In this issue we'll discuss...

1) Maintain Balance In Strong Winds
2) Use A Wall To Cure This Common Swing Fault
3) Question of the Week - Chipping It High And Soft
4) Article - Fixing Your Short Game Fast
5) Article - Stop Bad Weather From Boosting Your Golf Handicap

1) Maintain Balance In Strong Winds

A strong wind can severely hamper your putting, costing you strokes. In addition to affecting the ball's speed—the key to a good putt—a strong wind can affect your feel, your rhythm, and your sense of direction. More importantly, it can affect your balance. If you lose your balance when putting, you'll be hard pressed to sink the putt.

Here are six keys to putting in the wind:

1. Take a neutral grip
2. Place your eyes over the ball
3. Keep your hands ahead of the ball
4. Square up your body
5. Spread your feet
6. Bow your legs

Putting in the wind is tricky. Start by taking a neutral grip with your thumbs pointing straight down the shaft. Place your eyes directly over the ball. Keep your hands slightly ahead of the ball. And square up your body—with your feet and shoulders parallel to the target line.

To maintain balance, widen your stance slightly, bend over a little more to make up for the wider stance, and bow your legs. Bowing your legs is a trick that golfing great Tom Watson uses to help keep his balance when putting on windy days. It helps provide a solid foundation for putting.

Putting Drill:
Next time it’s windy out, go to the putting green. Drop some balls on the green, take your stance, and make putts taking your putter back the normal length for the distance you face. Hold it in that position for 10 seconds before beginning the forward stroke. After several such strokes, hit putts holding in the backswing position for seven seconds, and then five, three, one, and your normal stroke. Do this drill several times. Concentrate on maintaining your balance while putting.

The drill enhances your rhythm, sensitivity for distance, and ball-putter contact on windy days. It also heightens your sense of balance. Next time you're playing on a windy day, use the drill on the practice green before teeing off. It will prepare you for the actual play.

2) Use A Wall To Cure This Common Swing Fault

Taking the club too far inside the target line on the backswing spells disaster. It can lead to all sorts of bad shots—pushes, slices, duck hooks, and topped shots. A common swing fault, this move is usually caused by a backswing controlled by the hips and the dipping of the shoulders away from the ball. With practice, you can cure this fault.

Here's a six-step drill to cure this fault:

1. Situate yourself with a wall behind you
2. Take your address position with a driver
3. Make sure your backside is barely touching the wall
4. Simulate your backswing in slow motion
5. Keep moving your arms until they're waist high
6. Make sure the toe of club points straight up

If your backswing is correct, you'll eventually hit the wall. But that won't happen until after reaching waist high. Since you're not going beyond waist high, you shouldn't hit the wall. Just in case, use a head cover to protect the clubhead and the wall.

At the start of a correct backswing, your clubhead should run along the target line for as long as possible. Once the clubhead reaches waist high, the toe should point straight up and away from the wall. If your club touches the wall as you take it back, you know you're moving too far inside.

In that case, practice your takeaway by first leading the backswing with the upper body along the target line. Once the upper body can't turn any more, the lower body takes over. That's the correct way of making your backswing.

This drill also helps golfers who struggle with "laying off"—dropping the clubhead behind the body because of a weak pair of wrists. Women and senior golfers sometimes have this problem.

If your hitting slices, pushes, duck hooks, and all sorts of other bad shots, you could be taking the club too far inside on the backswing. If you think you are, use this drill to cure this common fault. It will cut strokes from your scores.

3) Question of the Week - Chipping It High And Soft

Q. Dear Jack, I play a course with a green that slopes steeply up from the front to the back. The green isn’t very large. If my approach shot goes over the green, I have to chip short but high so the ball lands softly on the green and doesn’t run too much downhill.

If I don’t hit the ball hard enough, it won’t make it over the hill to the green, and if I hit it too hard so it gets up in the air, it rolls across the green and off the front when it lands or else shoots across the green.

I don’t know how to hit the ball high so it lands softly and stops. Can you give me some tips on how to do this?

Thanks.
Carol Cotton

A. Thanks for the question, Carol. The type of shot you make depends on your lie and how far you are from the green. Here are three options:

1. If you're not too far off the green and you don't have to hit the ball too high, try a "Runyan shot." It is named after the late Paul Runyan, who invented it. This shot hits the ball higher than a normal chip shot, but it doesn't run as much. Here's how to hit a Runyan shot:

1. Take your normal putting stance with front foot open
2. Stand close to the target line
3. Hold the club (a 7-iron works best) in a vertical fashion
4. Grip the club like you grip the putter
5. Position the ball in the center of your stance
6. Swing straight back and through, pendulum fashion.
7. Keep the toe of the club low to the ground

The key here is hitting the ball with the toe of the club. That deadens the ball while it rides up the face of the club, giving it some overspin so it rolls forward.

2. If you’re off the green but on the back slope, use a less elevated club and swing with the slope of the green. Just make sure you pick out a target before hitting the shot. You’ll need to put some backspin on the ball to control the roll, which you can do by hitting down on the ball.

3. If you’re farther away and have a tight lie, you have to alter the trajectory of your shot. Here’s three ways to do that:

* Move the ball forward in your stance
* Open up your clubface more
* Release your hands through the ball earlier

Again, you'll have to add backspin to control roll. It takes practice to learn to hit the ball with different trajectories.

The first thing you must determine when your ball rolls off the back of the green is the lie. Based on that, you can decide on what shot to make.

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/newsletter03042009.html

Here are some of my recent articles:

4) Article - Fixing Your Short Game Fast
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/fixing-your-short-game-fast.html

5) Article - Stop Bad Weather From Boosting Your Golf Handicap
http://www.howtobreak80.com/articles/stop-bad-weather-from-boosting-your-golf-handicap.html

Until next time,

Go Low!

Jack

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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.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Golf Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.