About 15 years ago, an appraisal client of mine (appraising commercial real estate is how I've paid my bills for nearly 30 years) asked me to play in a four-ball tournament, one that I had won in 1989. I had not played much golf for a few years up to that point, and was quite [...]
A few weeks ago, I played my second round of golf in five years in a friend's annual gathering. I was paired with my friend and two other golfers, none of which can break 90, and two of them can't break 100. I will give a pass to one of them...it's apparent that he rarely [...]
If you want to become a scratch golfer, you’ve got to learn how to practice. Simply going to the driving range and beating balls will not turn you into a ball striking machine. The other day, I was on the range, and in the stall next to me was this young man, probably early 20's, [...]
When you watch a tour player, you’ll notice that they ALL have a pre-shot routine that they run through to get focused on the task at hand. They also use this routine to get properly aligned at the target. Most amateur golfers have no routine whatsoever. Occasionally they take one practice swing, and then for [...]
After you’ve been playing and practicing for a while, you should start to notice some patterns to your shots. Bad shots tend to be caused by one swing fault or another, so I thought I’d cover some of the basic issues. The Slice For a right handed player, a slice typically starts to the left [...]
One of the most common issues that new golfers and those golfers that still struggle to break 100 have is that they try to control the club in their golf swing too much with the hands and arms. Many of these golfers also hold onto the club too tightly in an effort to gain control. [...]
If you are new to golf, once you learn some of the basic fundamentals, much of your work should be focused around the greens. That is where you will be able to lower your scores most quickly. When you become a scratch golfer, putting will account for about 40% of your strokes. So, you can [...]
Go to a driving range and chances are that you will find a few people who are barely making contact with the ball, yet swinging one club, the driver. Many people just want to go to the range and blast away with the driver, trying to hit it as far as they can. Meanwhile, I [...]
Welcome to the Hacker to Scratch Blue Print! My goal is to turn hackers like ole Sir Charles over here on the right, into really good golfers. This will be a step by step process to help you become the best golfer you can be. Let's get to work! The Fundamentals If there is one [...]
While most golfers struggle with slicing the golf ball, some golfers actually have trouble with hooking the ball too much. Golfers who hook the ball too much tend to be better players, because they've developed a swing sequence that is closer to the professional golfer. As such, fixing your hook golf swing should be less [...]