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Find it and you win

Find it and you win

The key point for every golf beginner is to know ourselves better. This is also very helpful tips for us to handle a variety of troubles. Not only limited to the golf game. So do you know what you are good at or weak is? Here our editor is give you the general problem for most of the beginners. Of course you can visit our website for more golf tips to help you to improve you skill.

Have a hybrid

A good alternative to fairway woods and long irons are hybrids. The shorter shaft length along with a more compact head helps most golfers hit these clubs much better than the harder-to-hit fairway woods and long irons. The end results are solid shots that give golfers increased confidence, which leads to better swings.

Finally, take a lesson from Phil Mickelson, and put three or four wedges into your bag. I recently played golf with a higher handicap player who tried to use his pitching wedge to get out of greenside bunkers

Sand wedge is Ok

In the first 12 holes, he was in four bunkers, and it took him three shots to get out of each bunker. He was bunkered on the 16th hole, and by this time I could not stand by and watch this anymore.

I gave him my 60-degree sand wedge and a few pointers on how to use the club, and said give it a try. To his great relief he swung that wedge; the ball came out stopping about 15 feet from the hole.

I yelled to him, “Go out and buy a sand wedge!”

Of course we can not show you all the point over the paper, but comes to the key point; you have to know yourself better.

 

Speed Up your Pre-Shot Routine Transition for Better Golf Psychology

Golf instructors often talk about the transition in the golf swing as that pause between completing the backswing and starting the downswing. They often suggest that slowing down the transition is one of the most important keys to hitting a good shot.

Well, I’m not qualified to comment on the technicalities of the golf swing. However, I am qualified to comment on what for me is an even more important transition in golf psychology. It’s the transition from the conscious analytical planning phase of your pre-shot routine to the unconscious instinctive phase of actually hitting the ball. Unlike the pause at the top of the backswing, the faster you can comfortably make this transition, the better and more consistently you’ll find yourself striking the ball or rolling the putt.

If you watch the top players in the world, like Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, you’ll notice that they take very little time between taking their chosen club out of the bag and hitting the ball. A recent study suggested that Tiger and Phil consistently take around 11 to 12 seconds to do this and they are very consistent with the timing. If they took any longer, they often hit a less than good shot – these guys don’t hit many downright bad shots.

So what do they do in those 11 to 12 seconds? Well, every player has his own idiosyncrasies, including re-gripping, waggling, breathing, blinking and countless other rituals. However, they all seem to

  1. take one or two practice swings to get the feel of the shot they visualise playing
  2. step forward to the ball and take their stance
  3. align their body and clubface
  4. take a final look at their target
  5. finally, hit the “start button” and swing the club or putter.

What’s interesting is that they don’t seem at all rushed in fitting all that into such an apparently short time. They certainly don’t have any spare time for self doubt and that little voice in their head telling them they’re doing it all wrong! In fact, they complete the process like they’re in some sort of trance and that means that they are leaving the whole process to their unconscious golf mind, just like driving a car or riding a bike.

Now some of the players you watch on TV or out on the course take a lot longer to make this transition and the time they take is less consistent. How well did you see them play? If you watched Sergio Garcia playing golf a few years ago, you’d have often seen him take an inordinately long time to hit the ball. He had a pained expression on his face that suggested he was experiencing a lot of negative self-talk and he seemed to be wringing the life out of the club as he repeatedly re-gripped his hands. It’s no surprise that his golf was inconsistent at best and he certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying his golf.

So how do I speed up my transition from taking my club out to hitting the ball, I hear you say. Well one way is to make the whole process an instinctive or unconscious activity. Streamline your own transition process and use it every time you hit a shot on the golf course, at the driving range, on the practice putting green and in your mental golf practice. You do practice and play golf in your mind, now don’t you?

Trust your Unconscious Golf Mind to Align Your Club for a Better Pre-Shot Routine

How much is the accuracy of your golf shot influenced by club alignment at address and how much is down to your instinctive or unconscious golf ability? Now I’m not talking here about the complexity of aligning the various parts of your body when you address the ball. That’s a subject for your golf pro, not your golf psychologist. All I’m interested in here is the alignment of your club face at address.

I’ve been writing a lot recently about the importance, in golf psychology terms, of a quick transition from the conscious processes of planning your golf shot and selecting the right club and the unconscious process of taking your stance and hitting the ball. What concerns me most is that while the best golfers seem to take as little as 11 seconds to complete this transition the average golfer seems to take that long just to align their stance and the clubface.

Now, I don’t want you to go straight out and time how long you take, as that would introduce an unnecessary conscious activity into what should be an unconscious process and I don’t want you blaming me for making you play worse. You probably already know whether you are quick or slow in this area and if you don’t, just ask a golfing friend to tell you.

How accurately can you consciously aim your club face? Well, let’s look at a few technical facts. A typical club head is about 3 inches long from heel to toe and the hitting area is less than 2 inches wide. With a mid-iron, those two inches sit on the ground about 4-5 feet from your eyes, depending on your height and style.

And how precise can you be with the alignment of that clubhead from that distance? If you were an eight of an inch out with the face alignment, then your club would be facing about 10 yards wide of your target 160 yards away – the difference between hitting or missing an average green. Now, I know that the path the club head takes at impact has more affect on the direction the ball starts flying than the alignment of the clubface, but that’s more than compensated for by the slice or draw swing created and the tendency for us golfers to swing square to our clubface.

So, how do the better golfers maintain their accuracy if it’s so difficult to align the clubface accurately? Well, let’s look at other sports where the action is so rapid that we don’t have time to think consciously about alignment. How often have you seen a top-class cricket fielder throw the ball from maybe 40 yards more than a yard either side of the wicket-keeper? That’s despite having to run some way for the ball, pick it up, turn and throw it back as quickly as possible. I suspect that something similar happens in baseball. Now, do they spend any time aligning themselves consciously before they throw the ball? I don’t think so, they just turn and throw the ball and trust their amazing bodies and unconscious mind to assess all the variables and let fly.

The same goes for tennis where there’s little or no time for alignment. Timothy Gallwey’s original Inner Game book made similar arguments for the capabilities of the unconscious mind in the game of tennis. When he talked about Self 1 and Self 2 he was talking about what I describe as the conscious and unconscious minds. Even with the dynamic nature of tennis, he found a need for a distraction to stop the conscious mind interfering with the shot – calling out “Bounce” and “Hit” when the ball bounced or you hit it with the racket.

Now, what are you suggesting I should do to shorten my alignment time, Andrew? Well, all I’m saying is to think about taking less time with your club alignment when you’re setting up to play your shots and trust your unconscious to hit the shot where you want it to go. Work on it on the practice ground and in your mental practice until it becomes second nature and you know it works well for you. Then take it to the course and enjoy the results.