A Morning Around the PracticeGreen

I went to the range this morning to get a little practice in before I settle down to watch the Masters broadcast. I took a putter, and 8-iron, and four balls. I started chipping with the 8-iron to holes different distances away to see how close I could chip effectively with it, and how far away. I plan on doing that with all my chipping clubs, 6-iron through sand wedge. Someone else can chip with their lob wedge, but not me.

In addition to finding out what I wanted to know about the 8-iron, I found an effective way of judging the strength of the stroke. It's fairly intuitive. I was just looking at the hole and waiting for a feeling to appear that said, in its own way, "This hard." It is a feeling that is in your mind, but is felt in some way in your body, too. I found that if I executed that feeling with my body turn, and not with my hands and arms, my distance control was really good. When the feeling got into my hands, all was lost.

As for putting, I worked on approach putts by dropping balls at 20, 25, 30, and 35 feet, then putting them toward a hole. Again, looking at the length of the putt and letting the right feeling of power to infuse itself worked like a charm. For these longer putts I am finding that the best power generators are the oblique muscles of the abdomen. They are big muscles, not subject to flinching, and are the muscles of the moving stroke farthest away from the hands, which are the last source of power you should consider.

Short putts: Remember how, in the real old days, golfers would putt their putter in front of the ball, then lift it over to the back and make their stroke? They were checking to see if the clubface was square to their starting line, and that is easier to do without a ball in the way. If you have an alignment mark in the top surface of your putter, all the better. Mine doesn't, so I drew one with a Sharpie.

You put the putter in front of the ball, line things up, lift up the putter and replace it behind the ball without disturbing the alignment of the mark, and stroke along that line. Works great. You don't have to spend all that time fussing with the mark on the golf ball.

One last thing. Two last things, actually. Set the putter down gently so it barely touches the ground. That gives you a freer start to the stroke. Keep looking at where the ball was for a few seconds after you have hit the putt. I don't know why, by this greatly improves your accuracy.


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