Posts Tagged ‘golf course’

Bob Heintz’s Wishes May Come True This Weekend!

Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Bob Heintz's Wishes May Come True This Weekend!

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!

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Martin Laird and Bob Heintz in the lead at Wyndham Championship!

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

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.

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I Found The Secret to Hogan’s Golf Swing!

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

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! :)

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Jack Nicklaus Golf My Way!

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

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

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Part II

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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.

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Urban Golf – Make your Streets a Golf Course!

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Here’s a funny site that explains the definitions and how to play “urban golf”.

It sounds like a lot of fun, maybe it will pick up some speed among the urbanists.

Remember, if you have a job that allows you to sit around a lot and you have plenty of space, I recommend you do it and hit that ball really far.

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Tommy Armour III Iron Swing Analysis

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Tommy Armour III is actually the grandson of the great Tommy Armour who has won 3 major championships.

Although Tommy Armour III has not been as successful as his grandfather, I highly suggest you to read his grandfather’s book, A Round of Golf with Tommy Armour. The book teaches you countless great course strategy and let’s you score the game instead of focusing on swing mechanics. (It’s one of the best golf course strategy books out there that no one knows about, if not the best)

Now let’s look at Tommy Armous III’s simple and compact swing. Tommy does swing pretty quickly but don’t let that fool you, he’s actually “accelerating” through the ball better than most other tour pros.

At takeaway, Tommy likes to go with the traditional red plane. We will see that he returns to the red plane near the backswing though.

At top of his swing, Tommy is pretty much on-plane with the red plane. Also notice that his clubface is “parallel” to the red plane. (You have to imagine the red plane extends forever to the front and back of a golfer pleeez)

What I like about Tommy’s action is that he keeps his backswing pretty short but accelerates through the ball very nicely.

On the way down, Tommy get slightly inside to hit the ball inside-out.

Oh boy, with Tommy’s super fast downswing, he’s still in perfect position at impact. Look at how straight his arms, hands, and club are, almost matching the red plane.

Tommy may not have won as many tournaments as his grandfather, but expect him to win a major real soon.

Here’s Tommy Armour III’s iron shot in action:

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How to Practice to be a Scratch/Pro Golfer!

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

If you are trying to be a scratch golfer or a pro golfer, often people will ask themselves how many balls to hit per day.

Now, having experience watching other aspiring junior golfers when I was a junior golfer, the number of balls you hit actually does not mean anything once you get to a certain point. (Let’s say you can consistently shoot around 75 or lower)

I do however, have experince of hitting 10 buckets per day, that’s about 1,000 balls. I did that for about 3 months during summer and school breaks.

My mom would drop me off at the practice range at 8am, she’d pick me up around 8pm when I was done hitting 1,000 golf balls.

After I grew up and around college I was shooting consistently 3 under par. Those days, I didn’t practice with focus on quantity. However, I did focus on hitting each shot on the range as if it were a real tournament shot.

Now, that is called, quality practice. I still do that same type of practice and even do couple practice swings before I even hit the ball.

What does this do for you? Well, it let’s you hit the best possible shot you can on every practice shot.

Now, I average only 100 balls and practice maybe once a month. But I can still go out to the course any day and shoot around par.

So today’s lesson?

Next time you practice, do the following before hitting each shot:

1. Visualize your golf ball flight and your swing.

2. Make 2 or 3 practice swings matching your visualization and “see” the ball hit perfectly to your target.

3. After doing 1 and 2, go up there and hit that ball without thinking too much. Rely on your muscle-memory to hit it, just like in tournament golf or under pressure situations where you’d have to make a birdie to win all those skins.

Explanation

Golf is a game of visualization. If you hit 100 balls in a row at the range without clear thinking (visualization) of what you want to do, you are basically instilling that into your brain.

The next time you go out and “play” on the golf course, your practice habits will be present whenever you encounter any kind of pressure.

More Tips on the Range

1. Do not hit the same type of shot more than 10 shots in a row. You need to keep hitting a 5-iron, sand wedge, driver, etc…etc… and keep it rotating.

2. Practice your weaknesses.

Golf is all about lowering your percentage of failure. The more you practice your weaknesses, the less chance you will make bad shots on the course.

3. Practice your strengths.

Golf is also about having your strengths. For example, if I am at 125 yards from the hole, I can promise you that the ball “will” end up within 10 feet 10 out of 10 times. You need to find out what shot you are good and also practice that a lot.

Pros call this, “bread and butter” shot. Every pro has one including Tiger Woods. It’s a shot you can rely on the most toughest situations. Make sure you have couple in your bag.

4. Practice lots of wedge shots from 100 yards in.

I actually do about 50-60% of my practice shots for wedge shots from 30 yard, 50 yard, 75 yard, and 100 yard targets.  These are the shots that can save you “lots” of strokes.  Tiger practices these about 80% of his practice balls.  I did see Tiger practicing couple years ago, where he’d “hit” every target with his wedges.

Now, try these tips and I am sure it will help your score next time on the course especially if you have been banging those poor balls mindlessly and carrying that to the course before.

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Junger Woods Golf Psychology – Golf is not a game of Perfect!

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Golf is not a game of perfect, and this is a fact. Even all the championship winners, they have so many swing flaws. It’s a great thing they don’t tell you and Tiger is probably being more honest than most.

There’s even a great golf psychology book named, “Golf is not a game of Perfect”.

Now, the correct mind set on the golf course to play your best is to accept the fact that you are not perfect golfer and you do not have a perfect swing. 

No one in the world actually has a perfect swing, because it doesn’t exist!  Tiger Woods will be first to tell you that.

If you cannot get through this, you will have a tough time dealing with your results.

So what are you telling me, to think negative?

No, that’s not what I am telling you.  The best way to play golf is to be positive and to “visualize” all your shots going in the hole.

But, remember it’s what you do with what happens to you, NOT what happens to you.

So before your next round, tell yourself your “realistic” limits at the first tee and think through your course strategy for the day.

Let’s say at the practice range, you keep hitting your irons 50 yards to the left with a big bad hook.

Now, you can fight this big bad hook throughout your round OR you can simply use that as your advantage and start planning your course strategy to fit that.

So do I am 50 yards right on all my iron shots?

Hell yes, that’s what I am telling you to do.  Make best of what you have that day, you don’t need to be perfect.

I’ve had those rounds when I’ve shot under par when all my iron shots were going 50 yards left.   Now, if I had tried to correct my swing to hit it straight, I’d probably shot over 80 that day AND screwed up  my mindset for future golf rounds.

Now if this tip help you break 80 next time you go out there, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog and expect more fun psychology and course strategy lessons straight from my gut.

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