PGA instructor Kellie Stenzel helps a reader overcome fear on chip shots

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

By Kellie Stenzel, PGA
Special Contributor

Most PGA Tour players and professional golf instructors will tell you your short game can be the difference between saving and losing strokes. A great short game requires mastering several specific shots for a variety of situations: The wedge approach, the bump-and-run, the release or spin, the bunker shot and the simple chip. That last one is vexing WorldGolf.com reader Patsy Fournier, who wrote to me recently.

Dear Kellie,

I need help with chip shots. I liked your idea of the visual tip about the bunker shot. I am hoping you can provide something similar that I can visualize when I have to chip. I tend to freeze when the shot calls for a chip.

Thanks,
Patsy Fournier

Dear Patsy,

You are not alone in feeling like you "freeze" when you need to chip. Here are the two things I would check.

1. Your set up posture

Be sure that, at address, you are in the proper posture where you are far enough away from the ball with your feet that you can bow forward from your hips. If you are properly bowing forward from your hips at address you should feel that your chest is over your toes. This will allow your arms to have a postion to hang straight up and down. You may also check to see that your arms do not touch your torso or your legs if you are bowing forward properly.

2. Keep your lead arm moving forward

Your putting motion and your chipping motion are virtually the same from a slighly different set up. Remember when you chip you should be gripping low, stance narrow and your weight should favor your forward foot. When you putt you do not use your wrists, but rather move the triangle formed by your arms and shoulders as a unit. Make this exact same motion when you chip.

Be sure that your lead arm (the arm closer to the target) also continues to move forward toward the target. Your left arm should finish left of your left leg. You can check this by holding your finish. This is a good habit and you can see whether or not you have allowed you lead arm to move forward.

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Six ways to hit better 'long' clubs

By Karen Palacios-Jansen
Special to WorldGolf.com

For women and probably for the majority of high-handicappers, the long clubs are the most difficult clubs to hit. A lot of people lack confidence with the driver and fairway clubs. They are more difficult to hit because they have less loft. They slice more often than not. Here's some tips on how to hit them.

1. Learn the difference between hitting an iron and wood. When you hit an iron, you want to have a steep angle of decent to get the ball up in the air. When you use a driver, the ball is teed up, so you want to sweep the ball off the tee, not hit down. If you hit down, the ball will pop up in the air. Ball position is critical. Play the ball opposite your front foot which will encourage a sweeping blow. Since you play the ball more forward in your stance your back shoulder and hip will be lower at address. This tilt is critical for you to sweep the ball.

2. To be a good driver, you need to have clubhead speed. You need at least 80 miles per hour of clubhead speed to hit a 15-degree lofted club or less. To help speed up your clubhead speed, you need to have light grip pressure. Tight grip pressure kills speed. Hold the club above the ground and feel the weight of the clubhead. If the clubhead feels light, you are holding it too tightly. Adjust your grip pressure until you can feel the weight of the clubhead.

3. To hit a driver and your fairway woods, it is important to shift your weight on the downswing. This move will help create clubhead speed and attack the ball at the correct angle. If you have a reverse pivot at the top of the swing, you will never be able to shift your weight on the downswing. A reverse pivot will cause your weight to hang back at the moment of impact. This robs you of power. At the top of your swing, the majority of your weight should be on the inside of your back leg. This position braces you to push off on the downswing. If your weight stays on the front leg at the top of the swing, then you have a reverse pivot.

4. If you slice your driver, consider using a 3-metal off the tee instead. The 3-metal has more loft and it is easier to control than a driver. You will get more distance from a straight ball with a 3-metal than a sliced driver.

5. If you top your driver or fairway clubs, you may be losing your spine angle at the top of your swing. To correct this, work on your body motion and keep the same level throughout your swing. Avoid bobbing up and down. Do not lift the club up in the air with your arms; try to keep the clubhead low to the ground at least until it has passed your right foot (if you are right-handed) so that at the top of your swing you have made a full turn with your shoulders and your weight is predominantly on your back leg. When you make a turn you will stay at the same level, so that you will not top the ball.

6. Good drivers of the ball never take a divot with a driver. If you are striking the ball correctly, you will be sweeping the ball off a tee. Never hit down with a driver and take a divot. Hover the clubhead above the ground before you hit your drive, which will help alleviate tension and encourage more of a sweeping blow. Take practice swings brushing the ground with the driver, but never taking any turf.

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Fight your way through a golf slump

By Chuck Evans
Special Contributor

As many of you know, this year Steve Stricker managed to rise from the land of, "What ever happened to...?"

Back in the early 90's Stricker was on top of his game and was one of the players that was consistent in almost every category. Then suddenly, he disappeared. He lost his game like Ian Baker-Finch and David Duval. Stricker seriously considered retiring from the grind of tournament golf and doing something else to feed his family. But in his heart he still had the desire to play golf. The problem was his golf game would not allow him to.

Living in Wisconsin, the hub of winter golf, he set out to be the player he once was. Stricker's biggest problem was controlling his driver. So for three hours a day, in the winter, he hit practice balls from a heated, converted trailer to find the solution. The results are what we have seen this year.

Stricker is one of the PGA Tour's nice guys and is genuinely liked by other players. He has risen to #4 in the world.

What does Stricker's story mean to other players? You have to work through those rough periods in golf. Here are some tips to get you through your next golf slump:

1. Never give up. We all go through periods when we are not playing particularly well and the key is to find the weakness that is cause of that. Sometimes it is ball striking and other times it is the short game and in rare cases it is both!

2. Always practice with a purpose. Virtually all players practice incorrectly, they go to the range and hit balls, which is only exercise, but they almost always do not have a plan for improvement. I recommend rehearsal swings then hit one ball, rehearse and hit one ball, and so on to build a feel for what you are trying to accomplish.

3. Driver, wedge, and putter account for approximately 78 percent of all strokes, so spend the majority of your practice time with these clubs.

4. Work on distance control. If the best 5-iron you have ever hit in your life is 180 yards then your 5-iron distance is not 180 yards! It is generally less then that. Hit 12 shots with each club, take out the longest and shortest and average the remaining 10. That is your average distance for each club.

5. Mirror work: You can build a world class golf swing by using mirrors, tape, and flashlights. These are used indoors so that you can see what you are doing.

6. Find someone to help you in your quest for improvement. Very soon you will be able to find a Medicus Golf Institute Certified Instructor in your area.

7. Remember that golf is a game. Unless you are playing golf for a living, golf is still a game. Get outside and enjoy the surroundings, your playing partners, and the time to get away from the rigors of everyday life.

As I close this article I would like to invite each and every one of you to join the Medicus Golf Institute Members Section. Inside this section you will find more than 15 hours of video instruction that covers every swing malady that you may have. There is also an assessment tool that will generate training videos for you based upon your answers. Right now it is free to join, but you will have to hurry.

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For successful bunker play, you want ball position left and finish left

Sunday, December 1, 2013

By Kellie Stenzel, PGA
Special Contributor

The greenside bunker can often be one of the most feared shots in golf. And I understand because in most cases you need to take quite a large swing for a relatively small distance. And we all know, the larger the swing, the greater the chance for error.

With a proper set-up and a commitment to a proper, full finish, however, you can impress yourself and maybe even your friends.

In a greenside bunker, you want to have your sand wedge contact the sand before your golf ball and continue to slide through the sand for quite a long distance.

I like to see a divot path in the sand of 10-12 inches. Your club should never make direct contact with your golf ball. The momentum of throwing the sand out of the bunker will propel your golf ball as well.

In order to ensure contacting the sand before your golf ball, your ball position must be left or forward in your stance.

And try to see if you can get this to make sense so you can remember. If I want to contact the sand first, I would place the golf ball later in my swing, or farther left. I like the see a golf ball position just inside the left heel for most greenside bunker shots.

As I make my relatively full golf swing in a greenside bunker, it is imperative that you swing all the way through to a full finish on your left, so that your weight finishes on your left foot as you allow your right foot to rotate up to the toes as your right heel comes off the ground.

This commitment to a full finish on your left side will allow you to keep the sand wedge gliding through the sand and produce the longer sand divot necessary to propel your sand out of the bunker and your golf ball onto the green.

Start with these two fundamentals:

1. Ball position left
2. Full finish on your left side

These will allow you to learn to properly contact the sand and make your bunker game more successful and maybe even fun.

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Five ways women can generate more club head speed

By Karen Palacios-Jansen
Special to WorldGolf.com

Most golf instruction is written by men from a man's point of view. But women, who are built differently and have different tendencies, have to work on set-up and swing keys that are specific to them. Although only 5 ft. 5 in. and weighing 120 pounds, LPGA Tour Pro Lorena Ochoa's average drive is 271 yards. How is it that a petite woman can boom her drives out there farther than the average male golfer?

It is all in her technique and her ability to create club head speed. Here are five things ladies can work on to improve their technique for more club head speed and knock it out there with the big boys and girls - and maybe even past them.

1. Strengthen your grip

A strong grip helps create a flatter swing path and a more powerful release of the club through impact.

Instead of setting your left thumb on top of the grip, rotate it about 30 degrees clockwise (away from the target) so it is angled down the right side of the grip.

You now should see two, even three, knuckles of the left hand when looking down at address.

This grip will help compensate for having less arm strength than men.

As for the right hand, spread your fingers as wide as possible. There should be a significant gap between the index and middle fingers. This is also a strong position.

2. Take a firm stance

A solid base creates good balance and supports high club head speed. Flex your knees slightly and press them away from each other, not inward as many people think they should. Pressing them inward actually promotes reverse pivoting, a major power loss position. Pressing the knees away from each other enables you to shift your weight correctly.

 

3. Resist with the lower body

As the club starts back, stretch your arms away from your torso while holding your hips and knees in place. Your lower body will turn no matter how much you try to prevent it, but if you resist with your lower body at the start of the swing, you won't overturn - a common problem among women who tend to be very flexible. Overturning destroys the coil that sets up a powerful downswing.

4. Create the right support

At the top of the backswing, the right arm should fold to form a right angle. When this occurs, the right hand should be under the grip, providing support so the club doesn't dip past parallel. This support preserves your natural maximum swing arc and the wider the arc, the more club head speed you can produce.

5. Hands lead the shoulders

Starting down, push the hands away from your shoulders as far as possible. The butt end of the club should point down to the ball and the club head stays pointed to the sky creating angle in the back of the right wrist. This position combined with a stronger grip helps the forearms rotate the clubhead square for a solid strike every time.

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Learn to train your hands

By Chuck Evans
Special Contributor

At our Medicus Golf Institute schools we have a saying, "Learn to control your hands so that you can control the clubface. If you control the clubface you control the ball. Control the ball you control the game."

Sounds easy enough...right?

Actually it is easy if you learn how to properly train your hands. Since the hands are the only part of the body holding the golf club it is imperative that they know precisely what to do. If they are not trained then hitting a shot where you want it is purely an accident.

So, how do you train the hands?

First off, do not use a golf club to train with. Instead use a tennis racquet, ping pong paddle, or anything that is racquet-like. The face of the racquet emulates the clubface, but on a much larger scale, so it is easier to monitor.

There are only three things a clubface can do:

1. Layback
2. Close
3. Hood

Each of these motions produce different trajectories, but a straight ball flight.

Layback produces the highest trajectory while closing produces the lowest. Layback can be "under rolled" - the push slice - and closing can be "over rolled" - the duck hook.

These motions also have names associated with them and they are called Hinge Actions. Horizontal Hinging is closing and works like a door opening and closing, a full roll feel. Vertical Hinging works like a pendulum, a kind of a "reverse" roll feel, and Angled Hinging works like a canoeist paddle, no roll in either direction.

On their respective planes there is always a no-roll in either direction. But when they are placed on an inclined plane, where we play golf on, they take on the characteristics of that plane.

For instance, Horizontal Hinging on it's associated plane does not open or close but when placed on the inclined plane it is turned to the right and rolled to the left. An over roll would result in a smother hook.

So any type of curvature starts with either an over roll or under roll of the selected Hinge Action.

Now let's start training the hands. Grab your racquet and hold it in your left hand straight out in front of you so that the left arm is horizontal to the ground and that the racquet face is at a right angle to the imaginary target line. Now move your left hand to the right across your chest. Did the racquet face turn or roll? Of course not. That's because it is on it's associated plane. Now move it back toward the target. Did it turn or roll? The answer is still no!

Now hold the racquet and assume your address position. Take your left arm back like you did before until it is a mirror image of what you did on the horizontal plane. This time the left hand and racquet face had to "turn" to match up, didn't they? You see, whatever the face angle is on it's associated plane has to match when placed on the inclined plane. So with Horizontal Hinging there is a "feel" of turning to the right and rolling to the left. Your job is to not over roll the clubface.

Once you have gained a mastery of educated hands then the hands do not care what you place in them. It could be a tennis racquet, baseball bat, or golf club. If they are trained they will respond properly.

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Fear not the chip shot

By Chuck Evans
Special Contributor

A lot of players are scared to death of chipping - and for good reason. They have experienced the full gamut of frustration. Sculling the ball over the green, laying the old Hormel on it and watching the little divot go farther than the ball!

The good news is with the proper technique you can become a chipping wizard!

Set up is critical for any shot and at the Medicus Golf Institute we refer to this as "Set up for success." Address and set up are the two areas that anyone can look as good as a PGA Tour pro, so make sure that you get these two correct before you move the golf club.

In chipping you don't want any hand or wrist action, so the first thing you will need to do is place the club in the left hand between the thumb and heel pads. This will eliminate any wrist movement and also keep the left arm and clubshaft in one line. Now add your right hand and use any style of grip that is comfortable; overlapping, interlocking, ten finger, or reverse overlap. A lot of players use the reverse overlap since that is what they use in their putting stroke.

Once the grip is completed you now want to take your address and setup position.

Start by placing the ball location off the back ankle, keep your shoulders square to the target line, narrow your stance, and pull your left foot back to give the visual of an open stance. Keep your head in the middle of the stance! This will place the head in front of the golf ball. Then lean your body and clubshaft toward the target until you have 80 percent of your weight forward.

By leaning the weight forward you sharpen the angle of attack and make it almost impossible to hit the chip fat!

Now it's time to make the stroke by simply moving the club back until the butt end of the club reaches the middle of your right thigh. But do not shift your weight - the weight stays forward. From here rotate your torso and allow it bring the hands and club into Impact with no additional usage of hands - no flipping of the golf club!

After impact keep rotating to follow through and keep the clubhead below the hands.

We had a player that was scared to death of chipping and after working with him doing exactly what I have described above he went out the next day on the golf course and holed four chip shots! He came in all excited and couldn't wait to tell us what had happened. Shortly after he came in, a couple of the players that were out with him came and asked what we had done to change his chipping so dramatically. We showed them a couple of things and they asked how they could attend one of our Short Game Schools, and one of them is a golf professional from another course nearby.

Use this procedure and you will lose all fear of chipping. Who knows you may even make a couple!

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