By Jack Moorehouse

If you’re a professional golfer playing in PGA-approved Tournaments like the British Open, you’d better know how to salvage a bad round. When you play for the purses today’s pro golfers play for, a bad round can really cost you. If you’re a weekend golfer playing in local tournaments or just with friends, you also should know how to salvage a bad round. It not only increases your fun, it also prevents you packing strokes on to your golf handicap.

Bad days are a part of every golfer’s life. Even the best struggle once in a while. Unfortunately, most teachers don’t show you how to salvage a bad round in their golf instruction sessions. Usually, you learn how to do it through personal experience or by reading about it in golf tips newsletters or sports magazines. However you learn it, it’s a good skill to have. Below are some tips that can help you reverse your momentum and reclaim your game when things go bad.

Disastrous Driving
It’s really frustrating when you can’t get off the tee. It also costs you strokes. But there’s never been a golfer yet who hasn’t had some bad driving days. Many golfers try to make mechanical adjustments during the round. Unfortunately, this often leads to more mistakes and more frustration. Save adjustments for the range. So what do you do during the round?

Try hitting a fade. A fade is the most common ball flight in golf, as I explained in one of my recent golf tips newsletters. To hit a fade, open your stance a little, aim down the left side of the fairway (right side if your left-handed), make a full turn, and hit the ball hard with your right side. Make sure you hold on past impact with the last three fingers of your left hand, which keeps the clubface slightly open, producing a fade. If bad driving persists over several rounds, take golf lessons to help get back on track.

Inconsistent Irons
A good mantra to recall when your irons let you down is: more club, less swing. Your first priority when your irons go bad is regaining the feeling of making solid contact and swing fluidity. If this happens to you, take an extra club and make an easy three-quarter swing. This relaxes your muscles. It also relieves the tension generated from hitting several bad shots in a row. Three-quarter swings give you more control over the clubhead and the ball, and revive the feeling of what it’s like to hit a good iron.

An off day on the green is most apparent from eight feet in. Dave Pelz, the short game guru, calls this distance the “golden eight,” to give you an idea of just how important he considers putting from this distance. Tiger Woods is better from here than anyone on Tour. Maybe that’s why he’s won so many majors and is still considered golf’s top dog.. Weekend golfers who improve their average putts made from eight feet in slice more than a stroke or two off their golf handicaps.

Change Your Approach
If you’re having problems draining short putts during a round, try changing your approach. Instead of finessing the hole, bang it into the cup’s back. This technique takes your mind off your putting woes and your mechanics. Use this technique to create a break in a string of bad putts and help yourself regain good rhythm and tempo when putting. Once you regain rhythm and tempo, you’ll see more putts go in.

Keep these tips in mind when you start going bad. You probably won’t find them taught in many golf lessons. But they’re a proven way to help reverse the downward slide and reclaim your game. More importantly, they’ll help you revive your confidence. Restoring confidence helps you play your best. That in turn prevents you from falling into a slump that could see you pack several strokes onto your golf handicap.

By Jack Moorehouse

The British Open gets underway on Thursday, July 15th, and the field of golfers playing in this year’s tournament is impressive—as always. Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Ben Crane, and Angel Cabrera are all there. So are Sean O’Hair, KJ Choi, John Daly, Eduardo Molinari, and Sir Nick Faldo along with a host of other professional golfers. Golf handicaps don’t go low enough for this group. But they’ll all find this year’s Open a challenge thanks to the course.

The Old Course at St. Andrews is the venue for this year’s tournament. Among golf’s most revered courses, The Old Course is hosting the game’s longest running major for the 28th time since The Open was first played in 1860. Tiger Woods won the last two Championships at St. Andrews, setting a record score of 19-under-par to win by eight shots in 2000. But as pretty as St. Andrews is, this links course is bound to provide the field with some golf lessons and golf tips on playing a links course. The question is: What are the keys to winning the Open?

Length Not A Factor
Course length won’t be a factor at St. Andrews. The Old Course is long, but not overly so. St. Andrews is a par 72 that plays at 7305 yards—3584 yards on the front and 3721 yards on the back. The longest hole is the 14th at 613 yards. The next longest hole is the 5th at 568 yards. These are the only two par 5s on the course. The two par-3s on the course are just over 170 yards and the remaining par-4s are about average pro length. Golfers that can hit the ball long won’t have as much of an edge as at other pro tournaments.

Course design will be a factor at St. Andrews. The course’s design has withstood the test of time. Players have gotten bigger and stronger over the years and the equipment they use has changed dramatically in the 600 years golf has been played there. Yet St. Andrews remains a challenge because golfers must often hit from difficult angles at The Old Course.

The wind will be another factor. It can blow really hard at times. On a calm day, golfers can shoot 65. But on a windy day, they can shoot 80. Sometimes, the wind blows so hard you see golfers hitting wedges 20, 30, or even 40 feet. So if the wind picks up during a round, players will have to deal with it.

Good Shotmaking Is Key
Given these factors, what will be the keys to success at the Old Course? Good shotmaking is one. Controlling trajectory is a must at St. Andrews—probably more so than at any other venue on the pro circuit. So is placement. Players must determine not only where to place the ball, but also how it will run once it hits. They will also have to play shots they don’t normally play, making creativity imperative at St. Andrews, as it is with many links courses.

Another key at St. Andrews is putting. This year’s winner must putt well. Wet weather in the build-up to the Championship has kept the greens at around 10 on the stimpmeter, rather than usual 14. This means the greens will be much slower than normal. The pros usually do better on faster greens. Golfers in this year’s field will need to adjust quickly to the slower speed when putting.

Greens Are Large
St. Andrews’ greens are also large. How large are they? Let’s just say that you can hit a par-4 in two and still make bogey. In other words, the players are going to have a lot of long putts no matter how accurate their shots, so lag putting will be key. Then, of course, there’s the wind, which could also affect putting. The wind will influence strategy and execution dramatically.

Good shotmaking, creativity, and accurate lag putting are keys at the British Open this year. They’re also keys to achieving low golf handicaps on local courses. Weekend golfers able to see this year’s tournament should look for golf tips that will help them sharpen their skills. Golf lessons can provide the basics of how to hit a draw or a fade, but they can’t always provide the finer points or teach you things like creativity. Watching other golfers can.

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.

There has been a lot of buzz lately about the new “body-friendly” golf swings so I decided to weigh in and give my two cents.

Last year, when Don Trahan came out with the Peak Performance Golf Swing, I wrote about it.  It’s controversial and teaches a lot of opposing theory to modern golf instruction.  The same seems to apply to the new Perfect Connection Golf Swing.

These swings are mainly targeted for the older set in golf and advocate a 3/4 turn in the backswing.  The whole point I suppose is that the usual aches, pains and injury that come with a traditional golf swing can be alleviated by adopting this new swing type.

But I can’t honestly say whether the new Perfect Connection Golf Swing by C.J. Goecks is panacea or paltry.  All I know is there are a lot of golfers talking about it right now and I am in the process of reviewing it myself.  Will provide updates as I do so.

If any one has a review on it or first hand experience, leave a comment below.

One the one hand, I can appreciate that the traditional golf swing and instruction is not only difficult to grasp and execute at times.  This is probably why “new” swing techniques and teachings create such a stir.  But whether or not they hold the test of time…

So, any of you guys used it?  What did you think?  Good/Bad/Ugly welcome.

To be clear, this is not an endorsement.  The jury is still out on this new swing…it is too soon to tell.  Which is why I am asking you guys what you think.

You can get more info on CJ Goecks and Perfect Connection Golf Swing’s home page here http://perfectconnectiongolfswing.com

Look forward to your comments.

Jack

By Jack Moorehouse

You have to love technology. It not only makes our lives easier, it also enables us to see and do things we might not see and do otherwise. Take the Internet. If you haven’t been to the official U.S. Open Web site (www.usopen.com), go there. The site provides numerous high tech features, like an iPhone app, to help you truly enjoy the 2010 U.S. Open at California’s Pebble Beach golf course. The Web site also provides some unique articles that will not only peak your interest, but also help you chop strokes off your golf handicap.

Perhaps the most interesting high-tech feature on the Web site—for serious golfers, that is—is the course preview page. It gives you a great overview of the course from a variety of angles. It’s so good you almost feel like you’re walking the course. The Web site lets you not only watch a Fly-Over video of Pebble Beach, but also do a video walkthrough of the course. The walkthrough is like you were really there. In addition, the page offers tee, fairway, and green views of the course. The preview page comes as close as you can to being at the course without actually being there. The page is a golf instruction session all on its own.

Among The Prettiest Courses
The Web page’s overview of Pebble Beach is so detailed that people who’ve never had a golf lesson or read a golf tip in their life will enjoy it. Pebble Beach is among America’s prettiest public courses. Opened in 1919, it hugs the rugged California coastline. The course offers wide-open vistas, cliff-side fairways, and slopping greens. Pebble Beach claims Jack Neville and Douglas Grant as its designers. Home for the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Championship, the course often serves as a site for PGA events. This is the fifth time it’s hosted the U.S. Open. It also hosted the event in 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2000.

Another interesting feature of the Web site is a two-part article on how the U.S.G.A gets a course ready for an open championship. The article examines all the decisions and changes that need to be made by the grounds keepers to get the course in shape for the U.S. Open. In this case officials from the United States Golf Association walked the course addressing the changes that needed to be made.

For example, one changes involved the rough: Would it be a graduated? Officials decided to make it graduated. Another decision involved the bunkers. Previously, Pebble Beach had light rough running into around the fringes of its bunkers. Officials had all the fringes cut. Now, a wayward shot is more likely to run into the bunker than be stopped by the fringe, penalizing the golfer. This year Pebble Beach has a course rating of 76.6 and a slope of 149 for the Open. Course length is over 7,000 yards. Players will hit from the black tees.

Experts Choices To Win
Tiger Woods and Lee Westwood are among the more popular choices to win the Open.

Westwood is fresh off his win at the St. Jude’s Classic. It was his first win in the United States since 1998 and he seems to play well on West Coast courses. He also plays well in the U.S. Open. He’s played in three Opens and finished near the top in all three. He came in seventh in 1998 at Olympic, fifth in 2000 at Pebble Beach, and third in 2007 at Torrey Pines. He had a good chance to win in 2000, but left some shots out there and made some bad decisions. Westwood is playing well, Woods, on the other hand, is not playing well. His layoff seems to have affected him more than some experts thought. Then he had some problems with his neck a few weeks ago, so it’s anybody’s guess how well he will play this year around. Still, Wood is 113th in driving accuracy and 164th in driving length.

His putting accuracy this year is 1.708, which would be first on Tour if he were eligible for the ranking. Experts who pick woods say he needs to leave his driver and the bag and use his 2-iron off the tee. They thing the course sets up well for him, if he features his “stinger” out of the tee box.

It’s anybody’s guess which player will win this year’s tournament. But if you really want the full U.S. Open experience, stop by the championship’s Web site and make use of the technological features there, especially the course views. You’ll not only get a up close and personal view of the course, you may also get glean a few golf tips based on how the course is set up to help you chop a stroke or two off 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.