March 2011: The Instruction Blog: Golf Digest

Sandra Gal: How to stiff an 80-yard pitch

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Sandra Gal fired a 67 Thursday to tie for the lead at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. Last weekend, she finished off her 16-under-par performance with an 80-yard pitch shot that spun back to within two feet on the final hole. She beat Jiyai Shin by a single stroke to capture the Kia Classic for her first win on the LPGA Tour. For many of you, this less-than-full pitch is one of the hardest shots in golf. Because you're not making a full swing, solid contact and predictable distance is seemingly impossible. More often than not, you hit the ball fat or thin.

Back in the late '80s, I was struggling with the short wedge shot that Sandra performs so well. But I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with the great teacher Davis Love Jr., just a few days before he was lost in the tragic small-plane crash flying from Sea Island to Jacksonville. He had given me a tip for the part-wedge shots (from 80 yards and closer) that I still use today. Davis showed me how to make a
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Saturday Morning Tip: Breaking 100-90-80

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Today just might be your day to meet your goal of breaking your target score. For the next few weekends, the Saturday Morning Tips will be devoted to the theme of Breaking 100, or 90, or 80, depending on your current scoring level. I will give you one tip from Golf Digest's unprecedented lineup of teachers and players to help you meet your scoring goals. This weekend we start with advice from Golf Digest Teaching Professional Randy Smith, coach of Justin Leonard and Gary Woodland, who won the Transitions Championship last week. Here are Randy's thoughts on driving the ball better.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Smith pictured in an instruction article from the November 2009 issue.

Breaking 100
Cast your leg
in place at the top
One simple way to get more control over your swing path is to keep your back knee in place during your backswing. Your knees should be bent in an athletic position at address. At the
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Fitness Friday: Train your hips for a better swing

Friday, March 25, 2011

Editor's note: Every week my colleague Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest Fitness Editor, presents Fitness Friday on the Instruction Blog. He gives you a great health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he discusses your hip flexors and why you need to strengthen them to play your best golf. And remember to follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Two large and important muscles necessary for a good golf swing are the hip flexors (the psoas major and iliacus). They are attached to the femur, the pelvis and the spine, so you can imagine the important role they play. Not only do they stabilize the lower back and allow for the proper biomechanics of the lumbar spine, but they also help a golfer relay energy generated from hip/trunk rotation into the arms and club. In short, they protect the lower back and help provide power in the swing.

"Tight and/or weak hip flexors can be a real problem," says Golf Digest fitness expert Ralph Simpson, a certified manual therapist who worked for several years in the PGA Tour's fitness trailer. Read more

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Gary Woodland: How to make everything

Monday, March 21, 2011

The most amazing statistic from yesterday's PGA Tour event, the Transitions Championship on Innisbrook's demanding Copperhead Course, was that Gary Woodland holed 17 out of 17 putts from 20 feet or less in the final round. Did we hear that correctly? Nobody makes 17 of 17 from that length. But Woodland did, including a 16-footer on 17 for birdie and an 11-footer on 18 for the par that clenched his first tour win when Webb Simpson made bogey a few minutes later.

A discussion today with Woodland's coach, Golf Digest Teaching Professional Randy Smith (see their driving article) revealed that the secret to his greatly improved putting was not really a change in Gary's technique. Rather, it was a change in his approach, brought on by the influence of Brad Faxon, who long has been regarded as one of the tour's premier putters.

Says Smith: "About nine or 10 months ago, Gary played a practice round with Brad. He couldn't believe how many putts Brad made. So I encouraged Gary to go talk to him about putting. I told him not to be shy, to get in there and pick his brain."

Faxon told Woodland that his mechanics were solid. The only thing he
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Saturday Morning Tip: It's all about feel

Saturday, March 19, 2011

OK, I'll admit it. One of the worst things about reading a tip about technique just before you go out to play is it might get you thinking too much about your mechanics. And any good amateur or tour player will tell you that once you stick that tee in the ground, mechanics is the last thing you should be thinking about. So here's your tip for today: DON'T THINK!

Seriously, it's fine to have one swing key, but don't overdo it, And try to use non-mechanical thoughts on the course. Things like slow tempo, or smooth transition, or accelerate through. Not things like cock your wrists, or plant your left heel, or keep your elbow in. I remember watching the great Bert Yancey (pictured here at the 1967 U.S. Open) give a clinic in my hometown of Tallahassee, Fla., when I was a kid. He said he always thought of two things when he swung. Watching the ball and one other swing key. Never more than that. Bert was ahead of his time when it came to sport psychology. He knew that the brain can't think of too many things and also allow the body to make a naturally good swing.

About 10 years ago, I helped the noted teacher from Birmingham, Ala., Hank Johnson, write a

Fitness Friday: Dustin Johnson's pre-round stretches with Randy Myers

Friday, March 18, 2011

Editor's note: Every week my colleague Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest Fitness Editor, presents Fitness Friday on the Instruction Blog. He gives you a great health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he does the latter, with help from a couple of friends. And remember to follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Golf Digest fitness expert Randy Myers works with some of the top golfers in the world, including uber-athlete Dustin Johnson. How athletic is Dustin? He can do a single-leg squat all the way to the ground (so his butt is nearly touching) and then stand up again. He can also stand on a physio ball and swing a golf club. Stand, I said. No joke. You might not be in the same class of athlete as Dustin, but one Read more

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Does Foley teach Stack & Tilt?

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Sean Foley has been coming under tremendous scrutiny recently, as Tiger Woods' progress with his new swing seems to be a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward process. But it's not just the barrage of tweets from Tiger's former teacher, Hank Haney, that is getting a lot of attention. It's also an all-out frontal attack from the anti-Stack & Tilt forces out there among a number of golf instructors. Foley says his skin is thicker than an alligator's, but calling him Stack & Quack would be hard for anyone to take.

Sean Foley, shown here with star pupil Tiger Woods, has been forced to defend criticism that he has stolen concepts from Stack & Tilt. Photo by Getty Images

There are some common threads between Stack & Tilt and Foley's swing philosophy, and Tiger is definitely more centered throughout his swing under Foley's tutelage. But to say that Foley teaches the method as advocated by Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer is not accurate.

Learn from two winners: Nick and Nick

Monday, March 14, 2011

Yesterday's winners of the PGA Tour event and the Champions Tour event not only can play superb golf at the highest level, but they also can produce great articles for Golf Digest. Nick Watney, with his teacher Butch Harmon, showed us three keys for power (February 2010), and Nick Price, a Golf Digest Playing Editor since 1993, gave us 10 Rules for Being a Great Driver (February 2009).

Let's first look at the article that featured Watney, who won the Cadillac Championship on the famed Doral Blue Monster by two strokes, after crushing a tee shot on the intimidating final hole, which set up an 8-iron approach and a 12-foot birdie putt, which he drained. In the Golf Digest article, Nick's teacher, Butch Harmon, isolated three keys to bomb it off the tee: (1) Create more width, (2) Shift your weight on the backswing and (3) Get to your left side on the through swing. To do this, Butch recommends three drills:

(1) Swing outside the stakes. Put two stakes in the ground on either side of your address position, just inside the target line, on the angle of your clubshaft at address, and then make swings where the club stays in front of the shafts.

(2) Keep your knee flexed. Keeping the right knee flexed on the backswing puts you in a
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Playin' in the rain

Saturday, March 12, 2011

It's raining throughout much of the country right now, especially in the Northeast, and flood conditions are predicted for the next couple of days. Let's hope your home or apartment is OK. If you are able to actually get out and play some golf, undoubtedly you'll be playing in some very wet conditions.

I found some terrific tips, from a known "mudder," Tom Watson, for playing when it's difficult to keep your hands and equipment dry. Watson won five British Open (and almost a sixth two years ago), so he knows something about playing in adverse conditions. And even if it clears up, you'll need to understand how to hit shots off of soggy turf. Here's Tom's advice, from the pages of Golf Digest:

-- In the rain, wrap a handkerchief around the grip. If your grips are wet and slick, you might as well walk in, no matter how good a player you are. You have to maintain a firm grip
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Fitness Friday: Pick up 20 yards without swinging a club

Friday, March 11, 2011

Editor's note: Every week my colleague Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest Fitness Editor, presents Fitness Friday on the Instruction Blog. He gives you a great health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he focuses on three golf-specific excercises to help you hit the ball longer. And remember to follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

If you studied the swings of the longest hitters in professional golf, you'd see all sorts of different characteristics--short backswings, long backswings, violent downswings, smooth downswings. But one common element all the biggest hitters have is the ability to wind up and then let the body rotate toward the target quickly and powerfully.

A key ingredient to hitting it farther is increasing your swing speed, and a key ingredient to increasing your swing speed is being able to make a powerful, yet controlled rotation of your body. It's not a perfect science, but you can pick up 2.5 yards of distance for every mile per hour you increase your clubhead speed. "You want fast hips and a powerful turn," says Golf Digest fitness advisor Ralph Simpson. "Just watch the big hitters wind up and then let it go, Read more