Not every lie around the green is flat where the ball is sitting even with your feet and you could bend over and give it a nice little whack.
Sometimes you have downhill pitch shots, uphill chip shots, ball below your feet chip shots, and ball above your feet pitch shots.
All right, now let me go over this with you real quick so you understand it.
When you're making a full golf swing, it's very important that you pay close attention to all of your uneven lies.
Remember, if you're going uphill on a full swing, make sure your shoulders are level to the slope you're on. If you're going downhill on a full swing, make sure your shoulders are level to the slope you're on.
So, here it is. If you're going uphill, you want to stand to the slope. If you're going downhill, you want to stand to the slope.
If the ball's below your feet on a full swing, you want to make sure that you bend way over and bend your knees. And if the ball is above your feet, make sure that you stand up tall and sit back on your bottom.
But it's different when you're chipping and pitching.
Make sure that when you have uneven lies that you don't change your chipping and pitching stance and setup. Remember, for pitching and chipping, stance and setup, ball in the middle, weight left, handle left, and you're standing in this fashion, where 60% of your weight, 70% of your weight's on your left side, and you swing your arms up and down.
When you have an uneven lie, don't change that. The reason why? The swing isn't that long and you don't shift your weight back over to your right side.
So, when you're on your uneven lies around the greens, don't change your setup away from the traditional pitching and chipping setup.
Now, let's talk about the backswing when you're pitching. This could be one of the most misunderstood parts of the weekend golfer's short game or pitching problems.
I own three pitching wedges. I own three wedges. I own a pitching wedge, a sand wedge and one that's sort of in the middle. They go three very different distances.
But let me explain something to you about the backswing that will help you a lot. Most amateurs that miss/hit their pitch shots make a big windup every time, and then they slow down to match up how far they want it to go.
So, if they have a pitch shot, they wind it up and slow down and hope they match up how far they needed to go. Two holes later, if they have to pitch it a little bit further, they make a bigger windup and they try to slow down.
The only way to hit a pitch shot is to make sure that the backswing is broken down into three parts. And this is what I mean. This is a small pitch shot. I take the golf club back where the shaft is parallel to the ground, but I have a nice followthrough that continues on after I make impact.
If I want the ball to go a little bit further, then my next length swing is where the shaft is pointing into the ground, and this goes a little bit further, but it's the same followthrough.
And lastly, if I have a pitch shot and I want it to go all the way to the back of the green, I make a full swing with the arms, not with the body, with the same followthrough.
Now, let me start with the next part. The direction that you swing the golf club is very important.
So, after you get your setup, the arms swing the golf club just slightly up and down on an arc. The arc has a little curve inside, not inside to your right foot and not away from your body in the backswing. The weight stays left and the arms swing up and down.
Thanks, and have a great day.
Copyright (c) 2006 David Nevogt
From the bottom to the top it's about two or more inches. Most players associate all of that space with teeing the golf ball high. We even have three-inch tees now.
So, that isn't true. You don't need that. Some of you might, but most of you don't.
So, here's my rule of thumb for how high should you tee the driver: If the mistake you make is that you constantly top the golf ball, that isn't always the answer. You could fix your posture and bend over a little bit and that would fix topping the golf ball.
If you always hit underneath the golf ball, this isn't always the answer, where you tee it down so low. Maybe you simply need to get your chin up.
So, a great rule of thumb is that the golf ball should be slightly higher than the center of the club face.
If the golf ball sits much higher than the center of the face, the swing tip to improve your golf would have you hitting the golf ball on the upswing. If it was teed down close to the ground, and you tried to hit the golf ball on the upswing, you might wind up hitting a little grass behind it. Instead, you would have to hit this one on a little bit of the downswing, which is defeating the purpose of the driver. The driver's swing is a sweeping swing. And you want to catch the golf ball at the bottom of the arc.
At worst, you want to catch it on the way up but not too much on the way up.
Experiment with your tee shots. Play a whole round of golf where you tee it a lot lower than normal, then the next round a little bit lower than normal. And then play the third round where you tee it real high.
Now, I have a great golf strategy for you. I recently played 18 holes on a little bit of an odd golf course.
It was a good golf course, but the first nine holes, there was out of bounds on the entire left side.
On the back nine there was desert on the entire right side, the first nine holes, trouble left.
The golf strategy I used was that on the first 9 holes, I teed every golf ball exactly the same height, as close to the ground as I possibly could.
The last nine holes, I teed every tee shot as high as I possibly could.
On the first nine holes, when I teed it down low, if you tee a golf ball as low as possible to the ground, it's very difficult to get the club face to cross over and to hook it. I never hooked one ball out of bounds for the first nine holes.
The last nine holes, trouble right, this is very difficult to slice from here. The golf club will cross over and you'll wind up hooking the tee shot way before you'd slice it.
I missed one fairway on the front nine and I never missed a fairway on the back nine.
The golf strategy to use here is instead of changing your golf swing, change the way you tee it: low for fades of slices and high for draws of hooks.
David Nevogt has sinced written about articles on various topics from Recreation and Sports, Golf Guide and Golf Guide. David Nevogt writes golf instruction material that helps golfers of all levels reach their full potential and lower their scores. David is the author of "The Simple Golf Swing" which guarantees to have you shooting 7 strokes lower in only 1 week from toda. David Nevogt's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.