Archive for the ‘Resources’ Category
Learn From Watching (and Reading) the Pros
This week I have been watching some golf tournaments on TV – the Omega Dubai Desert Classic and the Northern Trust Open at the Riviera course in Los Angeles. I've been trying to pay attention to what the pros do and learn from them. I found this article – Learn to Play Golf by watching Golf on TV – that I thought was very helpful. In addition to the points made in that article, I also try to watch how the players use their balance, shift their weight on their feet and rotate around their torso. This is because I just finished reading an excellent book – The Natural Golf Swing by George Knudson. In this book George dispels the notion that we need to concentrate on a million different actions in our swing and focus on our balance and the target, not the swing and the ball. Learn to relax! I have found this advice very helpful and highly recommend the book.
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Finding Individual Irons
I have been finding it very difficult and frustrating trying to find individual women's irons. The big stores seem to have woefully small selections. When you go in the big box golf stores, you can rarely even find a decent selection of individual wedges and putters for women, and women's irons only in sets. Well, I don't want a complete set. I don't need a complete set. I can't afford a complete set. However, after spending a significant amount of time researching on the internet, I found Morton Golf Sales (I have applied to be an affiliate and should be posting a link in the sidebar soon). They have a very large selection of women's (and men's) individual clubs and I am transferring my loyalty to them effective immediately. Do you have other sources? Let me know.
Every Shot Must Have a Purpose
While I was in California my sister-in-law took me to a very nice golf store called Roger Dunn (near the Mission Viejo Mall). One of the things I bought while I was there was a book called Every Shot Must Have a Purpose by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott. This has turned out to be a really great book and is changing the way I think about my strokes and my scores. The front flap says,
“Unlike any other golf book, Every Shot Must Have a Purpose offers cutting-edge techniques for integrating the physical, technical, mental, emotional and social parts of a player’s game. The book’s revolutionary pre-shot routine improves a player’s focus, leading to a golf swing that is not only successful but can be repeated under extreme pressure. Emphasizing the individual golfer rather than a rigid set of mechanics, their VISION54 method takes the frustration out of the game.”
Now, I recognize that the book flap is meant to make high claims for the book so that people will read it, but in the case I have found it to be true. When I apply the principles of the book my shots are much better. So, I highly recommend this book. It has a foreword by Annika Sorenstam and she recommends it highly as well.
Getting Started on the Golf Course
As you get started playing golf, you might find it intimidating to get out on the course for the first time. I know I felt very intimidated. It helped a lot that my brother and sister-in-law took me the first time, and I went with my sister-in-law and her mother and sister the second time. Now, however, I am back home in Chicago and am facing the prospect of either going to a course by myself, or finding someone I don’t know very well to play with. My friends here don’t seem too interested in playing golf.
My brother has recommended that I start with public 9-hole courses, and I have started a list of those to try. To help you out in this regard, I am also creating a page on this site of public 9-hole courses that would be good for beginners. If you have any recommendations in this area, please submit them via the comments and I will add them to the page.
Meanwhile, I found a very helpful book that has reduced some of the anxiety about going out to the course on my own. I have a link to it below – it is really a great book for beginners – short, easy to read, and full of great information for the newbie.
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Choosing Your Clubs
If you’ve gone and looked at golf clubs at a sporting goods store, you’ve likely been overwhelmed at the options, the terminology, the brands, the sizes and on and on. Before I read this book I made several purchasing mistakes. The main point of the book is getting the clubs that are sized and weighted right for you. And though the author emphasizes getting custom made clubs, the information he gave on clubs proved invaluable. I did not go buy custom made clubs, but I did take the information and went and bought some clubs that were much more suitable for me — and, as the author promises, my game greatly improved. Right sizing is important! Check it out — you won’t regret it.
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Getting Hooked on Golf
I never thought I wanted to play golf. It seemed dumb. It seemed expensive. It seemed like it didn’t take enough effort to count as exercise and enough challenge to count as sport. And of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It is great exercise, lots of fun, extremely challenging and fun to learn, gets you outside in beautiful settings and provides opportunities to spend time with good friends and family having a good time together. There is nothing like the feeling you get from hitting a ball well and watching it sail out towards the green. In my second game I hit a drive that went all the way to the green, though it landed in a bunker just to the left of the green. Then, I got it out of the green in one shot with my sand wedge and it went right in the hole! A birdie! I hadn’t even made par on a hole before that. I was hooked. A good book for newbies: Golf for Dummies (see below).
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