September 2011: The Instruction Blog: Golf Digest

Fitness Friday: Tom Watson's secrets to ageless golf

Friday, September 30, 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 health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he discusses keeping your body strong and flexible with Tom Watson. Look for Saturday Morning Tip tomorrow, and remember to follow me on Twitter: @RogerSchiffman

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Here's Ron: Tom Watson turned 62 earlier this month. His golf swing turned 35. Despite having hip surgery a few years ago and despite playing more than 800 professional tournaments during his career, there seems to be only slight differences between the swing Watson used to win eight major championships from 1975 to 1983 and the one he used to nearly win another at the age of 60 at the 2009 British Open (see how he still makes a full turn in the recent photo here).

I met with Watson at his home course outside of Kansas City (Wolf Creek Golf Club) earlier this week. After watching him hit shot after shot with a golf swing that just about anyone would love, I asked him about his commitment to fitness.

Decline in physical fitness is inevitable for all of us as we age. But to make the decline as gradual as possible, particularly as it relates to the golf swing, Watson said a daily exercise regimen is vital.

Mid-week Lesson: Beyond the splash, part 2

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

By Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest
Twitter @RogerSchiffman

Contrary to popular belief, Bill Haas did not invent the splash shot from a water hazard. As we documented on Monday, Seve Ballesteros demonstrated how he used to do it, and now we'll show you how Jerry Pate wrote about it for Golf Digest back in 1982! Pate put on an exhibition in his backyard practice area right on a Gulf of Mexico bayou in Pensacola, Fla., for then Associate Editor Jerry Tarde (now Chairman and Editorial Director) and Staff Photographer Stephen Szurlej. Here's hoping you can benefit from Pate's advice, in case you find yourself in such a do-or-die predicament.

Here's what Jerry Pate said: I used to think I could play a shot out of water only if the ball were partially submerged or just below the surface, but after practicing this shot, I know I can play it successfully from as much as six inches under water. I figure it could mean the difference between winning and losing a tournament sometime. Unless I'm in a critical situation, I won't play this shot if the ball is more than two ball-widths submerged. I don't

recommend that you take off your shoes, but in this case I did because I could see the water's
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Monday Swing Analysis: Beyond the splash

Monday, September 26, 2011

Editor's note: Every Monday, PGA professional Kevin Hinton examines the game of a recent tour winner and tells you what you can learn. A Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, Kevin is the Director of Instruction at Piping Rock Golf Club, Locust Valley, N.Y., and is a Lead Master Instructor for the Jim McLean Golf School at Doral Resort & Spa. He also teaches at Drive 495 in New York. He has seen thousands of swings and has helped golfers of all abilities, from rank beginners to tour players. This week, Kevin examines the miraculous "water-explosion" shot Bill Haas pulled off in the playoff to win the Tour Championship as well as the Fed-Ex Cup worth $10 million, and he shows you how to apply the same principles to some other tricky on-course situations.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest Twitter
@RogerSchiffman

Kevin Hinton: Much has already been written about Bill Haas' incredible splash shot from the water on the second playoff hole Sunday to stay alive against Hunter Mahan, and how he went on to win the Tour Championship.

It may not seem like a shot you would need, but there are other shots you will encounter (from land) to which you can apply the principles of Haas' water explosion shot. Haas essentially played it like a bunker shot, combined with a lot more guesswork and some good fortune. He pulled it off beautifully. Here are three greenside situations where I'd recommend taking a similar approach.

1. Pine Straw
You've hit an errant approach and your ball comes to rest on pine straw. To make matters worse, you need to hit a lofted shot because of the large bunker between you and the green. Definitely not a good situation. Low is not an option, just like it wasn't for Haas. If it were, I'd recommend you play it as a bump-and-run of sorts and take your medicine. The ball likely won't end up on the green, but the mistake will be far less penalizing. However, here you need loft. Try to do just as Haas did and play it like a long explosion shot from a bunker. You're going to get some pine straw between the ball and the clubface, so be certain to make a committed swing with some speed. Your mistake needs to be hitting down too much and coming up short. Be sure that you don't miss the pine straw and make ball-first contact. Home-runs are only good in baseball!

2. Deep Rough
A similar situation--you've missed the green and are in another unfortunate lie (think U.S Open). It's not that the shot needs to be hit with a lot of loft, but the chances of making ball-first contact are slim at best. No chance of taking a standard chipping approach. The club will get Read more

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Saturday Morning Tip: A crafty pro from Scotland on playing in the rain

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Last week I was lucky to play some great courses in Scotland, from Dornoch and Brora in the north, to Gullane outside Edinburgh. I was a bit unlucky to encounter some horrendous weather--the tail end of Hurricane Katia dumping lots of rain on the courses, then its aftermath with 40 m.p.h. winds.

But at one of the courses, Craigewan Links at Peterhead Golf Club, an unheralded beauty just north of Cruden Bay and Royal Aberdeen, its club professional for 30 years, Harry Dougal, was nice enough to caddie for me. And along the way, he gave me a lot of excellent advice for playing in bad weather. He had me hitting shots I would never have thought of, and with pretty good success. Over the next few weeks, I will return to Harry's sage lessons, and pass them on to you.

Here are some of Harry's tips you can put into play this weekend, especially if you're in the northeastern U.S., where we're getting hit with a lot of rain:

1. Pack at least two dry towels and put one in the bottom of your bag so your grips stay dry.

2. If you wear a glove, carry two or three spares, preferably in a zip-lock bag.

3. Make sure any waterproof clothing you buy is generous in fitting and does not restrict your movements in any way.

4. Thin to win. Try to pick the ball cleanly from wet turf. Even a slightly fat shot can be
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Fitness Friday: Recover from soreness with self-massage

Friday, September 23, 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 health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he shows you how to recover faster from pain and soreness by administering self-massage. Sounds good to me. Look for Saturday Morning Tip tomorrow, and remember to follow me on Twitter: @RogerSchiffman

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Here's Ron: I recently visited with PGA Tour strength trainer Ben Shear at his terrific gym in Scotch Plains, N.J. Shear trains, among others, world No. 1 Luke Donald and Jason Day. The topic of massage came up, and I asked him how often he recommends average golfers get one. "As much as possible," he says. "Even if you're not sore. When you're not flexing, a muscle should be soft to the touch. But most people I see are so knotted up, their muscles feel like they are flexing even when they aren't."

Muscles go into spasm from overuse, adds top fitness trainer Mark Verstegen. "They've been worked too hard. Especially when you consider golf consists of dynamic, ballistic movements performed over a five-hour period. That results in tiny tears and spasms in the muscle. They're like putting knots in a rubber band. Your goal is to get rid of those knots."

The reality is that few people can afford to see a physical therapist or masseuse multiple times each week, but you can do it yourself. Manual tissue therapy, also known as "self-massage," "muscle regeneration" or "foam-rolling," is a huge factor in speeding up the recovery process from soreness and spasms and making your muscles more pliable.

Verstegen suggests getting a foam roller ($15-$20) to perform the most basic techniques.

"Compression by moving back and forth on a foam roller over-stimulates the nerves, signaling the muscle spasm to shut off," he says. "This allows the muscle to relax and gets the blood and lymphatic system flowing and helps restore healthy muscle tissue."

Consider doing self-massage at least a few times a week, either as part of your workout, or when you're at home relaxing, watching TV, etc. For demonstrations on self-massage techniques that appear in Golf Digest's October issue, click the link here.

Ron Kaspriske
Fitness Editor
Golf Digest

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Monday Swing Analysis: Hole chips like Justin Rose

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Editor's note: Every Monday, PGA professional Kevin Hinton examines the game of a recent tour winner and tells you what you can learn. A Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, Kevin is the Director of Instruction at Piping Rock Golf Club, Locust Valley, N.Y., and is a Lead Master Instructor for the Jim McLean Golf School at Doral Resort & Spa. He also teaches at Drive 495 in New York. He has seen thousands of swings and has helped golfers of all abilities, from rank beginners to tour players. This week, Kevin takes a look at the chipping style of Justin Rose, who won the BMW Championship this past weekend.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest Twitter
@RogerSchiffman

Kevin Hinton: Justin Rose secured his win at the BMW Championship with a clutch chip-in on the 17th hole in Sunday's final round. In the video below, Justin talks about imagining how tossing a ball can lead to visualizing the proper trajectory and landing spot. I will take you through some other keys to quality chipping.

To be a proficient chipper, you must be able to do three things: (1) Produce consistently solid contact, (2) hit the ball the proper distance, and (3) control the direction. Those are the same keys required to be a good pitcher or wedge player. Because in chipping we are looking to produce a shot that spends less time in the air and more time on the ground (the opposite of pitching), we set up differently and vary our club selection. But many of the basic fundamentals are the same.

CONTACT
The first key to producing solid contact is setting up properly. Here are the basics of the address position:
--Grip down.
--Stand closer and taller.
--Position the ball in the back half of your stance.
--Lean your weight and the shaft toward the target (for better players, this can be easily overdone...your clue is if the ball flies too low and the club often digs into the turf).

In the swing, your body and the club play important roles. The job of your body is to stay passive in the backswing, then pivot in the downswing. Allowing your hips and chest to open is essential to creating good contact. Doing nothing with your body in the downswing will likely
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Saturday Morning Tip: Underreach, part 2

Friday, September 16, 2011

I'm checking in this morning from Aberdeen, Scotland, where I've been playing some golf this past week. A few days ago, I learned about a great technique from a caddie at Gleneagles Resort, and it reminded me of the tip I wrote about last Saturday: Paul Runyan's brilliant technique of not quite grounding the club on pitch shots. This allowed him to make perfect contact at impact.

Well, the caddie, Bob Kaney, told my wife to do the same thing on fairway wood shots from the rough (believe me, we get a lot of these on the courses over here). And to make matters worse, the conditions have been very wet--Scotland received the tail end of Hurricane Katia, and Gleneagles was saturated.

With the ball sitting up or down in the higher grass, most of us tend to ground the club, so the center of the clubface is actually lower than the center of the ball. And sure enough, the club tends to go under the ball at impact, causing weak pop-ups, especially when using a fairway wood.

By underreaching the club at address--especially on wood shots in the rough--the club returns to the ball for perfect contact at impact. Give it a try. I think you'll find you can hit more-solid shots, especially from thick lies.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest
Twitter @RogerSchiffman

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Fitness Friday: It's time to hit below the belt

Friday, September 16, 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 health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he explains why you need flexible hips and strong gluteal muscles in order to swing the correctly. Look for Saturday Morning Tip tomorrow, and remember to follow me on Twitter: @RogerSchiffman

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Here's Ron: Without strong glutes and good internal and external mobility in the hips, it's nearly impossible to make a good golf swing and hit the ball solidly. And, if by some miracle, you can hit good shots, sooner or later you're going to end up with lower-back pain as a result of your lumbar spine twisting past it's natural allowances.

Think of the glutes (the maximus, medius and minimus) as a car's engine and the hips as its axle and wheels The glutes propel the car, while the hips steer it. turns. A crude analogy, perhaps, but the point is each one needs the other to move your body around. In the golf swing, strong glutes and good range of mobility in the hips enable you to not only maintain your posture (no more fat or thin shots) but also rotate your body (no more lunging in front of the ball and slicing it).

Saturday Morning Tip: Underreach your pitches

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The other day I played a public course on Cape Cod, the Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds in Barnstable, Mass. This course is a lot of fun, but I kept getting some tough lies to pitch from around the greens. A few of the lies were tight, some were fluffy. Some of the grass was damp and thick; some was sparse and dry. Making solid contact on those partial pitches was a challenge. Then I remembered a lesson I got years ago from the late and great Paul Runyan, who won two PGA Championships.

Underreach the clubhead at address. That is what Paul advocated on pitch shots.

In other words, don't ground the club; let it rest lightly on top of the grass behind the ball. Then, with a relaxed grip pressure and tension-free arms, swing the club up to the top, and then let it fall of its own weight back into the ball. As long as you maintain the posture you started with at address, you will make solid contact every time. If you don't interfere with the natural swinging of the club, gravity will allow it to slide just under the ball. You'll be amazed how easy it is to make solid contact, even when the lie is less than perfect. Consider it the genius of Paul Runyan. You can also experiment with different ball positions, depending on the trajectory you want to achieve--farther forward for higher shots; farther back for lower ones.

Good luck with your game this weekend and remember to follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

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Fitness Friday: Save those chicken wings for tailgating

Friday, September 9, 2011

Editor's note: Every week my colleague Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest Fitness Editor, presents Fitness Friday on the Instruction Blog. He gives you an unbeatable health and fitness tip or an exercise or stretch to get your body warmed up for the weekend. This week he shows you how to eliminate the ill-fitted chicken wing. Remember to follow me on Twitter @RogerSchiffman.

Roger Schiffman
Managing Editor
Golf Digest

Here's Ron: Shoulder mobility plays a huge role in swinging a golf club correctly. Without flexibility in this region--which is essentially a ball-and-socket joint--you're going to struggle to maintain the width of your swing. Your arms will collapse during the backswing and will fold again as you swing through the ball.

This jutted-elbow follow-through is known in golf as a "chicken wing" and will contribute to a loss of power as well as inconsistent contact. To make matters worse, the less flexible your shoulder joints are, the more likely you are to develop tendinitis around the elbows. If your shoulder can't move the way it's designed, your elbow has to help pick up the slack and the elbow joint isn't designed for any extraneous movement. If this happens often, especially if you're swinging a club 100 to 150 times a round (including practice swings), you've got a recipe for tendon inflammation.

There are several things you can do to help increase the mobility of your shoulder joint. I spoke with several PGA Tour trainers, including Sean Cochran, Greg Rose and Randy Myers, and two exercises in particular were mentioned often. Click on the video below to see me demonstrate them and show you a pre-round stretch that will help warm up your shoulders before you play.

Ron Kaspriske
Fitness Editor
Golf Digest

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