Here’s the most simplest yet great tip for any aspiring pro golfer:

Play several different courses with different features on a daily basis.

What do I mean?

You want to go out there and play many different courses in order to learn to score.

I know, you belong to a country club and you get to play the same course over and over for free but if you play there all the time, your golf game will never improve.

Why?

It’s simple.  You get used to the surrounding, you know every yardage from every tree, you get too comfortable.  When you get too comfortable, you will score good but as soon as you walk onto an unfamiliar golf course, this might shoot right back at you attacking your psychological and physical states.

To become really good “scratch” golfer, not just a scratch golfer, you need to rotate 3-5 different courses every time you head out to create the “randomness”.  Once you get in the mindset that you can play good regardless of the course, you will play much better under pressure.

Anaylsis

Face it, golf IS like playing different race tracks on your Playstation.  You need to learn to cope with new and random tracks so you learn the ability to adjust and play any course you encounter, not just your home course.

Besides that, you will also benefit from playing different courses and never get bored.

Bob Heintz's Wishes May Come True This Weekend!

You’ve probably never heard of Bob Heintz or the fact that Heinz ketchup is actually spelled without the t.

The fact is that Bob Heintz has been trying to gain fans so he can enjoy his round more.

Of course, you need to score great scores week-in and week-out on the PGA Tour to accomplish that.

Today, Bob Heintz did just that, attracting about 50 fans to follow his partner who is a local amateur.

Of course, if Bob Heintz keeps shooting 63s for the rest of the weekend, it will be possible that one of Bob’s wishes may come true.

Quoting from interview today:

“I said, ‘I imagine y’all are here to watch Drew, right?’” Heintz said. “They kind of laughed and felt bad that they weren’t there to watch me. I relayed to them that one of my career goals was to get where I’m good enough where someone might actually go to a golf course, pick up a pairing sheet and say, ‘I’ll follow Bob Heintz’s group today.’

“That’s kind of a vague career goal, but they started to tease me about that as the day went on — ‘I guess I’ll follow you now.’ I’d rather have attention than, you know, have nobody know who I was.”

Yes, the hardest fact of life on the PGA Tour is not that everyone who qualified makes at least $100K/year.  But the fact that if you don’t finish near the top, no one will ever notice you.

How cruel is that if you were a PGA Tour member most of your life, only to have no one notice you when you retire?

Of course, those spotlights are reserved for players like Tiger Woods but still, professional golf is a mirror-image of our capitalist society.  In order for you to be happy at what you do, you need to be near the top whether that’s golf or business.

Now, I really want this Bob Heintz guy to win this weekend.  Before today, I didn’t even know he’s a PGA Tour player!

Martin Laird and Bob Heintz are both in the lead at Wyndham Championship on the PGA Tour.

Both pros shot a whopping 7-under 63s on Sedgefield Country Club with par of 70.

Bob Heintz actually was at 8-under until the last hole where he scored a bogey.

Other notables include Scott McCarron at 5-under par, Zach Johnson at 4-under par, and David Love III at 4-under par.

From purely scoring point, tour players seem to be having an easy time on this golf course after weeks of hard golf on U.S. Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship.

Of course, a lot of big-name pros are missing this week probably due to the fact that the end of the year is near.

It’s still terrible too early to tell who will win this week, at least Bob Heintz and Marin Laird got their low scores in today.

In the meanwhile, we will do some swing analysis of Martin Laird and Bob Heintz to see who has a better swing.

Okay, this does really happen to me every couple months.  That is that I find the secret to the golf swing.

You go to the golf course and return with this “amazing” feeling that you’ve finally mastered the game of golf, or at least just the golf swing in this case.

Let me tell you how it happend and the secret too.

I have been on a long-trail of hitting balls on the range and really not practicing my short game or putting.

Well, yesterday, I go to the range at Harding Park GC, and found that the range closes early on Mondays.  Of course, this was my first time going to the range after 6pm on a Monday.

So, I decided to practice my short game for 2 hours.  What happened after that was amazing.

For the first hour and a half or so, I was really struggling to hit these hard-pan lies.  After trying several things, I hit a goldmine, the secret to my golf swing.

You see, the secret is in the dirt just like Ben Hogan said.  Literally, I found it in the hardpan dirt, where it’s practically impossible to hit the shot good unless you strike the ball perfectly.

As such, I found the secret of the golf swing as the following:

Your full swing is an extended version of your short shots.  It’s never the other way around.

For example, you are hitting the 2-iron really well.  You miniturize that 2-iron swing on the short pitch shots.  It might work and it might not, simply because what’s working for the full swing isn’t guaranteed to work on the short shots.

However, if you are hitting your 30-yard pitch shots from a hardpan lie perfectly (as you do need to hit it perfectly on the ball in order to avoid chunking it or thinning it) and you extend that short swing into a 2-iron swing, you will find that 99% of the time, the swing works.

This is why tour pros practice their short game so much because the rhythm and the swing technique flows into other longer shots.

Now, that is how I found the secret, let me tell you the “technical” details of my findings:

You need to feel that on the downswing, you are rotating everything including your stomach, shoulders, arms, and hands to the left while your weight is centered over the left foot.  You also need to feel you are standing very tall.

Here’s the important part, you need to feel like your wrists are uncocking upwards toward the sky just after impact.

If you take a careful look at Hogan’s after-impact position, you will notice that his wrists are actually lifted toward the sky.  This really helps you to hit the ball perfectly while minimizing wrist action through impact.

Now how to achieve this feeling?

It’s pretty simple, try to imagine there’s a giant ball hanging from the sky sorta like the above picture.

Then, try to rotate your body to move that ball foward toward your target.  Also try to hit the big imaginary ball with your elbows, this will automatically uncock your wrists the correct way by letting your wrists lift upwards.

I tried this and boy, I am going to the PGA Tour Q-School next year baby!

I remember reading the book, Golf My Way, by Jack Nicklaus over and over again when I was learning to play golf.  Jack has some really great insights into golf course strategy and fading the ball.  That’s probably the major reason he won so many majors, not his swing.

Anyways, Jack did make video of Golf My Way too, here’s an excerpt on Youtube.

Part I

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Part II

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

You can get Golf My Way the Book at Amazon here

Videos

Golf My Way - Full Swing Video

Golf My Way - Control Shots Video

I remember my dad used to have Golf My Way videos.  I still have them and do recommend you watch them too if you haven’t yet.

Jack Nicklaus is still the best strategy golfer of all time.