Branson Golf Guide

With the week of weather we have just experienced, I thought a good topic for this week’s column might be waterproofing your golf bag or possibly an introduction to duck hunting…

Then it hit me! How many times have you been playing golf either after a heavy rain or after a week of weather like this? The ground seems so wet you think you may loose your shoes walking into the fairway to hit your next shot.

Wet turf grass presents many problems to the golfer ranging in no roll to heavy rough to even how the wet ground affects how solidly you can make contact with the golf ball. I am sure you have seen it, or possibly even done it, but you manage to hit your tee shot into the fairway on a soggy morning, get out to your second shot, take your stance, make a swing and then… a spray of mud takes off behind a golf ball that flies half the distance your were trying to get.

If this sounds familiar, then I have a couple of suggestions for you that will help eliminate those shots that ruin your score, not to mention your shirt after you spray mud all over yourself from a “fat” shot.

As we have discussed in almost every tip, our fundamentals are the key to the golf swing and a well executed golf shot. We can overcome any hazard to our conditions through minor adjustments in our fundamentals.

To play a shot from a very wet lie we first want to widen our stance a bit. This will make our golf swing a little flatter and thus produce a shallower angle of attack into the golf ball which will reduce the chances of hitting the shot fat.

I also recommend choking down on the club about a half of inch and moving the ball slightly forward of center. This combination will also allow you to hit the ball on your upswing, rather than the downswing and give you cleaner contact.

These simple adjustments will help you to eliminate the tendency to hit down too steeply on the ball and hit a shot that comes up well short of your target.

You will need to make a few additional corrections to your shot selections when playing from this type of lie. First, by choking down on the club you will hit the ball slightly thin and not produce as much backspin, so you will need to alter your intended landing target on the green. Second by moving the ball forward in your stance the shot will have a slightly lower trajectory than normal, so keep this in mind should you be planning on trying to carry a hazard or clear a tree.

Good luck with the new shot, until the weather improves!

While running from one spot to the other, dodging construction crews and listening to the incessant ringing of my cell phone the week prior to opening the golf course, it dawned on me the hectic pace of everything around me and it only made perfect tense to revisit a subject we briefly discussed in a previous article… Tempo.

Regardless of how mechanically and fundamentally sound a golf swing is it will not generate positive results if the overall tempo is too fast. Although there is no definite amount of time it should take to swing a golf club, there is a proper rhythm of how it should take place.

Everyone in today’s society seems to be living in the “fast lane.” From the way we drive, order food, text message etc… Remember golf is supposed to be a relaxing game built to take in the beauty of nature and your surroundings, while playing a game where strong, weak, short and tall can equally compete against the golf course.

Determining that your tempo is off on the golf course is a pretty easy flaw to diagnose. If you are playing alone and seem to be hitting a lot of shots thin, and not getting the proper ball flight then the first cause I would look at is your tempo and try to slow down. Should you be playing in your usual group, don’t be afraid to listen to your golfing buddies. Although none of them may be tour pros, they do see your swing more often than anyone else and can pretty easily see if you are swinging faster than usual.

However, I always believe it best to avoid a problem rather than try to correct one. The tempo of your golf swing is no more than an extension of your overall mood and actions. If you are rushing to get to the golf course or hurrying to finish a round to get home for dinner it will be exposed in your golf swing.

Some exercises for you to work on to improve your golf swing tempo can be as simple as making you leave in enough time to get to the golf course before your tee time to leisurely prepare for your round, rather than tying your shoes on the way to the first tee like a couple of the guys I play golf with. Another would be if you play golf with someone who has a particularly fast swing, just don’t watch them swing or it will influence your tempo. Conversely if there is someone in your group that has a very nice fluid swing don’t be afraid to closely watch their actions leading up to hitting a shot and try to emulate some of their tendencies while preparing for your next shot.

Tempo is the piece of the puzzle that ties it all together in making a solid mechanically correct golf swing. Try to spend some time slowing down both your golf swing and your life in general. We only come this way one time, enjoy it!

I am headed back to the “rat race” of opening a new facility, but I believe I will take my own advice and slowly walk back into the maelstrom.

Fairways and Greens.

September already… it seems like it was only a couple of weeks ago when we first started discussing spring and getting ready for a new golf season.

Now the air is finally cooling off and the kids are back in school and the “sand between your toes” from summer vacation has been replaced by that nasty “fried egg” lie in the greenside bunker on number 11 that you have to get up and down to tie the skins game.

We have in the past covered how to play a bunker shot, but we assumed that we would be given the simplest of lies, lying in the flat part of the bunker with no limitations placed on our results by the condition of the lie.

Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Bunkers have edges and lips, and sometimes very soft sand. This is the most difficult type of bunker to hit out of. When a golf ball lands in the bunker with a very steep trajectory, as is the case when we are hitting short irons into the green, they have a much greater chance of plugging in the sand creating a much more difficult recovery from the sand.

When faced with a plugged lie in the bunker, many of the fundamentals of a bunker shot must change to produce a shot that will allow you to get the ball onto the green.

The first of these is the way we address the ball. Earlier we opened the clubface slightly to allow the club to slide under the ball and “pop” out of the sand allowing it to land softly and roll a very short distance. With a plugged lie we cannot take the same approach. If you opened the clubface you would be exposing more of the flange of the club to the sand and it would skip off the sand producing a shot that would be bladed and not escape the bunker.

To make sure we can “dig” down in the sand and get the ball out we have to close the clubface which will remove the bounce from the club and allow it to descend deeper into the sand and force the ball out of the sand.

This type of address will make the ball come out lower than other shots and also to the left of your target line. To adjust for these effects, we must first align our body to the right of where your intended target, you will essentially pull the ball back on line.

More importantly, you must allow for the additional roll the ball will have since you will not be able to put any spin on the shot. With the ball sitting deeply in the sand your swing will produce a shot that moves more sand than others and keep you from making clean contact with the ball and thus eliminating spin.

There are many bunker shots that are considered not very difficult and an “up and down” is a simple task, there are others that you may even think you can hole out.

This one becomes a sort of survival test. You can save par from one of these lies, but it will take patience and probably a ten foot putt to do so.

There are times on the golf course when we just have to take what was given to us and do the best we can. A plugged lie in the bunker is just that. Practice the technique we discussed and try to save your pars, but be sure you at least get the ball out of the bunker. The only thing worse than a plugged lie in the bunker is having two of them.

Fairways and Greens!

This being my first year in the Ozarks, and the recent weather patterns has caused me to now twice acknowledge the coming of spring and with it Golf Season. I cannot say I am certain, but I hope this beautiful weather in finally here to stay.

Spring is the best time to be around a golf course, with the trees blooming and the grass taking its first deep shades of green for the year. It is easy to forget the climate it has just been through for the past several months, and the care it must be treated.

This year has been particularly bad with the warm temperatures early and then the recent dip back into freezing weather; our golf courses suffer tremendous stress, not to mention our superintendents. Whether maintaining a golf course like my new friend Travis or growing one in like my superintendent Toby, they need our patience and respect.

Think for a moment the work that you put into your own yard. We mow, edge, weed flower beds, water, fertilize and the list goes on and on. It can seem like our weekends are not long enough too accomplish everything. Now imagine that your yard is 200 times the size it is now? That is what it is like to be a Golf Course Superintendent.

I challenge each of you, who play what I consider to be the greatest game ever invented, to take a little more action in bettering your own golf course. Think about your last Nassau game where you hit that “perfect tee shot” only to have it come to rest in a divot? Or how many ball marks do you have to fix on Wednesday afternoon in order to try and make that fifteen foot birdie putt to tie up a pocketful of skins? Try a little harder while you are out there, just because a ball mark is not in your line, does not mean that you can not fix it while you wait your turn to putt.

Even in this modern era of golf course technology, remember a superintendent is only just one man. There a whole lot more of us out there tearing up the golf course everyday than there are of them to fix it. Let’s help out.

As a member of the PGA, I may have given this topic too much press. I am looking so forward to spending the coming months with you giving you tips to help you with your golf game and answering any queries you send me, I just do not want to spend all season explaining the best way to hit a three iron out of a divot.

This week join me in thanking your local superintendent, and trying to help him out. Next week it will be all golf!

Fairways and Greens!

The short game, as we discussed last week, is not only the most important part of a good scoring round it is also the most complex. From any spot around the green there may be a multitude of different shots you could choose to hit. All of which have different degrees of difficulty and potential outcomes.

The natural transition for most golfers, from full swing to short game, is into the “pitch” shot. This is because the “pitch” shot is essentially a shortened version of the full swing. It is similar in technique and address. I believe that these shots will begin for most golfers in the 50 to 75 yard range.

The length of the backswing and the tempo of the entire swing are reduced from that of a full shot to produce shots of various distances. Unfortunately, it is impossible to teach anyone how to coordinate a visual sense of distance with the length and tempo of swing that will get the ball close to the pin. Each golfer must learn this from experience.

The “pitch” shot is played with the ball inside the left heel, with the hands lined up evenly at the ball. The club should be started back low and straight, using only the hands, arms and shoulders moving as one unit. The length of the backswing, the turn of the hips and shoulders will all be less than that of a full shot, but should be proportional to the length of shot you are trying to hit.

The ultimate success of most pitch shots is measured by how quickly the ball stops after landing. The pitch shot from 40 to 75 yards is the shot where you have the best chance to get the ball to spin backwards after landing on the green. It takes the proper conditions to get good backspin even from the optimum distance. Deep rough, a lush fairway, wet grass of any length, or to a hard surfaced green are all factors that will inhibit putting backspin on the ball.

To get such backspin, the ball must be sitting upon close cropped grass with a firm base, and hit to a green that is relatively soft of at the very least has some cushion to it. It also helps to be hitting into a green that tilts towards you and if there is a slight headwind. To take advantage of the ideal conditions, two elements in the basic swing are critical. First, your takeaway must be low and second, your right knee must “kick” to the left.

The right knee “kick” is vital to ensure both the correct release of the hands and square contact with the ball. If you hold the right knee back, the right hand is forced to roll over the left at impact, closing the blade and imparting a hooking, running spin to the ball.

Good luck with you “pitch” shots. If properly executed you will be able to save many pars around the greens and see your scores drop dramatically.

Fairways and Greens!

What is the basis of a good grip?  I subscribe to the time honored rule of having the “V’s” formed when you close the thumb and forefinger of each hand point toward the right shoulder.  Accomplishing this configuration provides the right amount of flexibility in the hands, plus the necessary control over clubface alignment at impact.

To create this union of hands and club, you should hold the club with the fingers of the left hand.  Specifically the club runs from the juncture of the palm and the last two fingers, across the lowest section of the middle finger and the middle section of the index finger.  The left thumb should ride just to the right of the center of the grip.  The ideal position of the right hand has the palm facing the target.  This will have the club lie in the fingers for the right hand.  The right thumb will lie diagonally across the grip with only the inside in contact with the club.

To make our hands work in unison they must be joined together.  This is where we get the interlocking grip or the overlapping grip.  You connect your hands with the little finger of the right hand and the crevice formed by the index and middle finger of the left hand.  There is no “right or wrong” choice between the two, a players hand size and strength will factor into the best for each individual.

Although currently pouring rain outside, I beleive golf season has arrived to the Ozarks.  I would like to ask all of you to pay special attention to this short comment.  It will make your pro, superintendant, and everyone who plays your course very happy… In spring a golf course can be a fragile as our “rusty” swings.  Wet conditions and new grass growth require us to pay special attention to our divots and ballmarks.  These practices are important all year, but a lack of care (or respect) at this time of the year can leave your golf course scarred for months to come despite the efforts of all who work there to make it better.  Work on this and you will feel better about yourself as a “golfer” while we work on yourself as a “player”.

Thank you so much from all of us who try to give you a golf course you can be proud of!