Archive for the ‘Set Up’ Category

STANCE

STANCE

The width of your stance is another foundation to get right as having a stance that is too wide will affect your body rotation.

Also a stance that is too narrow will affect your balance during the golf swing.

The width of your stance will vary a little depending on what shot you are playing, chip, pitch, mid iron to a driver. A good general guideline which will give you both balance and mobility during the golf swing is roughly shoulder width apart for a 5 iron. This means that the insides of your heels should be the same width as the shoulders.

To help you establish whilst you are practising at the range or even at home, is to take a club or alignment cane and hold it across your shoulders to measure the width off. From there you can drop the alignment cane down to create the same width in the stance. This will insure that your heels are shoulder width apart.

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When you are practising you should be regularly checking your stance width as well as the other areas of your set up as most swing faults can be traced back to a poor set up position.

A common misunderstanding among a lot of golfers is where to aim your feet, hips and shoulders. More often than not golfers align their stance at the target as opposed to “parallel left” to allow for a good dynamic swing plane.

From Your Friends at Mark Wood Golf Academy

PS. Come down and tee it up to make some magic moments of your own. Check our website at 

www.markwoodgolfacademy.co.uk

Mark Wood

PGA Advanced Professional
UK’s No1 Golf Coach

The Best Golf Lessons in Sussex and Kent

Build Your Work Station

AIM
Establishing and building great foundations is so important otherwise you will most certainly make compensations within the golf swing.

Firstly we are going to look at establishing good aim.

It is important and easily achievable in creating the perfect aim and alignment, you cannot afford to skip this as getting this wrong will impact on your golf swing. I always say that quality is always better than quantity; I much prefer to see someone practising quality for 10 minutes as this will be much more productive than countless hours of poor practise.

To help you practise more precisely I strongly suggest that you set up a “work station” to practise from, this includes laying clubs or canes down on the ground that parallel to your intended target line.

BUILDING YOUR WORK STATION
In the picture below place a cane on the ground just a few inches outside the striking area which is parallel to the target line. Place a second cane down just beyond your toe line which is also parallel to the target line. This will help you achieve a good square alignment ensuring that your feet, knees, hips, forearms and shoulders are all aligned parallel to the target line. Practising like this is 100% productive and will give you a good strong sensation of what a rock solid square alignment feels like.Mark Wood Golf Academy

“Placing canes on the ground parallel to your target line provides a great reference that enables and guarantees you good alignment”.

SPOT ALIGNMENT TIP
Stand behind the ball and pick out a spot on the grass about two feet in front of the ball that is online to your target. This can be an old divot or discoloured piece of grass. When placing the club in behind the ball, aim the club directly at this point as this will give you a square clubface to your intended target. It will also help you massively on building a good square set up.

From Your Friends at Mark Wood Golf Academy

PS. Come down and tee it up to make some magic moments of your own. Check our website at 

www.markwoodgolfacademy.co.uk

Mark Wood

PGA Advanced Professional
UK’s No1 Golf Coach

The Best Golf Lessons in Sussex and Kent

Stance Width

Why stance width is important

Stance width is a very important part of the address position as this will effect how the body turns and moves in the golf swing.

Mark Wood Golf Academy

Having a stance to wide will promote a very stable base but unfortunately you will lose a lot of mobility during the golf swing. It will in essence effect your body turn in the backswing and will also make it difficult for you to get your weight into the left side (for right handed golfers) in the downswing and into the follow through. This will cause the swing to get off plane and therefore potentially give you a poor path through impact, tilting the spin axis of the ball. It can also lead to poor strikes, thin or heavy and lack of power and distance.

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If you address the ball with a to narrow stance you will have lots of mobility but very poor stability in the golf swing.  You will be able to turn very well in the swing but the loss of balance due to the narrow stance is going to be a major problem. You will start to slow the swing down to keep some balance through the strike, leading to inconsistent strikes and a lack of power.

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Try and check your stance regularly to make sure it is roughly shoulder width apart for your long game as this will give you the blend of both stability and mobility in the golf swing.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

Posture

Posture is a key Fundamental to get right

Creating a good posture is key if we want to make a good ballistic athletic powerful movement in which clubhead speed is created. Posture sets up the shape of swing as well and if we start to stand to the ball with poor posture then we are going to make compensating movements in the golf swing, which is not good.

In order to achieve good posture, stand with your feet shoulder width apart and hold a club down your tummy and bend from the waist.

Once you have done this the legs will fell quite tight and stiff so you are now going to flex your knees just a little to take this stiff feeling away.

Softly flex at the knees as this is very important in good posture. Let the arms drop and form a good grip on the club as normal.

The knees are going to have the feeling of being turned outwards ever so slightly as this will help with our body turn. The weight in the feet needs to feel in the balls of the feet almost as if you are creating a strong connection between your feet and the ground, remember we need a solid base to swing and this is your point of contact with the ground, and to create power and force which in turn creates clubhead speed we need great stability.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

Grip it Correctly for More Consistency

How to form the right Grip

The Grip is very important in the in the set up and golf swing as it is the only direct contact we have with the club. It gives us clubface control as well as leverage in the golf swing otherwise known as ‘lag’ which will help create more power.


When placing the left hand onto the golf club make sure you have the grip sat down across the fingers so the fleshy pad sits on top of the grip. Always hold the club down an inch from the top of the handle as well.
Close your hand onto the grip making sure you keep a short left thumb as extending your left thumb down the grip will cause the left wrist to lock and can cause injury to the hand or wrist. It will also reduce the power within your swing and will also force the grip up into the palm of the left hand. Keep the ‘V’ of the left hand pointing up between your collar bone and right shoulder.

Linking the hands becomes a choice for you. You can either Overlap, interlook, intermesh or baseball (this is suited for juniors of a young age and ladies).

Overlapping Grip

Baseball Grip

 

Interlocking Grip

Intermesh Grip

Placing your right hand onto the grip should be performed in the following way. Place the lifeline of your right hand onto the side of your left thumb and then close the right hand over onto the grip.

The inner part of the right forearm should be parallel to the target line and the ‘V’ of the right hand also pointing up in the same direction as the left hand ‘V’.

Keep the grip pressure light as a too tight a grip will rob you of clubhead speed and power.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

 

 

 

Ready, Steady, Go

READY, STEADY, GO

Improve your golf with a great Pre – Shot Routine

Many golfers on the Worldwide Tours all have one thing in common – A PRE SHOT ROUTINE….

A Pre – Shot Routine is very important as it helps get you set up and ready for the shot, a lot of mistakes I see golfers make each and every day is poor alignment and poor stances…. You may ask well how will a pre – shot routine help me??

Well by having a great pre shot routine, it will get you ready for the shot, it will switch you on with the shot you are about to play, get you fully engaged with the purpose of what you WANT to ACHIEVE  and it will give you a much higher percentage of achieving the good outcome, the one that you set out to do…

Have a read below of an article I wrote back in 2003, and you will see how a good routine will help your golf.

THE FAULT

One of the first things I look for when I take a pupil on the course for a playing lesson is how they set up to hit the ball. In most cases of many beginners they simply walk up on the tee, stand to the ball, and then let it fly. Furthermore, the way in which they prepare to make their swing can often change from shot to shot and as a result, produce some pretty erratic results, mainly because they don’t use a repetitive pre shot routine.

Watch the top pro’s on every main worldwide tour and you will see one thing in common amongst the players, they all have a pre shot routine, in which they follow the same step by step process prior to hitting every shot.

THE DRILL

This routine has two key functions. Firstly, it ensures that you always remember to check the key aspects of your set up, such as alignment, ball position, grip etc.

Secondly, having a pre shot routine, helps to create a repetitive sequence of actions that have a continuous flow, which should start as you step up to each and every shot and finish as you start the club back from the ball.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

Grip Check Test

GRIP CHECK TEST

For many golfers, especially those who are fairly new to the game, faults often happen as the result of poor fundamentals in the set up including the all-important grip, rather than a poor swing. Here is a simple drill that can help you establish a good grip which will help keep your game on track.

First, take up your address position and grip the club as you would normally. Then cock your wrists directly in front of you at a 90 degree angle and look down at your grip.

If you can see three knuckles on your left hand and less than one on your right, then you have a strong grip that could cause you to hook the ball and also hit the occasional fat shot.

Alternatively, if when you look down at your grip you can see three knuckles on your right hand and only one on your left, then your grip is overly weak and this can cause you to slice the ball.

A Neutral grip would show two knuckles on both hands but for many amateur golfers, especially those who are not physically strong, then using a grip that is slightly stronger, with at least two and a half knuckles showing on the left hand will usually produce the best results.

Ideally, spend some time on the practise ground or at your local driving range, experimenting with different grips, from weak to strong, until you find the one that you are most comfortable with and which helps you to achieve greater accuracy, distance and the type of ball flight you prefer.

It’s always a good idea to regularly check that you are gripping the club the way you think you are and this simple drill only takes a few seconds to carry out.      

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

Creating Good Impact

Future Superstar

I was working with a young junior today on creating a much more solid impact, delivering everything at the right time and on time. This leads to much more consistency in many ways – angle of attack, swing path, shape of shot, power, distance control and much much more.

    GREAT IMPACT CONDITIONS HERE              

  TO AGGRESSIVE WITH THE RIGHT SIDE

As we progressed with the lesson as we always do, after a good solid warm up we filmed his swing from a few different angles and then we could analyse what needed to be changed and improved in this young Sussex County player.

To start with he was getting to much action with his right side and therefore all the power was spent by the time he reached impact, this had an effect on distance, accuracy and constancy amongst other things. We needed to really get to the root cause of this and start to get more control in delivering the right side on time, every time.

The swing was on a great path in the backswing with great plane being achieved at the midway stage in the backswing. At the top of the swing, the club was in a great position with the body maintaining the angles, it looked very dynamic and strong. The clubface however was a tiny bit closed at the top of the backswing and this was leading to that very early and aggressive body rotation through impact. He basically needed to try to “hold” the clubface off through impact, not letting it close down too much as this was resulting in a ball flight with too much right to left shape. The tiny change that we needed to make was in the left hand grip, it was a bit to strong and this was the root cause of the impact conditions. Once we had put the left hand into a great neural position at the set up, the clubface instantly sat in a good square position at the top of his backswing. He could then start to control his body motion much stronger through impact resulting in a much more powerful, penetrating 2 yard drawing ball flight which had instant control.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex

Stand the Right Distance to the Ball every time

This is a great way of achieving the correct distance to the ball every time

Many golfers’ posture problems stem from the fact that they are unable to position their body the correct distance from the ball at address. This can often lead to poor posture, which in turn causes a number of faults.

For example, standing too close to the ball can promote an overly steep backswing. Likewise, standing too far away from the ball could encourage you to create a swing path that is too flat.

However there is a simple check that you can make at the address position, which will ensure that you are always standing the correct distance from the ball. First take up your normal address position with the clubhead placed behind the ball but holding the club only in your right hand (left hand for left handed golfers.) Then with your right arm allowed to hang down vertically from the shoulder, without looking down towards the handle of the club, swing your other hand across naturally until the palm touches the handle.

Now check the position of your right hand. If it is touching the handle of the club well below your left hand, then you are set up too close to the ball.

If however, your right hand is actually above your left, then you are standing too far away from the ball.

If you are in the correct position, then your right hand should naturally fall into place in exactly the correct spot to enable you to take up your grip on the handle of the club without any additional alterations.

I hope you enjoyed the article, any comments or Questions then please leave a comment below..

Until next time I wish you all the golfing success

Mark

Mark Wood Golf Academy
Dale Hill hotel & golf club
East Sussex