How to Maximise Your Time at the Driving Range

Saturday, November 9, 2013

When you find the time to work on your game and get down to the driving range, it's important to ensure that you're using your time effectively. It's not all about getting out the driver and swinging at the ball like a madman, hoping to make holes in the back fence; it's about improving all aspects of your game.

 

If you think you have a serious problem with your swing, then it might be wise to consult with a professional or experienced player; and ask them to observe your action. If there are any red flags they should be able to help you iron out your imperfections. After all, there is no use in spending your time practicing the incorrect swing.

 

 

 When you consider how many times you use your driver during your average round (probably between 14-16 shots depending on the course) it doesn't make sense to spend a whole session devoted to working on the drive. The majority of your shots will come from using wedges and irons, so it's important to work on these aspects of your game.

First and foremost, it's is imperative that you warm up properly. A lot of people perceive Golf as a sport that doesn't require as much athleticism as other sports. However the explosive nature of a golf swing means that you will be moving a lot of muscles at very high speeds in a twisting motion. Warming up thoroughly will not only help prevent injury, but it will also make your first few swings more effective than without warming up.

 

Tom Logan is a Golf enthusiast who works for TopGolf, an interactive driving range with 3 locations in the UK.

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A Force for the Future

aboutGolf’s new swing coaching software
 

 Revealing new swing analysis technology from golf's leading simulator company, in partnership with the European Tour's biomechanics initiave, is transforming the coaching exeprience for amateurs as well as leading tour stars. Dominic Pedler visited Urban Golf in London to see the latest about Golf System in aciton.

The steady rise in biomechanicalbased coaching across sports ranging from track and field to skiing, rowing - and increasingly golf - reflects the success in tailoring technique according to an individual’s physical capabilities.

 

We can all dream of the perfect swing but without the necessary flexibility, movement and power we’ll never achieve it.

 

And having seen success from leading experts with all levels of golfer, the European Tour itself is launching its own coaching initiative, European Tour Performance Institute, which is being be rolled out across their own portfolio of golf courses in the UK and continental Europe.

As JJ Rivet has proved in recent years, biomechanics combined with the new Balance Pro technology is proving a coaching revelation. At the simplest level it provides instant feedback to both coach and player on a variety of data including the relative weight between left and right feet (and also between heel and toe) from address through to follow-through. This immediately throws up faults, most obviously a reverse pivot, while helping the golfer to feel the correct weight transfer that is so fundamental to maximizing their distance potential.

 

 The latest Perform Pro software from aboutGolf provides instant feedback on weight transfer and the forces generated by a player throughout the golf swing.

All the relevant numbers are thrown up clearly as digital graphics in the programme, as we saw on Urban Golf’s giant 12ftx11ft screen. The software’s attention to detail is impressive: for example, sudden dips in the graph of weight shift in the downswing help to identify golfers with a tendency to lift up their body slightly before impact, thereby causing an inefficient loss of force (force which, frustratingly, the player had already generated). Indeed, it seems that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ golfers can be very effectively identified simply by differences in their weight transfer profiles.

 

“There are still new challenges in making the concept more interactive, allowing golfers to play each other online and letting them ‘compete’ in a digital version of a real tour event, complete with leaderboards, sights and sounds,” envisages Day.

With the Kensington, Smithfield and Soho branches now all offering the same standard of tracking, and aboutGolf technology transforming the instruction potential, Urban Golf look set to grow their 1,200-a month customer visits across the three venues. Not least as the British winter approaches….

For more information visit: www.urbangolf.co.uk, www.aboutgolf. com

 

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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How to Make the Most of Your Practice Time

One of the highlights of the IJP Invitational is the hour-long clinic Ian conducts on the range for all competitors (and parents!) at the end of the tournament day. This year was no exception and the highlights of an informal and absorbing session provide invaluable insights into the mind of a world-class professional

Poults…on stretching and warming up

No matter how old you are, or how frequently you play, you run the risk of pulling a muscle if

you go out to play or practice without first warming-up for a few minutes. I use a variety of exercises to warm up my arms and shoulders every single day – I might even do this workout with elastic bands at home on days when I’m not playing golf.

Those of you who watched the Open at St George’s may have seen Darren Clarke using a special stretching pole, with a spring at one end, to help him with his exercises before he began hitting shots. I prefer to use these rubber bands (right) – relatively cheap to buy and easy to use providing a simple range of exercises that help you warm up your muscles and strengthen the ‘core’ groups of muscles you need to make a good golf swing.
 

Poults on…taking care of the fundamentals

It has become quite trendy these days to carry a pair of alignment rods in the golf bag and I was impressed today to see so many juniors using these canes to check alignment and ball position. If you don’t have a pair of alignment rods, I urge you to invest in them. This is invaluable. I recently bought this one, which can either be used as two separate rails or attached to create a T-square, which gives you a reference for alignment and another for ball position. I use this T-square every single time I practice for no other reason than I want to be 100% certain that my alignment and ball position is exactly as I want it on every shot I hit. Once I have my target fixed, and a visual image of the shot in my mind, I think of nothing else other than that image – I have zero technical swing thoughts.

 

Poults on distance control – and the importance of the ‘scoring shots’

My configuration of wedges, the scoring clubs, is 48-degree pitching wedge, 54-degree sand iron and 60-degree lob wedge. For me, that’s an easy system to work with and six degrees between each of these clubs gives me a good span of distances. I love gadgets and in recent years I’ve come to rely heavily on the Trackman system, which I’m sure many of you have seen at your club or on TV.

 

Poults on visualisation – ‘seeing a shot’…

We never ever see a straight golf shot. Every shot has some element of movement in it. Say the wind is off the right, as it is here, I want to hit the shot with a little cut-spin to hold the ball against the breeze. There are a couple ways to do this. Say my ultimate target is the 150 post. I would aim everything else (feet, knees, hips and shoulders) to the left of that target and then open the clubface a fraction so that it points at my ultimate target. If I then swing along the line of my feet the ball will move with a leftto- right spin. That’s the easiest way to work it. And, naturally enough, I’d make the opposite adjustments for a draw.

 

Poults on coaching…
 

I see David Leadbetter from time to time but I don’t have a full-time swing coach. I have the odd lesson every now and then. I am fortunate that in my pro shop days my boss had a camera system and I could video my swing and see whatever was going wrong. Thanks to my PGA training, which I am very proud of, I know how I want to swing the club and I carry a camera all the time so that I can monitor my technique.

 

Q. Do you always aim at a target?

Absolutely…and so should you. If you stand on the range hitting balls without a distinct target in mind you are practising without a purpose. Wasting your time. It’s not good enough. You have to have a target and you have to go through the same procedure before every shot to develop a pre-shot routine you can trust out on the course. Remember, you are practising to play – and when you play you will be hitting towards a target on every single shot.

 

Q. Do you have a sports psychologist?

No, because if I had a psychologist he’d be a nutcase after a couple of days with me! Seriously, we are all different. A lot of people do get a lot out of working with a sports psychologist – Darren Clarke has certainly reaped the benefit and he looked incredibly relaxed all week at Sandwich. Has it held me back? I don’t know. Self belief has never been a problem an issue for me. I’ve done alright, I’m pretty stubborn. But not everyone has that self confidence and it can be a hard thing to give to somebody. There are people who respond well to the specific techniques that are used, others do things better on their own. I talk to my agent quite frequently – he, to me, is my psychologist.
 

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine



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Adam Scott- The Open: Did he Blow it or Not?

PRACTICE UNDER PRESSURE

Golf is almost unique in so much that we tend to do all of our practice in an environment (i.e. on a range) that has little or no relevance to the real game which is played on the course. When you play golf with a card in your hand, each and every shot has a consequence. Yet we are all guilty of standing on a driving range that is wide open and belting balls one after another with little or no consequence to the outcome.

 

This style of practice gives golfers what I call ‘false confidence’. You are good in an environment that is totally removed from the real thing. Without identifying a specific target, you might hit 30 balls on the range to loosen up and feel that you are hitting them pretty well. Then you get to the 1st tee, and all of a sudden you find yourself looking at a narrow fairway, trees left and right. That warm-up session hasn’t prepared you for this – now the shot has a real consequence. And you get nervous...
 

DO NOT DITHER

The normal reaction under pressure is to slow down and try to think too much. Over the first three rounds of the ’96 Masters at Augusta, Greg Norman’s routine hardly varied. Yet in the final round his pre-shot routines varied by anything up to 45 seconds. It’s no coincidence he collapsed to a 78 while Nick Faldo was putting together a 67. The Australian played magnificent golf to build that 6- shot lead going in to the final round...and then he abandoned the execution of his game plan and his natural shot-making rhythm.

It is counter intuitive...but under pressure we need to be a little bit more intuitive and just do it! This is why it is SO important to have – and to practice – a really effective pre-shot routine. A routine that is concise and rhythmical. You should gather just enough information and go through a set procedure and then get in there and GO! If you don’t practice this when there is no pressure don’t expect it to hold up when there is pressure.

 

FOCUS ON THE PROCESS NOT THE OUTCOME

One of the things that settles your mind down under pressure is to focus on things that you are able to control. Unfortunately, winning is not one of them. If you shoot five under and someone else shoots seven under then there is nothing whatsoever you can do about it. What you DO have control over is your own emotion and your game plan. The advice I give to a lot of my clients is to become fascinated with the golf course. See the course as a complex puzzle that you are trying to unlock. Ask yourself what the course designer is trying to trick you into doing and then come up with a plan that will enable you to play your game and defeat him.

To be absorbed in your own game plan and what you need to do is a wonderful antidote to the physiological symptoms of pressure. I love the line that Jack Nicklaus used when he said that in the main he didn’t win majors, he let others lose them. Under extreme pressure he knew that other players would stray from their game plan and watch too closely what others were doing. He knew that he wouldn’t do that because he had a plan and he would stick to it. That’s a key message from the greatest player who ever lived – one that you should remember and apply to your own game.

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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Is Someone Else Playing Your Golf Ball?

        Nobody, in my opinion, plays golf totally for themselves. As human beings we are simply hard wired to seek approval from our peers. We like to fit in, we like to feel appreciated and – above all – we like to feel worthy. Yet some of these powerful unconscious drivers could be wrecking your scores, giving rise to a huge amount of frustration with your game – and no amount of swing instruction will be the answer. I don’t think that you will ever totally free yourself of this but let’s take a closer look at exactly what happens out on a golf course, at some of the behavioural traits we can recognise. Maybe you will identify with one or two of the personalities and then, perhaps, decide to act differently in the best interests of your game (and your sanity!).

     I am sure you would agree that we all take on certain ‘personalities’ depending on the context that we find ourselves in. For example, your personality is surely not the same in a corporate meeting as it is when you are having a drink in the pub with your mates. Similarly, our personality will be a bit different with a brother or sister than it would be with our grandparents. Of course our basic character is intact but we all adapt somewhat depending on the environment and the context we are in.

"If we can play the game and become absorbed in this task at hand we can lose ourself and create the possibility of entry into that special place called

‘the zone’. We get ‘lost in action’."

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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Memories and How They Affect Your Golf

Friday, November 8, 2013

The following is a series of tools and techniques that can enable you to really take charge of the way your memory works for you. Make a commitment to use them to find out just how good you can be at golf.

The alternative to using these tools is that you will get to the end of your golfing career and you have lots of memories of potential which have remained UNFULFILLED. As you imagine that now, what would that be like if you didn’t take action on this information?

MEMORY TOOLS & TECHNIQUES The 3 Moments Diary
 

Many years ago, when I spent time working with people who were struggling with life (as opposed to sport), it became painful (but at the same time fascinating) to get to know people who were seriously threatening suicide – to discover the kind of life experience they were having which drove them to the point of making this horrendous decision as to what their life amounted to.

I then wondered that if something so simple as an Appreciation Diary could have such a big impact on people suffering in life, what impact could that have on golf?

Well, I can tell you the results over the past few years for anyone who commits to this exercise have been nothing short of miraculous. And I’m going to suggest to you that doing the same, i.e. keeping your own Golf Appreciation Diary will transform the way you think about your game. As you write out in detail each day your three best moments on the course – it could be a putt, a great drive, the way that you controlled yourself when you had a bad break, it doesn’t matter what it is – so you will begin to change the way you memorise aspects of your game which, given time, will change your outlook.

 

GOLF APPRECIATION DIARY

What happens is this. Each day, as you write out in detail each of the experiences you most enjoyed and appreciated, you SOLIDIFY that experience inside your brain – you literally begin to CONTROL your memory as you decide what is stored in there. I have lost count of the number of people who have said that after just a couple of months of keeping the diary they just can’t seem to remember the bad stuff anymore – and the feeling of self confidence and belief just gets stronger and stronger as they recall vividly the positive moments of each day.

There is a massive difference between TRYING to think positively and actually RECORDING positive events that happen each time you play a round of golf. I don’t care who you are and at what level you play, but each day you go out onto the course SOMETHING good will happen that day.

As you keep recording these moments, the brain rewires itself and then becomes TRAINED to search for uplifting experiences. Not for one minute are we saying you ignore your mistakes, but there is a world of difference between LEARNING from your mistakes and DWELLING on them. Most people are experts at the latter. What you will also find with the diary as you record your peak moments in detail is that you will notice PATTERNS beginning to emerge. You will start to notice the things you do when you are at your best, and these will help you to recognise and identify the INGREDIENTS of your success.

YOUR GOLF – 3 MOMENTS DIARY

• When you arrive home after a game of golf, write out in DETAIL your 3 best moments on the course 

• Make the detail SENSORY rich – i.e. what did you see? What did you hear? How did it feel? 

• Record any of the emotions that you felt 

• Sitting quietly, replay in your mind VIVIDLY the 3 best events from your game

 

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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A Lesson in Learning

How can we look at the latest swing idea if we haven't got the faintest idea on HOW we put that information into our body as actual motion?
 

For those of you who have spent time with me before you will recognise the fact I firmly believe in good sound technique. I get very tired of people saying golf is ‘all in the head'. No, it isn't! A good swing will hit better shots than a bad swing and no amount of mental training can make up for a dreadful technique. As I have said over and over again, a good mental approach will get the best out of your swing but it won't make a bad swing a good one.

What is so exciting here is starting to look at the latest research on how your brain works to help speed up the process of making the swing changes you and your coach deem necessary to take your game to the next level.

In many ways, this article started to take shape in my mind through a passing comment that I read a few years ago made by the greatest ever British golfer, the six-time major champion Sir Nick Faldo.

WHAT DOES WORK? Internal v. External Focus
 

It seems it is not necessarily the number of shots you hit on the range that is key to changing your swing but rather the quality of your attention and, more importantly, where you place that attention.

As we delve a little deeper and begin to understand just how important the focus of our attention is, then it becomes appropriate to look at the incredible work done by Dr Gabriele Wulf at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Dr Wulf has spent a great deal of her life studying how people learn motor skills and she has come up with some startling research which will have a direct bearing on how quickly and efficiently you change your swing.

 

TAI CHI SWINGS

The other important suggestion I want to make for you to speed up the process of changing your golf swing will actually take us back thousands of years to the Far East.

I am sure you have heard of Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese martial arts discipline (see Jayne Storey's series of Tai Chi-based instruction).
 

Think of it this way:

• If we are unable to do a movement slowly there is little chance of us doing it quickly.

• As part of your programme to change your swing I want you to do 5 minutes of Tai Chi swings. That is, you make your movement but you do it ridiculously slowly.

• When I say slowly, I mean slowly.

• Take your set up.

• Be in balance.

• Then start to make your move and literally try to sense that your mind is ‘in your muscles' – i.e. sense exactly the feeling that you want to ingrain in your swing simply because you are making the movement so very slowly.

• The key thing is that you do this whilst actually going ahead and hitting the shot.

• Do this for just 5 minutes, which will only be a few balls, but you will find that whilst doing this exercise your quality of attention will be highly focused. You will be shining a torch of awareness into your movement, literally giving your brain/body system the imprint of the moves that you desire.

• You will find that after doing this for a few moments you can then return to ‘normal' speed with a much better chance of transferring the learning.

• This is not just my opinion – you have centuries of wisdom on your side!

• As well as helping you to change your golf swing I do strongly recommend that you look at Tai Chi as an adjunct to your golf.

• Anything that helps promote balance, grace of movement and calmness of mind has to be worth looking at.

• It is a fascinating as well as infinitely beneficial art.

When you start to combine all of the information I have provided in this article you really will be giving yourself an outstanding chance to make your golf swing as you want it to be and as permanent as it is possible to be.

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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