The post Driver was the worst part of my golf game. These 3 fixes have me feeling more confident than ever. appeared first on Golf.

The post Driver was the worst part of my golf game. These 3 fixes have me feeling more confident than ever. appeared first on Golf.

Are you lacking confidence on the tee box? I was too. For years, I hit what my friends dubbed a “boomerang” — a wicked, arcing slice that made doglegs difficult and forced carries impossible. Now, I feel like an entirely different player, and that’s thanks to three key swing fixes:

After just a handful of sessions at my local GOLFTEC in Englewood, New Jersey, my swing was looking a lot better. But more importantly, my swing IQ had skyrocketed.

My GOLFTEC coach Nick Schiavo made sure I understood not only what I needed to do better, but why I needed to do it. The result was a major confidence boost with a driver in my hand — an excitement to show off what I can do, rather than fearing the bad (and I mean really bad) outcomes that were possible.

Fix 1: Understanding (and maximizing) power

Are you maximizing power in your golf swing? If you’re a mid-handicapper like me, the answer is probably not.

I didn’t really understand what ‘taking a turn’ meant in the backswing, so instead of rotating my hips, I was just swaying them back and forth.

After identifying the issue, turning my hip sway into hip rotation has been a relatively easy, if time-consuming process. Nick helped me find a more athletic posture by narrowing my stance and sticking my butt out further. He gave me a drill to do at home, where I kept my rear end on the wall behind me and rotated my lower body correctly through the swing.

Now my body doesn’t slide away from my target during the backswing. Instead, I transfer the weight into my back leg, keeping my right knee in place. On the way down, I transfer that weight forward and fire my hips through the ball at impact. In other words, my swing looks like a real golf swing!

The other key to unlocking power wasn’t where I expected it at all. Nick identified that I had a very strong grip (a common theme among former baseball players), and I kept my wrists completely locked. This was a huge mistake that had cost me ball speed and distance my whole life.

By using the proper wrist hinge in your swing, you too can gain power you might not know you had! I learned quickly that by loosening my grip and activating my wrists at the top of my backswing, I could create more clubhead speed on the way down. It’s important to get the timing right, my GOLFTEC instructor helped me understand how to do this most effectively.

Fix 2: Building a swing routine

I always knew I had to find a consistent way to address the ball, but because my old swing was so bad, I was always trying to tweak on the fly. It was all a perfect storm to feel no confidence with a driver in my hand.

The first step Nick and I took was to address the ball the exact same way, every time I got to the tee box. Establishing a routine made me feel more comfortable, not to mention more consistent.

Nick had me grip my driver and had me slowly bend into my new, athletic posture until the clubhead was right behind the ball. We also decided I should tee the ball lower for more consistent strike on the face, and not worry about trying to hover the clubhead at address (which eliminated the 100-yard popup from my game).

We decided it was best for me to keep my lead arm as straight as possible throughout the swing, so it felt like my left arm was locked at address. Since I’d struggled with my launch angle, Nick had me lower my right shoulder slightly when addressing the ball. This led to my driver catching the ball at a much better angle and my ball flight soaring.

This may seem like a long list of changes, but coming up with a repeatable way to address the ball didn’t take more than 30 minutes of my time at GOLFTEC, and now it’s become second nature!

Fix 3: Forgiveness over everything

There’s no club fitting process that’s as fun as a driver fitting. Grip, rip, and watch your numbers soar in the simulator.

If you too have been holding on to your trusty driver of many years (I was playing with a 2013 Callaway X-Hot), trust me when I tell you: now is the time to make the change. This year, club manufacturers have made great strides in technology compared to previous models, not to mention that we’re just months away from the drop of next year’s new tech.

In my GOLFTEC driver fitting, I got to try the TaylorMade Stealth, PING G425, and Callaway Rogue ST Max. It was evident how much my outdated driver was holding me back, because I instantly saw 20-30-yard distance increases off the tee.

Nick and I went over the specs of each trial round to make the best decision for my game. Still lacking a consistent strike on the sweet spot, we went with the Rogue ST Max. It’s considered to be one of the most forgiving drivers on the market, meaning that players will see increased performance even on off-center hits.

Now, when playing with family and friends, not only do I enjoy showing off the new driver, but also my new swing. (The hundreds of additional fairways that have come with it haven’t been too bad, either!)

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The post What I learned during a ball-striking challenge vs. my co-worker appeared first on Golf.

The post What I learned during a ball-striking challenge vs. my co-worker appeared first on Golf.

There’s no one, perfect way to get better at golf — but it certainly doesn’t happen with ease by banging balls at the range without any sort of plan.

To really improve, you need focused, targeted practice. And, more importantly, you need feedback. Over the past few months, I’ve been among a handful of GOLF.com staffers who’ve benefited from both of these things. After a successful Room for Improvement campaign with GOLFTEC — in which several of our staffers across the U.S took lessons and chronicled their progress — we’re back for Year 2.

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This time it’s called the Room for Improvement Skills Challenge. The goal is to still get better, but this time we’re doing it head to head. Eight of us are competing in a bracket-style challenge with each matchup focusing on a different, targeted and important part of the game (driving, short game, etc). The winners keep advancing until we crown a champion.

My first-round opponent was Claire Rogers, GOLF’s social media manager, and our skills challenge was iron play.

The rules were simple:

(1) Pair up with a coach at a GOLFTEC location (Claire’s was in Cranston, R.I., and mine was in Minnetonka, Minn.).

(2) Take GOLFTEC’s irons skills challenge, which measures eight swings on a launch monitor and spits out a baseline rating based on your accuracy (or lack thereof) from four distances (two swings each from 120, 135, 150 and 165 yards).

(3) Try to improve on that number. Over a series of lessons, we’d aim to dial in those scoring clubs as much as possible, under the tutelage of our coaches. At the end of the regimen, we’d take the irons skills challenge again. Whoever posted the highest score would advance to Round 2.

The challenge

For starters, the baseline. As a 14 handicap, my initial score out of 100 was 76.3. Claire, a 16 handicap, scored 47.8. Since the challenge was simply who could score the highest, I was off to a great start. But this was no runaway competition.

“Right away, [GOLFTEC coach] Ryan [Galloway] noticed I switched my grip before I even start my takeaway, and that I bring the club way inside,” Claire said.

Me? I had my own problems. My swing still had a tendency to get too steep; so hand path was always something important for me to work on. My coach, Nick Pelle, brought out a noodle and a hula hoop to help me out.

“You are kind of using that noodle for your swing direction,” he said. “You are going to kind of pull your hands in along the hoop, and on the downswing, you want to try and get your clubhead to trace and follow the path of the noodle. If you hit the noodle that means your swing path got a little outside to in.”

This worked well for me, as did a Spiderman swing thought I already wrote about this year.

Over the next several weeks, we got to work, taking lessons, practicing and playing golf on our own time and trying to focus on the little but significant tweaks our coaches were helping us incorporate into our games.

After working a lot on her setup, address and hand path, Claire found some enormous gains when she returned for her second baseline test. Her new total? A whopping 73.5 — more than 25 points higher than her previous test.

I knew what I had to beat, but it didn’t start off well. For starters, I should have sandbagged more. When I did my first baseline test I hit my two shots from 120 yards to 10 and 16 feet, when the PGA Tour average from that distance is 20 feet.

I didn’t beat those numbers on my second go-around but still did well at that station. The difference came when we moved farther away from the target, as I got slightly better from all of those distances. From the last station (165 yards), for example, I scored an 81 compared to a 73 the first time.

I ended up improving too, going from a 76.3 to an 82, which was enough to edge Claire 82-73.5.

Now, if the competition would have been decided by who improved the most, Claire would have mopped the floor with me. (But I don’t make the rules!) But she deserves major props for some massive gains and being a good sport, to boot.

“I still feel like I learned a lot and my swing improved, so now when I’m on the course and things start to go wrong, I think I know my general tendencies, thanks to Ryan,” she said. “Where I can kind of say, ‘OK, here’s what I need to work on’ and kind of get myself back on track.”

Next up for me? I get to take on another co-worker in the semifinals of our office competition. We’ll face off in a short-game skills challenge, and the winner of that will head to the championship for one final battle. Wish me luck. And keep following along.

Watch this space for more episodes of the Room for Improvement Skills Challenge. To set up your own GOLFTEC swing evaluation or club-fitting, click the link below.

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Our GOLF.com staffers are teaming up with local GOLFTEC coaches to see whose game improves the most. Josh Berhow and Claire Rogers battle it out with their irons for the right to keep their GOLFTEC journey going.

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The post We both struggle with long irons. Here’s what we did to fix it appeared first on Golf.

The post We both struggle with long irons. Here’s what we did to fix it appeared first on Golf.

He won. I lost. We won. You may win. I’m not sure what that makes everyone’s record here, but let’s continue. 

Our game was simple, and it wasn’t. Coworker Tim Reilly and I recently competed in a long game skills challenge. We hit shots from 180, 200 and 220 yards. A month later, we hit them again. In between, we were guided by GOLFTEC.   

And therein also lay the difficult part. From deep, Tim and I were coming up short. While we could explain the game to you on this website, we hadn’t necessarily been able to translate it to ourselves. We needed the coaching. 

“If you ask anyone who I play golf with regularly what my biggest weakness is, the likely answer is consistency with long irons,” Tim told me. “They have been a guessing game for me for as long as I’ve been playing golf.”

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Same here. I actually texted three friends ahead of time to ask what they thought my golf shortcoming was — it’s a *great* question for your golf buddies, by the way — and they all said 5-iron on down, though with a few more adjectives and adverbs. My problem is, I’m a self-taught player, and while that works for some, and to a degree it’s worked for me — I’ve broken 80 a few times — I’ve never quite been able to cobble together a swing to get me home from over 175 yards out. It’s not just one “miss,” either, though usually I bone-stingingly hit it thin. 

So we went to work. Here are the particulars: Our contest is the second match-up in a bracket-style competition in which eight GOLF.com staff members are squaring off — with a GOLFTEC coach at our sides — to determine, through cold, hard data, who can improve the most this golf season. (Round 1 features skills challenges in four categories: driving, long game, iron play and short game.)

The rules for our long game clash: 

(1) Pair up with a coach at a GOLFTEC location (Tim worked with Dan Benzenberg in Carle Park, N.Y., and I connected with Nick Schiavo in Englewood, N.J.). 

Driving

(2) Take GOLFTEC’s long game challenge, which measures shots from 180, 200 and 220 yards on a launch monitor and spits out a rating based on accuracy (or lack thereof). 

(3) Try to improve on that number. Over a series of lessons, we aimed to tack on as much accuracy to our swings as possible, under the tutelage of our coaches. At the end of the regimen, we’d take the long game challenge again. Whoever posted the highest score would advance to Round 2.    

Let’s begin. On day one, as coaches Benzenberg and Schiavo monitored on a computer behind us, I scored a 61.9 and Tim a 76.8, and we were debriefed. Benzenberg, Tim said, first addressed his impact position.  

“I was, for lack of a better term, ‘flipping’ at the ball and costing myself a lot of power and a lot of inconsistent contact points,” Tim said. “Between that and a combination of body and head sway, I was in poor positions.”

I heard the word sway, too. And words on my grip (“too strong”). And my back (“more ‘S’ curve”). And my feet (“too wide”). And my hips (“no turn”). Oh, and my backswing, downswing and follow-through. Them, too. And this funky “dip.” Visually, think slow-pitch softball swing. Descriptively, think tail wagging the dog — my arms were doing most, if not all, of the work, and the rest of my body was along for the ride. 

So what was the fix for Tim?

“First, we worked hard to eliminate the sway in my hips and head,” he said. “I now have a quieter body during my swing. From there, we worked on squaring my clubface more at the point of contact. We went about doing that by hitting a lot of punch shots. I exaggerated the action and feeling as much as possible to get my hands out front more and clubface where it needs to be. This felt like a knockdown shot until the point of feeling natural. That’s what over 1,000 swings like this will do.”

For me, we checked off the easy corrections first — I softened my grip, brought my feet in a few inches and slightly cocked my back up. From there, we spent the next four lessons positioning my hands on the takeaway (“point the butt end of the club at your right hip”), improving my rotation (“turn your right hip inward”), working my wrists on the backswing (“cock them as you rotate”) positioning my legs (“anchor the right leg on the back swing, and the left leg coming through”) and finishing. So a lot. 

But to be honest, it was easier done than said. The results were less than desirable; we were both rebuilding and erasing, and neither Rome nor a golf swing can be built in a day. However, when it was right, it was pure. I was putting in less effort and receiving better output. In high school science, that was termed an efficient machine, and I felt like one. 

And Tim’s adjustments?

“I’ve gained nearly 15 yards of distance with some of my irons and now I have to take a moment to reassess which club I’m pulling out of my bag,” he said. “The distance gains have been a great stride, and I find myself having a much better idea of what I will do with my long irons. It’s not a complete guessing game anymore.”

And we then competed again. If you read the first paragraph, you know how this ends. Tim won. He scored a 71.8. I scored a 65.8. But, but, but! We both won. And you may win. 

Cheesy, yes. But so are pizzas, and who doesn’t like pizza? 

We both came out ahead. We are better for having done it. And whatever you can take from that, by all means do. 

“The most exciting part is seeing these results and knowing I’m not even all the way there yet,” Tim said. 

Good game, champ. 

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The post Room for Improvement: Zephyr’s Driver Fitting appeared first on Golf.

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At GOLF.com, we live and breathe golf, but it still leaves us perplexed. So we sent eight staffers on a game improvement journey, courtesy of GOLFTEC.

The post Room for Improvement: Zephyr’s Driver Fitting appeared first on Golf.

The post How I shallowed out my golf swing and hit my driver better than ever appeared first on Golf.

The post How I shallowed out my golf swing and hit my driver better than ever appeared first on Golf.

At GOLF.com, we live and breathe golf, but it still leaves us perplexed. So we sent eight staffers on a game-improvement journey, courtesy of GOLFTEC.

My golf swing is as homegrown as they come. I never took lessons growing up, and my game is much more feel-based than concerned with perfect technique. This strategy got my game into pretty solid shape over the years. As of spring of 2021, my handicap index was in the mid-single digits, and I was confident in what I could do on the course.

But as good as my homegrown swing was, I knew the ceiling was nearing. Being a 5 handicap is fun, but I aspire to get my game down to scratch. And for that, I knew I needed some help. So, I got in touch with our friends at GOLFTEC.

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They hooked with me up with Nick Schiavo at their Englewood, N.J. location, and from the very first lesson, I knew this was the coach for me. Nick knows the swing well, and his style of communication is perfect for my personality. The improvement was apparent after the very first lesson.

Nick pointed out that my hand path was a little too far inside on the takeaway, and my arms were too high at the top of the swing. This made my downswing far too steep, and sapped me of much-needed power.

To fix these issues, Nick and I used a pool noodle as a training aid. He would stand behind me and hold the noodle out, forcing me to get my swing plane underneath it on the downswing. It felt awkward at first, but as we continued with the drill, it became easier and easier for me to shallow out my swing.

To see my full journey, watch the video above!

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At GOLF.com, we live and breathe golf, but it still leaves us perplexed. So we sent eight staffers on a game improvement journey, courtesy of GOLFTEC.

The post Room for Improvement: Zephyr in New York appeared first on Golf.

The post Room for Improvement: Sean in Chicago appeared first on Golf.

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At GOLF.com, we live and breathe golf, but it still leaves us perplexed. So we sent eight staffers on a game improvement journey, courtesy of GOLFTEC.

The post Room for Improvement: Sean in Chicago appeared first on Golf.

The post How this 10-handicap stopped his sway and added power to his swing appeared first on Golf.

The post How this 10-handicap stopped his sway and added power to his swing appeared first on Golf.

GOLF’s Tim Reilly is a classic weekend warrior. He gets out on the course (pushcart in tow) as much as anyone in the office, and he knows his game to a T.

There’s nothing flashy about his game, but it gets the job done. His scores hover in the 80s, but there is an occasional round he’ll take it into the 70s. The foundations are there for a solid single-digit handicap game; he just needs a little help.

In search of that help, Tim connected with our partners over at GOLFTEC for a swing evaluation and series of lessons to get him playing the best golf of his life.

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On April 20, 2021, Tim showed up for the first lesson of his life. And at first glance, his instructor, Dan Benzenberg, was pleased with what he saw. Tim’s swing direction was on track, and he clearly knew how to get the ball to go in the general direction he hoped it would.

But while the direction was good, the contact was not always consistent. Tim swayed his body far too much during the swing, which caused his club to bottom out at inconsistent spots near impact. The result was a swing that was serviceable but not as repeatable as he wanted.

To fix this issue, Tim’s coach had him set up his golf bag behind his back leg to discourage him for swaying so far off the ball. If he swayed back too much, he’d hit the bag and know he had too much lateral movement during the swing.

After a few weeks grinding on the range, the change started to take hold and Tim saw dramatic improvement on his swing.

Check out his entire swing-improvement journey in the video above.

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The post How working on my golf swing’s low-point improved my solid contact appeared first on Golf.

The post How working on my golf swing’s low-point improved my solid contact appeared first on Golf.

Five months ago, I took the first of what turned into a total of 10 lessons at my local GOLFTEC in Scottsdale, Ariz. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect — I’ve been a golfer for three decades, but my dad was my primary instructor in my formative years. I took a handful of lessons from others as a junior, but never on a consistent schedule or with the same instructor.

I have plenty of competitive experience on my resume — I played collegiately at Columbia and qualified for the 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am — but that seems like eons ago now. My life has changed a lot in recent years. I’m a mama now, to a soon-to-be five-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. As much as I love the game, rounds of golf — and even range time — have been subjected a free-fall in terms of time priority. My handicap — a mid single-digit — has languished in the no-man’s-land that is years of unposted scores.

But with my daughter starting kindergarten this year, and my son nearly pre-school eligible, I knew it was high time to get my game back in gear. “Me time” approacheth! And I planned to devote one day a week to swinging a club once the kids were in school. What better way to prepare myself than with a lesson series, for the first time ever?

Instruction

So I arrived to my first session with an equal mix of trepidation and eager anticipation. What is it about hitting shots into a net in front of someone that makes you feel like you might shank each one?! So nerve-wracking. Anyway, after taking a few swings, I explained to my instructor, Thomas Howell, that I would do my best to practice but it would likely be minimal. Tom was great — he said he understood, and we would basically do the best we can with what we’ve got.

So! My swing revealed two significant leaks that Tom suggested we hone in on. The first: my swing’s low point. I’m a bit of a sweeper, so Tom thought we could get more clubhead speed and distance out of each shot if I had more ball-first contact. To do that, Tom suggested we address my lack of a wrist hinge. Instead of the ideal “L” shape that players like Collin Morikawa make on the way back, my shape looks more like … well, let’s say a very obtuse angle. In short: there’s a lot more wrist hinge to be had! So that’s what we decided to focus on.

I should note that, over the course of my life, I have given my golf swing pretty much zero thought. I am not a technical person or player. My swing is essentially the same now as when I was six years old. So, over the course of my sessions with Tom, thinking about things Tom suggested like adjusting my head position, shoulder set, weight distribution and wrist hinge was admittedly difficult for me. I felt like my mind was going a mile a minute over the ball, but together we worked through it, and found a balance that got my swing into a better spot, without me thinking too much.

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Tom was great partner to have throughout the experience because of his willingness to pivot when I started getting frustrated or demoralized. He always had another drill at the ready if the first one just wasn’t clicking — and that happened several times! I think one of my biggest takeaways was the fact that improvement is certainly not linear. I had what felt like multiple setbacks, but Tom would often suggest something at the end of the session that would result in a bit of a breakthrough or at least leave the lesson on a high note.

My wrist hinge still isn’t where I ideally want it to be, but as Tom told me: I can still play perfectly enjoyable golf with the swing that I have right now. Real, meaningful change will require a higher time commitment, but the process of doing that has already helped me make better ball-first contact. It’s getting better and better every day, and the process of working it means I now have an arsenal of things I know to tweak when my swing starts to go sideways on the course. I’ve truly never had that before, and that alone makes the last five months of effort worthwhile.

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