Short Game Alignment and Setup

Thanks to Golf Digest and Sean Foley

I keep seeing articles about your setup on short shots and chip shots, but for some reason, no one mentions that alignment and setup for each shot is slightly different.  The length of the shot and how high or low you want the ball to fly is determined by your setup and alignment.

Align the Shoulders

While ball position and lower body alignment may vary, the one constant is shoulder alignment.  Your shoulders should always be roughly parallel to your target line on any shot whether you are hitting a driver or a putter.  NOT pointed at the target, but parallel to it.

The Lower Body

The lower body – meaning the feet, legs, and hips - will be open or pointing left of the target in order to get yourself out of your own way quickly.  The club needs to travel down the target line as long as possible and a square stance makes it much more difficult to accomplish that. 

Do NOT Shift Your Weight

The single most important factor in developing a good short game is that you absolutely must learn to contact the ground in the same spot in your swing every time.  To accomplish this you simply need to stabilize your weight.  The low point in your swing arc is where ever your weight (or center of gravity) is.  If you shift your weight the bottom of your arc moves constantly with your weight.  The odds of winning the lottery are better than the odds of getting your weight in the same spot every time if it is shifting.

One point that needs to be made at this time is watching and reading about how tour players do it is a waste of time unless you are already that good.  Tour players have extraordinary hand-eye coordination, touch, and feel so they can do things in their swing that would be problematic for the average golfer.

It is easier to just place the weight on the left side or left foot and keep it there throughout the swing. 

 Keep the Club Head Low

Keep the club low to the ground as long as possible on the back swing and the follow through.  Never make any attempt to lift the club or cock the wrists unless hitting out of deep grass.  Keep the hands quiet.  Over active hands will result in fat and thin or skulled shots.

Another very important factor is to be able to have your hands in the same position at impact that you did at address.  The club head must never pass the hands until well after impact.  The chipping or pitching swing is made primarily with the arms and shoulders – not the hands.

How long the shot is determines how wide or narrow the stance and how open your body is.  For a chip shot your right foot is very close to your left foot and your lower body is very open.

For a pitch shot it is less pronounced.  The hands will generally be more forward on a chip, but the height of the ball flight will be determined by the loft of the club and the forward lean of the shaft.

Grip Down On The Club

One final point that needs to be addressed is gripping down or “choking up” on the club.  The shorter the shot the more you choke up.  It is perfectly fine to grip all the way down to the bottom of the grip.  This enable you to be firmer and more aggressive because the shorter you make the club the shorter distance you will hit the ball.

I played a lot of golf with Hubert Green who had 19 PGA Tour wins including 2 majors and he used to choke the sand wedge all the way down onto the steel and open the face so he could be firm and aggressive. 

Never let the golf club slow down prior to impact.  Taking it back too far and slowing down prior to impact will cause the club head to pass the hands with the absolute certainty of a bad shot.

Practice with slightly different alignments until you find what is most comfortable for you.  I suggest practicing extensively with a sand wedge which is about 56 degrees.  By adjusting the shaft lean forward and backward and opening and closing the face you can learn to hit a variety of shots.  I am not a fan of using the lob wedge to chip or pitch with.  I agree with Barney Adams, the founder of Adams Golf, when his club designer told him they were going to design a 60 degree lob wedge he told them to stamp a skull and cross bone on it. 

As you go from a full swing to a less than full swing to a chip the right foot gets closer and closer to the left and the hips open more and more.  Shoulders stay parallel to the line.

Once you have learned to develop a solid short game simply start taking a bigger and faster swing and gradually square your body alignment and you will have an excellent full swing as demonstrated by the video below.

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Learn To Hit The Golf Ball Straight

Learning to hit the golf ball relatively straight is not as difficult as most people believe if you simply understand what is required.  Most normal people have the hand-eye coordination necessary to accomplish it.

 Only two things control the direction of the golf ball -  the direction the club is facing and the direction the club is traveling.  If the club is traveling towards the target and the club is facing towards the target the ball will fly toward the target.

Most people have the ability to swing their arms toward the intended target so the trick is to get the club to face in the same direction.  A simple homemade training aid will help you do this.

Take one of your golf clubs and tape a ping pong paddle to the shaft of the club so that the paddle and the club face are pointed in the same direction. Now swing the club toward the target while watching the face of the paddle.  Normal coordination will allow you to control where the paddle faces.  If you have the ability to use a screwdriver you can do it.

If you want to draw the ball or hook it simply  rotate the face of the paddle so that it points left of the target while still swinging toward the target. If you want to fade or slice the ball, have the paddle point to the right of the target while you continue to swing your arms and the club toward the target.

Practice doing this without a golf ball until you learn how to do it and get comfortable with it. As you get used to how it feels you are learning to do it without thinking about it.  The more you practice it the faster it will become automatic.

A final note about slicing.  A slice is caused when the face it pointing right of the directions your arms are swing.  Nothing else.  When you get the face (or the paddle) to face in the direction of the swing the ball will go straight in that direction.  Since most slicers swing from out to in this means you will pull the ball straight left until you fix the direction of your arms.

If you don’t have a ping pong paddle the next best thing is a tennis racket.  Grip it with both hands and swing it like a golf club.

Fixing Over-the-Top Golf Swing Video.

This video is one of the best I have seen at fixing one of the most common problems in golf.  The over-the-top move or also known as outside-to inside swing.

The video comes from Craig Jones who is part of my network of some of the best and brightest in the golf instruction/coaching business.  Craig was with GolfTEC for over 11 years and decided there was a better way for the average golfer to get help.  He specializes in golfers with a 12 handicap and up.  This is one of the things that he and I share plus very similar teaching philosophies.

He also has an excellent Facebook page called Face First Nation Elite which is a closed group, but he would be happy to have you.  It's so he can just deal with the golfers that fit his demographics and also to keep other so-called golf instructors from confusing things.  

Here is what he has to say about the video:

 "When we talk about conquering your over the top downswing path, we’re really talking about how you want to deliver the club head to the golf ball. Since swinging over the top is swinging left of target, a great visual for swinging more from the inside on the downswing is to picture how to hit the inside of the ball. I recommend practicing it with a 6 or 7 iron and the ball on a tee because you want to make is as easy as possible when first learning it. Practicing into a net is ideal because there is not really any benefit to seeing ball flight in the early stages of learning downswing path."

Bobby Jones Was Ahead of His Time.

Either Bobby Jones was ahead of his time or this philosophy got lost as the years went by.

I read a lot of the writings and thoughts of the greats of the past because I believe their message is still effective today and that the future of golf instruction is in learning to teach better.  Not in learning more "what to teach."  It appears that Bobby Jones knew over 70 years ago something that is now being learned, or relearned about how people of all ages learn to swing the golf club.  The science behind human learning is slowly seeping into golf instruction.

They learn primarily with their eyes and not their ears! 

There are sub-groups under that -  visual, auditory, read-write, and kinesthetic, but we primarily learn with our eyes.

Without getting too deep into the rabbit hole of neuroscience, the Holonomic brain theory supports that people learn motor skills not by linking a progression of positions together like line-by-line computer code, but instead by storing the entire movement as a neural 3-D hologram.  In other words they learn from watching.  

It appears that Stewart Maiden and Bobby Jones understood this.

Bobby wasn't a big proponent of teaching the golf swing.  Bobby learned the game by playing and observing the pro at his club, Stewart Maiden.  Maiden did not spend time on the practice tee giving Bobby swing instruction.  In fact, Bobby claimed that, to the best of his knowledge, Maiden never allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion about the golf swing.  To Stewart Maiden, golf was all about striking the wee ball.  Bobby might have been convinced to write about the swing, but I suspect he did so with mixed emotions.  He was not a man who believed in playing the game in a mechanical way.  He was not a fan of what he called, "rigid adherence to prescribed routine," in the teaching and learning of the golf swing. 

Bobby wrote: "Even if a person may not have begun to play golf at an early age, I believe that he may gain much by emphasizing naturalness in his learning processes. I think he has the right to convince himself that an effective golf swing can be made without rigid adherence to a prescribed routine and that there is room for differences in physical structure and capabilities. No matter how nearly equal in performance the top-rank players may be, yet they are as recognizable by their swings as by their faces.

"What the average golfer needs more than fine spun theories," Bobby wrote, "is something that will give him a clearer conception of what he should try to do with the clubhead... When we speak of sound method or good form, we mean nothing more than that the possessor of either has simplified his swing to the point where errors are less likely to creep in and he is able consistently to bring his club against the ball in the correct hitting position."

A Simple Way To Check Your Alignment.

A Simple Way To Check Your Alignment.

I just ran across this and had one of those moments where you slap your forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that."

I have noticed over the years that many of my students struggle with getting the club face square at address.  Most have it slightly open and then wonder why they slice.

Well, here is a simple and inexpensive way to help you check your club face alignment.  Simply buy some small magnets and glue long tees (the longer, the better) to the magnets.

It will help you train yourself to what proper club face alignment actually looks like.

Golf Instruction From 1953 With Hogan, Snead, and Others.

In 1953 the PGA released an instructional movie along with Life Magazine called "Keep Em On the Fairway".

The intro is by Bobby Jones and the explanation of the golf swing is as true today as it was then.  I love the way it uses what was then state of the art technology to inhance the instructional portion.

The film features a nice mix of footage where the pros are seen both attending to the common faults of some everyday golfers and demonstrating their techniques on the course. Included in the film are the giants of the game at the time: Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Lloyd Mangrum, Jerry Barber, Cary Middlecoff, Walter Burkemo, Ed Oliver, Jimmy Demaret, Lawson Little, Byron Nelson, Lew Worsham, Pat Abbott, Miss Louise Suggs, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Golf Instruction Used To Be Simple!

Golf Instruction Used To Be Simple

In the battle of simplicity vs. complexity, simplicity wins, every time. We gravitate toward products and services that eliminate complexity from our lives, and we rail against the things that complicate matters and make us feel stupid.

Back in the days of the three-martini lunch, golf instruction was simple and appealing. As a country club member you had a pro at your disposal. He’d work with you on the driving range, play with you, coach you to get better, and monitor your progress.

It was a personalized, one-on-one experience.

No two lessons were the same. He worked with the swing you had, and helped you build the skills you needed to score well on the golf course.

Accountability was built in… You’d practice because you knew the pro was keeping an eye on your progress.

But those days are gone.

Sam Adams Golf Instruction Used to Be Simple

Today, less than 5% of all golfers have a relationship with a golf professional. According to the NGF, less than half of all golfers have ever taken a lesson, and when they do they are often disappointed. There are 27 million golfers, but less than 4 million lessons in any given year. Maybe we should think about why that is…

I believe that most lessons are totally intimidating, especially for women. Because most instructors make them way too complex! Most of all, because they frequently don’t work.

It is a rare instructor who sends the student off with fewer than five or six “things to work on.”  According to Phil Mickelson, even the tour gurus are often guilty of over-instruction. “Can’t you just give me one thing to work on?”

Often it’s a checklist of a dozen mechanical issues that the average person can’t possibly grasp, much less incorporate into his or her game. The more technical the lesson is, the worse it gets.

Group lessons and most golf schools are especially ineffective. Common complaints include: “I came back worse than when I started.” “It was just way too technical.” “He didn’t give me anything positive, it was all about what I was doing wrong.”

Video analysis only helps the most analytical, visual learners; Maybe one half of one percent of the golfing population. And yet, instructors routinely use stop motion video to analyze every position and point out every flaw.  

I call that the “Let Me Show You How Bad You Suck” school of golf instruction.

More often than not, it’s just confusing and demoralizing for the student.

In an issue of Golf Digest, Jim Flick, one of the top five teachers of all time, wrote an article that sums up the problem with modern golf instruction:

“A lot of today’s teachers are enamored with what works for the tour pros, and they give the same information to their higher-handicap students… In general, trying to swing like most of today’s tour pros will make the average golfer – say a 5 handicap or higher, – only worse.”

Rather than working with the student’s natural swing, today’s teachers tell everyone to emulate Tiger or some other tour player.

They bottom line is that if the golf industry is going to turn things around, the methods of instruction HAVE to change.  We’ve got to make it simple, enjoyable and fun.

How Swing Speed Impacts Distance.

Swing Speed vs Distance

I’m going to give you a way to drop your score without changing your swing.  This is something that all really low handicappers know that higher handicappers have trouble with.  When I was at the peak of my playing career I had the lofts on my irons set so I had exactly 10 yard increments between clubs.

One of the fastest ways to improve your score and your enjoyment is to learn how far you actually hit your irons consistently so you can make the right club selection.

In my previous articles I stated that you should swing at about 75 to 80 percent of your max to hit the ball better.  Hold on to that truth because it is essential that you have some control over where the ball is going to land.  As effort and tension increase, accuracy drops dramatically.

With this in mind, go to the range with what you consider your 150 yard club and hit about 30 balls with it.  Eliminate the shortest 5 and the longest 5 and then measure how far it is to the middle of the rest of them.  That is how far you hit that club.  If the average is short of the 150 then park your ego and use one more club.  It is all about score.  There are no extra points for how far you hit it off the tee or what club you hit on your approach.

I have put together a little chart that may help you using swing speed and distance.  Club selections are based on what club to use to hit the ball 150 yards.  These are general numbers that don’t take in to consideration varying lofts and lengths of different models.  If you are hitting it farther than these swing speeds indicate, then you are playing with very strong lofts.

Swing Speed                                                      150 Club

60 mph                                                                 Driver

70 mph                                                                 3 Wood

80 mph                                                                 3 or 4 hybrid

90 mph                                                                 6 or 7 iron

100 mph                                                               8 or 9 iron

The next thing you need to do is figure out the distance gap between your clubs.  At 100+ mph swing speed that gap should be about 10 yards.  As swing speed slows down that gap narrows.  When you get into the slower speeds there is no need for a full set of clubs.  If the difference between your 6 and 7 is only 5 yards you can eliminate one of them.

Now you are in a situation where you can figure your distance from the 150 and add or subtract.  If you are at 175 and the gap between clubs is 8 yards then you need you are going to need two or three more clubs.  When in doubt take the longer club and choke down on it.  Making it shorter will take some distance off of it.

One other thing to factor in is how are you hitting the ball today?  How solid you are hitting the ball today and weather conditions can change club selection by as much as three clubs not counting wind. 

I hope this will help you to score better and I want to thank those that took me up on my offer analyze their swings.  Keep me posted and leave comments about any questions you have.