Posts Tagged ‘improve your game’

golfTEC Swing Evaluation

Last week I wrote about every golfer’s frustration: not getting any better.  No matter how much I play, I never feel that I get make significant progress in my game.  I’m a 25 handicap and although I’ll go through phases that I shoot in the low 90′s, I can never do that consistently.

My friend Travis recommended I check out golfTEC (www.golfTEC.com) which is a company that teaches people to play better golf.  I believe that most of their instruction takes place in hitting  bays inside their store locations, although my coach alluded to some short-game sessions that take place at a real course. From their site:

“Using an instructional system proven in over 1.7 million lessons with 170,000+ clients since 1995, GolfTEC is the world leader in golf improvement. From tee-to-green, clients gain skills to reach their shot-making and score-reduction goals.”

For the record, I am not compensated by golfTEC.  I’ve decided to blog about my experience with golfTEC so that it might help other golfers out there looking to improve their games.

This post will be about my swing evaluation session which I participated in last week.  My coach’s name is Thomas Baird and he explains the process thoroughly and obviously knows how to teach golf.

When you start your session, you put on some straps that quantify your golf swing in terms of a number of metrics, including shoulder tilt, shoulder turn, hip bend, etc.  golfTEC utilizes high-tech equipment so you can see exactly what you are doing.  After you take a couple of practice swings and one feels good, then your coach will display your video next to a pro’s video.  Here are some screen shots of my swing next to Larry Mize.

In these shots, a number of things are obvious:

• I’m squatting so much it looks like I’ll shortly need some toilet paper
• My upper body moves forward towards the ball during my swing
• My swing is severely coming from outside in, aka over the top
• I should probably never play golf again

Here are a few more pics of me next to my golfing idol, Tiger Woods (and to all the Tiger-haters out there, chill out and give the guy a break, you’re not his wife).

Look how my head is left of the ball and Tiger’s is right of the ball.  Big difference.  And in my swing, Tiger reaches full extension well in front of the ball.  I reach the bottom of my swing about 2 feet behind the ball!  How ugly is that?  No wonder I’m constantly digging into the dirt.

After going through a bunch of golf mumbo jumbo, my coach made some tweaks to my setup and my backswing.  See the before and after pics of my backswing.

One of the things I like from this session is that I was assigned homework: drills that I can do at home without a ball.  My drills are the chair drill, proper setup, and arms at top.  You have access to videos of these drills from their website, but I can’t link to them from here.

I’ve spent 20-30 minutes per day working on my drills.  I have to confess, I got a little cocky after my drills over the weekend and hit the range thinking my re-invented self would start blasting balls like a champ.  Ooops!  I guess it’ll take more work than a few sessions of drills.

I have my next session this week and I’m feeling good about where this is going.

To be continued…

Head Dipping

The definition of frustration is knowing what you’re doing wrong, but not being able to fix it.  Case in point – my spine angle.  Here’s a video of a drive I hit about a month ago:

Here, I tried to show this in a side by side.  The picture on the left is my backswing.  The picture on the right is my downswing.  I drew in the red line at my head and the yellow line on my shoulders.  When I start my downswing, my head comes down, I bring the club up, and my shoulders come in.

That causes a number of things explained in this video:

During my practice sessions I’m trying to concentrate on keeping my spine angle consistent and my head up.  It seems to work.  The problem is when I am in the middle of a round and it happens.  It’s not just on my full swings either.  The head bob/shoulder dip pops its ugly head during chips and pitches too, causing either super fat shots or sculls.

Guess I’m going to research how to fix this and see what I have to do.  Damn, how can hitting a little white ball be so tough!

Use the Body, Not the Arms

I found this drill from Ireland’s no.1 golf lesson instructor, Barry Power.  His website is http://www.bpg.ie.  The focus is making sure to use the body, not the arms during the swing.  The drill looked pretty useful.

Shave 3 Strokes by Clearing Your Nose

Any of you golfers out there suffering from sleep apnea?  Well, here’s an article from WebMD News:

Nov. 2, 2009 — Men and women who undergo treatment for sleep apnea not only can improve their general health, but their golf games as well, new research indicates.

A study presented at CHEST 2009, the 75th annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians, finds that golfers who have obstructive sleep apnea and who received a therapy called nasal positive airway pressure (NPAP) improved their daytime sleepiness scores.

And they also lowered their golf handicap by as much as three strokes, according to Marc L. Benton, MD, FCCP, of the Atlantic Sleep and Pulmonary Associates in Madison, N.J.

You can read the rest of the article here:

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/news/20091102/sleep-apnea-treatment-helps-your-golf-game?src=RSS_PUBLIC

I thought this article was pretty funny because there’s probably a ton of other ways that sleep apnea is affecting someone’s life (like keeping your wife up all night because you snore like a drunk lumberjack).

I guess if potential heart failure, stopping breathing between 25 and 100 times a night, heart attacks, and strokes don’t make you go to the doctor, maybe shaving a few strokes off your handicap will.  Good luck!

-Houston Golf Nut