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How To Break 80 Newsletter

September 19, 2007

“The Web’s Most Popular Golf Improvement Newsletter”
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In this issue we’ll discuss…

1) Taming Fast Greens
2) How $0.25 Can Sink More Putts
3) Question of the Week - Eliminating Pop-Ups Off the Tee
4) Article - Three Stroke-Saving Putting Drills
5) Article - The Science of Squaring the Clubface

Jack’s Note: A big congratulations goes out to Tiger for winning the first ever FedEx cup. It was a dominant victory for him and pretty much locked up his votes for Player of the Year. Do you guys like fast greens? Well, I do and in today’s tip we’ll discuss just how you need to play them differently than slow greens. Enjoy!

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1) Taming Fast Greens
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With September come fast greens. Lower humidity, cooler temperatures, closer mowing, and less watering turn what were once ordinary greens into super fast speed traps. While some players like fast greens, they can be treacherous. They multiply errors in judgment of speed and break, adding unnecessary strokes to scores and ballooning golf handicaps.

Here are five keys to negotiating fast greens:

1. Check the greens out
2. Choke down on your club
3. Lighten your grip
4. Eliminate wrist action
5. Take the club back a shorter distance

First, try to get a feel for speed beforehand by using the practice green. Hit several long putts to see how fast and how far they travel. Then compare those to what usually happens. While every green’s unique, putting on the practice green offers a good idea of the green’s speed that day. Make determining the speed of the greens before each round a priority every time you play.

If the greens are super fast, choke down on the club. How much depends on how fast the green. Choking down reduces the energy transferred directly to the ball. Choking down beats hitting the ball off the putter’s toe because it keeps the ball on line when it’s hit. Using the toe is an alternate way of putting on fast greens, but it can twist the club in your hand, skewing your line.

In addition, lighten your grip, which helps control pace - a critical element in sinking a putt—and take the club back a shorter distance, which also imparts less energy to the ball. Instead, make a longer follow-through, which promotes acceleration through the putt and keeps the putter on line.

Finally, eliminate wrist action. Swinging from the shoulders in one piece allows you to execute shorter, more delicate strokes with precision. And don’t be afraid to take advantage of technology. Soft cover balls and soft epoxied inserts for the putter’s face lets you take a slightly harder stroke that yields less distance.

Becoming a good putter takes practice. World class golfers practicing making putts at three speeds putt: 1) most break, where the ball is hit the slowest and dies in the hole; 2) least break, where the ball is hit the hardest but still drops in; and 3) median break, where there’s a safe break and speed to sink the putt. Practicing the same way hones your putting skills.

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2) How $0.25 Can Sink More Putts
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To sink a putt, you must do four things correctly: (1) read the line of the putt, (2) align the putter to the hole, (3) execute the moment of impact factors, and (4) produce the right speed. Mess up any one of these things and you’ll probably miss the putt.

Of the four, speed is perhaps the most critical. Putt a ball with the wrong speed and it ends up short, long, or never breaks. Speed is especially critical on big breaking and downhill putts. If the putt breaks big and the putt’s too fast, it goes right through the break. If the putt goes downhill and the putt’s too fast, it goes sailing past the hole and ends up who knows were.

Ideally, you want to hit the ball hard enough to travel 18 inches past the hole, assuming you’ve covered it. The problem is that when you’re practicing, you don’t cover the hole. You leave it uncovered so the ball drops in. This approach creates a tendency to hit putts so they just drop in. As a result, you leave putts short. Here’s a drill that eliminates that tendency.

Drop A Dime Drill
This drill teaches you accuracy and speed, so when you want to hit the ball 18 inches past the hole you can do it. Drop a quarter on the green and step back several feet, depending on how long a putt you’re practicing. Place 10 balls on the green and try to hit each so that it touches the quarter when the ball stops. When you’ve mastered that, replace the quarter with a dime. Then, replace the dime with a tee. An added benefit to this drill is that when you’re though, the hole looks 10 times bigger than usual.

The putter is one of golf’s best scoring clubs. It saves strokes and reduces golf handicaps. Practice your putting until you’ve mastered speed. Then when you putt the ball during a round, you’ll know exactly how hard to hit it so it goes 18 inches past the hole.

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3) Question of the Week - Eliminating Pop-Ups Off the Tee
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Q. Hi, Jack, I played in the Irish Open Senior on Monday and drove the ball really well. Next qualifying day, Tuesday, everything was going well until I started driving the ball high off the tee. I got away with it on the 9th and 10th hole. I lost some distance, but it was still down the middle. However, from then on my drives started to go higher and higher. I failed to qualify by just a couple of shots, and I’m trying to figure out just what went wrong.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in anticipation.

Regards,
Julie Barkman
A. Thanks for the question, Julie. Too bad about the Open. Hitting a pop-up is embarrassing. It’s also costly. You lose distance on your drives and add strokes to our scores. Players who pop-up shift their weight forward too much and approach the ball at too steep an angle on the downswing. The combination de-lofts the clubface, causing the club’s top line to become its leading edge. Hence, the pop-up

Here are 5 tips on eliminating pop-ups:

* Take a slightly wider stance
* Maintain a higher position at the top
* Maintain a lower position at the finish
* Take a full shoulder turn
* Shift weight to your back foot

Simple changes in your set-up help eliminate pop-ups. The key is encouraging a higher and longer backswing arc. This in turn shallows out your swing plane and reduces the steepness of your downswing. Here’s how:

First, widen your stance slightly, creating room for a bigger backswing arc. If you’re not comfortable using a slightly wider stance, hit practice balls until you are. It won’t take long.

Second, concentrate on maintaining a higher position at the top of your backswing and a lower one at the finish, widening your swing arc.

Third, focus on shifting your weight to your back foot on your backswing and your forward foot on your downswing, which solves the weight shift problem. Together, these changes will eliminate your tendency to pop-up.

If you’ve got a golf question you’d like answered, send an email to us at questions@howtobreak80.com and we’ll review it. I can’t guarantee that we’ll use it but if we do, we’ll make sure to include your name and where you’re from.

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If you want to truly discover the secrets of shooting like the Pros and creating a more reliable and consistent swing, check out: http://www.HowToBreak80.com

Also, for past issues of this newsletter and some of my most recent articles, visit our blog at www.HowToBreak80.com/blog

To view this newsletter online, please visit:
http://www.howtobreak80.com/newsletter09192007.html

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article - Three Stroke-Saving Putting Drills
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/pdrills.html

5) Article - The Science of Squaring the Clubface
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/squareface.html

Until next time,

Go Low!

Jack

P.S. Feel free to share this newsletter with family and friends. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter, send a blank email to break80ezine@aweber.com

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About the Author
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Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 and Shoot Like the Pros!”. He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicaps quickly. His free weekly newsletter goes out to thousands of golfers worldwide and provides the latest golf tips, strategies, techniques and instruction on how to improve your golf game.

Design advances in woods have everybody talking. From larger clubheads to the use of exotic materials, today’s woods are not only designed better, they’re also manufactured better. Add to these changes the advances made in shaft technology, and you have well-crafted metal woods engineered specifically to help you chop strokes off your golf handicap.

But advances in iron design are helping players as well. Golfers don’t talk as much about these advances as they do about those in woods, but they’re just as significant for improving your game. Iron advances, like those made in woods, help you hit the ball longer and straighter, and shave strokes from your golf handicap. Let’s take a closer look as some of these design advances.

Perimeter Weighting and Investment Casting
The revolution began forty years ago when Karsten Solheim turned traditional iron design on its head by introducing the concepts of perimeter weighting and investment cast manufacturing. Since then the advances have continued apace.

Perimeter weighting (PW) creates a large sweet spot on the club. PW repositions the weight of the clubhead around the perimeter of the clubface instead of at its center. If a player always hit the ball dead center, he or she would want a small sweet spot and no perimeter weighting. That way the club would have as much physical mass directly behind the impact point as possible. However, if the player is off even a millimeter, his or her shot goes astray. By perimeter weighting golf clubs, manufacturers’ create maximum forgiveness in the club.

Investment casting is another key advancement in iron production. Many manufacturers produce irons by pouring molten metal in a pre-shaped cast. Cast irons provide the user with less feel, but are less difficult to hit consistently, and are therefore better suite for players with high golf handicaps. Forged irons have a softer feel and are less forgiving to a user, but they cause the ball to turn more off line when mis-hit.

Thinner Designs
Solheim’s advances were followed by the introduction of new materials, like scandium alloys, and of improved manufacturing techniques, like computer-milled faces, in iron design. These advances also took iron design and construction in new directions.

Club engineers were gaining a better understanding of how each characteristic of a clubhead, like moment of inertia (MOI) and center of gravity), impacts club performance, and were beginning to take advantage of this knowledge. Today’s clubfaces, for example, are thinner than their predecessors. Thin design frees up more mass that designers can redistribute to lower the center of gravity (COG) or improve moment of inertia (MOI).

Re-positioning the COG, as I’ve explained in my golf tips, creates a more forgiving iron, with a larger sweet spot along the blade. Thus, a mis-hit with an iron whose COG has been re-distributed is more likely to stay on target than a similar shot with an iron whose COG has not been redistributed. Why? Because a redistributed iron twists less in a player’s hand when the ball is mis-hit. The ball is also likely to travel farther on a mis-hit as well.

MOI is a property of physics that indicates the relative difference in how easy or difficult it will be to set any object in motion about a defined axis of rotation. The higher the MOI of an object, the more force will have to be applied to set that object in a rotational motion. Conversely, the lower the MOI, the less force needed to make the object rotate about an axis.

Shaft Lean and Swingweight
Shaft lean is another new design concept that has found its way into club design. Shaft lean is the angle at which the club must be delivered to the ball at impact to create optimal pressure. Keep in mind that a ball compresses when hit, which causes it to spring off the face at maximum velocity, which leads to maximum distance. A forward-leaning shaft at impact, particularly when hitting the short- and mid irons is critical to solid ball striking.

Swing weight is also a key iron design feature that affects performance. In non-technical terms, swingweight is a measure of how the weight of the club feels when it’s swung. Why is it important? If your clubs do not match in swingweight, they may not all feel the same to you during your swing. That slight change in feel could affect your performance with those clubs.

Philosophy and Intent Remain Key
The introduction of concepts in club design, like swingweight and perimeter weighting, is not new in itself. Club manufacturers have always sought new ways to improve an iron’s performance. What’s new is their approach. They are now trying to think of ways to improve one area of the club while keeping the other areas consistent.

What’s this mean for you? It means that you must decide which design ideas are worthwhile and which are just marketing hype. Next time you buy irons, don’t just buy something that’s on sale. Study the philosophy behind the model’s design and construction and what the manufacturer is trying to achieve with the club. If you do that, you’ll get your money’s worth and you’ll get a set of irons that will help you lower your golf handicap.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros.” He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.

If I asked students who take my golf lessons how critical good rhythm is to a good swing, most would agree that it’s important, but not the most important factor. Many weekend golfers would probably agree with this assessment. But a new device developed by a professor at Yale reveals that good rhythm is more important to chopping strokes off your golf handicap than many think.

Bob Grober, a professor of applied physics at Yale University—and a one-handicapper— recently invented a device for translating the rhythm of a swing into sound. Here’s how it works: A small wireless transmitter inserted into the butt end of a club detects the club’s movement. The signal produced is transmitted to an iPod-sized unit attached to the player’s waist. The auditory signal is relayed to a set of lightweight headphones and the sound manifests itself as a pleasing organ-like tone when the player swings.

If your clubhead is decelerating through impact, your transition from backswing to downswing is too abrupt, or your mechanics are way out of sync, Grober’s device tells you through sound. The faster the club travels, the louder the volume and the pitch. The idea is to make the loudest sound at impact, not before. Grober’s device also registers how fast the club is moving on the downswing, and gives you a start-to-finish speed profile. It’s a handy tool for serious golfers.

Swing Profiles
Using this device, Grober was able to isolate three distinct speed profiles among golfers.
Golfers with high golf handicaps (20+) are cursed with lousy rhythm. They’re like dancers who have two left feet, always tripping over themselves. Golfers with golf handicaps from 20 to 5—intermediate golfers— tend to complete their swings too quickly. The loudest sound comes just before impact.

Then there are golfers with golf handicaps below 5. Let’s call them tour players. They also tend to rush their swings but to a much lesser degree than intermediate golfers. Like the intermediate golfers, these players create the loudest sounds just before impact, but they do it much less often than with the intermediate golfers. More often than not, their loudest sound comes right at impact, which explains why they hit the ball so well.

Improving Rhythm
The best swing according to Grober contains a brief period when the club is hardly moving at all while the lower body begins to clear out. Unfortunately, weekend golfers tend to hurry the transition from backswing to downswing. That disrupts the player’s rhythm and throws off his or her swing at impact. So the loudest sound comes just before, not at, impact.

The professor’s device doesn’t tell us anything new about swinging a golf club. It just reaffirms what we’ve suspected all along regarding the rhythm of the swing: That it’s one of the keys to hitting a ball well, if not the key. So how can you take advantage of this information?

First, relax your hands at address. If they’re tense or tight, the rest of your body will be tense. Whenever Johnny Bench, the great baseball player, wanted to hit the ball for distance, the first thing he did was lighten up on his grip. That relaxed his hands and his arms and body.

Second, work on swinging to a beat. Pace yourself when you practice. Think of your swing as a one-two motion. One is your backswing. Two is your downswing. You can even say something like “one-two” during the swing. “Back and through,” “low and slow,” or “turn and turn” also work.

Third, practice swinging with your eyes closed. By swinging with your eyes closed, you can feel the weight of the club and sense its speed gradually accelerating from the top of your swing all the way through to a controlled finish. Once you’ve mastered that, re-create the swing on the course. If successful, you’ll see your consistency improve and your bad shots diminish.

Most golf instruction sessions focus on the mechanics of the swing, not the “intangibles,” like rhythm and tempo. But as professor Grober’s device reveals through analysis of sound, the intangibles are just important as good mechanics, if not more important. If you want to become more consistent and cut your golf handicap down to size, focus on improving both the mechanics and the intangibles.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros.” He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.

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How To Break 80 Newsletter

September 12, 2007

“The Web’s Most Popular Golf Improvement Newsletter”
===================================================

In this issue we’ll discuss…

1) Conquering Golf’s Toughest Bunker Shot
2) Hitting It Flush
3) Question of the Week - Hitting Irons Correctly
4) Article - Using Sound to Improve Your Swing
5) Article - Advances In Iron Design Cut Strokes

Jack’s Note:

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1) Conquering Golf’s Toughest Bunker Shot
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What’s golf toughest bunker shot? Hitting the ball from a lie with loose sand over a hard surface. If you dig down too deeply with the clubface, hitting the hard underbelly, the clubhead slows down, causing you to leave the ball in the bunker.

The shot is tricky, no doubt. But don’t be intimidated. Attack it with a heavy-flanged wedge, like the sand wedge. The wedge’s bounce lets the club glide smoothly through the sand, without cutting into the hard underbelly, and throws the ball up and out of the bunker.

Here how to approach bunker shots systematically:

* Determine the sand’s hardness by testing it with your shoes. The shoe test tells you if the sand is hard-packed, just firm, soft with a thin crust, or soft with a hard underbelly.

* If the sand is firm, replace your sand wedge with a pitching wedge. It digs in and under the ball better than a sand wedge, preventing skulling. If the sand is firm, set up a little wider than normally. Make a low sweeping take away. And hit down briskly 1 inch behind the ball

* If the sand is hard-packed, play the ball as you would from hard dirt. Square the blade, position the ball back in your stance, and set the hands ahead of the ball. Pick it cleanly off the surface when swinging.

* If the sand has a thin crust, play the shot as a typical bunker shot. Use a sand wedge, especially if the sand is deep and powdery.

Most bunker shots have a slight margin for error. So don’t let them get to you. Attack them confidently, regardless of the type of lie you have. Work on getting out of the bunker in one shot. It will strokes cut strokes from your scores and your golf handicap.

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2) Hitting It Flush
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Driving the ball for distance depends on creating torque in your swing. Torque can be defined as the force that causes rotation, twisting, or turning. The force generated by an internal-combustion engine to turn a vehicle’s drive is torque. It’s really stored energy. The more torque you generate during your backswing, the more energy—and power—you deliver to the ball at impact. We call it “hitting it flush.”

Three keys to hitting it flush are:

1. Full shoulder turn
2. Flare your front foot
3. Kick in your back knee slightly

Taking a full shoulder turn creates torque. In fact, it’s probably the most important contributor to torque of all. Creating maximum torque involves using the whole body, including your hips and shoulders. If they aren’t included, then your arms are forced to take the club to the top of the backswing alone. This produces a weak, arms-oriented backswing position, with almost no coil and little stored energy. In short, you create a position with little or no torque.

Toeing out the front foot about 25-30 degrees also helps generate torque. It allows you to turn your hips through the ball quickly. Many weekend players keep the front foot straight, preventing them from turning their hips through the swing and limiting the amount of energy delivered to the ball. Keeping the back knee flexed and kicked in slightly toward the ball maintains your posture during the swing and encourages the build up of torque.

Some players push the front knee slightly towards the target. This move acts as a forward press, triggering their swings both mechanically and psychologically. It also helps build up rhythm, another contributor to power. Gary Player uses this technique. Other players, like Jack Nicklaus, turn their heads slightly to the right before committing to the swing as a trigger.

Generating power depends on how much torque you create, not on how hard you swing the club. Concentrate on creating torque when at the driving range. Ingrain the keys we’ve mentioned above in your swing and you’ll hit the ball flush time after time after time. You’ll also hit it longer and straighter.

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3) Question of the Week - Hitting Irons Correctly
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Q. Hi, Jack, I have a problem hitting the ball with my Irons. Every time I hit a shot I pop the ball high in the air or I hit the ground first. How do I fix this problem?

Ossie Parker
Ab Bahamas

A. Many weekend golfers have problems hitting their irons correctly. Often, it’s because of a single swing flaw. But in your case, it sounds like you need to focus on grooving the fundamentals of your swing. The key is doing things systematically. That gives you the best chance of hitting the ball consistently.
Here’s an example:

* Take a comfortable, relaxed, setup. Let your arms hang down naturally from your shoulders. Hold your head up away from your chest.

* Start the club back slowly using a one-piece takeaway. Cock your wrists when you’re about hip high. Set the club on the right plane as you complete the backswing. Make sure you make a full shoulder turn.

* Pause briefly at the top of the backswing before starting the downswing. Don’t hurry the transition. It needs to be nice and smooth. Hurrying the downswing is one of the biggest mistakes weekend golfers make.

* As you go into your downswing, drop the club slightly inside as it comes down to meet the ball. Stay connected with your arms.

* Maintain your head behind the ball at impact, with the club freewheeling into the follow-through. Carry this motion through to a perfectly balanced finish.

Make sure you swing down and through the ball when hitting your irons, creating a divot in front of the ball, not behind it.

This 5-step approach trains you to be systematic when hitting your irons. Practice it until you don’t have to think consciously about doing it. It will improve your ballstriking. One other tip: Replace the longer irons (3-, 4-, 5-) with hybrid clubs. They’re easier to hit.
If you’ve got a golf question you’d like answered, send an email to us at questions@howtobreak80.com and we’ll review it. I can’t guarantee that we’ll use it but if we do, we’ll make sure to include your name and where you’re from.

===================================================
If you want to truly discover the secrets of shooting like the Pros and creating a more reliable and consistent swing, check out: http://www.HowToBreak80.com

Also, for past issues of this newsletter and some of my most recent articles, visit our blog at www.HowToBreak80.com/blog

To view this newsletter online, please visit:
http://www.howtobreak80.com/newsletter09122007.html

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article - Using Sound to Improve Your Swing
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/sound.html

5) Article - Advances In Iron Design Cut Strokes
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/irondesign.html

Until next time,

Go Low!

Jack

P.S. Feel free to share this newsletter with family and friends. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter, send a blank email to break80ezine@aweber.com

===================================================
About the Author
===================================================
Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 and Shoot Like the Pros!”. He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicaps quickly. His free weekly newsletter goes out to thousands of golfers worldwide and provides the latest golf tips, strategies, techniques and instruction on how to improve your golf game.