An injury can do more than just balloon your golf handicap. It can permanently derail your game. Golfers elbow (medial epicondylitis) is among the most common—and annoying—injuries in the game. It not only causes pain in your elbow, but also produces a shooting sensation down your forearm when gripping objects. Rest and ice is usually the initial treatment. Changing your mechanics by either taking a golf lesson or using new golf tip also helps. But sometimes surgery is the only solution.

Golfer’s elbow is a form of tendonitis. Its cause is overuse. Tendons at the end of your muscles attach to bone. The insertions points of the tendon on the bone are often pointed prominences. Inflammation at these points, caused by overusing the elbow, produces the pain you feel with this injury. The main difference between golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) is the pain’s location. The pain from tennis elbow’s pain is more on the outside of the elbow than the inside.

The Mechanism Varies
What triggers golfer’s elbow varies. It ranges from a single violent action to repetitive injuries where an action is performed repeatedly, like swinging a golf club or a tennis racquet. Often, golfer’s elbow appears at the start of the season. But it also occurs during the season when the repeated action increases in duration or intensity. In addition, golfer’s elbow comes from work-related injuries, like hammering nails. In that case, swinging a golf club only makes the injury worse or prevents it from healing.

The initial treatment for golfer’s elbow is rest, ice applications after using the elbow, and anti-inflammatory medicines, like Advil or Motrin. Ibuprofen also helps. These medications control the pain and reduce swelling. But use them carefully if you have stomach or kidney problems. If these measures fail, a cortisone injection is an option. If you get two cortisone injections with no relief, a third probably won’t help. In extreme cases surgery is an option to remove the inflamed tissue. But this is rare.

Build Up Your Muscles
Once you’re pain free, build up the muscles around the inside of your elbow. Use wrist and forearm exercises and stretching. Avoid exercise and stretching if you still have pain, though. They just inflame the tendons more, causing more pain. Also, try wearing a forearm brace like that used by tennis players and baseball players. It redistributes the jarring force from impact to different area away from the inflamed tissue.

Another option that keeps you playing is teeing the ball up on every shot—even from the fairway. You might have to adjust your golf handicap to make this option acceptable to your playing partners. But it decreases the force of impact, minimizes pain in the elbow, and lets you enjoy the game.

Change Your Swing Mechanics
You may also want to change your swing mechanics. See a local pro who uses a video cam. Have him check your mechanics. Or, have a friend whose judgment you trust watch you swing. If your mechanics are off, take some golf lessons or read some golf tips and correcting them. Also check your clubs and grips. Both must be right for you. Otherwise, you’ll still have problems.

Golfers elbow is serious business. It not only creates bad shots that increase your golf handicap, but also produces intense pain. Rest, ice, and medication usually help. When the pain subsides, exercises and stretching can prevent a recurrence. Also check your mechanics. If they’re off, attend golf instruction sessions or read golf tips to correct them. If the pain persists, see your doctor. It’s better to stop playing for a season, than injure yourself permanently and never play again.

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

Golf tips in sports magazine often say that your first shot is the most important on every hole. So do some PGA pros. While this idea is debatable, one thing is certain. Finding the fairway more often cuts your golf handicap down to size. In other words you’re better off being 10 yards short in the fairway, than 20 yards longer in the woods. That’s just smart golf.

But even if you play smart, you still need the right driver. Without it, you’re in trouble. Too long a driver is just as bad as too short a driver. But the right size driver helps you hit more fairways, lower your scores, and score well. But choosing the right driver isn’t easy, as I tell students in my golf instruction sessions. You need a good plan to do it right. Below are five elements to include in our plan.

Check Out The Loft
You’d be hard-pressed to find a PGA pro using a driver with less than 10 degrees loft. Why—because the key to distance is high launch and low spin. The longer the ball is airborne, the longer the drive. Since balls are designed to stay airborne longer, you want a driver that maximizes this technology. Higher loft also increases your chances of hitting straighter shots. If you’re using a driver with 12 degrees of loft, try one with 13 or even 14 degrees of loft.

Get The Right Shaft
Shaft technology lets you choose shafts that hit the ball higher, straighter, and/or longer, and that provide better responsiveness. Key considerations when choosing a shaft are torque, stiffness, and length. Shafts that are too stiff cause distance and control problems, as I see with students in golf lessons. Stiff shafts also hamper responsiveness. Longer shifts have the potential for longer shots, but are harder to hit straight. Choose the shaft torque, stiffness, and length that let you to make a consistent, repeatable swing.

Size Matters
Size matters when it comes to clubheads. PGA pros are switching to larger and larger clubheads these days. These larger clubheads, as you’ve probably read in magazine golf tips, have more “miss area.” This is called Moment of Inertia (MOI). The bigger the clubhead, the higher the MOI. In other words the bigger the clubhead, the more forgiving the clubhead. So think big when selecting a clubhead.

Offset Offers Advantages
If you slice or hook—and more than 75 percent of us do—consider a driver with an offset clubhead. Many offset drivers also have closed face angles to further help a slicer hit the ball. Some even add weights in the heel to help the club rotate closed toward impact. Offset drivers are great for the average player.

Don’t Forget Grip
Last but not least is the grip. Since it’s the only point of contact with the club, you need the right size grip. Most clubs come with standard size grips. But not every player’s hands are standard. In fact, I see all sizes of hands in my golf instructions sessions. Hundreds of grips exist in the market. Almost all can be fitted to your hand size. Take advantage of this flexibility and get the right grip.

Loft. Shaft. Clubhead. Offset. Grip. All are key elements in a driver. Develop a plan that includes these elements before buying a new one. And don’t get side tracked by all the hype surrounding drivers. On the tee it’s better to be in the fairway 10 yards short than in the woods 20 yards longer. That’s just smart golf. You’ll be surprised what smart golf does for 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.

In this issue we’ll discuss…

1) Maximize Power With Your Irons
2) Maintaining A Quiet Shaft Boosts Consistency
3) Question of the Week – Conquering Island Greens
4) Article – Five Steps To Choosing The Right Driver
5) Article – Treat Golfer’s Elbow Now

1) Maximize Power With Your Irons
Tired of hitting weak irons from the fairway and leaving yourself short of the green. Maybe you’re trying to lift the ball. Lifting is common among weekend golfers—especially with irons. Instead of hitting down on the ball, they try to slip the clubface under the ball and lift it through the air. This swing fault usually results in disaster, producing a weak shot, a dribbler, or some other weird mis-hit.

Here are five keys to maximizing iron power:

1. Shoulders are even at address
2. Open your hips at impact
3. Keep your hands ahead of the ball
4. Make a descending blow
5. Deliver your right shoulder hard

To hit an iron solidly, you must use a descending blow that creates a divot after the ball, not in front of it. The key to doing this is delivering your right shoulder to the ball. Consider this:

At address your shoulders are fairly even. Perhaps your right shoulder is slightly lower than your left. But this changes at impact. At impact your hips are open, your hands are ahead of the ball, and your right shoulder is closer to the ball than your left. This also means your right shoulder stays low through impact.

To train your brain to keep the right shoulder low through impact, visualize a martial artist punching through a board. As she punches the board, she lunges forward with her arm, supplying the momentum she needs to snap the board.

To train your body to deliver your back shoulder, make some practice strokes with just your right arm holding the club. Concentrate on moving your right shoulder closer to the ball during the downswing. This exercise ingrains the proper feel for delivering the right shoulder to the ball, and prevents an early release of the arms and hands—a major power leak.

Delivering the right shoulder to the ball is the key to hitting solid irons, not lifting the ball with your clubface. You want to create a divot after the ball, not before it. Practice the exercises described above and you’ll hit your irons with more punch.

2) Maintaining A Quiet Shaft Boosts Consistency
Many factors hurt consistency in the golf swing. An often-overlooked one is a spinning shaft. A spinning shaft moves independently on its own axis. This move opens and closes the clubface, making it hard to achieve consistency. But in a good golf swing, the golfer never the shaft spins independently. A good golfer maintains a “quiet shaft” throughout the swing—one that rotates but doesn’t spin.

Below are for keys to maintaining a quiet shaft:

* Unitize your chest, arms, and club
* Let your hands retain their position
* Limit trunk rotation in the backswing
* Cock your wrists up and down

The best way to ensure a quiet shaft is by unitizing your chest, arms, and club. In other words you need to swing these three elements simultaneously with what some golfers call “quiet hands.”

When you unitize your swing, your hands retain their position relative to the rest of your body and your club. This entails having wrists that cock up and down the swing arc with no twisting by the club shaft. This move makes it easier to produce sound, repeating results.

Often, it appears that the clubface opens and closes in relation to the clubhead’s path. But it doesn’t. It merely “slides” up and down the swing with no twisting on its own. Of course, a small amount of trunk rotation must accompany the movement of your arms and legs as the club starts off in the beginning of the swing. Otherwise, the shaft will be forced to spin, wrenching the clubface out of position and hampering consistency.

In the battle for achieving consistency make sure you’re not spinning the shaft. It could boost your consistency as you play.

3) Question of the Week – Conquering Island Greens
Q. Hi Jack, I have been reading your newsletter for quite a while. I am an avid golfer (a 10 handicap), who only gets to play once a week (if I’m lucky). My local course has a short par three, plays from 150 yards to 110 yards, and is fairly straightforward to play. But it’s an island green. The landing area leaves no room for error, since the green is in the shape of an upturned saucer. Any shot off target—long, short, right, or left— is doomed to a watery grave.

This hole has us in a very shaky state mentally. I personally have tried every type of shot known to golf with no regularity of success. Help me please, and the rest of us who are on the brink of insanity, not to mention the expense of drowning two pro v 1’s every week.

Thanks,
Joe Macaulay

A. Thanks for the question, Joe. You have two problems with island greens—one physical and one psychological. You must hit the ball higher than normal to get it to hit and sit on the green. First, make sure you select the right club for the shot, one with enough loft to get the ball in the air quickly. Move the ball forward slightly in your setup, about an inch or two in front of your shirt’s logo. And tilt your spine away from the target a little. You want your back shoulder to be slightly lower than your front shoulder.

When swinging, keep your chest behind the ball, place more weight on your back leg than normal, straighten your back arm at impact, and release your hands a little earlier than normally. Swing to a full follow-through, just as you normally would do on a typical short iron shot.

In addition, put backspin on the ball, so it holds the green when it hits. You can put backspin on by swinging down and hitting the bottom half of the ball, like you do when putting backspin on the cue ball in playing pool

Your second problem is a lack of confidence. The best way to gain it is to practice the shot at the range. Pick a target between 110 yards and 150 yards or so from you and practice hitting to that spot. Make sure you change targets after each shot. Once you can do this accurately, you’ll have the confidence to pull off this shot. Until, then, use golf balls of lesser quality than the Pro Vs.

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/newsletter03252009.html

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article – Five Steps To Choosing The Right Driver
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/five-steps-to-choosing-the-right-driver.html

5) Article – Treat Golfer’s Elbow Now
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/treat-golfers-elbow-now.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, go to http://www.howtobreak80.com/newsletter.htm

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.

Here’s a golf tip I learned a long time ago: Approach every shot in golf as a target shot involving distance and direction. If you’re going to cut strokes from your scores and trim your golf handicap down to size, you must learn to hit your targets. That means adjusting your shot not only for the right direction, but also for the correct distance. Thus, the ultimate measure of a shot is how close the ball actually finishes to its target.

Unfortunately, some weekend golfers treat shots as direction shots only. They envision the ball flight they want, but they don’t calculate the distance. It’s like the golfer who aims her 5-iron down the center. She’s accounts for the shot’s direction but not its distance and usually ends up short. It’s no surprise she’s struggling to cut her digit golf handicap down to size, despite taking numerous golf lessons. When approach shots matter, distance deserves equal billing as direction.

Develop Consistent Contact:
Increasing accuracy is great, but first your must develop consistent contact. It’s critical to achieving both direction and distance control. Is there are secret to developing consistent contact other than hours and hours of practice? There is. Commit yourself to holding the club gently in your hands and making your arms feel soft and supple when you play. Holding the club softly encourages your arms to work together when making a full swing. Below are four other tips on increasing distance control.

Let The Lie Determine Ball Position
Your lie determines the angle of your shot. Your goal is to make impact with the ball with a minimum amount of interference from the grass. The worse the lie you have, the more downward the blow you’ll need for the same result, generally speaking. Move the ball back in your stance slightly to increase the steepness of the your downswing. If you’re right handed that means moving the ball more toward your right shoulder.

Choose Enough Club To Swing Softly
One point I stress when giving golf lessons is to use one more to reach your target. If you need 7-iron, use a 6-iron. Many weekend golfers choose clubs that require them to swing hard to hit their target. Swinging hard like that often throws or your swing, forcing you out of balance. Instead, choose a club that lets you swing leisurely and softly, and allows you to retain constant but light grip pressure.

Chose Club Based On Trajectory
On full shots into the green, base your club selection on the trajectory you want for your shot. If you have a poor lie and you’re playing the ball back in your stance, you’ve subtracted loft from the club. If you’ve selected a wedge, the shot will have the trajectory of an 8-iron or 9-iron. When the lie is good, opt for a club that allows you to make a less than full shot, yet gives you the right trajectory.

Work On Distance Control In Practice
If you’re hitting shots at a practice green, don’t forget about distance control. Hit full shots to imaginary greens. Hit chips and pitches to imaginary circles surrounding your target. Just make sure you vary the targets and the distances on every shot. Try to make the practice session as close to actual play as possible. That increases the value of the practice sessions, enabling you to get more out of each session, just like they preach in golf lessons.

These five tips on hitting full shots will teach you distance control. When combined with direction control, distance control is a powerful tool for cutting strokes from you golf handicap. The key is focusing on both distance and direction when you have a full shot into the green.

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.