Butch Harmon – Golf Digest – Try My 10 Minute Warm-Up

Butch Harmon – Golf Digest

Try My 10 Minute Warm Up

1. Leave Stress in the Car

If you’ve got 10 minutes to get to the tee, I’m guessing you just raced to the course in your car. Being all tensed up in a sitting position can really make you stuff, so start by doing some full-body stretching. Spread your arms and legs wide, bend from the hips, and reach out as far as you can in every direction – to the left, the right, straight out. Doing this for a minute or two will get the big muscles in your back and legs out of car mode.

2. Target Your Turn

Quickly head to the range and zero in on the muscles that control your body turn. Hold your driver across your back, get in your address posture, and rotate back and through. Do it slowly at first and work up to fuller, faster turns. Then hit half a dozen balls with a short iron to get a feel for the hinging the club back and releasing it through impact. If you have a weighted club, now’s a great time to swing it.

3. Set up a Good Start

Finally, pretend you’re playing the first hole on the rnage. Take out your driver, go through your normal pre-shot routine, and hit the kind of shot you’ll want on the first tee. Then go back to your bag, grab the club you’ll likely need for your second shot, go through your routine, and hit that shot. Do this three or four times, and your brain and body will be ready to go.

Left Coast Lefty – GOLFWEEK

Phil Mickelson, a San Diego guy who played at Arizona State, has been a perennial force on the West Coast Swing. Seventeen of his 38 career victories have come during the Tour’s early-season venture West. With last weekends 35th-place tie at the Northern Trust Open, Mickelson hasn’t won in the West wince the ’09 Northern Trust. If Mickelson doesn’t win this week at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, an event he never has won, it would be his first tw0-year drought on the West Coast.

Butch Harmon – When you Have to Hit the Fairway – Golf Digest

When You Have to Hit the Fairway

1. Bench you driver

Where playing from the fairway is huge, you see alot of fairway metals and hybrids off the tee from tour pros in major championships. You should consider doing the same.

2. Use your practice swing

Make a practice swing at 75% of your maximum speed, but swing all the way back and through to a good finish. Check out Davis Love III and Jeff Overton.

3. Play our stock shot

This is not the time to try that draw you’ve been working on. Go with the shot you know you can hit.

Butch Harmon is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional and runs the Butch Harmon School of Golf at Rio Secco, Henderson, Nev.

Birdies Instead of Bombs – Golfweek

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Michael Rowells has no problems facing bombs and bullets on duty in Afghanistan, but put him alongside Tiger Woods in a pro-am and he becomes a quivering wreck.

Rowells, 47, a Mississippi native, won the spot alongside Woods on the Emirates Course via a drawing among 16,000 worldwide amateurs.

Rowells, a 9-handicapper at Bayou Barriere Golf Club in Belle Chasse, La., took a break from duty with the 401st Army Field Support Brigade at Bagram Air Base to tee it up in Dubai.

“The air base at Bagram has come under rocket attack, but I never think about the danger, as I’m not a person who really gets nervous,” Rowells said. “But standing on the opening tee today with all those TV cameras and photographers, and all the crowd watching to see how I would hit the golf ball was a lot more nervous than anything i’ve ever faced in Afghanistan.”

Rowells said that he and Woods, whose late father, Earl, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army, connected.

“We first met on the practice green and he walked over and introduced himself,” Rowells said. “He was just so nice and so open, and that helped dissolve all the tension.”

“While he might not envy me and where I am headed back to, I feel he understands where I am coming from, given his father was a Green Beret.”

Rowells headed back to Afghanistan with a momento of his greatest golf experience in golf.

“Tiger kindly signed the peak of my Army cap, so that’s now been retired from active duty,” he said.

Golf Digest – The Flop Without the Flip – Matt Killen

You don’t have to get wristy to hit a high pitch.

Here’s how Matt Killen plays the flop:

Using a 60- or 64-degree wedge, I set up with the ball fairly forward in a wide and slightly open stance. The clubface is open to my stance but aligned at the target. I pre-set my weight a little to my left and position my hands really low, between my legs, farther from the ball – a little extra knee bend helps. From there, I make a pretty steep back swing, setting my wrists early. Then-and this is the key-I maintain that wrist angle through impact by keeping my left arm close to my chest as I swing through. I don’t really maintain angle, but that’s the feeling.

Try it yourself: Just set your wrists going back and then turn your body through, keeping your head still. You’ll use the bounce of the club so it slides along the ground instead of digs. You’ll make consistent contact for a high and soft shot.

Start with miniature pitches, then progress to this modified flop. Remember: The lower your hands, the higher you’ll hit these little shots.

Matt Killen – The Club at Olde Stone, Bowling Green, KY.

Rick Smith – Easy Way to Fix a Hook

If you’re afraid of hitting the ball left of your target, your tendancy is to slow your body turn. You think if your upper torso turns left of the target, the ball will follow.

Ironically, the opposite is true. By slowing or even stopping your turn toward the target, your arms and hands whip through the hitting area and shut the clubface, producing that dreaded snap hook.

To prevent the clubface from getting shut at impact, you’ve got to keep turning. It’s hard to convince yourself to do this, but you have to trust it. Let your chest and hips rotate forward until your shirt buttons and belt buckle point left of your target. This stops the clubface from flipping closed and will help keep your ball in play.

- Rick Smith, Golf Digest Teaching Professional

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