Your golf grip and your technique

The most intriguing grips in pro golf

 

A substantial subsection of the golf canon is devoted to romanticizing Ben Hogan and his technique. And that includes his grip, which is shown in the photograph shown above for Life Magazine in 1947—before he weakened it to stop hooking and went on to dominate golf through the mid-1950s.

Even with all of the changes in equipment, clothing, agronomy and, most of all, the ball, how the best players hold the club has stayed mostly within a familiar set of parameters. “There has always been debate about grips—should you be weak, strong or in the middle,” says top Arizona teacher Terry Rowles, who coaches Aaron Baddeley and Martin Trainer on the PGA Tour.
“But the span of grips has always been the same. Henry Cotton looks like Tiger Woods. The action item is how players match their grip with the way they release the club.”
A stroll back through history reveals Arnold Palmer (“The Grip,” Rowles calls him) with his weak right hand turned toward from the target, Johnny Miller with both of his hands set weak and Lee Trevino and David Duval (below), who both believed you couldn’t grip it strong enough, or turned away from the target.
READ FULL ARTICLE
/by

A wedge to solve all your problems!

Cutter CTR-1 wedge takes a different approach to solve the same old problems with our short games

Frustration has been the inspiration for golf inventions for all the centuries the game has been played, from the rut iron of the 1830s to Gene Sarazaen’s extended flange that created the sand wedge in the 1930s to Karsten Solheim’s more forgiving putters of half a century ago to the oversized drivers still being perfected today. Whether the distinctive Cutter CTR-1 wedge will be that historically significant in golf’s cavalcade of inventions remains to be seen. Its inspiration, though, is right in line with the history of golf innovation.
But the frustration that was the inspiration for inventor Dickie Walsh’s CTR-1 started with others. “I could see people getting to the point where they were throwing their wedges into a pond,” Walsh said. “I was seeing what people do and it’s so fundamentally wrong. So part of what I wanted to do with this wedge was to almost help counteract some of that fundamentally bad technique.”
Walsh, who is a business executive and neither teaches golf nor had he designed a golf club before, refashioned the shape of the traditional wedge with a dramatically curved sole design. The idea hit him as he was watching Tom Watson backhand wedge while stymied against a tree. “I wondered how he did that, and I saw how that almost v-shape of the toe of the wedge cut through the grass. I started messing around with some clay in my daughter’s room one night and that’s where the ‘aha’ moment hit me.”
According to Walsh, the CTR-1’s extreme heel and toe relief on the sole is designed to release the wedge’s leading edge by about two-thirds. Also, unlike most wedge and iron designs, the face is nearly symmetrical
Walsh worked with veteran independent club designer Jeff Sheets on his design, which also includes parallel bars on the back of the wedge framing the heel and toe in an almost horseshoe shape. Those bars are designed to stabilize the head for less twisting both on an off-center hit and to make it more resistant to the player twisting the club open during the stroke.
“Regardless of grip pressure, when the clubface opens and twists, that’s a very bad thing for a lot of high-handicap players,” Walsh said, who said he still wanted his design to not be limited as a wedge of last resort. “The goal is to have this help the players with poor technique, but doesn’t inhibit the players with good technique. I really wanted to design a confidence builder.”
The Cutter CTR-1 is available in 52-, 56- and 58-degree lofts ($130).

SOURCE: golfdigest.com

/by

Poor mental decisions could ruin your golf game

5 MENTAL MISTAKES YOU SHOULD NEVER MAKE ON THE GOLF COURSE

Most golfers lose way too many shots to poor mental decisions and not knowing how to systematically approach each shot and control their emotions to maintain confidence. This article will show you the 5 most common mental game mistakes that most golfers make and how to eliminate them.

1) Don’t analyze your swing, or think about it while swinging

2) Don’t think about your score (unless you really have to)

3) Don’t beat yourself up, be your own caddy and remember it’s just a game

4) Don’t just aim at the fairway or green – have a very precise target in mind

5) Don’t forget about your routine

READ FULL ARTICLE

 

This is a guest post by David MacKenzie from Golf State of Mind

SOURCE: practical_golf.com

/by

What’s the secret to golf?

Hall of Fame instructor Butch Harmon says this is the secret to golf

Butch Harmon is one of the most revered golf coaches on the planet — ever, really. The World Golf Teacher’s Hall of Fame member is an inspiration for golf instructors everywhere, and has helped thousands of golfers over the course of his storied career. When he talks, we listen.

This week, the legendary golf coach appeared on GOLF contributor Mark Immelman’s podcast, and dropped a series of fascinating, hilarious and utterly brilliant pearls of wisdom he’s learned through the years. There’s so many of them, and the only way to do it justice is to listen to the podcast in its entirety. Trust us, it’s well worth you time:

My favorite pearl came when Butch, in passing, revealed what he says is the “secret to golf.” He literally used those words, so, naturally, my ears perked up.

What’s the secret, according to Butch Harmon? It’s “repetition”:

“Anybody who loves golf should go to St. Augustine to the World Golf Hall of Fame, because there’s hundreds of strange-looking swings in there, and they all work. Because the secret to golf is repetition.

He continued by pointing to Jim Furyk as an example; someone whose swing isn’t something you’d teach to anybody, but it’s one that he has the ability to repeat on command:

“Look at Jim Furyk, he’s just about to turn 50, he still competes on the PGA Tour with a swing that … if his father had changed that swing to make it look perfect, we’d have never heard of Jim Furyk. [The legends of golf] had a lot of strange characteristics in their swing. The common thread was getting the club square at impact and being able to repeat it time and time again.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That “repeatability” isn’t much of a secret, because people want to know how to be repeatable. That’s the tricky part, but Butch goes on to say that your best chance is not to try and imitate another golfer’s swing, but to perfect the tools at your disposal. Work with a good coach who keeps things simple, and remember that the common thread is getting the clubface back to square at impact.

“I don’t care how you do it,” Butch says, “just do it.”

SOURCE:  golf.com

/by