Tag: Personal Favor

The Best Way to Choose Golf Equipments Lesson

Golf is a sport that is not easy to master. One can have a smooth, fluid backswing, turn back to the ball in perfect fashion and then leave clubface a degree open and the ball goes sailing behind Junior’s Pig Farm. And good golf irons are very important.

It’s hard to stare down at that non-moving, little, white ball and not want to crush it. A beautifully executed drive is what all of us desire, strive for and obsess over. Just like all sports, the sound of perfect  contact is a sound and feel worth striving for. How to achieve that is not easy with all the books, magazines, training devices, golf pros, clubs and balls that are out there to confuse us. To make matters worse there is this guy named Tiger that we all want to be like.

We’ve all had that round where everything is working perfect; we swing on plane, our putting stroke is aligned and our feel around the green is spot on. However, we come back the following week and something changes; we feel cocky and swing harder, our putts sail way past the hole and we shank every pitch shot. The frustration keeps us up at night so much so that we spend the following days and weeks buried in all sorts of books, videos and magazines to find the perfect tip to correct our ailing golf game.

We’ve all been there and we’ve all suffered the same problems. When this happens, we turn to pros for help. There are those of us that have read Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons” and Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book.” Some of us have studied the images in Jack Nicklaus’ “Golf my Way” and stored in memory the fixes found in David Leadbetter’s “Faults and Fixes.”

Dave Pelz’s is there to help us with our short game in his book “Short Game Bible”. Annika Sorenstam helps the girls in “Golf Annika’s Way.” John Daly will help you learn how not to live your life. Michael Murphy’s “Golf in the Kingdom” explores the beauty and mystery of this game called golf. (This is my personal favorite)

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There are books on fixing slices, shanks, hook, chunks, chili dips and even our heads. Now some of us are not much for reading so we turn to videos and dvd’s to help us along. Some need to see how to swing, act and play the game correct. I prefer this method to get a feel for rhythm and swing path.

So we turn on the TV, watch Tiger and Phil for a bit, make our way to the driving range and swing our little hearts out. After buckets of balls and blisters on each hand, we figure out, we are not these guys. So we go  home and search for more advice.

We read articles in magazines, on the internet and try our hand at more fixes. We test these out and search for more. One day we step foot in a pro shop and run across an amazing new training aid that will cure our golf game woes forever.

Who hasn’t strapped on a “Straight Arm Sleeve” or wrestled with an “Impact Ball?” Some of us have wiggled into the “Perfect Connextion” and stood on Hank Haney’s “Step Minder” and felt unconnected to say the least.

Nick Faldo tries to help with his “Step2 Swing”. Then there is the legendary, disjointed Medicus that “buckles” when one isn’t on the correct swing path. There are training aids for putting, curing a slice, gaining more distance, balance, rhythm, stance and a whole host of other oddities.

I’ve been there, I’ve read all the books, I’ve tried all the fixes and I’ve watched so many golf videos and rounds of golf that my brain can’t comprehend anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, these items are useful and help in many ways, but they can also send one in too many directions.

That all changed for me the day I played a round with my dad and two of his friends ages, 72 and 74. I was 32 years old, in great physical shape and limber as can be. My golf game was OK, but still needed a lot of work. I knew that I could show off for these older guys and show them how a longer hitter plays the game. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The best golf lesson I ever received came from that round of golf and these two older gentlemen.

The round started out the way I expected; the two older men drove the ball short and down the middle of the fairway with myself driving the ball a hundred yards past them. This was going to be a delight.

I pared the first whole and was up by two on the rest of my competitors. Cockiness settled in and on the second hole I bombed a drive into the pines. The older gentlemen poked the ball down the middle of the fairway,  hit to the green and pared. I had to scramble out of the woods and took a double bogey .

This went on the whole round. I ended up off the fairway while my competitors enjoyed the luxury of the short grass with no obstacles in their way.

After nine I was ten strokes behind my nearest competitor. It was there that I realized how to play this game. The older gentleman had odd, short swings, but they took their time, stayed out of trouble and delivered a consistent blow to the ball hole after hole.

To play nice to choose good golf irons. This game is not about how far you hit the ball or how smooth you look when swinging; it’s about playing smart, swinging within your means and enjoying the time on the course.