Performance Secret

December 4, 2012

Never underestimate the importance of offseason lessons.
Pat Bernot, GolfTEC Director of Instruction and PGA Member, GolfTEC Easton

As a PGA Professional who teaches golf all year long in Ohio, I often have many people ask what plan gives them the best chance for success.  It seems logical that taking lessons while we are in golf season would be a good path towards improvement.  The offseason, however, is an equally important time to improve your game and make changes.  Here are five reasons why you should take lessons this offseason:

    1. No competition – Many of my students tell me that while they were working on a swing change, once they got to the golf course they “went back to the old way” because they knew that it would work.  Competition takes many forms.  We may compete against our playing partners, the golf course, or ourselves. Offseason lessons allow you to commit to changes without any need to go back to the old way to beat your buddies in your regular Saturday foursome
    2. No rust buildup – Golfers often complain that it takes them a month or more to get back into the swing of things when the weather improves.  The reason for this is simple.  After taking 5-6 months off from playing and practicing regularly, the body needs to re-learn many things that were second nature to them the previous year.  Taking lessons during the offseason does not allow this rust to build up, making early rounds in the golf season more enjoyable.
    3. Some changes are easier to make in the offseason – If you have taken lessons before, you undoubtedly tried to make changes to your swing (or game) with little to no success.  The difficulty may have been accentuated when you were making the changes.  Golfers want to strike the ball solidly during the golf season.  Therefore, making changes that may negatively affect your contact are much tougher when you are concerned about the effect on your next round of golf.  This makes indoor lessons in the fall and winter a great time to make changes when you AREN’T playing regularly.  Your body is more likely to adapt to a new change when interim negative results are not taken to the golf course.  If you spend the winter making these changes, your reward will be a grooved new swing at the start of the season.
    4. Ball flight can be a distraction –Ultimately, improving ball flight is a part of improving one’s games. However, often times golfers are distracted by ball flight when making changes initially.  This disrupts the process and leads both to poor performance and a lack of understanding of what the true problem is.  At GolfTEC, our fact-based diagnosis allows us to know exactly what is causing a player’s frustrations, allowing us to focus on making the necessary changes that will impact the flight of the ball.  Our sequential lessons give us time to work through core or root problems, which ultimately leads to long-term, more significant results when it is time to play.  When we are ready to focus more on how the flight of the ball is changing we can view this either by getting outside (weather permitting) or by using in-bay launch monitor technology. 
    5. The offseason isn’t just for the full swing – Golfers who take lessons at GolfTEC already know that we don’t just work on the full swing.  We want our golfers to improve their entire game all year long.   Therefore, at all times, we work on full swing, pitching, chipping and putting.  We have all the tools and resources necessary to help golfers reach their goals.  Whether you need instruction to stop blading your chips, chunking your pitch shots or 3 putting, we can improve all parts of your game indoors without being outside.  Changing the mechanics of your short game will go a long way in helping you become a wizard around and on the greens by the time that the grass is green again.

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Performance Secret

October 10, 2012

Lasting Swing Improvements Start with Proper Aiming
Craig Hunt, GolfTEC Certified Personal Coach and PGA Member, GolfTEC Cascade Station

Aiming properly parallel to your target is a prerequisite to making any lasting improvements to your swing.

Incorrect Alignment

If you are like most golfers (right-handed), you may be aiming too far to the right on every shot you hit. This will require you to either swing to the left with an outside-to-in path or flip your wrists at impact in an effort to make the ball land on the target. In other words, an incorrect aim will require you to make a compensating swing. In addition, misalignment leads to incorrect information. If you do not know how you are aligned, you will not truly know what your miss pattern is, as it will only be based on perception.
For a normal golf shot or putt, your body should be aligned parallel left of the target (if you are right-handed) so that your body line and the target line are like two railroad tracks. In other words, your body should NOT point at the target; it should point just left of the intended target.1. Take your stance and aim at a very specific target.First, you need to test your aim to see if it is faulty.2. Lay an alignment stick, or club, along your toes and along your target line.3. Check to see if the stick you laid down on your toes is actually pointed parallel left of your target.If the stick is not pointed parallel left of your target, start practicing shots with the following practice station:

1. Lay an alignment stick, or club, on the ground just outside your golf ball pointing directly at the target.

2. Lay another alignment stick, or club, close to your toes and place it parallel to the other stick.

3. Leave both alignment tools on the ground (being careful not to move them), walk back behind the ball 10-15 feet and double-check the relationship of the two lines.

Correct Alignment

The two lines should be EXACTLY parallel (like railroad tracks), with the one on the right pointing at the target and the one on the left pointing left of the target.

Aiming properly parallel may seem a bit tricky at first, but using a practice station with alignment sticks will help ensure proper alignment and remove the need to develop compensations in your swing, thereby enabling you to make lasting improvements with the help of your coach.

For more information and a closer look at proper alignment, check out the video below.

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Match Play Mindset

October 2, 2012

5 tips to win more holes
Patrick Nuber, GolfTEC Manager of Teaching Quality, PGA Certified Professional, 2011 Colorado PGA Teacher of the Year

This is the time of year when match play becomes the focus of the golf world. Many of us tuned in to watch the greatest match play competition, the Ryder Cup. But, for most players, match play isn’t a common format to play. At least, not officially. For those of you who like to spice up each round with a friendly wager, your focus will switch to winning holes rather than an 18-hole score. Even if wagering isn’t part of your game, thinking about your round with a match-play mindset just might be the best way to improve your results.

1. Play to hit the fairway. Hitting the fairway sets you up for success from the start of each hole. You cannot win each hole by playing from the trees, out of fairway bunkers or simply when out of position. This means that you may have to give up yards at times by using a 3-wood or possibly even a hybrid. Be selective on the holes that allow you to do this. In other words, if you can hit a 3-wood 225-230 yards and you are playing a 350-yard par 4, by hitting a 3-wood you would only have 120-125 yards left into the hole, which is a short iron shot. If you hit a hybrid, for example, that went 210-215 yards, you would allow yourself to hit an 8 or 7-iron into the hole, which are still considered middle to short irons. Play smart, hit fairways and put pressure on your competitor.

2. Plan on 75-80%. Golf is a game of misses and it is unrealistic to expect to hit most of your approach shots “perfectly.” I hear too many times during playing lessons that my students tend to select the club that would get them to the yardage they need IF they hit it 95-100% solid. With most amateurs this rarely happens throughout the round. Even the best players in the world only hit a handful of shots throughout the course of a round that came off just as planned. Pick a club that allows you to swing comfortably and carry the distance you need, but also allows for an off-center shot. This will lead to more greens in regulation.

3. Miss appropriately. As explained in the previous tip, golf is a game of misses. Ask one more question to yourself, “Why do you aim for the pin so much?” Most players have a miss tendency where they miss either right or left most of the time. To give yourself the best opportunity to win the hole, you need to take your miss tendency into account when selecting a target. Amateurs get in serious problems and add strokes to their score or lose a hole when they miss on the short side of the pin on an approach shot. Plan your misses to be on the larger or fatter side of the green. This will make up and downs easier to achieve!

Hitting the fairway not only sets you up for success, it also puts added pressure on your competitor

4. Warm up the critical putts. Prior to each round, spend a significant amount of your warm-up time making the critical short putts. Start by building trust in your stroke with some straight putts from 3-6 feet. Once you build confidence in your stroke, start to move around the hole at those same distances making putts that break left, break right, are uphill and downhill. Finish this warm-up by going back to the three-foot long straight putt and try to make 10-15 in a row. By doing so, you will build confidence in your ability to make these critical putts that will surely make a difference in every match!

5. Have a game plan. Too many times golfers hit that first tee shot without a game plan for the day. This game plan could be focused on anything that you feel will help you win each hole, such as having a thought to “swing easy” throughout the day or committing to play your game and not trying to keep up with others. Better players always have a game plan of what they want to accomplish on that particular round. You cannot have too many items in your game plan, as you will tend to forget what they are. Keep them limited to one or two keys. I recommend trying to limit the amount of words it takes you to say it out loud. This ensures that your game plan is simple and concise.

BONUS TIP: Pretend the course is your match play opponent. Consider your handicap or average score and apply it to the course you’re playing. If you are a “bogey golfer”, then pretend that the “Course” has shot a bogey on each hole. Then, when you tee it up, play to beat that score.  Consider this: if you miss a fairway and end up in the trees, you might normally try to still make par by attempting a heroic shot. (Trees are 90% air, right?) But, if a bogey can still salvage the hole, you’ll start making the smarter play back into the fairway.

By approaching every round you play with a match-play mentality, you’ll find that you start improving your overall score as well. You’ll play to your strengths and recover from bad shots more quickly. Try playing your next few rounds with these tips in mind. You just might have to find a bigger wallet!

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GolfTEC Performance Secret

July 6, 2012

Making Solid Contact in the Short Game
Brian Skena, Certified Personal Coach, GolfTEC North Scottsdale

In order to develop touch around the greens you must start with consistent contact. Making solid contact with the ball first and the ground second is the first step in developing short game shots that will fly a reliable distance with a consistent trajectory.

The two most common misses in the short game are hitting fat (ground first) or hitting thin (leading edge of the club making contact high on the ball). These are in fact the same miss! Both fat and thin shots occur because the angle of attack into the ball is too shallow and the swing arc bottoms out before the ball.

If you’re experiencing these misses a good place to start would be checking your ball position. In a basic pitch you’ll want to locate the ball in the center of your stance equidistant between the ankles. In a basic chip the ball position will be just inside your rear ankle.
In a basic pitch image In a basic chipimage

Assuming appropriate ball position, if you’re still experiencing fats and thins you’ll now
need to identify the physical fault that’s causing the club to shallow out before the ball.

Our angle of attack can become shallow through one or more of these three
primary physical faults:

a. weight hanging back on the rear foot b. casting or flipping the club with the wrists
weight hanging back image casting or flipping image
c. a swing path that is too far inside out.
a swing path image

Identifying the physical faults you exhibit will allow you to zero in on the fix.

The Fixes:

  1. Ensure your weight remains on the front side during short game shots, weight only transfers to the rear foot during your power swings and these are finesse swings.
  2. Work with a “Punisher Club” to get the handle leading through impact. You can hold an alignment stick in line with your grip so the stick is positioned to your left side at address. If you flip your hands through impact, the “Punisher” will hit you in your rips reminding you to keep the handle leading through impact.
  3. Lay a club along the target line from a ball. The club should be approx 1-2” from the ball, with the ball centered on the shaft of the club on the group. The grip end should be along your swing path. Practice taking swings without hitting the club on the ground.
club along the target line from a ball image

What about deceleration you ask? Can’t that also be a cause of thins and fats? Deceleration is more likely linked to fear. Fear that you’ll hit your next short game shot fat or thin, fear that you’re going to hit it too far, or fear that you won’t hit it far enough. When you learn to make solid contact and develop your touch, the fear will dissipate, leaving you with nothing but confidence around the greens.

Talk to your GolfTEC Coach about working on these short game fixes in your next lesson.

Brian Skena, PGA
Certified Personal Coach with GolfTEC, N. Scottsdale

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PGA Teaching and Coaching Summit

January 26, 2011

PGA Master Professionals in Instruction Andy Hilts and Steve Atherton joined an elite group of presenters at the PGA Teaching and Coaching Summit in Orlando, FL yesterday. Listed on Golf Digest’s list of the Best Young Teachers in America from 2009-2011, Atherton and Hilts presented a sample of GolfTEC’s ground-breaking swing research and advanced instruction concepts.

Highlights included:

Atherton reported several other Golf Top 100 Teachers asking questions after the presentation or complimenting them on the content of the presentation. As one listener said, “those guys came with something.”

Hilts presented GolfTEC’s philosophy of a long-term, developmental approach to golf lessons and Atheron talked about hip turn speed at impact. Both subjects were well-received. White Papers on GolfTEC’s ground breaking swing research, including information that was included in the presentations, will be coming out in the near future.

Have you connected with GolfTEC on Facebook? LIKE GolfTEC today and connect with other golfers while reading the latest in golf instruction tips and news.

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