New Year’s Golf Resolution

Posted by John

January 2, 2009

2009, make it the year to really change your golf game. Tell yourself you’re going to break some of your old bad habits and create a more efficient and reliable swing. No excuses, let’s do it this year. It’s not as hard as you may think!

The winter is the perfect time to remake your game. I’m thinking back to Harvey Penick’s advice in the first book he wrote. He strongly encouraged using the off-season to practice the ‘right’ swing in slow motion every day to create muscle memory. If you follow Dave Pelz – the short game guru, he preaches the same thing for the putting stroke.

What is the ‘right’ swing? That’s a loaded question. If you don’t know, there are plenty of great books and videos available. A good teacher can do wonders, but not all teachers are created equal. Too many have one way of doing things and that’s all they can teach. Choose carefully. A hinged club like the Medicus is a useful tool for slow motion practice sessions.

Here are some useful things you can practice this winter to get you started. Learn the proper setup, including alignment, and practice it daily like a religious custom. Inconsistent setup is probably the biggest problem for all amateurs. If you only practice one thing, this is it and it’s easily done at home. There are lots of good books on setup so there are no excuses for not getting it right.

Locking in a one-piece takeaway is also excellent for indoors practice. Just learning to consistently get the club waist-high will do wonders for your game and can be learned in ten minute daily sessions. You want this move to be automatic by the time you actually start hitting balls. Just the act of putting a ball down increases anxiety and the increased tension destroys the takeaway. Learning a tension free takeaway is key to a great swing and is also critical to stopping a sway.

If you’ve got an indoor space with a high ceiling, practice limiting your backswing. There are many good articles explaining how to measure your flexibility to know how far your body can turn without destroying mechanics. Most amateurs lift the club unnaturally to gain what they mistakenly think is more power only to destroy any chance of delivering a solid blow to the ball.

Ingrain good mechanics at home over the winter and you’ll be surprised at how much you can improve your swing before you get outside again in the Spring. Once the season starts, don’t stop practicing your basic moves.

When your swing breaks down during the season, as it always does, you’ll have a routine to follow to make sure your fundamentals are strong. All of the above works for putting as well. Search the web or you local bookstore for simple putting exercises to help you ‘groove’ your stroke during the winter. Cut your ice fishing by 10 minutes and dedicate the time to better golf in ’09.