Archive for April, 2006

Does anyone remember this guy from the Big Break II? Remember the guy who always played without shoes? What a goof, Right?I guess the real question is are you allowed to play a round of golf with no shoes on? Are golf shoes required in the game of golf during play? Well the answer to the second question is no, as far as Getting to Scratch can determine. You don’t need to have regulation golf shoes to play a round of golf on almost all golf courses. Now I’m sure there is a course out there that requires them but most all courses allow you to play in some type of sneakers, or maybe your penny loafers if that’s all you have.

A lot of course do require soft spikes if you are going to wear some sort of spiked golf shoe. Those metal spikes really do a number on the greens.

As for playing the game barefoot. If you don’t see a sign that says no shirt, no shoes, no service out on the course, Getting to Scratch would imagine that it’s alright for you to go ahead and let those dogs breathe. Sam Snead used to play practice rounds without shoes on, and Charles Howell as well. Playing without shoes on makes you keep your lower body from moving around a lot because you have less stability in your bare feet.

A proper swing should have little movement from about your knees down and you should try and restrict movement as much as possible. Going barefoot at the tee forces your body to slow down because you are not used to the easy rotation of your bare feet. This also helps build muscle in your feet creating a more stable swing should you go back to wearing your Footjoys.

Next time out at the range try it out and you might just move towards a more stable swing yet. For more information on the guy from Big Break II that played barefoot check out The Big Break II website at the Golf Channel.

While driving some golf ball today on the range, Getting to Scratch author Erik, noticed that his grip was too tight. On every shot I felt like I was chopping at the ball rather than trying to swing at it. Of course I didn’t notice until after I was done with my second basket but there it was plane as day. Chopping at the golf ball rather than rotating my body and swinging through the ball.

To practice the loose grip you should take a light club, possibly your 5 or 3 wood and head out to the driveway. Then grab the club with the tightness of a 2 out of 10, 10 being the tightest and begin to rotate your body with your club and arms following their normal swing plane. The difference you should be trying for is imagine your wrist to be a loose hinge that you have no control over. When you get to the top of your back swing begin to rotate your body allowing only your body and shoulders to take your club through its swing path.

Don’t worry about where the club head goes. If you swing with the correct amount of tension in your grip the club head will actually have an easier time coming back to square. Continue on with your swing, imagining your wrist is an unrestricted hinge and finish by nearly letting the club fly off into the distance. It should actually whip around and almost hit your in the back of the head.

Continue to do this with the your wrists just free floating. Don’t try and hit a ball. Do this 10 or 20 times until you get the feel. Then the next time you are at the range try this same motion. Don’t worry about where the ball goes just fling your wrists without controlling them.

The reason for loosening your grip and ultimately your wrists is because if you have a tight grip on the golf club that means your wrists are going to be tight and when you bring the club to the bottom of your swing, where you contact the ball, you’re going to have that much more of a difficult time bringing the club around to square. You are actaully going to use your arms and your strength to re-square the club rather than using the momentum of the club head as it swings around.

With a tight grip you are more than likely slowing the club head down to allow your wrists and forearms to play catch up and thus reducing the momentum of the club head and therefore hitting shorter shots as well.

It should also be noted that this type of loose grip technique works best with a neutral grip.Â

Just remember to keep your grip loose and your wrists and arms will follow. More to come on drills to practice the proper and loose grip.

In this months Golf Digest Butch Harmon, the swing guru gave a simple but very effective golf tip. In talking about the drive he mentions that too many people stand over the ball and try to swing as hard as they can. This is pretty much common knowledge yet even though everyone knows you need to slow down your golf swing, too many of us just keep swinging as hard as we can.

If you can slow you swing down to 80% of full speed and get yourself into a rhythm, you will straighten out your shots and have a better day of golf. Sure you can go with the tried and true swing as hard as you can and end up 40, 50, even 60 yards off-line, or you can swing at 80 percent power, end up in the fairway and be 170 out rather than 150 out in the rough or OB.

Next time out on the course suck up your pride and don’t try to out drive your buddies, male or female. Just relax swing slow and watch the ball hit the center of the short grass.

A lot of people carry 4 wedges in their golf bag by replacing a 3 iron with a lob wedge and don’t think twice about it. Why not throw in an extra driver and take out that putter you can’t hit with? Or maybe leave the putter and take out that 5 wood you never use.

Think it’s crazy? Think again. Phil Mickleson devised a plan in the weeks leading up to the Master’s which would help him deal with the extra yardage chairman Hootie Johnson added to the course. Along with the yardage that everyone was talking about was longer sand traps, more trees (pine trees that of which most balls can’t find their way through), and what I am told was a lot more difficult cuts of rough. All that on an already ridiculously challenging course.

To give you a little background on club selection and why you would need two clubs we need to think about what a fade and a draw does to distance. For those of you who can’t control which one of those happens at any given moment (myself included) let’s think about what happens when that fade jumps into your shot. The ball, besides landing most likely in the rough or OB dives into the ground spinning almost sideways. On the other hand, the draw tends to lift the ball up, up and away, most often to the side of the fairway a little longer than that fade on the last hole.

This was the idea behind Mickleson’s two driver scheme. His idea was to use one driver to fade the ball with a maximum distance of about 290 yards and another club to draw the ball with a maximum distance of about 310 yards. He tested this bag of clubs, removing his sandwedge, at the BellSouth Classic where he shot 28 under par and won by 13 strokes. The week after that, winning the Master’s with the calm of Cool Hand Luke on the last day of the tournament.

Was it the two driver method that won him the tournament or the fact that he hit almost 70% of greens in regulation? Well he ended up having the longest driving average of just under 298 yards, which meant he was able to use a higher club selection for his approach shots, leaving him closer to the hole more often than the likes of his playing partners.

Who knows what it was. However, you may need to think twice about buying that Fusion or Sasquatch and actually give the thought of that goofy R7 with the movable weighting system a try. OK maybe not goofy, but you may annoy a few of your playing partners if you have to switch weights every other hole.

Aaron Baddeley came back to win the Verizon Heritage during what appeared to be a melt-down final round. From the trees to the sand, Baddeley looked as though he was cracking under the final round pressure to win the lovely plaid jacket.

Going into the final round it was Jim Furyk and Baddeley in the final pairing tied for the lead at 14 under par, 3 ahead of the nearest competitors. The round began with Baddely jumping out to quick lead of 2 strokes after some birdie tries and then fell just as quick. By the 11th hole the 25 year old Australian was 2 behind Furyk and looking as though he was fading fast. Two consecutive holes from the pine rough into sand traps and Baddeley was in dire need of some magic.

He then birdied two of the hardest holes, the par 3 14th and the par 5 15th to regain the lead. Finally on the 18th Lighthouse Hole, Baddeley finished off Furyk in the same fashion he was playing the round, bouncing between roughs to pull off some great golf.

This was Baddeley’s first U.S. Tour win.

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The USGA website explains both slope and rating as a way to measure the difficulty level of a golf course. For course rating the website says

“Course Rating is the evaluation of the playing difficulty of a course for scratch golfers based on yardage and other obstacles to the extent that the affect the scoring difficulty of the scratch golfer.”

While

“Slope Rating is measurement of the relative difficulty for the bogey golfer compared to the course rating. The lowest slope is 55 and the highest slope is 155.”

For more information check out the USGA website on Course Rating and Slope Rating.