Are golfers gadget freaks?  You bet!  That is why we carry these huge bags around.  Look inside any one and you will find any number of strange creatures, from plastic wiffle balls that don’t go anywhere when you hit them to straps to tie on to various parts of our anatomy. We’ve got the weighted clubs,  the hinged clubs, the telescopic extention water-ball retrievers, the Alien wedges.  Lost, in the multitude of pockets, you can find ball markers from every course we ever played, with the complimentary golf green repair tool as well.  The ones that we don’t like to use very often, come from that fancy course we played last year and don’t want to loose.

At all the tournaments that we play in we get these sponsorship packages, with the spyglass range finder that does not work.  (But, its got the name of the local bank engraved on the outside of it you know)  We’ve got the latest club-logo clip on our hat ball marker, the new club cleaner wash cloth with the plastic on one side so we can keep it in our back pocket.  And most of all when we travel, we like to get a new tag from the exotic golf club that we played on vacation to dangle off of our bag for the boys when we get home.

If you look in our garages you will find the portable driving mat and capture net.  Don’t even ask about our personal den/home office with the roll out putting green and automatic ball returner.  Don’t even ask about the collection of VHS tapes and later DVD’s on the shelf or the two solid rows of books on the shelves.  After years of frustration at not being able to put the Wilson golf ball on the tee of my sno-globe I gave it away to a collector.  Imagine my frustrated amazement when he deftly flicked it and floated the golf ball onto the tee in one flick of the wrist.  But hey, I play golf for fun and frustration…he just collects things, and I glued my “Hole-in-one ball to the tee on my own homemade plaque.

Are these gadgets and training aids useful and do they work?  You bet, a weighted club will help you to warm up (Be sure to stretch and get loose before you start swinging).   Are there specific areas of your game where you are having a challenge?  When you are a beginning golfer that can be a lot of places, or everywhere, but as you get better you will begin to identify areas that need more work than others. Lets look at a few of the offerings that will help you to improve your game.

Ok Mike you are going off the deep end now!  Hold on a sec and let me explain.  You can be short an horrible off the tee, it may take a while to learn to get distance with your irons, but the place that you can improve the most and in the quickest time is in your short game.   I pointed this out in my short game post; you need to know how far your wedges travel at a certain length of back-swing.  The best way to find out is to go to a practice facility and measure it off and see exactly what that distance really looks like.  If you go out in the spring when your local course first opens up there are days when the course is not crowded at all and you can play by yourself.  Break out the tape when you  get close to the hole and take a few measurements.  Now that you know what 50′ (or 100′) looks like you will know which wedge you can use a full swing or an 11 o’clock swing or a 9 o’clock swing  to get you close to the center of the green.  See the post for more information.  When you get lethal around the green you can keep up with the gorillas who can drive the ball a country mile and tend to use this same prowess around the green when they really need touch and finesse.

If you are just starting out one of the challenges you will face is learning how to make full and correct contact with the ball.   The professionals have teamed with the statistical types and discovered that for every quarter of an inch you  are from hitting the center of the ball with the center of club face you loose about 15 yards in distance.   Ouch! And that is for a direct  hit!  What about when you hit the ball in a glancing way with the club-face at a slight angle to the direction of the swing?  Yep you guessed it, you loose even more potential distance.  That is why from the very first lesson you take a good instructor will tell you to make sure that all the elements of your posture and setup are correct.

Here is the biggest challenge for any golfer.  Total awareness of what all the parts of your body are doing in the approximately 3.5 seconds that it takes to start and complete a golf swing.  As a beginner, it seems like quite an accomplishment to simply complete the swing without falling down let alone to be aware of where your knees, hips and elbows are.  Here is a tool that will help you with a part of that dynamic.

 Are you bending your target side arm during your back-swing?  If you are you, are loosing distance.  Now a good setup will correct part of that problem, and eventually you will learn to keep your target side arm straight while you fold the other arm in toward your chest at the top of the swing.  This simple strap sits just below the elbow and helps you to insure that you are not bending.  Genius! for a piece of velcro and a piece of plastic you will be given an automatic reminder when you do not feel that pressure on your bicep you have bent your arm.  Obviously you cannot play on the course with this (unless you are alone  or your partners agree) but it is a great training aid to remind you to keep your arm straight.

This little golf training aid is called “Golfstr”  it is available from http://www.golfstr.com/

Why is a bent arm such a detriment?  There are 2 things here,  radius and wrist-cock.  When you bend your arm you are shortening the potential length of your swing ever so slightly which reduces the speed of your club-head and increases the chances of topping the ball.  The other element is wrist-cock, it is your wrist that should bend in the upper part of your back-swing.  At the top of the swing you transition into the down-swing; the feeling that you will chase for the rest of your golfing life is learning to feel when your wrists open up for that final snap as the club-head whips through the ball.   This takes just a few milli-seconds so don’t expect to isolate it;  you can see it in slow motion videos as the hands of the pro get to a position of being parallel with the ground on the down-swing the wrists un-cock and the club-head gets an extra boost of speed through the ball for an amazing increase in distance. This ain’t gonna happen with a bent arm back-swing!  (See Tigers Swing)  There is much more that could be said about this part of the swing but that will be the subject of another post later on.

While we are on the subject of straps here is one more for the lower part of the anatomy.  Do you know anybody that sways during his back-swing?  That was only me for the first 15 years that I played golf.  Of course no one ever told me (Hey we gotta be polite and all that you know) so I did not even know I was doing it.  When I finally found out in a lesson, my pro had me turn my right toe in toward my left foot.  When I tried to swing my 7 iron I almost broke my right knee; ouch that hurt.  This is much more humane and guess what?  It will cure the sways in a hurry.  Once again when you learn proper setup procedures and  keep your weight distribution on the inside balls of your feet you will stop swaying.   This strap assembly will give you the ability to feel and to see the difference staying centered over the ball really feels like.  It can be an amazing feeling for someone who has never felt it.  You can find The Power Leg Strap at: The Purepoint Golf Site

Technorati Tags: Golf Training Aids, Golfstr, Power Leg Strap

A few years back, I got an email from one of my golf newsletter subscriptions talking about this fellow named Tracy Reed.  The following day several others also sent me emails talking about the same person who had developed this phenomenal approach to the golf swing.  Since I now had recommendations from several sources I decided to check it out more thoroughly.  Boy am I glad that I did.

The introductory video that I watched had an interesting feature to it that I had never seen or heard about.  Tracy gives a thorough explanation of  the value of balance in the golf swing and what he says makes a tremendous amount of sense.   Before I heard Tracy’s ideas my standard approach to the golf swing was a rushed address and a hasty swing which was rarely a deliberate setup  with an “in balance” stance.

After viewing this small piece of information I went out to the course to give it a try.  As someone who rarely broke 90, my swing was inconsistent, my setup routine was non-existent and my drives and fairway irons rarely went as far as they should have.  The balance aspect was the root cause of most of my problems.  In a word, I was “SWAYING.”

I would move over onto my right side in my back-swing, usually too far.  Then struggle on the downswing to get back to center to hit the ball, much less have any sort of weight transfer to my left foot for a proper finish. On top of that my timing was poor and my wrist cock was expended before the club had even passed 9 oclock on the downswing.

Tracy’s simple counsel was to start with a balanced stance, that you settle into so that you truly feel balanced.  Then tilt your upper body slightly toward your right or non target side.  In other words instead of moving there in your back-swing you start out there.   This puts you in a position to take an efficient back-swing without moving your weight outside of your back foot enabling you to focus on transferring your weight onto your front side.

There is no magic or hocus/pocus here, when you start your swing in balance and stay within the parameters of the balls of your feet the weight transfer occurs naturally. The consequence is that you are able to deliver maximum power to the ball.  The results are immediate, your swing improves immensely.  The timing takes place naturally and your body co-operates by spending  it’s energy swinging through the golf ball instead of trying to regain your lost balance.

If you add to this a good setup routine in which you insure a correct grip, insure that correct muscles are engaged (every time you address the ball) and a short mental/visual check-list (where do you plan to land).  You will have given your self a chance at curing the most common complaint that golfers have.  Which is: Golf Consistency!

That is what I discovered.  Those two simple video’s on Tracy’s site showed me how to setup in balance, how to swing in balance and finish with my weight transferred to my target side foot.  The swing became repeatable because the steps to get into balance were repeated every time and this made the results predictable.  I did not have to change my grip, or change my swing or add anything new.  I simply learned how to setup in balance and stay there through-out the swing.

Tracy  spent 20 years developing and refining his technique to come out with Golf Swing Control .  The issue of staying in balance is the beginning of building a consistent golf game, once that is mastered the game becomes much more exciting as you can now focus on mastering the ability to draw or fade the ball at will.  When you have learned to craft your shots you can then move on to learning how to control your golf focus to get even more consistency into your golf game.

You can opt in to see the two video’s that I mentioned at http://ultimategolfsystem.com I won’t make any outrageous claims as to decreased strokes for your game, for each golfer it will be different.  I can tell you however,  that  having a predictable golf swing is priceless.

Technorati Tags: consistent golf game, Golf Consistency, Golf Swing Control, Tracy Reed

garmin-approach-s1-gps-golf-watch

Garmin has finally seen the light with this wrist watch. The Garmin Approach S1 GPS Golf Watch gives you all the essential information you need to make the correct club selection without the hassle of fumbling for a separate device.

Why?

Because the device is attached to you in the form of a wrist watch. What a great idea. Glance down at your wrist period, no fumbling through your golf bag for the laser finder, no running back to the cart to check the GPS (If the course has one).

Duh, where have I been? I love to play golf and it is a lot of fun to play new courses. It is especially enjoyable when the new (for you) course you are playing has GPS in their carts so you will have some clue about distances. Over the years I have played around with many different range finding devices, from the simple $10 telescope with a line on the top of the inner glass to a fancy program for my palm pilot.  I discovered with the palm  that I needed my reading glasses to make use of the program. This became so much of a distraction that I stopped carrying it after the third round.

I never had the urge to buy the laser binoculars as one of the guys in my normal foursome already has a pair.   I find it interesting to watch as I am standing next to a marked sprinkler head and watch as my partner struggles to hold the binoculars steady to get a reading and then tells me a couple of yards more than the head indicates. The bottom line is that all you need is a fair approximation of the distances.  Assuming you have done your work on the range and know the distances that each of your clubs will carry then you will know which club to choose.

The Garmin Approach S1 GPS Golf Watch has three modes besides telling you the time.  It will keep track of the total distance (odometer) that you have walked on the entire course.  It will track the distance of your individual shots,  so you can set it after you take your shot, walk to your ball and get the distance.  Finally, it will give you a distance to the pin so you can make the best choice of an approach club.  For your local course you probably already know that, but for an unfamiliar course this can be highly useful.  (My first round on an unfamiliar course usually adds 4-6  strokes due to miscalculations)

If you are looking for a full-blown GPS lay-out with maps to the hazards, you will probably not like this device.  It does not yield this kind of information. But if simple distance and convenience is important then this is the best choice I have seen.  No more digging in your bag for the glasses or laser finder, no trips the cart to check the map (especially on a “cart path only” course).  It comes with 14,000 courses pre-loaded, with more being added, so your course is probably already there.  Plus you will not have any software subscriptions or extra fiddling.  The only serious complaint that I have heard is the charge time, apparently it is only good for a single round before it needs to be recharged.  (36 hole days are rare for me so this will not be a problem).

You can see the approach watch at the In The Hole Golf

Simply scroll to find your pre-loaded course.

 You can see the entire line of GPS range finders on this page.

Technorati Tags: Garmin Approach S1 GPS Golf Watch, golf range finder, GPS for golf