RedTail Landing Golf Club » Monthly Golf Tips

Strengthen your wrists for a better swing and more distance

Joshua — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:23:14 +0000

Players with weaker wrists need to grip the club more tightly during the swing to accommodate the forces involved in moving the weight of the golf club. Too much tension in the wrists inhibits your ability to hinge them smoothly and fully, and limits your potential for club head speed through impact. Tight muscles are slow muscles. The stronger your hands and wrists are, the more relaxed you can keep your grip pressure during the swing (while still controlling the club) and the more shaft lag you can maintain before releasing the club with ‘greater authority’ at the ball. There are many things that you can do on a daily basis to build strength in the wrists… even something as simple as wringing out a wet dish cloth a few extra times before hanging it to dry or using one of the many wrist exercise/strength building products on the market. Stronger hands and wrists are also what are needed to dig your ball out of the longer grass or thick rough, and strength helps to protect against injury during the course of the season. So when you are thinking about improving your swing, don’t forget to work on the ‘speed hinge’… the wrists.

Dave Lengyel

Get your Arms & Body Working Together

Joshua — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:34:28 +0000

If there was such a thing as a universal swing fault antidote, it might be hitting balls or just swinging a club with your feet together. Many great players use this drill as part of ‘every’ practice session. When you need to slow things down, find balance, improve your rhythm/tempo, and rid your swing of unwanted lateral motion put your heels close together and start taking half to three quarter swings focusing on maintaining good balance from address through to a full finish position. Start things off as slow and small as you need to in order to maintain your balance. Use this drill often to promote proper body rotation and to keep the arms and body working together all while staying properly ‘centered’ during the swing. If you do this drill often… your swing will become awesome!

Keep it simple…Swing a club

Joshua — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:06:28 +0000

It is very easy to lose track of your golf swing during the winter months here in Northern Alberta. In fact I bet many of you haven’t even said the word ‘golf’ in weeks. If you are wondering how foreign your swing has become, go find your golf bag, pull out one of your wedges and take 20 swings. Start off swinging small and slow so that you don’t hurt yourself and swing just above the ground (no divots required). I like to use a wedge as it is a shorter club and I hit the roof in the basement far less often than when using my 7 iron. It is also a little heavier so that I get a better sense of where the club head is during the swing. If you are feeling a lot of muscles that you don’t normally feel during the golf season, it simply means that you need to be swinging this club a little more often. Now don’t bother putting this club back in your golf bag but instead put it somewhere where you will stumble into it on a daily basis and see if you can get into the routine of swinging it 20 times a day. I guarantee that simply swinging the club on a daily basis will reap great rewards when the season starts.

Dave Lengyel

Make Your Wish List

Joshua — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:34:45 +0000

While we may have just played our final round for the season, our golf thoughts are still fresh and we are not in ‘golf withdrawal’ just yet. Take a moment to think about all the great shots and good rounds you had this season and ask yourself what you did really well… and then what you thought were the weak parts of your golf game that could have made those rounds even better. Now take a minute with paper and pen and jot down in point form what you need to work on to drop your scores and create your ‘wish list’ for ways to improve your game. Now stick this list on the fridge, on your bedside table, use it as your new favorite bookmark or put it somewhere where you will see it often as this season starts to become a memory and your winter activities cause you to stray from your thoughts of golf. There will come a point in the not too distant future where your thoughts of the new golf season will inspire you to take out your wish list, give me a call, and we will create a plan to help your golf wishes come true!

Enjoy your off season,

Dave Lengyel

Have you checked your wedges?

Joshua — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:20:53 +0000

With the ever increasing choices in makes and models of wedges, it has never been more important to make sure that they are properly fit to you and complement the rest of your set. Many of the new wedges have specific wedge shafts which can vary quite a bit in performance characteristics from the rest of your set. Having just updated my own ‘scoring clubs’, the first order of business was to make sure that the shaft lengths were correct and then that the lie angles were bang on at the new length. Because of the effect of compound angles in the more lofted clubs, your wedges are the most important clubs in your bag to make sure that the lie angles are correct on. For full to ¾ swings the scoring lines need to come through the impact zone perfectly parallel to the ground. Pushing or pulling your shots, or hitting consistently off of the heel or toe of your scoring clubs can be a sign for needing to have your clubs checked. See your local Golf Professional to make sure that you are hitting the best shots that you can with the clubs that can make the biggest changes on the score card… the closer you can hit your wedges, the shorter the birdie putts are.

Dave Lengyel

Good Thoughts About Pitch Shots

Joshua — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:58:23 +0000

A few good thoughts for simple, consistent and reliable pitching…

Keep your stance comfortably narrow with the ball in the middle and put a little more weight on your target foot at address. The club face should be square to slightly open depending on how high you need to hit it with a neutral to weak grip position. Your grip pressure should be ‘light’ and consistent throughout the shot. I have always suggested weakening at least the trail hand grip (right hand for most) to help neutralize the input from the release. This shot is hit with a ‘synchronized turn of the body and arms’ with the hands staying out from the sternum from start to finish… the hands are just there to hinge the club to the ‘toe up’ position on the way back and have very limited input leading the club head on the way down and through. You will control your distances by the size of your shoulder turn making sure that your follow through is always larger than the size of your backswing… we want to accelerate through impact. Keep your head as steady as you can and keep your focus down seeing the grass under the ball for a split second before looking up to see how close your putt will be. If you are having any problems with this shot, come and see me and I will teach you how to hit it.

Dave Lengyel

Slow it Down

Joshua — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:44:47 +0000

One of the best tips I can give you when you are having trouble hitting the ball well is to slow down a little and see what happens. The expression ‘speed kills’ is applicable to the golf swing and I find that most rookie golfers try to swing way too fast and way too hard. The moving parts in the golf swing all need time to do their jobs to allow for a square clubface, a good path and solid contact. If you consider that the whole swing from start to the finish position might take around 1 – 1.2 seconds, we can portion the backswing component to the downswing and finish. The optimum tempo would be around 2.5 parts back swing to 1 part downswing, however I find most amateurs are way too fast coming down. Try to swing to the top with a smooth controlled speed and then swing back down just twice as fast (not ten times as fast) and see if this kind of rhythm and tempo doesn’t help you hit it better. Slowing down a little should give the levers in the swing the time they need to get the club back to a good position at impact. Remember… smooth on the way back and then swing back down just twice as fast.

Dave Lengyel

How to Hit the Golf Ball further

Joshua — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:24:19 +0000

I am often asked that age old question, ‘How can I hit it farther?’ Well if you assume that you have the necessary ingredients for ‘hitting the ball’ to begin with, such as a square face and a good path and decent fundamentals of the swing (grip, posture, stance, alignment). And you also assume that your golf equipment has been fit to you to optimize your launch angle and spin rate, and now that also includes the correct ball, then the Holy Grail of hitting it farther is purely club head speed… give me just one more MPH of club head speed and I can hit it just a little over 3 yards farther with the big stick. At any given time I am able to increase my club head speed a fair amount by swinging a little farther back around with a bigger shoulder turn (increasing my arch), and making sure that I stay as loose as possible (tight muscles are ‘slow’ muscles) and releasing the club (unhinging the wrists) as late as possible before impact. The problem is that every time I try to chase after an extra 10 or 15 yards with the driver I start missing the center of the club face and lose the predictability of where that silly ball is going. So we are left with this simple rule to follow… swing only as fast as you can without losing your good swing fundamentals or balance. You cannot sidestep hitting it ‘well’ before trying to hit it far if you would still like to know where your ball is going…

See you in the fairway,

Dave Lengyel

Does your Putter Fit your Putting Style?

Joshua — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 00:38:39 +0000

After all these years of preaching the importance of having your clubs properly fit, it still surprises me to see how many of you out there are fighting what could be great putting strokes by trying to use putters that don’t fit you. It is just as important (if not more, considering it is the one club that you will use on every hole) to make sure that the putter you use suits your putting style and that it is of correct length, lie and loft to accommodate your setup and physique as it is for the rest of your clubs. When your putter has been properly fit to you, it acts as a tool to help you get into a good putting position every time you setup. When your putter is not the correct length or lie angle, you tend to try to put your eyes and your hands in less than optimum and often uncomfortable positions… why make putting any more challenging than it is already. The best advice I can give you is to make sure that your putter is one of the clubs that you have had ‘custom fit’.

Dave Lengyel

Don’t Over Do It On Opening Day

Joshua — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:12:27 +0000

Spring has finally come and the range has finally opened… Do yourself a favor and leave the driver at home for your fist visit to the range. Far too often I see the opening day ‘how far can I bust the driver on day one’ mentality as I walk down the row. Ease your way back into the season by trying to find some rhythm and tempo with a short to mid iron and focus on good fundamentals… seeing if you can hit it pretty straight before you try to hit it ‘over the fence’. I have been guilty myself in past years of over doing it a little the first time out and it has always been by trying to hit the really long clubs with really big swings. I guaranty that it will take less time to figure your driver out again if you leave it in the bag just a little longer and try to get reacquainted with your swing using your scoring clubs first.

Play well, Dave