Perform Better Golf Blog

I’ve been watching the series on the Golf Channel Tee It Up With Tiger. Tiger and Anthony Kim talk about golf swing technique and how they approach the game. It was kind of fun to see Tiger so casual and how Anthony Kim doesn’t put too much thought into his game, but has so much talent.

Tiger was very humble and impressed with Anthony’s golf swing. Hitting all kinds of golf shots “on call” from Tiger was pretty impressive. Here’s a guy who chokes up on every club he swings, and still hits it a TON.

Tiger was mentioning how pure Anthony hits his irons and even driver. When you can make solid contact with the ball into a square clubface, the ball will go a long ways. Goes to show you it’s not always how fast you swing the club, but how solidly you hit the ball.

The game of golf, and the golf swing are evolving. The modern golf swing has become the ideal for most amateur golfers. With tour players like, Adam Scott, Aaron Baddeley, and now the emerging star Anthony Kim, you’ve got a level of golf that is nearly untouchable for 85% of the tour players. Even Tiger Woods has a run for his money.

Can any golfer emulate the modern swing? I’m not sure it’s possible, unless the golfer improves both golf specific flexibility and strength with golf swing exercises that allow them to make full shoulder turns with no tension.

For the senior golfer, the modern golf swing may not be attainable. The key to good golf as you get older is “swinging within yourself”. You’ve got two choices as the years go on. Accept your physical decline and make compensations in your swing, or buck the curve and start fixing the machine and watch your game go to a new level.

Anthony Kim had a phenomenal year in 2008 and I look for him to do even better in ‘09.

Look at Anthony’s impact position! Most amateur golfers could not get their bodies to do that. Have their hips this open at impact. The core strength and flexibility to do this, is way above average, and can ONLY happen with golf-specific training.

Talking about these young golfers does not mean that there is no hope as you get older. It just means you need to adjust your golf improvement approach to enjoy your golf for years to come. The best way is to create a program that slows the aging process, and helps you maintain (or improve) a level of golf specific fitness that enables you to make more of a modern golf swing.

The moment of truth in golf - impact position! It really doesn’t matter what you do unless you get back to impact with a square clubface. I was watching the Natalie Gulbis show on The Golf Channel, and some guy asked her what the most important thing in the golf swing was, and that is exactly what she said. “Square impact!”

If you look at Tiger Woods impact below, you’ll see that his hands are ahead of the clubhead and he is compressing the golf ball. I got this off YouTube so it’s not a really good picture, but you can see what I’m talking about.

Impact position is different with your driver as you need to sweep the club into the ball, not hit down on it with your hands ahead like with this iron shot above. But with most, if not all your irons, and even hybrid clubs, you should have your hands ahead at impact.

Head

Your head should not slide laterally towards the target during the downswing. Tiger’s head actually is further back at impact than when it was at address. This takes a tremendous amount of core strength  and flexibility, and most golfers (especially senior golfers) don’t work on their core, and could not achieve this position with the head.

Shoulders

Here’s a secret golf tip Ernie El’s gives about the shoulders in the golf swing. At the start of your downswing, get the left shoulder moving away from your chin as soon as possible. Look at how far Tigers chin is from his left shoulder at impact. A flaw I currently have is not clearing my hips, and getting “jammed up” at impact, and you’ll see my chin is still quite close to my left shoulder. I am working on getting those shoulders to clear through at impact.

Hips

Your hips are definitely starting to clear at impact. The are aggressively rotating to the left to get out of the way for the club to freely swing at optimum speed through impact and beyone. I have a swing fault where my hips don’t clear as much as they should, and I fight and grind through impact. I am working on golf swing drills as we speak to correct this.

Knees

You can see how Tigers right knee has really “kicked in” towards the golf ball, and his left knee is starting to straighten (but not lock). You know you’ve rotated your hips if that right knee is more kicked in that when it was at address. Your knees will show you a lot if you ever get on video.

Feet

The feet believe-it-or-not play a key role at impact. The weight in the feet has changed from address to impact, and the right foot is really starting to “kick in” resulting in the right knee kicking in as mention above. The downswing should start from the ground up, and the first move is with the right foot pushing off. Now don’t think this is a lateral push, but more of a rotational one. The left foot has more weight on it at impact.

I truly believe impact is EVERYTHING in golf, and if you don’t get it right, you’ll be one heck-of-a frustrated golfer for a long time.

There is one aspect of the swing that if golfers got it right would hit the ball much farther and straighter, and that’s the shoulders in the golf swing. The shoulders are the biggest moving part in the swing and generate a maximum amount of torque and clubhead speed.

Just picture your shoulders at address, then how far they go to get to the top, then again how far they go to not only come back down to impact, but the rotating all the way through to a full finish. I think you’ll agree to me that they move more than any other major body part in the golf swing.

Take a look at Tiger Woods BIG shoulder turn with minimal hip turn. His shoulders rotate more than 110 degrees while his hips don’t even get to 40 degrees. That’s a HUGE amount of core torque and power.

I know we’re all not Tiger woods, and the older we get the harder it is to maintain enough flexibility to make a full shoulder turn let alone minimizing hip turn. But we can do our very best with simple golf swing stretches and training drills to make it better.

In a future article, I’ll talk more about what exactly the shoulders do in the golf swing.

Tiger Woods is at it again. I am not a TV watcher, but boy was I yesterday. Tiger is in an 18 hole playoff today with Rocco Mediate for the 2008 US Open Golf Championship.

Grimacing on almost every tee shot Tiger show the guts of the entire field combined. No one else on tour could match his guts and absolute commitment to winning this tournament.

Having not played in 5 weeks and coming off a knee surgery that was not completely healed, he is doing what no other tour player could dream of doing. He’s put himself in a position to win another Major.

I’ll be watching the TV again, and rooting for Tiger, although Rocco is such a great guy, if he won I wouldn’t be too bothered. If it was Rory Sabbatini it would be a different story though.

My money’s on Tiger!

We’ll know soon enough, but what excitement Tiger Woods has brought to this tour!