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Home | Contents |
| "From
The Ground Up / How To Shoot In The 70's"
Chapter One: The Elements |
| The
Grip
Ok, I lied! But remember the title; From The Ground Up. I am going to start with the grip, but not the one you hold the club with. We're going to start with your grip on the world. (Pretty Heavy huh?) Joking aside, this is the first thing you need to learn about; your feet and what your lower body needs to accomplish. Every, and I mean every player I've seen who can break 80 has this element in their game to some sort of efficient degree. The touring pro has this element down to the degree that he can and does repeat it almost precisely hundreds of times in a row. He has learned this and owns it. To him it's like breathing. He, at times may change his footwork, or stance, but these are just adjustments. High handicappers do not have a stable, repeatable weight shift, or foot and legwork! None. Zip, zilch! Observe this for yourself. This is very important. I know it is true, but you yourself have to observe it, to really know if it is true to you. Watch the pros lower body next time you are watching a tournament on TV, not the club or the ball. This will help with the element you are about to learn, and will give you reality on the matter. So, I will repeat myself. High handicappers don't have repeatable lower body work. Well, many repeat the wrong lower body work. Ah, the classic left leg in the air, half falling over, arm flailing finish. Don't laugh too hard; unless you shoot 70's you have this problem to some degree. Let me repeat this datum to you. Every golfer who shoots under 80 regularly has decent or good foot, leg, hips, lower body action. Every golfer who doesn't have this shoots 85-00. Amazingly enough, this is not very difficult to learn! Check this out yourself after you have learned what and how good lower body work is achieved. Most 12-20 handicaps have learned to do something, which kind of resembles a golf swing, on a regular basis, and can usually get up and down in 3, and can two-putt from 20 feet, and in. Only folks with pathetic short games who have this first element down, shoot 80's and 90's more often than 70's, but they at least can and do shoot 70's once in a while. By the way, we will deal with the short
game simply and effectively later. This part is extremely important
in scoring low, and is really simple to achieve at least a decent efficiency
at. Personally, I love that part of the game. That's where
the real pressure shots and win or lose situations occur. A good
short game can just demoralize your opponents, and make up for a lot of
mistakes on those days when things aren't going particularly well.
More on that later.
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