sport education

Confidence is one the most important elements in golf. This is true for golfers of all ages, but it is especially true for younger golfers. Confidence can be divided up into two general areas.

The first is confidence in yourself as a person. This separates you from golf, or any other single endeavor. Do you like yourself? What is your value to you? If you start to question yourself because you play golf poorly you are not putting a very high value on you as a person.

The second type of confidence is performance confidence. This is about how well you expect to perform. Some people have little confidence in their ability to play well even if all the evidence strongly suggests that they will perform well. These people usually have low self-esteem and therefore have little of the first type of confidence mentioned above. Without good confidence in yourself as a person, it is not likely that a golfer will have high performance confidence.

Others have great amounts of confidence in their ability to perform well, even though they have not put in the necessary time and training to build up their level of play. These people begin each tournament or round with the greatest expectation and often feel very disappointed after a few holes of average or poor play. These golfers have not learned how to develop true confidence and instead rely on wishful thinking.

The first step in building up true confidence is to give the youth the understanding that golf is not life and that it is something that develops and improves over time. They do not need to play well to enjoy the game. Talk to them about how uneven and unpredictable the game actually is. Help them be ready for anything so that they can enjoy the experience without tying it to their own value as a person. If you think you are motivating someone by belittling them, think again. You are simply modeling being a bully and if they buy into your thinking they will not develop true confidence because they will strive to satisfy others and not set their own goals and limits.

One way to help a young player is to have them break down their game into five or six categories or components. Make sure that menta preparation is one of the categories. (Didn’t think of that one did you?) The other categories could include such things as short putts, long putts, distance, accuracy, sand shots, and other elements that are easily kept track of. Ask the young golfer to make a list and, in a practice round, keep track of what actually went well and what areas were problems. It is hard to mess up in everything.

After the round go over the results and look for the good and the bad. Talk up the strengths and show him or her how to improve. Then go over the problem areas and talk about what is needed to improve. Always have the belief that they are exactly where they should be as to level of play. If you get upset, you teach them that they are wrong or off base or not trying – and you make it hard for them to emotionally be available to put energy into practice. By breaking golf down into these components you help them enjoy the positive and tackle the negative.

Remember the old saying, “A bad day on the golf course is better than a good day at the office”. Help the young golfer understand why this is true.

And remember to build up the person, break down the problems, stress the positive and model having fun doing it all.

The chip and run should be the workhorse of your short game. It is the most reliable shot around the green when you can’t putt.

I would estimate that at least 95% of my short game shots (from within 20 yards of the edge of the green) are played with a chip and run technique, and the other 5% is made up of putts from off the green, pitches, and bunker shots.

Getting the ball on the ground and rolling as soon as possible greatly increases the chances of the ball’s behavior being predictable. That is not to say that a chip and run is always very low to the ground; just as low as possible. A chip and run style shot can be played with the most lofted wedge in your bag, in which case some people might refer to the shot as a “pitch and run.”

In many cases where the average golfer tries to pitch the ball up in the air, the “risk vs. reward” and the uncontrollable nature of a pitch (especially from a marginal lie) make it a poor choice.

.Wanna be a good putter? Here are some basic fundamentals you should be practicing.

There are many more (seemingly endless) details about putting, of course, but if you turn these fundamental concepts into habits it will take you a long way toward being a consistently good putter

.Two of the biggest factors that contribute to distance are hitting the golf ball in the center of the club face, and creating speed. Think of your swing as having two engines – your body and your arms. Both are power producers and both have their role in the swing. The body needs to make a centered turn around your spine with limited up and down or side to side motion, thus creating an efficient coiling of the upper body and lower body. The arms are your second engine and they will swing around your body with speed, but only if they are relaxed. Imagine swinging a string with a rock attached at the end. As your arms swing around in a circle, the rock follows the path of the circle, and continues to increase its speed as your arm increases the speed of the string. In its passive state, the string is limp but when in motion, it stretches out and straightens. For those players who try to keep their arms straight at address or during the swing you are simply losing speed, creating tension, and producing a weaker impact.

Imagine a baseball player’s set-up when waiting for their pitch to be delivered (See Image A). Their arms are soft and relaxed so they can generate more bat speed. That is the feeling you need with your setup in golf. At address, the arms should be relaxed and hanging down from your shoulders, tension free. At impact in baseball, the player’s arms are stretched out to full extension but it is the swinging motion of the bat that creates this. (As the body turns, the arms swing around the body on an arc as in the golf swing.) At impact, the relaxed arms are stretched out by centrifugal force due to the swinging motion of the arms. The left arm and club reach their straightest point just past impact. This is a result of the arms being relaxed and tension free in the swing