First what kind of slicer are you. There are generally two types; the pusher and the puller.
You are probably a push slicer if:
You are probably a pull slicer if:
You are probably a pull slicer if:
Why you need to do:
You are probably a push slicer if:
Why you slice:
How to Fix Your Slice:
Place the club more down in the fingers. Most push slicers have the club too much in the left-hand palm.
Your feet, hips, shoulders and eyes should be parallel to the target line. Like pull slicers, most push slicers have an alignment problem of some sort.
Most push slicers play it too far back. Position it in line with your left heel.
Most push slicers swing too hard. Concentrate on maintaining a rhythmic motion, the arms and body turning back and through in sync.
Where is the center of the golf swing? It is somewhere between the bottom of your spine and your navel. It is not your head, although the fallacy about controlling head movement persists. Don’t think about your head. It serves only two purposes during the swing:
a) It holds the brain that sends messages to muscles,
b) It holds the eyes that see the ball.
The swing’s stabilizing force is in the abdomen. This, not your head, is the axis around which to rotate.
Ideal rotation should allow for the back to be facing the target, or thechest facing straight back away from the target. It is not important that the club get to parallel. If the back is facing the target and the hands are still basically in front of the center of the chest, you have more than enough power stored for the downswing.
The Reverse Pivot
Typical Cause: Attempting to maintain your head on the golf ball.
Remedy: Begin your set up with the head behind the ball and start your swing with your left shoulder.
The Sway
Typical Cause: Using the lower body to create weight shift.
Remedy: Turn the hips; don’t slide.
Article Source: http://www.golfarticles.net
Get a FREE online golf lesson with the Golf Swami at: Bobby Lopez, PGA Bobby Lopez and the G-TEAM (757) 382-5500 bobbylopez@bobbylopezgolf.com www.bobbylopezgolf.com golftipsbobbylopez.blogspot.com/ Describe your ball flight and the Swami will tell you what you’re doing wrong with your golf swing.
There are 6 main fitness components for golf to play your best. These are all equally important and should not be ignored in a training program specific to golf.
The golf swing requires, no demands a high level of golf specific strength, flexibility, stability, balance, coordination and muscular endurance. If any of these qualities are lacking, your golf swing will be inefficient and nearly impossible to repeat.
Golfers are always seeking the “magic bullet” for a better game. This is it! Working on the machine, not buying more equipment or trying to make a swing work with an ineffective body.
The golf swings is very athletic. Every major muscle in the body is used in a specific sequence of motion to enable you to hit the ball solidly and with power. The out of shape golfer might hit a solid shot or two during a round of golf, but that is by pure luck and not physical skill.
When a golfer hits that shot, it gives them the false hope that they can do it more frequently if they only go and hit more balls and take more lessons. This is the farthest thing from the truth.
Without the above fitness components, your swing will NEVER be consistent, nor will it ever have power and distance. This is harsh words, but they are also truthful words.
Golf is athletic! Athletes work on their bodies to reach their true potential. Why wouldn’t you? Treat yourself like a golf athlete and start focusing on the physical aspect of the game and not the technical. The technical will fall right into place with your newfound fitness for golf abilities.
Strength
It takes strength to maintain golf posture and to rotate your upper body powerfully into the ball. A lower level of golf specific strength will result in difficulty with posture, and downswing power.
Flexibility
Flexibility is a must to achieve a full backswing with no muscular tension. Lack of flexibility creates tension in your golf swing, robbing you of clubhead speed and distance.
Stability
You need to be stable in your golf swing to perform optimal swing mechanics. Also, your consistency for 18 holes depends on a stable golf swing.
Balance
Have you ever fallen out of balance during a swing? Everyone has…but why then do golfers ignore balance training for a better swing. Improved balance creates a consistent and very powerful swing for 18 holes.
Coordination
The golf swing requires a particular sequence of motion, which is indirectly coordination. If you can’t figure out this sequence and repeat it, forget it. You’ll struggle to improve indefinitely.
Muscular Endurance
Having endurance helps you maintain optimal swing mechanics and power for 5 hours of golf. Endurance also affects your concentration. When you’re tired, it’s easy to lose focus. When you’re fit, you stay focused for 18 holes with ease.
Implementing a fitness for golf program with the above components will get you REAL results…and fast!Article Source: http://www.bettergolfarticles.com
Mike Pedersen is an internationally known golf performance expert. He is Golf Magazines Golf Performance Expert; as well as GolfIllustrated.com’s. His best-selling golf fitness manual is helping golfers all over the world. For more fitness components for golf improvement visit PerformBetterGolf.com today!
On page one of The Rules of Golf the “spirit of the game of golf” is discussed as well as a player’s responsibility to abide by/uphold the spirit of the game. The pertinent passage reads, “All players shall conduct themselves in a disciplined manner, demonstrating courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, irrespective of how competitive they may be. This is the spirit of the game of golf.” Perhaps that was the spirit of the game at some point in time. Certainly in the era when golf was “colf,” a nine was niblick named, and St. Andrews “wrote” the rules. It remained that way when the Jones that mattered was Bobby, when King Arnold reigned and through the golden years of Jack the Bear.
Golf has been touted for centuries as a “gentlemen’s game,” and, I believe, rightly so. Of course, nowadays we would have to modify that to “gentleperson’s game,” given the belated inclusion of women in the sport. In Golf World’s January 2007 issue, Bob Verdi wrote, “Golf is far from perfect, but it is a square peg in the round sewer hole of sports.” I would agree with Bob, because, John Daly notwithstanding, you don’t often read about the legal woes of professional golfers.
Can you imagine Tiger being arrested for smuggling Thai stick into the country on his return from the Asian tour? Or how Luke Donald or Retief Goosen being pulled over for doing 90 in 45 zone, with illegal weapons in their cars? These are scenarios we have seen repeatedly with professional athletes in other sports, but aren’t likely to see with professional golfers. Golf may be the last bastion of civility in modern sports, but the infidels are storming the citadel, and the keepers of the tower may need to erect additional defenses.
As one who cradles the game gently to my breast, it is the odd weekend indeed that passes without my rear end settling into the imprint left there from the previous weekend’s date with the game I love. It may be my imagination, but as I have observed over time, it seems that some of the spirit that once imbued the game has been expunged by modern mores. Cutesy has replaced courtesy. Boo Weekly, he of the squirting tobacco juice all over the venue through which other players must roll their balls, is now a golfing hero. Courtesy indeed! Acts of sportsmanship through which the spirit of the game flowed onto the links is being threatened by displays of gamesmanship.
Tiger Woods is the primary torchbearer for the game today, much like Jones, Palmer, and Nicklaus were the bearers in their time. Throughout the match that Tiger lost to Nick O’Hern at the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play, Woods refused to concede two-foot putts to O’Hern, despite O’Hern’s routine concession of such putts to Tiger. This was in the Bobby Jones bracket of the tournament no less. Is there much question as to what Jones, the ultimate sportsman, would make of Woods’ behavior?
What a contrast to Nicklaus’s display of sportsmanship when he conceded Tony Jacklin’s two-foot putt in the 1969 Ryder Cup allowing the Europeans to tie. According to accounts of the event, Jack said, “I don’t think you would have missed that putt but in these circumstances I would never give you the opportunity.” Jack did this during the Ryder Cup, the most pressure-packed golf venue where the desire to win is perhaps greater than at any other.
In Golf World’s March 2 issue, John Hawkins recounts Tiger’s “slightly muffled obscenities” and other angry displays after his loss to O’Hern. When we combine the above with Tiger’s failure to grant an interview after the loss and blaming a ball mark for his defeat, it appears that the world’s best golfer is complicit in the/guilty of assault on the spirit of the game. Even though Hawkins discussed Woods’s blaming his miss on a ball mark and his churlish behavior after the loss, he did nothing to place such behavior in the context of the spirit of the game. Unfortunately none of the commentators during the broadcast of the match had the chutzpa to call Tiger on his boorish behavior and its contribution to the erosion of the spirit of the game.
I believe Earl Woods raised Tiger to be a sportsman and an ambassador of/for the game, as well as the greatest golfer who ever lived. Generally Tiger has lived up to his dad’s efforts. On the course he has shown the kind of mental toughness that we have seen previously only with Nicklaus in amassing a professional record that is unprecedented even by Jack. He has also conducted himself well in the course and has been gracious in interviews and in his dealing with the public.
However, although TV commentators continue to tout Tiger’s mental toughness, there has been some slippage in the discipline and strength of mind that has made him the best player in the game today and potentially the best ever. In his first six years on tour, Tiger made plenty of errors, but rarely did he make wayward swings and miss makeable putts on holes 16 - 18 when he was in contention. Such swings and putts aren’t so rare these days, and his struggles during his match with O’Hern (the missed putt on the 19th hole and bogey on the 20th) are indications of the chink in Tiger’s armor.
The steely discipline that it takes to conduct oneself with class when things aren’t going well, to be pleasant in the face of disappointing defeat, has also been a Tiger trait. Yet recently, I have seen some very obvious displays of anger on the course, and his behavior during and after the Accenture may be indications that Tiger is straying from the course so carefully carved out by his dad. I suspect that the late Mr. Woods would be more disappointed by Tiger’s failure to conduct himself according to the spirit of the game than by his failure to make the short putt to win the O’Hern match.
Tiger has acknowledged that he is greatly motivated by his desire to surpass Nicklaus’s records and to assume his place in golf history. Does he have the ability to break Jack Nicklaus’s record for major wins or Byron Nelson’s for total wins? I don’t believe anyone who knows the game questions that. Nicklaus himself has noted as much. Does Tiger have the strength of mind and character to do it? I have always believed so, but I am beginning to wonder. If what I have observed recently is a portent of things to come, then it appears that Tiger will have a more difficult time than anticipated equaling Jack’s golfing achievements. Perhaps of greater importance, he will have a much tougher challenge matching Jack’s character whether he aspires to such heights or not.
I doubt that Tiger wants to win any more than Nicklaus and Jones did. However, Jack and Bobby had the presence of mind to understand the magnitude of their role as the greatest golfer the world had seen to date, and the strength/quality of character to conduct themselves accordingly. Golf is as much a display of character as it is a display of skill. All of the great ones understood this and demonstrated that understanding. When Earl Woods was around, it seemed that Tiger understood this as well. Without Earl’s guiding force, it appears that Tiger may be forgetting.
Let us hope that the world’s greatest physical golf talent remembers before too long that the mantle he carries is not to be sullied by boorish behavior fueled by an unbridled desire to win. Tiger is no cub anymore and is about to bring a child into the world. Hopefully the example he wants to set isn’t the one that he offered at the Accenture, but the one that Earl Woods provided for him as a dad and Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones provided as role models on and off the golf course.Article Source: http://www.bettergolfarticles.com