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Over 10 years ago, I developed GOLFSTR+, a golf training aid to remind me to keep my leading arm straight during my backswing. I knew that I had a winner when I started playing a round of golf at Indian Wells Golf Resort in Palm Springs, CA while wearing my GOLFSTR+. After hitting a number of greens in regulation, I removed my training aid and soon lost my magic. Practicing and playing with GOLFSTR+ was a great start for my future golfing success.

I had learned that if I kept my leading arm straight, I could generate more distance, but my limited flexibility was limiting my backswing. In every round while playing without GOLFSTR+, I found that I would start bending my leading arm to increase my backswing to gain more distance. That bent leading arm would eventually destroy the consistency of my hits.

If you have been reading my recent blogs, you will be aware of my testing program to roll my leading arm elbow clockwise so that it faces up my target line during my setup.

BINGO: I now realize that this leading arm muscle roll is creating a strain in my arm that locks my leading arm straight DURING MY BACKSWING.

This is the miracle that I have been searching for to create consistency in every shot for distance and direction control. I just have to remember to set up with the elbow roll for every shot. I may add a 2 to 3 foot takeaway waggle for my driver but I definitely have to take my time to add a full backswing and a cocked wrist for lag at the top.

This is the fourth in a Series of simple adjustments that you should explore to improve your game. Your swing thoughts should be embedded in your brain so that you don’t need to hash them out every time you setup for your next shot. Rushing your backswing will destroy your performance.

Avoid an abbreviated Back-Swing: Use a 2 or 3 foot takeaway waggle to feel the right rotation of my shoulders and hips before you start your actual swing. It will give you a new feeling for the start of your swing because you are making this wake-up move with your shoulders and NOT just your arms.

Add enough time in your backswing: Your speed and cadence will depend on how easy it is to keep a straight leading arm, to rotate your shoulders and hips as you add wrist lag before your transition. You will be amazed as I am that when you take more time for your backswing you can create a lot more power and distance.

Shallow Your club at the top: Haney, Leadbetter and Ballard are all teaching golfers to loop their club down at the top of their swing to shallow the club and avoid slicing from over the tip swings. Bowing your wrist down at the top will help you shallow your swing.

Avoid Early Extension: Swing through your ball with the transfer of weight to your leading foot so that your iron sweeps the grass after impact and your driver launches upward after it passed the bottom of your swing. We all want to extend our knees after impact but you can’t afford to get excited and extend them too early. Use your knees to push forward instead of rushing to spring up.

This is the third in a Series of simple adjustments that you should explore to improve your game. Your swing thoughts need to be embedded deep in your brain so that you don’t hash them out every time you setup for your next shot. Own your unique setup for each of your clubs to create a consistent swing and consistent results.

Your setup and takeaway timing is extremely critical for the success of your swing. After you stand behind your ball and choose your target line, pick a point in the grass within 3 feet from your ball. From that point forward you can isolate yourself within your own CUBE like Wyndham Clark at the 2023 US Open . Learn to believe in the success of the shot that you are about to make. If you complete the perfect setup and proper swing with the right club you can only expect excellence.

Easier said than done. Clark did it, almost to perfection but it was good enough to beat the best in the golf world. You have made perfect shots to the perfect location so why can’t you do this every time? It just takes a little focus on what works best for your strength, flexibility and mental attitude.

The perfect setup stance: An athletic stance with a bend at your hips, a straight back & neck and a limited bend of your knees with the right spread of your feet (unique for each club). Right-handed golfers should add a clockwise rotation for your leading and trailing elbows to simplify shallowing your club in your backswing. It’s up to you to choose the pro who you want to emulate for the power that you want to generate.

The right grip for each club is a light grip which is nesting across the base of your fingers. This allows your driver and iron swings to release fully through impact. Your putter grip should be a preference for each golfer, but you can’t afford to be guiding your putt with your wrists and fingers. Swing your putter by using your spine to rotate your shoulders.

This is the second in a Series of simple adjustments that you should explore to improve your game. Your swing thoughts need to be embedded deep in your brain so that you don’t need to hash them out every time you setup for your next shot. Rolling your elbows in your setup will add power and direction control for every shot.

I was surprised to see that Martin Chuck and Danny Maude released blogs a few weeks ago recommending that you should setup by rolling an elbows clockwise (for right handed golfers).
–Martin Chuck recommended: “How to Aim Your Elbow to Maximize Your Consistency and Accuracy.” His blog referred to a setup by rolling your LEADING arm elbow.
-Danny Maude recommended: “Aways Start with Your Right Arm in this Position for Consistency, Accuracy, and Distance.” His blog referred to a setup by rolling your TRAILING arm elbow.
It really was surprising to see both of these trainers recommending unique elbow setups (one for your leading arm and the other for your trailing arm). Of course, I had to test these setups before releasing this blog. I really did find surprising results.

Understanding Elbow Rotation
You can try this with or without a golf club in your hands. Extend your arms and hold your hands together as if you are gripping a golf club. Without rotating your hands (for right hand golfers) you will find that you can rotate your left elbow clockwise so that it will line up to point in the direction of your target (up the fairway). You can also rotate your right elbow clockwise so that the crease at your elbow faces upward (as it normally does with a strong grip).

Observations Watching the US OPEN and on the golf course
Pros in the US Open and lower handicap golfers automatically line up their leading arm elbow in the clockwise rotated direction (with their elbow pointing up the fairway). Weaker golfers typically setup with the crease on both elbows pointing inward.

I tried drives with all 3 combinations: (leading elbow rotated, trailing elbow rotated and both elbows rotated clockwise). After I got over the tension in my arms (caused by the forced rotation), I was able to make very consistent drives as long as I released with an inside to outside swing to create a nice draw. [You may find a different result but I am recommending that you test this out on your game.] Leading elbow rotation helps my swing to shallow the club in my backswing and trailing elbow rotation delivers a much stronger release up the inside slot.

This is the first in a Series of simple adjustments that you may want to try to improve your game. Your swing thoughts need to be embedded deep in your brain so that you don’t need to hash them out every time you setup for your next shot. Setting up to shape your shot is the easiest way to hit more fairways and greens.

It really is frustrating when your ball does not head where you thought you were aiming your shot. Minor changes in your setup and swing make all the difference. Your line up, your posture and bad thoughts from your last shot will all affect your next shot. You can’t afford to stand over your ball thinking about your last miss-hit. You need a positive plan to make your next CONFIDENT swing or putt exactly where you plan.

Learn to Shape your Shot
Don’t expect to hit every drive or fairway shot exactly straight at you target. Very few of your shots every fly in a straight line. To add more control to every one of your shots over 100 yards you should be setting up for a slight draw or fade depending on your normal swing. Your launch direction is based on the face of your club at the point of impact and your ball flight will create its curving path based on the side and/or top and undercut rotation of your ball.

A higher percentage of pros tend to add draw for their shots to gain distance and you should too. Practice creating a draw for most of your shots. Setup with a very slightly closed club face and execute your swing with a shallow inside to outside swing across your target line. If this is not creating a draw, then test your swing with a slightly closed stance (moving your trailing foot back an inch from your target line) and/or a slightly stronger grip by rotating your trailing hand back (pointing the V from your thumb to your first finger to the right of you trailing arm pit).

Every golfer has different strengths in their physical body rotation so you should use a trial and error approach at the driving range to figure out if you need to add a closed stance or stronger grip change to add draw to most of your swings.

Don’t you wonder why you are more likely to top a ball when you are trying to hit your longest distance with any of your clubs. It’s that ticking time bomb in your head. It’s caused by your state of mind that triggers a chain reaction in your mind and body to overpower your transition at the top of your swing. You need a remedy to break that STUPID habit.

Pros Have the Same Problems
What happened to Rory McIlroy in the 2023 Masters? He missed the cut and it must have been caused by the pressure and emotion to win! The opposite must have happened to Jason Day’s victory in the Byron Nelson after 5 years without a win. It’s not the phase of the moon or just wearing lucky copper infused socks. Calm, controlled emotion must have a lot to do with your success on any given day when you are playing golf.

What is Your Primary Mishit?
The slope of the ground where you are standing has a lot to do with your mishits but first your need to understand what causes your mishits on the flat surface of the tee or fairway. It’s rare that TV cameras will show us the mishits for the pros but they do happen. We should be more concerned with the typical mishit for Weekend Warriors. I have played with hundreds of different golfers so I suspect that you will agree that fat and thin shots are the most prevalent mistakes for mid-handicappers. But thin hits or topped balls are by far the most common mishits for most golfers.

Problems Causing your Topped Ball Mishits
We all have to agree that emotion and personal pressure to hit longer or better shots are the primary causes for our mishits. These are the causes:
1/ Swaying back in the backswing and then rushing your arms during the downswing are the primary cause for bottoming out our swing arc before the ball and then topping the ball as your club arcs upward.
2/ Tensing our shoulder and arm muscles reduces the length of our swing arc. You may be lifting your shoulders or bending your leading arm to shorten your swing arc (as compared to the distance when you setup for your hit.)
3/ “Early Extension” refers to the way you stand up taller just before your impact with the ball. During impact, you need to keep your shoulders down on the same plane as when you setup.
4/ Transition Yip: You can’t afford to rush the transition because it will make your arms get out of sync with your body as you start to shift your weight to your leading foot. The harder you try to swing the worse this problem get. Just relax the transition.

Solution: We all need to create a comfortable rhythm to add wrist lag at the top and to hold that lag as we transition into our downswing. I now think the words “bow annnd go” to add cadence to my backswing. Saying “bow” reminds me to bow my leading wrist (for drives) or fatten my leading wrist (for fairway woods and irons), saying “annnd” as I cock my wrists for lag at the top and “go” as I bump my hip forward to start my down swing.

The 2023 PGA Championship was a real exciting nail bitter. If you were watching, you may have picked up some insights which will impact the success or failure in your game too. Of course, perfection for every swing in YOUR game is every golfer’s wish. So that’s why you practice and play this game instead of turning into a couch potato. These tips may hopefully help you turn on a few light bulbs for your future rounds of golf.

PGA Pro Ties for 15th Place (and a big payday)
Michael Block was one of the 20 PGA Golf Course Pros who was selected to play at the PGA Championship. It is rare that these Club Pros every get into the top 20 for this tournament so the network cameras focused a lot of time on Michael Block during his Cinderella success. He had only honed his skills for years by hitting about ONE bucket of balls every week as he demonstrated shots to his trainees on a California golf course.

Why was he so successful? Surprisingly, he used old technology clubs that worked for his game. He has played with the same 7 iron since 2013 and his Odyssey White Hot 2-ball putter for the past 20 years. Luck also came into play when he sank a hole-in-one on the final day. You only need to know the right club and the right swing to hit your target. We should all work on perfecting our swing but you will need some divine guidance or a great caddie to find success.

BTW he was offered $50K for the 7 iron used for his hole-in-one shot. He should have taken the offer as he had the highest scores on his next tournament and he missed the cut.

68% of the LIV Golfers Made the Cut
Brooks Koepka won the tournament at 9 under par. Including Brooks, 5 of the top 20 spots were from the LIV team. [Three LIV players finished in the top six at The Masters.]. It really is critical for PGA and LIV to work together to provide world class golf. It will be a great loss if the golf entertainment world don’t provide a unified solution in the near future.

You will never break 80 if you can’t consistently drive into the fairway and 2 putt most greens.  Even more important is your skill to hit greens in regulation (GIR).  Longer drives or playing from forward tees will shorten your approach shots and improve your chances to hit more GIR’s as well as landing closer to the hole. That’s why it is so important to control your DIRECTION and DISTANCE to hit more GIR’s.

It’s not easy to control golf shots because you are swinging in an arc to impact your ball at different positions in your swing arc and at different speeds with different weights and lengths for each of your clubs.  Yes, this is a crazy game, but you can improve your direction and distance control by paying attention to each of the following tips.

Take a Practice Swing:  After you select your club to reach your target and choose your target line be sure to take a practice swing to learn the feel for the weight and length of the club that you have chosen.  Each club need your personal attention and you want to make sure that the soul of your chosen club is lying flat on the surface of the ground during your setup and practice swing. 

Consistent Swing Speed: Because your knees, your hips and your shoulders all move in a different sequence during our backswing and your downswing, you need to learn the cadence that allows your arms to catch up with your hips during your downswing.  Commit to swinging at 80% of your swing speed for every swing. A faster swing will leave your club face open and an inconsistent slower swing will definitely lose distance and direction control.

Always Take More Club: Know the distance that each of your clubs will reach.  Higher handicap golfers overestimate the distance for each club as they tend to remember the wonderful result for only about 10% of their perfect shots.  If you feel that you can’t reach your target, use a club with less loft, DO NOT JUST SWING FASTER as you will lose control of the direction of your shot. Adjust your distance by gripping down on a higher lofted club to take distance off your hit.

Bubba Watson has had his ups (2 Green Jackets at The Masters) and downs during his pro career but his successes came by learning from his own trial and errors as he practiced his game of golf. He was proud to say that he never took a lesson in golf. He figured it out be using whatever worked for his game using draws and fades. So why can’t you develop your game by experimenting for your success.

Anyone can Learn to Golf
I learned this game the hard way by finding old clubs and some balls in our attic so that I could hit balls around a park with my buddies. In my early years playing golf, I never had the money to pay for a lesson, so I just hacked around the park and short golf courses with friends. In my early working years I decided to put more focus into my game and joined a golf club. I bought a books about the fundamentals by Jack Nicklaus and took a week of group lessons. At least that was my starting point.

Don’t Go it Alone
If you want to get serious about golf read up on the basics and rent some clubs to sort out the shaft stiffness that suits your physical strength. You may even want to buy some used clubs with the correct shaft length and flex that work for your swing. Take some professional lessons and then buy some new clubs that will fit your game.

Read GOLF Tips to Find Your Game
This is a great example: Dustin Johnson & Lee Trevino swing with similar grips and elbows. They roll both of their hands back on their grip to give for a “STRONGER GRIP“. They also keep their trailing elbow bent so that it stays under their leading elbow for more leverage to add power to launch their drives. You may want to try this but my description below may help you achieve this approach.

Creating a stronger grip is easy as you do this during your setup, but managing your elbows during your downswing may cause some confusion. Fortunately I discovered the easy way to make this happen. BOW YOUR LEADING WRIST during your takeaway and add wrist lag as you near your transition at the top. That forces you to shallow your downswing and keep your tailing elbow bent like Dustin and Lee. Trust me. This really works so practice this swing with your driver and start launching amazing straight drives.

I have always wondered why all of my golfing buddies and I rarely hit our drives over 220 yards when I see some recreational golfers and all of the pros hitting over 280 yards. In Jon Rahm’s case its strength and club head speed but I’ve seen scrawny golfers drive 280 yards too. I just watched a 110 pound golfer hitting a 290 yard drive and demonstrating 3 things that he did to gain 50 yards. We can all do this.

In all cases he hit each drive dead center and used a swing monitor to verify a consistent swing speed just over 100 MPH. [Recreational golfers swing at about 85 MPH so that accounts for a gain of 35 yards but it would still be nice to hit 255 yards on every drive.]

POSITIVE ATTACK ANGLE
All 3 of his recommendations were focused on generating more power impacting the ball TEED UP HIGHER to allow an upward attack angle and to reduce ball rotation from 4000 RPMs to 2000 RPMs. Most recreational golfer impact their drive with a downward (negative attack angle) swing. Hitting with a positive attack angle is the best solution.

1/ Shoulder Angle: Setup with your trailing shoulder below your leading shoulder and your shoulder line parallel with your target line.
2/ Head Back at Impact: This is totally different than swinging with an iron where you swing to hit down to impact the ball before you skim the turf. Keep the leading side of your head behind the ball at impact.
3/ Ball Forward: Setup with your ball lined up with the toe of your leading foot (instead of your leading heel). Adjust your stance to make sure that you are still driving the ball up your target line. Moe Norman used a slightly closed stance with his driver starting on the ground about 4 or 5 inches behind the ball to launch it in a positive plane upward.

These are pretty simple adjustments that every golfer should be doing immediately to gain more distance with your driver. Adding head speed (to gain 2.5 yards/ MPH) requires more strength for a more powerful release of lag through your ball. Exercise when you can but practice with GOLFSTR+ to launch your straight arm drives. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

Do you freeze-up over your ball for 5 or 10 seconds before you execute your putt or drive? A recent golf tip said that the best putters keep moving their feet and hands before they putt. Patrick Cantlay is one of those movers and shakers. In the past, golfers all used some sort of waggle before they hit their drives, but we don’t see so much of that typical waggle like Jason Dufner. Mike Weir used a takeaway waggle and now I see that Justin Thomas is using a similar pre-shot motion. Is there a benefit adding motion to your arms and legs before you putt or hit any shot?

I decided to experiment with active hands, feet and legs before putting and hitting my driver. It really makes sense that you should not let your muscles freeze up before your make a controlled swing. Fortunately, I have discovered the reasoning with amazing success without using any of the historic waggles.

Putting Issues
Successful putters need to “feel” the right amount of swing required to pass a hole by up to 2 feet and they also need to choose the right target line to anticipate any break in their putt. Your planning is critical but your swing has to be smooth too. Nervous shaking hands will NOT HELP YOUR PUTTS. That’s why putting needs to be completed by rocking the major muscles in your shoulders and avoiding any small muscle jitters from your wrists or hands.

Putting Solution [Don’t freeze-up over the ball.]
After you line-up your putt and make a practice swing (by rocking your shoulders) with enough force to pass the hole, (1) move up to your ball and lift your putter away from your ball to make one more practice swing (by rocking your shoulders). (2) Look up to your straight-line target point for 2 seconds. (3) Then in 1 continuous motion, visually trace the line directly back to the grass behind your ball as you swing your putter back and up your target line without looking up from your focus point (behind the ball). BINGO, you will sink more putts.

Driver and Iron Solution
A poor first hole drive can destroy the mental outlook for your round. You are nervous so you can’t afford to freeze your body waiting to make your shot. Take your practice swing and then move forward to your ball. DON’T FREEZE-UP OVER YOUR BALL FOR 5 TO 10 SECONDS. Make a slow 2-3 foot backswing (waggle) to activate your spine and hip rotation for the backswing that you plan for your shot and then use the same motion to initiate your drive. BINGO, you will no longer miss your first tee shot (and many other nervous iron shots).

Live, Laugh and Love what you are doing. It just happens that golf is a great game where you can extend your life with exercise in the wonderful outdoors. Enjoy laughter with new friends who have a common bond with the love of golf. Your success depends on your interest in improving your game. But are your EMOTIONS getting in the way?

We all get inspired by the winners and leaders in the major golf tournaments. Jon Rahm may not have been your favorite to win The Masters but you had to be impressed by his ability to keep his emotions under control. The wind, rain and cold weather were all affecting the performance of every player, but Jon survived it all. SO WHY IS IT THAT JON AND MANY OF THE OTHER TOP PERFORMERS WERE CLOSE TO THE CUT LINE IN THE RBC HERITAGE TOURNAMENT at the end of the first day of play?

Controlling EMOTION AND CONFIDENCE ARE THE KEYS FOR SUCCESS
Every professional golfer saw the $20,000,000 prize money at the RBC Heritage, so they all had the motivation to succeed. All pros also have goals to win their first professional golf tournament or to be the top golfer of the year in order to earn major endorsement contracts.

As a recreational golfer without the pressure to win the big bucks, you still want to improve your performance and possibly win a friendly match for a few dollars. The thrill of improving your game and victory are still the driving forces that bring you back to play your next game. So what should you be doing to control your emotions and to build confidence?

1/ Practice: Get professional assistance and practice at the range. Know what your weaknesses are and focus on the best solutions to improve your next round of golf.
2/ First Tee Jitters: Arrive at the course early and spend time hitting balls with different clubs and putting. Get comfortable with your practice shots and sort out the swing that works for you. I find that a 3 foot takeaway waggle gets my body rotating correctly for my actual swing.
3/ Avoid Mishits: You will make better contact with your ball if you take a practice swing at the same speed that you want for your planned shot. Don’t lose the feeling of that practice swing. Just step up and hit your ball at the same speed.
4/ Hitting from the Rough: Use an iron. The deeper the rough the more you need a lofted club to escape. Don’t hit for a long distance escape. Just get your ball back into the fairway.
5/ Missing Short Putts: Pros average sinking only 30% of their putts between 10 and 15 feet. Lag your putts within 4 feet of the hole. Practice MORE short putts to avoid 3 putt greens.
6/ Missing Long Putts: Lag them close and DON’T EXPECT TO SINK THEM. Take iron lessons to get your approach shots and chips closer to the hole.

The Masters is watched by more golf fanatics than any other golf tournament.  For many, it is like the First Rights of Spring to get tuned up for the new season.  The world starts to bloom as the grass turns green in Augusta, GA.  So I thought you might enjoy recalling memorable thoughts of golf to prepare for the your new season.

1/ Short putts never go in.

2/ The most important shot in golf is your next one.

3/ Breezy? Swing easy.

4/ Don’t kill the ball.  Even Scotty Scheffler hooks the ball when he gets excited.

Watching The Masters is a great opportunity to learn from the MASTERS of GOLF. Augusta put the leading golfers from throughout the world to the ultimate test. Unfortunately, the TV coverage is focused mainly on the leaders’ performance on each day of the tournament. On the Sunday coverage we saw Jon Rahm at his best, Brooks Koepka struggling and Phil Mickelson (with very little TV coverage) plodding along to end up tied with Brooks for second place. You can definitely learn from these master golfers.

They all get into the same problems as we do but they often recovered with intelligent shots.

Attitude: Jon Rahm started his final day 4 shots behind Brooks Koepka and finished the day 4 shots ahead. He placed most of his drives in the fairway and kept his cool when he made poor chips or putts. His patience paid off. After making up 2 strokes on the first hole played on Sunday he reminded his caddy that he had a lot of holes ahead of them.

Luck (“Rub of the Green”): Jon was 4 strokes ahead on the final hole when he duck-hooked his tee shot into the trees. The TV camera followed his shot deep into the forest, but his ball landed short and in the middle of the fairway. He parred the hole.

Cool Head: Brooks Koepka lost his lead with a few weak chips and a number of errant tee shots in spite of some miraculous golf shots. On the tee shot to start his 4th round he landed about 75 yards offline in the next fairway but his recovery shot to the green allowed him to make par. On the 10th hole dogleg left, he hit the dreaded straight shot behind a pine tree. He avoided a risky shot under that tree and hit safely to the fairway. That was followed by a perfect shot to the green and a putt for par.

Martin Chuck and Danny Maude recently sent out blogs talking about trying to hit straight drives. You swing a golf club in an arc, so its almost impossible to get both the swing direction and the club face direction in the correct position for a consistent straight drive. Any imperfection will launch your ball in the wrong direction as well as adding a sideways hook or slice rotation. You really should make slight setup changes to ensure that your ball flight will draw or fade back into your target zone: THE FAIRWAY.

Both Martin and Danny have trained thousands of students to overcome their swing issues, so they realize that every golfer has their own unique swing problems. And of course, you do too.

Martin Chuck referred to his Automatic Accuracy System. Basically, his system only works if you are either a CONSISTENT hooker or slicer. Setup by lining up to your target and then compensate for your hook by slightly opening your club face to offset your hook. If you have a consistent slice just close your club face by different amounts to sort out your ideal launch direction .

Danny describes solutions by slightly moving your stance forward or back along your target line to change the point where your swing arc bottoms-out to compensate for a consistent hook or slice. [You want to bottom-out before impact to launch your drives on your up-swing.] Your next adjustment is to setup with a slightly open club face to add fade or slightly closed face to add draw. Your goal is to curve your ball back into the fairway on every drive.

Small changes can solve problems with your swing. Make your adjustments to find the right setup mix and then hone it into your swing for more consistent drives. Write down your ideal adjustments and read them often. [Driving from a flat tee block is the critical starting point to improve your consistency.]

If you could discover the primary flaws in your game, would you be able to attack those flaws and lower your scores?  Of course, you can!  Just recognizing your areas of weakness will give you a renewed purpose to focus on those areas by looking for solutions, taking lessons and applying your findings to overcome your weaknesses.

The game of golf can be broken down into 4 components.  Each one has its own unique requirements and solutions for improvement.  If you look at Performance Stats for any professional golf tournament for the leading golfer as compared to the stats for the worst golfer, you will see glaring differences in the following 4 components of their games. Improve your stats and cut your scores.

1/ Driving Distance (DD): Longer drives will give you shorter approach shots.  

2/ Fairways and par 3 greens Hit in Regulation (FIR): Simplify approach shots and putts.

3/ Greens Hit in Regulation (GIR):  This is the best way to reduce your putts.

GOLFSTR Swing Tip blogs are all based on articles written about solutions recommended by professional golfers and trainers. I present their thoughts in a simplified version because I’m always looking for the magic that will set your game (and my game) on fire. In a recent tip by GOLFPASS I discovered a tip that solved a problem for one of my physical limitations and realized every golfer who can’t swing like a pro may be faced with similar problems.

Whether you know it or not, we all have physical deficits caused by historic injuries or wear and tear on our bodies. Every time you recover from a broken bone or a torn muscle or cartilage, other parts of your body adjust to accommodate repetitive motions. That’s also a reason why you have a difficult time trying to change your posture or your golf swing.

In a GOLFPASS on-line lesson I discovered my upper body limitation and a solution to overcome my rotation limitation to improve my swing power and driving distance. When I asked other aging golfers about this limitation, I found that this may be a common problem for most golfers over 50 years of age.

Adding lag in your backswing is a key component which allows you to add power in every swing. Your arm rotation allows you to add lag. The trainer suggested that we should:
1/ extend your trailing arm (right arm for right handed golfers) horizontally from our side
2/ bend it forward (horizontally) from your elbow
3/ and rotate your bent arm (elbow to your hand) vertically and beyond vertical if you can.

My deficit (like many aging golfers) is that I can only rotate my arm upward about 80 degrees. Scratch golfers can rotation their upper arm about 20% beyond vertical. That’s 30 degrees beyond my ability. So that gives them a 30 degrees advantage to add more lag (and power) in their backswing.

Whether you know it or not, every golfer has his own personal swing problems. You may have been given advise like “Keep your head down or Slow your swing down” but these tips are not helping. You need professional help to sort out the root cause which is preventing you from landing every drive in the fairway.

Your golfing buddies can only advise you on what they see but they most likely can’t give you the proper approach to solve your swing problems.

Key for Golf Success: Longer Drives
Hank Haney recently reminded us in a blog that longer drives are the key to success on every par 4 or par 5 hole. Longer, accurate drives help you shorten every hole. The only way to achieve longer drives is with faster head speeds at the point of impact with your ball. You don’t want to swing harder, but you do want to swing faster by releasing your wrists with whipping action through the ball.

Your success depends on your ability to generate club head speed in the direct line with your target. Swinging with a slicing or hooking action is minimizing your resulting power. They are just as bad as hitting a shot fat or thin. You need a professional PGA trainer using a LAUNCH MONITOR (or golf ball flight analyzer) to measure the rotation of your golf ball and then present the ideal swing changes for your ideal hits.

My personal driver swing defect was identified as a downward slicing swing path. My correction was made by flattening or bowing my leading wrist at the top of my backswing to shallow my swing path as I swing from the inside and up my target line. I’m an aging golfer and I now drive consistently over 200 yards (up to 250). I have virtually eliminated my 100-yard mishits.

I recently read an article that described Tiger Woods’ past problems hitting poor drives on the first tee in many tournaments. I did not realize that it was a problem for Tiger but I certainly know that I, like many others, generate poor drives on the first tee for any round of golf. We all practice for that first tee shot but I did some research to understand first tee jitters and how best to fix them.

Chemical Release That You Need to Overcome
Nervous tension on the first tee automatically triggers the release of dopamine and serotonin as well as the hormones: adrenalin and cortisol. They affect the mental way that you react and the physical way that your body moves. You have no choice but to deal with these mental and physical limitations.

Dopamine speeds up your heart rate and serotonin affects your emotions. They get your excited and may be the reason why you are speeding up your swing on the first tee (or any tee for that matter). Adrenalin gives you an energy boost and Cortisol increases your stress level. They are the reason why you shorten your backswing and hit shots off the toe of your open faced club.

Set a Plan to Overcome your First Tee Emotions
Just knowing that you have to deal with your chemical and hormone release will give you a new advantage over your nervous body and mind.
1/ Calm Down: Take a few deep breaths as you select your club and setup for your shot.

2/ Keep Moving: Take a practice swing by shifting your weight from your leading to your trailing foot as you rotate your hips and generate a FULL backswing with your shoulders and arms.

Every time you setup to hit a ball you need the right plan in your mind.  You are either planning to LAUNCH with your driver by hitting up or you are trying to POWER off the deck with all of your fairway clubs. You can’t afford to mix these up or you will pop-up your drives and top your fairway shots.  Positioning your ball forward for drives and centering your ball for fairway shots is easy to do but your mind also should focus on the right swing ANGLE OF ATTACK.

Too often we generate power off our back foot when we drive and then repeat the same swing and fall back when we are mishitting a fairway shot with a wood or iron.  We have all read articles where you can’t tell if the author is writing about a LAUNCH or a POWER shot (off the deck).  Make sure you tee up and tilt your shoulders 20 degrees to launch your drives.  It’s the best way to shorten the course.

EARLY EXTENSION Will Kill Your Launch AND Power Shots

Completing your swing by SPRINGING up with your knees will kill your driver or fairway shots.  Don’t do it.  I’m only making this statement to ensure that you don’t misunderstand the launch with your driver.  You still need to let your shoulder tilt and let your limited loft driver do the work.  Use the point of impact off the tee to allow your driver’s trajectory angle take care of the distance.

Tiger Woods Described How He Controls Launch Angle with Irons