Georgia Hall on Hitting a Stable Drive (Video)

With Georgia Hall having won the Ricoh Women's British Open this past weekend, I thought it might be good to take a quick look at her swing. She did this video on driving for the LET.



I'm not going to focus on any specific tip from this video. Rather, I want you to notice what she calls this video -- "The Stable Drive." As she says, too many players move too much over the ball, and that makes it hard to get consistent and predictable hits.

Georgia's not talking about being immovable over the ball; she specifically says that she works on rhythm, which requires you to stay relaxed. We all tend to get so tight! We freeze over the ball during address, then we jerk around when we finally try to move and we wonder why we can't stay steady over the ball.

If we want to get better, we have to learn to relax and move freely during our swings. And as she says, trying to hit the ball too hard works against that. It's better to accept what feels like a little less clubhead speed at first while we learn how to "swing casual," to borrow an old Han Solo line, then just move a little quicker as we get more relaxed.

Hey, it worked for Georgia Hall. It couldn't hurt to try it, could it?

David Howell on Hitting a Hybrid (Video)

David Howell did a great little video on hitting a hybrid solidly. I want you to see his ball position.



You can get several good views of his address position in this video, but there's a really good one at the 1:23 mark. Here's a still that I snagged:



The ball is just ahead of the center of his stance, maybe a third of the way between his heels. The shaft points almost straight up, pointing at his lead ear or perhaps just a fraction inside it. (Maybe his lead eye? No more than that.) I'd pay a lot of attention to that vertical shaft at address; if you get that right, you'll probably get the ball position correct for your swing.

And when he swings, he takes a slight divot; you can see the dirt fly when he does.

That's the big thing I'd like you to get from this, although you can certainly pick up some other tips from what David says. But if you put the ball too far forward or too far back, you're going to have trouble getting a consistent strike on the ball.

And ball position is something EVERYBODY can learn. You don't need any specific physical gifts to learn where your best ball position is!

Todd Sones and His Radical Putting Technique (Video)

I said it's radical, but I'm going to take it even farther and teach you what I do. GCA coach Todd Somes wants you to ignore your putter's swing path!



Somes says not to worry about your swing path, just think about where you want the ball to go. But I'm going to take it a step further...

Your putter's swing path doesn't matter!

I mean it. Seriously. Your putter's swing path doesn't matter at all. Here's why:

When your putter is one foot behind the ball, does it contact the ball at all? No. So it doesn't affect your ball there. Nor does it affect the ball from two feet back or six inches back. Which begs the question: Exactly when does the putterhead affect where the ball goes?

ANSWER: From just a fraction of an inch before contact until the ball is no longer touching the ball. That is no more than TWO INCHES, give or take a quarter inch.

Now consider the nature of a putter's stroke. No matter whether your putter travels forward and back in a straight line, or in a gentle arc around your body, there is a short section of that stroke where the putterhead is traveling in a straight line. That section might be as long as four to six inches, depending on your stroke, and the middle of that section is when the putter shaft is vertical.

Which means that, no matter what shape your putter stroke takes, the putterhead travels straight toward the hole in the middle of your stroke, and it does so for long enough to hit the ball on your chosen aim line. All you have to do is get the ball position correct and this will happen automatically, no matter how you swing the putter.

So the real question is... where should you position the ball?

ANSWER: Hold your putter in your normal putting grip and stance, and let your arms and hands hang down so the shaft is vertical. When you do, the shaft is pointing to your ball position. When you place the ball there and take your stance, your hands will be over the ball and the shaft will lean ever so slightly forward.

I've recommended this ball position several times in this blog. It's the simplest way to get a consistent ball position, which means you'll get a more consistent strike. Your stance may be square, open or closed; it just doesn't matter. As long as the ball is in the middle of that little straight section of your putting stroke, the ball will go down your aimline without any manipulation by you. You can focus on your speed.

It sounds too good to be true, I know. But I have a friend who used to be a PGA Tour caddie and, every time he sees me putt, he comments about how solid my six- and seven-foot putts are, and about how little time I take to putt them. That's because I KNOW that, as long as I can see my line, my ball will usually go where I want it to go. Nobody makes everything, but I make enough to feel confident when I stand over the ball. (And most of my misses are misreads. Nobody's perfect!)

Yes, it sounds too good to be true, but it IS true. This isn't rocket science, folks. Don't make your putting harder than it has to be. Ball position is the most important key to better putting. It really is that simple.

John Cook on Putting at a Links Course (Video)

Since the Open is this week, here's a Live from the Open clip from Monday, with John Cook demonstrating how to putt on a links course when the wind is blowing. This might help you on any windy course, though.



Cook's keys are simple:

• Widen your stance.
• Place the ball near the center of your body.
• Grip down slightly on the grip.
• Trust your eyes.

I think the "trust your eyes" advice is interesting, especially since -- after setting up with the ball more centered -- John appears to move his ball forward in his stance! Apparently what John sees in this lesson is a bit different than what he says.

This is pretty standard advice, don't you think? But I find Cook's ball position change to be the interesting bit here. No matter how much instruction you hear about how to do something, when it comes to putting, mechanics are no substitute for feel. It's important to make sure you feel comfortable over a putt. If that means you have to break the rules a bit, so be it.

Tyrrell Hatton on Pitch Shots (Video)

Tyrrell Hatton will likely be on the European Ryder Cup team later this year, so it's appropriate to take a look at how he plays pitch shots. Note that Tyrrell is playing only a 55-yard shot here. That's tricky for many players.



While Tyrrell says he swings "shoulder to shoulder" with this swing, you can see in the video that his hands actually never get to shoulder height on his backswing. Rather, his lead arm is parallel to the ground, which is quite normal for most players hitting a pitch shot.

He positions the ball in the middle of his stance for this shot, which creates a downward strike that gives him a reasonable amount of spin, but not enough to get the ball zipping backward once it hits the green. You don't want a lot of spin on this shot; ideally, you'd like it to hop once or twice and stop. Clean contact is the important thing here.

Ironically, as I watched Tyrrell's swing, I had the same reaction I did with Andrew Rice's video lesson in yesterday's post. Tyrrell is making a move that's almost identical to the L-to-L drill I keep mentioning. (This link goes to a post with the simplest version of that drill.)

I know I say it a lot, but the L-to-L drill is a fundamental move in the golf swing. The more you work on it, the better your impact will be, which means you'll get more distance with more accuracy than you would otherwise. And you get those advantages simply by choosing how you want to focus your practice -- in today's case, it would be short game work -- and then using the same basic drill with that goal in mind.

Since you'll be using the same drill each time, you'll continue to help your overall swing at the same time, which should cut the amount of practice time you need to keep your swing in shape.

It's a win-win situation.

Paul Casey's Setup Changes (Video)

I couldn't ignore this. Paul Casey's 62 -- his lowest score ever on the PGA Tour -- was the result of a couple of simple setup changes. Here's the video where he describes them. His interview begins around the 2:55 mark and the changes he made are mentioned around the 4:30 mark.



Casey was struggling with pulled shots. He and coach Peter Kostis fixed the problem by having him stand closer to the ball, which probably played a part in the second fix -- correcting his posture. Sounds simple, but it was enough to help him hit 10 of 14 fairways and all 18 greens on Saturday, which gave him a four shot lead.

It's amazing how many problems can be fixed simply by adjusting your setup. I particularly want to call your attention to checking how far you stand from the ball. Standing closer to the ball can help you fade it; standing farther from it can help you draw it.

HOWEVER, standing too close can create a banana ball (or a dead pull) while standing too far away can cause a big duck hook (or even a big push). It depends on what other problems you're dealing with -- in this case, Casey's poor posture combined with poor ball position caused him to pull shots.

Before you think about making swing changes, do the smart thing and make sure that your address position is good. Correcting your setup can bring a dramatic improvement in your game without the difficulties involved with a swing change.

Btw, I considered posting this video of Rory's run-in with that squirrel at Travelers, but felt Casey's setup changes were more valuable to most of you. That doesn't mean you can't click the link and see what a brave squirrel can do to a pro, though. ;-)

Ged Walters on Hitting a Draw (Video)

Golf Monthly's Ged Walters did this cool video on hitting a draw. Why is it so cool? Because he's hitting irons off the fairway, not drivers off the tee! And to make it even better, he's hitting from a hanging lie, which makes the shot even tougher.



The fundamental things he teaches here are not new or unique, but his presentation is one of the simplest I've seen. Let me point out a couple of things he says.

First of all, I like how he distinguishes between a draw and a hook. It's not about how big the curve is, but about whether the ball is getting closer to the target or farther away at the end. A draw curves out and and finishes "on target" -- that means it's still moving toward the target when it stops. A hook curves around too much, so that it moves past the target and keeps moving away from it. A hook is out of control. That's a good way to think about it.

He likens the way you strike the ball with the club to the way a footballer kicks the ball. (For my American readers, we'd call it soccer.) The kicker strikes the ball with the inside of his foot; the inside of his foot is facing the target while his foot is moving out to the right (you lefties would be moving to the left).

And playing off a hanging lie? You just exaggerate this action. A very simple explanation.

If there's one key technical thought I'd like you to remember, it's that you position the ball just slightly back of center in your stance. You want to come at the ball slightly from the inside with your swing -- that's the footballer analogy again -- and moving the ball back slightly encourages that, without having to make a huge change to your swing. You might even want to stand slightly farther from the ball, simply because that will help you hit from the inside more easily, without a lot of conscious thought.

Walters has -- in my opinion -- done a real service to weekend players with this explanation of how to play a draw off the turf with an iron. So spend a little time with this video. It'll be well worth your time.

Kristin Sunderhaft on Ball Position (Video)

Kristin Sunderhaft, an LPGA teaching pro in Las Vegas, did this video some time back on ball position. It's helpful because you can actually see how she's positioning the ball, so have a look:



Kristin teaches three ball positions for your full swing, depending on what club you're using. That may sound different from what I teach -- I position the ball under my hands -- but bear in mind that, as the clubs get longer, my arms have to reach out a bit and that straightens my trailing elbow. And as that happens, my hands move a bit more toward the target as the clubs get longer.

So Kristen's method isn't really that much different from mine, but many of you may find it easier to understand what's happening when you see her in the video. So here are the three ball positions:

• Wedges: Ball in the center of your stance.
• Driver: Ball just off your lead heel or lead instep.
• All other clubs: Ball is slightly left of the center position.

And she shows these positions using a couple of golf clubs to mark your aimline and your ball position. This is a good tactic to use during your own practice, to help you visualize how the actual ball position looks when you're standing over it and not looking at it from the front, as you are when you watch this video.

One last thought: You may think this setup with the two clubs is a reasonably recent invention, perhaps since Hogan really started focusing on mechanics. But here's a photo I posted in a past post about Harry Vardon's method for playing a draw. See anything familiar?



That line drawing in the upper right-hand corner -- and the chalk lines drawn on the ground -- are doing the exact same thing as Kristin's clubs. This is a time-honored method of visualizing ball position, and you should make use of it too.

Sean Foley on Changing Your Angle of Attack (Video)

GC is posting some bits of their Revolution Golf teaching for free, probably as samples of what you'll get if you pay for the service. In them I found this short video from Sean Foley that might help improve your driving.



I know Sean sometimes gets very technical in his explanations, but this isn't difficult to understand.

Your angle of attack is simply whether you're hitting down or up on the ball at impact. And what Sean is saying is that you unconsciously change your angle of attack just by teeing the ball higher or lower. Furthermore, you'll do it regardless of whether you change your ball position or not, because your eyes react to the height of the ball.

• If you tee the ball low, you'll automatically try to hit down on the ball, even if you move the ball forward.
• If you tee the ball high, you'll automatically try to hit up on the ball, even if you move the ball backward.

Obviously, you'd like to move the ball a bit forward when you tee it high, and you'd like to move the ball a bit backward when you tee it low. That way, your ball position and angle of attack are working together to get the results you want.

But what you need to take away from this video is that you can change your angle of attack by as much as ten degrees just by changing how high or low you tee the ball -- and that will happen without any effort on your part to change the angle of attack.

This is a case of simple knowledge being more important than technique. Knowing that what you see will change what you do can eliminate a whole lot of frustration caused by working against your natural tendencies.

Ball Positioning: Feet VS Hands

This is a response to a comment Dana left on my post about Claude Harmon III's setup advice. In that post I mentioned there was a difference between using your feet and your hands to position your golf ball. Dana asked for a bit more detail, so here we go.

Let's start with a theoretical setup with the ball positioned right in the middle of your stance. Your weight is evenly divided between your feet, and a vertical line (dotted in the diagrams that follow) would pass through your chin, along your spine, through your hands and split the ball exactly in half in the middle of your stance.

As you can see, in this admittedly perfect setup, the clubhead sits just behind the ball at address and, as the curved line with the arrow shows, its swing path would contact the ball perfectly and take a tiny divot just after you hit the ball.



But this is a perfect address position, after all. Let's suppose -- simply because we need a situation that you might commonly experience -- that there's a stiff wind blowing at us from the direction of the target. In order to steady ourselves, we shift our weight a bit forward, placing more weight on our lead foot. As you can see in the diagram below, the vertical dotted line shows that our spine has shifted forward.

However, since the ball is positioned in the center of our stance -- that is, we positioned the ball using our feet -- the ball is no longer in the correct position for solid contact. In fact, the ball is actually hidden by the clubhead in this diagram! If you position the ball relative to your feet, you'll have to make changes to your swing just so you can get the ball in the air.



But what if we had been using our hands to position the ball? In the original diagram, the ball was also directly under our hands. What if we had set our weight forward to resist the wind BUT we still positioned the ball under our hands?



As you can see from the final diagram, the ball is still in the correct position relative to our head and our spine, which is the critical thing here if we want to keep our swing arc consistent. In this final address position, we'll make the same solid contact with the ball that we would have made in the original setup in the first diagram.

And as long as we don't lean our spine toward (or away from) the target, positioning the ball relative to our hands means we automatically keep our swing consistent.

Obviously we're talking about stances on fairly level ground here. If we have a serious uphill or downhill lie, we'll always have to adjust our swing. But for the vast majority of normal stances, just letting your hands hang down and setting up so the ball is directly beneath them gives you the most consistent method of creating solid contact.

Now I have to admit, it's not exactly correct to say the ball is UNDER your hands. The ball would be much too close to your body if that was the case. It would be more correct to say that, if you drew a line on the ground extending away from you -- imagine a line connecting your feet, and the "ball line" would form a T with that line -- the ball would be on that line far enough away that your could make proper contact with the clubface. When using this method, you just let your hands and arms hang down, then position the ball so that the T is directly under your hands.

Hopefully that's pretty clear. (I didn't think to make a diagram showing the T positioning method, so that may be a bit hazy.) If you have any questions, you can just put them in the comments below and I'll try to do a better job. But once you've done it a time or two, I think you'll agree it really simplifies your setup with all but the most difficult stances.