Golf Game Secrets

Golf tips come from all sorts of place. That doesn’t mean they can’t help you chop strokes off your golf handicap. The advice might be from an unusual source, but if you don’t give it an honest evaluation, you might miss a good thing. The important thing is to look not at who the source is, but at the advice itself. When it comes to golf tips, the only thing that matters is, does it work .

Take, for example, Tom Lehman. A five-time PGA Tour champion, the 1996 British Open winner, and the 2006 Ryder Cup captain, Tom had stopped making big putts. Eventually, he started getting advice from fans by mail. He enjoyed reading the letters he got from fans and viewed the letters as sympathetic. After a while, he disposed of them. For some reason though, he kept one man’s letter for three years.

The letter was from a fan some might be consider a most unlikely source. The fan had been following Tom for some time and was trying to support Tom during a difficult time in his career. An amateur player of some note, the fan had been considered an excellent putter. At one point, he had qualified for the North Dakota State Amateur championship. Along the way, the fan had gained a reputation as someone who never choked on a key putt.

Book of Revelation

In addition to the letter, the fan sent a book he had written, published, and sells on his Website. The book’s topic was what the fan called hidden handicaps—those things we unknowingly do and think that handicap our performance, like thinking negative thoughts and dwelling on past failures.

The book was based on the fan’s life experiences as a quadriplegic—the unfortunate result of a car wreck at age 41. The fan had had a tough life since his accident. But despite his injuries, he no longer felt sorry for himself.

One day Lehman met the man.  Lehman was in the area anyway and he figured he would stop by and thank the man for the book. Lehman figured that if the man was so tough that he no longer felt sorry for himself, he might have something to offer Tom.

Tom came away from the meeting with a simple insight. The brain can’t process two thoughts at once. Tom had had all these thoughts running around in his head about break, speed, and stroke that it confused him But after talking with the fan, Lehman reduced to one thought and one thought only—roll the ball in the center of the cup. That one simple idea transformed the way Tom approached putting and ahs been benefiting him every day since.

When it comes to golf, we all have hidden handicaps. Tom was thinking about break, speed, and stroke when putting. The combination handicapped his putting in key situations. But Tom could also have been thinking of all the times he had missed big putts in big tournaments, like the Masters or the U.S. Open. Or, the 19 times he finished second on tour. By focusing on one simple thought, he eliminated these handicaps.

Focus on One Simple Thought The fan’s advice applied to putting. But it could easily have applied to driving or his pitching and chipping. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of your swing when you hit a drive, about where your hands should be, and what your tempo should be, think about keeping your take away low and slow.

Instead of thinking about the swing’s mechanics, like what part of the ball to hit, how to swing down on the ball, and how to create a divot after the ball, think just about hitting an on-course target. Instead of worrying about how high to hit a pitch shot and about making first ball contact all at the same time, focusing on one thing: hitting the landing spot you’ve pricked out on the green. Keeping one thought firmly in minds banishes any negativity that might interfere with your shot or putt.

Players of Tom’s notoriety frequently get advice from fans.  In Tom’s case, the fan’s golf tip worked. If he had dismissed it because of its source, he would never have learned what he considers a valuable golf lesson. Golf is difficult. There’s no two ways about it. But by remembering that the mind can only process one thought at a time, you can eliminate our hidden handicaps and put yourself in the right frame of mind.

Tom came away from the meeting with a simple insight. The brain can’t process two thoughts at once. Tom had had all these thoughts running around in his head about break, speed, and stroke that it confused him But after talking with the fan, Lehman reduced to one thought and one thought only—roll the ball in the center of the cup. That one simple idea transformed the way Tom approached putting and ahs been benefiting him every day since.

When it comes to golf, we all have hidden handicaps. Tom was thinking about break, speed, and stroke when putting. The combination handicapped his putting in key situations. But Tom could also have been thinking of all the times he had missed big putts in big tournaments, like the Masters or the U.S. Open. Or, the 19 times he finished second on tour. By focusing on one simple thought, he eliminated these handicaps.

 

Putting isn’t just about feel. It’s also about information processing. In other words, the better you are at reading greens, the more likely you are to sink a putt. You don’t need a golf tip to tell you that. Plumb-bobbing is an old-school technique for generating information that’s useful in putting. Some players swear by it. Others disregard it.  The question is can it help you sink a putt.

The biggest knock against plumb-bobbing is that it tells you how a putt breaks but not how much. But a computer model developed by Fredrick Haney, Ph.D., a few years ago, is changing the way golfers think about plumb-bobbing. Haney’s model suggests that there’s more to it than meets the eye and that with a little effort you can use it to help determine how much a putt breaks. Improve your putting and you’ll slice strokes off your golf handicap quickly.

The Art of Plumb-bobbing

Before we get into Haney’s findings, lets take a look at plumb-bobbing and how to do it correctly. Here are six tips on plumb-bobbing:

1. Stand behind the ball 2. Extend one arm 3. Hold the grip lightly 4. Align your dominant eye 5. Flex your knees 6. Align the shaft’s longest point

Stand behind the ball so the hole, ball, and your dominant eye are aligned. Keep your eyes parallel to whatever slope exists on the portion of the green you’re standing on. Flex your knees slightly. Let your body tilt with the green’s slope. Holding the top of the grip lightly between your thumb and forefinger, extend your arm slightly.  Let the putter hang freely in your grip.

Next, using your dominant eye, line up the putter so that the shaft’s lowest point covers the ball. Without moving your head, look up at the hole. If it appears to the right of the shaft, the hole slopes left. If it appears on the left, the hole slopes right. If it’s in line with the putter, the hole is flat.  That’s all there is to it.  You could learn all you need to know about plumb-bobbing in the first 5 minutes of a golf lesson.

Determining

Plumb-Bobbing Distance

If you plumb-bob correctly, you’ll notice that the putter makes a point either left or right of the hole on the putting surface. The distance from that spot to the center of the hole, Haney explains, is the plumb-bob distance (PBD), a measure of slope and distance at the ball. On a level putt with no right or left break, the PBD is zero. But for all other putts, plumb-bobbing produces a discrete value. That value is an indicator of how much the ball will react around the hole.

Using PBD, Haney developed a computer model on plumb-bobbing. It takes into account varying speeds of greens, the distance of a putt, and the amount of slope (both sideways and up or down). It also takes into account the effect of friction on a putt. When you first stroke a ball, it first slides and then rolls. Both are considered in the computer model. The force of friction causes the ball to slow down. Haney’s goal was to figure out if you could use plumb-bobbin to determine the true amount of the break.

Computer Model Guidelines

After examining lots of examples and producing numerous charts, Haney concludes that for typical green speeds (9 on the Stimpmeter) and level putts (no uphill or downhill slope), the amount of break varies from slightly more that the PDB for gentle slopes to about 1-1/2 times the PBD for steeper slopes.

The above guidelines assume you’re following the Dave Pelz suggestion for leaving your missed putts 17 inches past the cup. If you like to die your putts into the hole, then you need to allow for about 2 to 4 times the PBD for steeper slopes.

For similar conditions, moderate uphill putts break as little as half the PBD. Down hill putts can break anywhere from eight to 10 times the PBD. Obviously, downhill putts break much more than uphill putts. Green speed has much the same effect as uphill and downhill putts. The break is greater for faster greens than for slower ones.

Putting is about feel and information processing. The better feel you have and the more accurate your information processing, the more your chance of being the kind of putter that sports a low golf handicap and that I talk about in my golf tips. Keep in mind, however, that there’s no magic formula for determining the break on a putt. But by experimenting and using PBD as an additional bit of information, you can improve your green-reading skills.