Sometimes we need to do things differently to improve. If you’ve done any weight training, you know that body builders often change their routines. Their bodies get used to a routine, and to get the most out of the time spent working out, they try to “fool” their bodies by doing something different. Changing their routine also overcomes boredom, makes working out more interesting, and maximizes each training session.

If you’re serious about driving down your golf handicap, try something different every once in a while, something that “freshens” up the game and gets you to look at how you’re playing in a new light. One thing you might try is to forget about your score next time you play. Announce your total for each hole to whoever is keeping score, but don’t ask to know your final score until the round is over.

Benefits of Forgetting About the Score
Tracking your total score hole by hole can be a recipe for disaster. If you’re not playing well, you get more and more discouraged as the day goes by and your score mounts. If you’ve set a specific score as your target for the round, you may get even more discouraged once you pass that target.

On the other hand, if you’re playing well and you’re on track to hit your target score, you can really get upset when you have a bad hole, turning a good round into a bad psychologically. In other words, keeping your total score sometimes takes the fun out of playing golf and prevents you from focusing on learning.

Forgetting about the score provides several benefits, including staying in the present. If you’ve read my golf tips, you know I advocate this as a way of playing your best. When you stay in the present, you forget about past shots and future shots. You also forget about everything but making the shot at hand. And that’s the way it should be. Once you’ve made the shot, you can relax until the next one.

Forgetting about the score also allows you to concentrate on improving your game, rather than trying to achieve a specific score. Instead of trying to do things that take you out of your rhythm or are beyond your present capabilities, you can focus on playing target golf. You can also focus on your swing, on its rhythm and tempo, and on slowing it down, rather than driving the ball out of sight. In other words, forgetting about your total score encourages you to stay within yourself, something I also advocate in my golf tips.

In addition, you can keep track of things that will help you improve your game and lower your golf handicap. You can track how many fairways you hit, for example, or how many times you hit the green in regulation. You can also track of how many total putts you had and how many holes you three-putted. And you can track how many “saves” you had. Tracking information like this is a good way to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your game and pinpoint things you need to work on.

Take Advantage of Online Help
In addition to forgetting about the score, try searching the Internet for ways to improve your game. Golf Digest’s Web site, for example, offers the Golf Digest Challenge. Designed to provide personal golf instruction, the GD Challenge helps you track statistics related to your game as a way of improving your play. It’s a free service, so all you have to do is sign up and enter your scores. The Web site does the rest.

The GD Challenge helps you lower your golf handicap by channeling your energies toward specific weaknesses in your game. The Challenge provides tools like a short game and long game handicap that can help you practice smarter. It provides tips and drills that are geared to your game. And it provides a video library of golf lessons that can help you improve your swing. These tools are invaluable when it comes to improving your play

The GD Challenge offers a fresh approach to evaluating your game. By changing what you do, you may be able to improve your play, lower your golf handicap, and get more fun out of the game. No matter how much you enjoy golf, it never hurts to try something different. You never know. It may help you take your game to a whole new level.

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.

Professional golfers take meticulous care of their equipment. That’s how important they feel it is to their games. Playing for prize money instead of a golf handicap, the pros can’t afford to have their clubs—or any of their equipment—working poorly or not at all. With hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, their equipment must be in good working order or it could cost them big time.

What about you? How important is equipment to a weekend golfer? It’s more important than you probably think. While you’re not playing for thousands, your equipment is still critical. Feel is a big part of golf. That’s why your equipment must feel good and be in good working order. Poorly functioning equipment makes shots harder and destroys self confidence. And that in turn hurts scores. Below are five golf tips to enhance your equipment’s performance and yours.

1. Shorten Your Putter Shaft
Experts agree that at address your eyes must be directly over the ball and your arms should hang directly underneath your shoulders. This provides the best stance to judge your line and move your putter on the correct path. Most putters have shafts in the 35-inch range, making this setup difficult. Trim your putter shaft to about 32 inches and see if that helps your putting.

2. Put More Life in Your Putter
The solution to better putting may lie in your club’s grips, not your stroke. You must find a grip that suits your stroke. Thicker grips limit the influence of your hands on the putter, so if you find yourself getting too “handsy” with your putts, try thicker grips. Thinner grips encourage a wrist-driven stroke, so if you feel you’re not getting enough of your hands in your putting stroke, try thinner grips.

3. Experiment With Grips
These thicker/thinner grip guidelines apply to your other clubs, too. If you find yourself needing new grips on your clubs, which you should change every year or so, follow those guidelines as well. All other things being equal, larger grips limit hand action. Smaller grips enhance it. Experimenting with different size grips within your set of clubs. Use thinner grips with the long irons and woods, which require more hand action to rotate the clubface through the hitting area to produce square contact. Use thicker grips with the short irons and wedges, which require less hand action to prevent pulling short shots.

4. Get Your Groove On
If you play with debris-filled grooves, you limit your ability to control shots. You’ll have a harder time stopping your shot on pitches, approaches, and chips. To spin a golf ball, you need clean groves. The ball must “climb up” the face of the club to create spin, requiring the grabbing ability of clean, deep grooves. Use a groove cleaning tool, a tee, or even an ice pick to clean your groves, but clean those grooves. It will help you cut strokes off your score.

5. Counterbalance Your Clubs
This tip is a little controversial but worth considering. When a club feels right, you hit the ball better. We all know the feeling. Golfing great Jack Nicklaus used to counterbalance his clubs. Counterbalancing is the act of adding weight to the grip area to offset clubhead weight. Nicklaus used lead tape. But today you can find alternatives that provide more precise weight measures. Not everyone advocates counterbalancing your clubs, though. Some experts think it’s a waste of time. That’s certainly a valid opinion. Nevertheless, counterbalancing your clubs gives them a different feel.

So much of golf has to do with feel. That’s why it’s critical your clubs feel right to you. It’s also critical that your equipment is in good working order. Equipment in good working order helps you make better shots and instills confidence. The more confident you are in your ability, the better you’ll play. And the more strokes you’ll chop off that golf handicap. You don’t need a golf instruction session to tell you that.

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

November 28, 2007

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

1) Determining Correct Spine Angle
2) It’s All In The Lean
3) Question of the Week - Hitting The Fairway Bunker Shot
4) Article - Get the Most from Your Equipment
5) Article - Forget The Score

Jack’s Note:

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1) Determining Correct Spine Angle
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Your spine angle must be correct to hit a ball straight and long. Unfortunately, golfers don’t always achieve the correct spine angle. They stoop from the waist, slouch their backs, overly flex or straighten their legs, and/or “glue” their chins to their chests. If that’s you, don’t feel bad about it. Even professionals struggle with their posture occasionally. So check your spine angle periodically.

Here are five keys to setting the correct spine angle:

1. Bend from the hips not the waist
2. Flex your knees slightly
3. Stick your butt out
4. Keep your chin up
5. Tilt your front shoulder slightly

It’s easy checking your spine angle at home. Just stand in front of a full-length mirror and turn your head. But what about when you’re on the course? What do you do then? Below is a drill that helps you check your spine angle when playing:

Address a ball with your back to the sun so your shadow falls in front of you. Have a friend place three balls in a line along the front edge of your shadow. Your spine should tilt back slightly at address, so the line of balls should angle to the right from your perspective, if your right-handed, or to the left, if your left-handed. Now swing the club to the top and hold. Check your shadow.

If your shadow covers the balls on your backswing, you’re tilting toward the target and setting yourself up to hit a pull/slice. If your shadow is to the right or left of the balls, depending on whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, you’re approaching impact from the inside, the first step in achieving a powerful consistent swing.

Bad things happen when your spine angle is off. Check it periodically to make sure it’s correct, whether you’re on or off the course. Remember, you need the correct spine angle to hit the ball with authority.

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2) It’s All In The Lean
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To chop your golf handicap down to size, you need to master three shots around the green—the low runner, the mid-trickler, and the high softie. Knowing how to hit these shots saves strokes and positions you for makeable putts. When putting, it’s always nice to have makeable putts.

Shaft lean and spine lean at address are the keys to mastering these shots. Each requires a different shaft lean and spine lean to execute successfully. Shaft lean and spine lean control the height of each shot and how much the ball runs after it hits. To help, we’ve summed up the basics of each shot below.

* The low runner is a low risk shot. You need plenty of green for this shot and a tight lie. You also need the least loft of any of the three shots. Play the ball back in your stance, keep your front shoulder lower than the back shoulder, and lean the shaft forward.

* The mid-trickler is a moderate risk shot. You need a moderate amount of green for this shot and a rather grassy lie. Play the ball in the middle of your stance, keep your shoulders level, and lean the shaft forward slightly. You want to take advantage of the true loft of the club.

* The high softie is a high-risk shot. You need the least amount of green for this shot and a rough-like lie. Play the ball forward in your stance, keep the back shoulder higher than the front shoulder, and maintain a vertical shaft, adding loft to your club.

Practice these three shots whenever you can. And don’t be afraid to try them on the course. Mastering them will turn you into a veritable scoring machine. And that will drive down both your scores and your golf handicap.

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3) Question of the Week - Hitting The Fairway Bunker Shot
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Q. Hi Jack, Do you have any advice for hitting the fairway bunker shot?

I am good in the bunkers around the green and have no problem getting out. The fairway bunker shot, however, gives me problems. I have two results. Either I hit the shot fat and just get over the lip, or I over-compensate and hit the ball so thin it catches the bunker’s lip and just gets out onto the fairway.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Jennus Burton
Tucson, AZ

A. Thanks for the question. If you’re using a long iron or a 3-wood, minimize the use of your lower body when hitting the ball. Golfers tend to drive down on the ball when using these clubs, lowering their centers of gravity. This in turn causes them to hit behind the ball. To hit a fairway bunker shot with a long iron or 3-wood, you need to pick the ball cleanly from the sand using your arms instead of your lower body.

You could also switch to a 5-wood or 7-wood. Many weekend players do better with these woods from a fairway bunker. To hit a 5-wood or 7-wood out of a bunker, use a descending below rather than picking the ball clean. Open the clubface slightly, which gives you a little extra bounce off the sand, play the ball back a bit in your stance, and dig your toes into the sand, reducing the chances of you hitting a fat shot. Above all, don’t overswing.

Golfers try to really drive the ball when hitting from a fairway bunker. Instead, pick out a target within reach, focus on making good contact, and swing normally. Getting out of the bunker and onto the fairway in position for the next shot is your primary goal. You can do that if you stay within yourself.

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/newsletter11282007.html

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article - Get the Most from Your Equipment
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/equipment.html
5) Article - Forget The Score
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/forgetscore.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.