward swing to the end of the follow through. When measuring the time to impact we confirmed what had been found in an earlier study done by the company that developed the technology. An average stroke takes 1 second or 1000 milliseconds from start of the backswing to impact with the ball. The lower the handicap of the player the closer they were to exactly one second, as the very best players measured 950 to 1050 milliseconds. More importantly, we discovered the total time to impact did not change with the length of the putt. A five foot putt took one second to impact as did a fifty foot putt. So what does this have to do with controlling the distance a putt will roll?

The data proved that the best way to control distance is to vary the length of your stroke to the length of the putt, rather than using the same length backswing for all lengths, slowing down or speeding up depending on perception. Use a long stroke for long putts and a short stroke for short putts, with the time of the stroke being consistent at one second. The easiest way to control the time is to simply count to one second like we used to do as children, one thousand one. Start the count as the putter goes back and hit the ball on one. It takes a little practice, but you will find as you change the length of the putts your stroke will almost naturally speed up or slow down as the length of the stroke changes. Over a short amount of time you will develop a feel for the distance the putter needs to swing to control the distance you need. Another benefit is that your direction control will improve as well, as the putter position at impact is more consistent as the timing becomes more consistent.

A Change in Perspective can Change your Game.

Prior to any lesson, at the United States Golf Academy, there is an interview session and often we hear comments of the same theme. Their game lacks consistency. They can hit some great shots and then some lousy ones, never knowing what might happen next. Our follow up question is, “Why, do you think your golf game is inconsistent?” This is when the student usually loses his or her patience with us and says something like, “That is the reason I am here, because my golf swing is never the same two times in a row!!!”

The longer I try to teach this game, the more I have come to realize that the idea of an inconsistent golf swing is probably the source of the problem. If you read this column with any regularity you have heard me rant against constantly trying to change your golf swing in an effort to fix the prior shot. We change the way we swing the club when the problem is probably not the swing at all. What we really need is to learn to use what we have, rather than search for something we don’t.

Go outside with any golf club and swing. No ball or target, just swing the club. You will notice that every swing will feel the same. You will move the club in a nice full motion with no inhibitions at all. This is a great start. It is proof that the swing will repeat if you let it. With that knowledge we can make the following statement; IF WE CAN REPEAT THE MOTION WE CAN FIND A BALL POSTION THAT WILL PRODUCE A GOOD SHOT.

So if we use our “practice swings” every time we will eventually learn to make contact with the ball. It might take a change in posture, or where the ball is positioned and it also will take some time for your body to learn where the location of the ball. But if you keep trying the same swing you will eventually make contact. This is when we need some patience. As all of you know, just because we make contact does not mean the ball will travel in the correct direction. We have to find out how to connect the golf club to the swing so that the face of the golf club is pointed the correct direction at impact. The goal becomes for the ball to travel in the same direction as the path of the swing. If the path is left the ball, should go left. If the path is to the right then the ball should travel in that direction. If the ball is not going in the intended direction the player has two choices. Learn to curve the ball to bring it back to the desired target, or change the original body alignment to match path to target. The end result in either case is better contact and more consistent results.