Online golf lessons are becoming increasingly more prevalent. In just a few short years you are now able to go to the internet and search on Youtube for almost any aspect of your golf game. You will find after a bit of searching a little snippet of video that will begin to address some of your concerns.   I say begin, because 2 minutes is hardly enough to satisfy you when you have just spent 4 hours  of misery on the golf course trying to figure out what went wrong with your swing.

When you take lessons from a professional you typically show up in your golf attire with your bag in tow.  He comes out and begins to speak, he will then demonstrate his desired result and then turn it over to you to attempt to duplicate. Since this is a hands on training, you will probably not whip out your notepad to take notes.

You may or may not be able to copy his swing pattern and accomplish the required motion.  Forty-five minutes later the lesson is finished and you are “fixed” with new technique.  For this you paid at least $50 if the professional is worth his salt.  I know, you bought the package for $300 and you get a two day intensive or a 10 lesson series.  Rarely do they send you home with the “Cliff notes” that you can refer to when you are having challenges later on.

What do you do two months later when the exact motions begin to fade and you have reverted to your old patterns?

Today you are able to purchase DVD’s that will address the specific areas of golf that  challenge you.  Not only are you able to own a DVD with the lesson but several of the available coaches also offer forums and live webinars that enable you to ask questions directly.

Bobby Eldrige and Purepoint golf offer both of these things.  You are able to select from a series of online golf lessons that deal with several different aspects of the game. Whether it is the driver, the long irons or closer to the pin with your wedges, there is a training DVD available to address that specific area of your game.  The sweet thing about owning the DVD is the ability to go back and review a year or two later if any problems crop up.  Not only that the DVD’s are often priced at less than the cost of a single lesson.

You may want to simply brush up on your skills or find some warm up exercises.  The Apprentice club may be just what you are looking for.  For $1 you can sample a month’s worth of the great training tips, short training videos (downloadable) with a private forum and monthly training webinars.  A major key to improving your game is knowing your statistics, the “apprentice club” gives you a series of tools to track your game and chart your improvement as the weeks go by.

Each month there is a different focus, from putting to the driver, all aspects are covered over the course of a year. This is a great investment, for $14.97 a month you will receive a complete golfing education.  Online golf lessons on demand for your total golf game, you can tune in on your own schedule and work on any aspect you need to focus on.  If you are serious about improving your game it deserves a look; it worked for me.  The Apprentice Club

Technorati Tags: online golf lessons

When you have played a golf course more than once you will begin to develop attitudes about certain holes that can have an effect on your game. A successful finish on a difficult hole may increase your ability to navigate that hole successfully in the future. The converse is also true, if for some reason your tee shot went errant and you spend the rest of the hole trying to recover with one bad shot following another, this will also be recorded. Once you have played a course for the first time you should be developing a mental strategy for achieving your best possible score.

It is amazing to watch as week after week the pro’s go to different golf courses and no matter what the conditions they seem to score well and meet the demands of the course.  In most cases for a 4 day tournament they will have arrived on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, typically play in a pro-am on Wednesday and by Thursday they are teeing off. In their golf mental game they have already developed strategies for the methods they will use to conquer the more challenging holes.

Here are some questions to consider when you play a course for the first time.  Use these questions to formulate your strategy for your next visit.

• Should I be using a driver to tee off on this hole? Sometimes a driver will get you into more trouble.  In a lot of cases the better option would be to use a lesser distance club that you can control to set yourself up for the next shot.  A driver may bring you the distance that you want but it is not the most accurate club in your bag. If you can shape your shots with a driver then use it. If that distance will put you through the fairway into the deep rough, it is not the best club to use.

• What is the best club that I can be using to make the shot that I need? You are 120 yards out and beneath some trees, do you use your 9 iron? (I know dumb question  but I have unfortunately seen it happen more than once) Maybe the better club would be a low flying 5 iron chip or “stinger”.

• Is it always best to shoot straight for the hole? Should I always advance the ball toward the target?  If you are in serious trouble as in behind a tree it is better to take your next shot to get back into the fairway so that your following shot is set up to get you there. I see this all the time, people trying impossible shots that most professionals would not attempt.

• Where is the flag on the green? What is the best angle of approach to the flag. As a general rule this does not come into play very often, however there are times when the pin placement means that you can access it much better from the left side or right side. When you are teeing off it is very useful to know. A pin placement on the back left side of the green is much more accessible from the right side, than over a bunker on the left.

• Is the shot that I am about to attempt within my capabilities? I know, you have seen Phil Mickelson execute this fantastic “butterfly lob” from the hillside of the raised green. Have you practiced this shot enough to be able to execute it?  If not then use a shot that you are confident of making.

• When do you lay-up? You are 230 yards out from the hole, but there is a lake to cross a hundred yards down the fairway. Too many times I see this, the odds of getting the perfect fairway boomer with your three wood are significantly less than a couple of well placed wedge shots. The first shot will keep your ball dry the second could be in the cup!

• Does my previous experience on this hole dictate my performance today? So the last time you played, this or that happened and you had a bad experience with this hole.  Does that mean that every time you play this hole something bad is going to happen? Take some time to study the hole.  Course designers lay out a lot of holes out with visual obstacles that really shouldn’t affect your shot, but they do if you let them.  You tee off on a hole with a lake running down the right side, the lake seems to creep into the center of your vision even though the fairway is directly in front of you.  Focus on your perfect shot for the fairway, your previous lake ball should not dictate today’s performance.

Keep these questions in the next time you hit the course. They may help you to score better, especially on the second round for a new course.  Below is a good video which illustrates some of the things which I have mentioned. I apologize for the dimensions, unfortunately Youtube will not let me change them.

Hit them Straight and Seldom

Michael Brown

Technorati Tags: Golf Mental Strategies, Mental Golf Tips

This Rock sits on the left side of hole #7 Tee Box at Evergreen GC.   The arrows point at 2 Rock Badgers who sit and watch as golfers tee off.  They live in the cave beneath the rock.

I read today that 70% of all golf shots take place from 100 yards in to the pin.  The article went on to say that the pros spend 80 to 90% of their time practicing in this area of their game.  Having a long game that will get you to the green in few shots is great, but you don’t have to be long in order to score well.  Here are some golf short game tips that will help you to become lethal around the green.

In his book the “Short Game Bible” Dave Pelz talks about how he spent years collecting data on pro golfers and their shots.  He discovered that they were very good at selecting the right club and swing for their distance into the green but the landing pattern was often a spray to the left or to the right. In other words their distance was usually very accurate, while their direction was not always what they were hoping to accomplish.  For us non professional golfers, I suspect that generally this would be true as well.

So this means that once we know the distances that a given club will fly, our next task is to get extremely accurate.  The first obvious task is to build a repeatable method of aiming.  The best way I know is the “intermediate target”; pick out a spot directly in front of your ball, imagine the ball flying over this spot on its way to the hole.  You would select the spot when standing behind the ball but make sure that you can see it when you align yourself for the shot. As you go through your set-up routine you should insure that your club face, shoulders and hips are aimed directly over this spot.  This should be an automatic part of your set-up routine.

Next is your attitude, the professionals generally consider anything from 120 yards in as a make-able shot.  Think about it, do you see the ball going into the cup when you are 80 to a 100 yards away?  I call it a “Hole in One Mentality”.  It may sound like voodoo, but I assure you, your body will cooperate in helping you to make the best possible swing to achieve this goal when you incorporate it into your thoughts.  You do this on the green, so why not use it from 120 yards in.

The next aspect of scoring well around the green is what is referred to as “touch”.  Touch is the ability to get close to the hole, leaving yourself with a make-able putt.  Touch can be developed with practice. Use a three club system at the practice facility and learn how far a chip will go with a 7, 8,9 or any combination of wedges. Learn your distances in correlation to your back-swing. If my ball is considered 6 o’clock and I swing back to 8 o’clock; how far does it travel?  Now learn those same distances for a 9 o’clock swing and an 11 o’clock swing. When you arrive near the green armed with this knowledge you will perform with touch.

As a long time student of the game I have read my fair share of theory and articles on golf. A few years ago I picked up the Purepoint Golf Short-Game DVD.  Bobby Eldridge finally helped me to develop a repeatable swing for my short game.  His series has now expanded to include  Pitching and Bunker-shot DVD’s as well as written PDF’s so you can study in a variety of ways.  For less than the cost of a single lesson from a Professional you can add a terrific resource to your library. It is currently on sale for the next few days as a bundle package but that will not last for long.  It deserves a serious evaluation and I might add Bobby has a guarantee that is unlike any I have ever seen.  See for yourself.

Hit them Straight and Seldom

Michael Brown

Technorati Tags: golf lessons dvd, golf setup routine, Golf Short Game Tips