Proper Alignment for Your Golf Swing

To develop a way to spot check alignment problems. Make sure your shoulders are properly aligned. Your shoulders are the most important element because your swing path will follow the alignment of your shoulders at impact. Subtle compensations can creep into your swing if you are not properly aligned. Without help even the best golfers can have trouble recognizing this. You must constantly check your alignment to be consistent. Poor alignment is a major problem for golfers who slice. Align the clubface squarely then align your body. Check the position of the ball by using alignment clubs also. Most golfers think they play the ball further back than they really do.

To start your practice sessions properly aligned. Don.t assume you are lined up correctly. Remember practice makes permanent, so make sure you are starting off positioned correctly. Learn the square stance first. Later, as the need arises, you can experiment with other stances.

To double check your target line. If you don.t accurately know your target line, you cannot easily tell if you are making swing path errors. Before each shot approach the ball from behind and pick your target line. Then when taking your stance align yourself toward your target. Better players align themselves much more consistently than poor players. Hitting balls without aiming at a target is an invitation for swing problems. Tape, clubs on the ground, or and "practice partners" are all good ways to check alignment. Learn to identify the different between a poor shot and an error in alignment.

Do's and Don'ts
Don't leave the club between your feet longer than needed to check proper ball position. Many good players leave one club on the ground parallel to the target line whenever they hit practice balls. This "drill" is a good way to begin every practice session.

Special Golf Shots - The Short Game - Ball Against the Collar By Tom Wilson

By now you know the way to shave strokes from your golf game is to improve your short game. Driving the ball is essential to playing well but even the pros only hit about 65 to 70 percent of the fairways when they tee it up. The best way to lower your scores is to focus on the short game.

Understanding that golf is comprised of many different types of shots will help you to categorize and understand the shot that you need to hit when you need to hit it. One of the golf shots that can come in handy is when golf ball rolls off the green and winds up against the collar. When the golfball is against the collar you have two options. Either use the putter or your wedge. You can use the leading edge of your wedgee to try to hit the equator ( ie the middle ) of the golfball.

Alternatively, you can you use the putter by placing the ball back in your stance ( ie back of the center - between your ankles closer to the right ankle ) so that the face of the putter strikes the golfball with a descending below causing the ball to pop up slightly and begin its roll towards cup. The advantage of moving the golfball back in your stance comes from the fact that there are fewer blades of grass between the putter face and the golfball enabling you to provide a much more accurate stroke on the ball. Do not forget when putting with the ball back in your stance up against the collar if you're on the first cut you need to strike the ball slightly firmer then if you were on the putting surface. This is because the higher grass provides more friction and slows the ball down so you will not get an even pace on the ball from start to finish.

Practice this shot in your local practice area. Statistics show that this shot is needed about once per round. Knowing how to knock it close or into the hole will save you strokes.

Coil For More Consistency By Matt Holin, Teaching Professional

The primary benefit of having the proper amount of hip bend in your swing is that it allows your body to coil effectively to create an efficient source of power.

While testing the PGA and Champions Tour players' golf swings, we discovered that a proper coil of the body is a simple way of achieving a repeatable power source. Average touring professionals turn their shoulders 41 degrees further on the back swing than their hips. This coiling action allows for a proper weight shift to occur, while maintaining a solid base, by keeping the hip motion in the golf swing to a minimum.

Typically we see most amateurs have two flaws with the coiling action in the golf swing. The first flaw is when a student's hips and shoulders turn together to create a long backswing with no coiling action. This swing usually produces action that takes the club significantly past parallel and is very difficult to repeat from swing to swing. The second flaw is the opposite. A student will not rotate their shoulders at all, leading to a lifting of the club with their arms. This invariably produces a reverse weight shift, which robs power and produces inconsistencies.
Test Your Coil
1. A simple way to test your coil is to set up in proper posture.
2. Now place a golf club in front of your shoulders.
3. Your goal is to turn the club across your shoulders over to your right foot. When you have done that you have created a sufficiently long turn with the shoulders.
4. Now comes the tricky part. Look and see where your belt buckle is facing.

If it is facing inside your right toe, you have a fantastic coil and are ready to hit long consistent golf shots. If your belt buckle is facing right of that point, your hips have rotated too far and you are losing power in you golf swing. By improving your coil you can maximize the efficiency of your swing and improve your ball striking.

5 Keys to Mental Toughness for Golfers by Susan Hill

If you have any interest in seeing first hand the impact that mental toughness has on sport performance, go no further than the PGA or LPGA Qualifying tournaments or .Q-School.. Each year for the past several years, I have worked with players on site during this event. A great many of the conversations that the players have are a rehashing of their performance this past year on the PGA, LPGA, Nationwide, or mini-tour circuits.

What I have heard frequently are things that could help the junior golfer get a head start in his or her career. In attempting to describe why they hadn.t reached their outcome goals for the season I hear these professional players repeatedly talk to one another about .trying too hard., .not letting it happen out there., .playing tentative. and many other frequently used mental game phrases. The challenge for many of these professionals is not only to sharpen their swings and putting strokes for this critical week, but to sharpen their mental games as well.

The players who do well in Q-School are the ones that will follow some basic rules about the mental game. Each of these also has application for the junior golfer:

1. Keep each shot in perspective. This is especially true in a 108-hole tournament. Q-School, of all tournaments, is understood to be a marathon and not a sprint. There is no rational reason to be unnerved by a bad hole or two. Similarly, the junior golfer has years and years of opportunities ahead. There is no particular shot in any tournament that is .life or death..

2. Focus on the task rather than the outcome. This is probably the most difficult of the basics for players to follow. It is natural to think about the result and then the consequences of the result. This thinking will not help get the job done. Whenever these thoughts come to mind, replace them with thoughts of the immediate task at hand.

3. Breathe. Even the best in the world get tense in this type of situation. That tension can increase a player's tendency to hold his breath in anticipation of a shot or a putt. This then impacts muscle tension even more, and potentially affects his ability to swing the club smoothly. Deep breaths = slower heart rate and less physiological tension. Creating a habit of doing this as a junior player will be invaluable as your golf career progresses.

4. Remember that you cannot control things. Anyone who plays this game knows that something unexpected happens in nearly every round. A great tee shot lands in a divot, a club you.ve been hitting well all week suddenly starts getting shaky, or a two-foot putt is missed. The successful players in Q-School and elsewhere will recognize that they have control only over their preparation and reactions, and not over anything else. If they know they.ve prepared the best they could for each shot, and know that they are capable of controlling their reaction after each shot, they.ve done all they can possibly do to achieve their goals. Move on to the next one.

5. Play to succeed. Nearly every year there is a player or two held up at the end of Q-School as an example of a late tournament collapse. In nearly all of those instances, the player interviewed will speak of having thoughts of trying to hold on or trying not to make a big number. Many players will have a tendency to play to avoid mistakes and/or prevent something bad from happening.The players who are successful are those who are confident in their abilities to go out and get the job done, and will be playing to succeed rather than to avert failure.

Common Swing Faults With Physical Fixes

NOT ALL MUSCLES WERE CREATED THE SAME by Paul Chek

Joint dysfunction Muscle imbalance Static or dynamic postural stability problems All the above are reasons why a player's swing faults are hard to improve long term. Aside from blatant lack of skill, muscle imbalance is by far the most common source of altered neuromechanics and both poor and/or inconsistent swing mechanics. Teaching pros need to be able to identify and correct length-tension relationships. Length-tension relationships (the balance between muscles and groups of muscles) represent and dictate both the real-time function of the working joints and how well the body executes the brain.s swing command.

In the presence of muscle length-tension imbalances, what may be a very good motor engram leaving the brain often manifests as a swing with notable faults. A player with muscle imbalance is most easily identified by his/her poor posture. Altered spinal curvatures disrupt spinal mechanics, leading to compensatory movement at other joints. When the player.s muscle balance and postural alignment are optimal, there is minimal engram (motor command sequence) disruption. In this state, good motor programming results in long term correction of swing faults and minimizes chances of orthopedic injury. One of the main reasons for muscle imbalance is the way our muscles are designed. We have muscles that are classified as TONIC and muscles that are classified as PHASIC.

The physiological reality of how these two muscle types react to both physical and mental stress is what underlies many chronic swing faults that persist despite having spent large sums of money on elite coaching and high-tech clubs! Tonic muscles are ideally suited to postural duties such as holding an address posture and an optimal swing axis. Tonic muscles react to aberrant physical or mental stress by shortening and tightening. Phasic muscles are more suited to dynamic movements such as actually swinging and accelerating the club. Phasic muscles react to aberrant physical or mental stress by lengthening and weakening.

One of the key reasons for the difference responses between the muscle types is the threshold of stimulation; tonic muscles have a low threshold of stimulation, while phasic muscles have a high threshold of stimulation Additionally, as we age (beyond 40) our phasic abdominal and gluteal (butt) muscles tend to weaken, further encouraging muscle imbalance. Experienced golfers often have a very good mental image, or consciousness of the ideal swing, and try with all intent to execute one. Because tonic muscles have a lower threshold of stimulation than phasic muscles and tend to override commands to antagonistic and synergistic phasic muscles, which have a high threshold of stimulation, the physical image or expression of the motor command may not represent the mental image used to generate the movement. Here the tonic lumbar erectors and hip flexors override the phasic abdominal and gluteal musculature, pulling the player into an over-swing; not only does the player frequently not realize he/she is doing this, back pain is a common byproduct. Note that muscle imbalance is most easily identified as poor posture (the key is recognizing what is poor posture versus good posture!).

When a player develops any degree of muscle imbalance, the swing motor engram that leaves the player.s brain is altered in proportion to the degree of facilitation and muscle imbalance that exists in the musculoskeletal system. Additionally, each time a player executes a swing in the presence of muscle imbalance, the engram is progressively altered and the muscle imbalance is further facilitated. This is one reason that golfers play for five or even ten years with minimal improvement in their handicap; even though their understanding of the game is improving, their level of neuromechanical imbalance is of greater influence on their game!

THERE IS A SOLUTION! You can make significant gains toward a better swing by simply stretching the shortened tonic muscles just before you play.