Newb golfer

[chazzyphizzle]

Lots of people say they are good and then shoot 90, take almost 100% of golf stories with a big grain of salt. Guess that can be said for most stories of any kind, but especially golf ones.

[Akiyama]

Still, get in some practice, get to the point where every tee shot you hit isn't topped/groundballed/smacked deep in the woods, or there will be some very pissed off people, lol

[chazzyphizzle]

Yeah, if you go to a course on the weekend in place of learning how to play at a range, your playing partners, family, me, BG, and everyone else on the course will hate you.

[Thefonz]

heh yeah i realize that chazzy. they said we could do a driving range and i intend to go play some mini golf as well tomorrow to work on the putting stuff. probably wont be enough practice but they only go once or twice a month so i'll put in some time on my own where i can and all that.

[Plow]

Also, remember that golf =/= baseball or hockey. Your arms should have literally nothing to do with any shot you take. The moment you start moving, pushing, or pulling with your arms, you've failed and your shot will suck.

Shoulders and hips. Repeat that to yourself a few million times.

This might be reasonably acceptable advice for someone that never wants to have a clue wtf they're doing, but if you want to get even remotely good, how you move your arms is a huge part, working your body for more distance and control comes after you've worked out your arm positioning/angles and whatnot.




^ You coil like that or release half that violently when you don't know what you're doing with your arms and you're going to look like a cross between Charles Barkley and the swings in Happy Gilmore where he misses the ball completely.

[chazzyphizzle]

Yeah, you have to know how to release the club with your hands/arms, among other things. But what Sath said really is not a bad swing thought for a beginner. Don't want too much to think about, just swing the handle.

[BerenTebogo]

Yeah, just trying to keep it basic for someone starting out. Can put a thousand different tips for golf in someones head about how you interlace your fingers, or where you position the ball in your stance, choking up or down, blah blah blah. None of it matters if you can't make solid contact with the ball though lol.

[Plow]

Yeah, I'm just saying if you don't concern yourself with what your arms are doing at all, you're not going to make any kind of good contact.

Honestly if you want to be pretty good and don't care enough about reaching scratch to develop your own swing, just watch that Tiger video and mimic it as much as you can, start with just the basics and then look closer and closer.

I.E. first notice how he keeps his head down the whole way.

Next, note how his left arm is absolutely locked completely straight from the moment he starts his backswing until the very top of his follow-through. You may also want to look at one with a slightly different angle to see what the right arm is doing, that's kind of self-explanatory, though.

Once you get used to those 2 feelings, focus on the shoulder turn. At that point you should already be getting it going by virtue of keeping your arm straight. So, start to look at the plane of his shoulders and how it shifts as he goes back and comes forward.

If you get that far, you can start to look at the hip slide, the weight shift, and the way he pops onto his front knee.

[Plow]

Oh, and one other thing, about slices and hooks:

Slice (fade) = away from you
Hook (draw) = towards you

If you're right handed, a slice curves to the right, a hook to the left.

If you start to have problems with one or the other, people will tell you 50 billion different things to try to fix it, but extremely few will even realize to point this out:

A slice swing is from outside in, a hook swing is from inside out.

I.E for a righty, a slice you're hitting the ball like this \
a hook you're hitting the ball like this /

When you get good you'll want to be able to work the ball like that, but it's also an extremely basic bit of knowledge that can help you easily adjust your swing just by feel if you have issues with one or the other.

[Plow]

wow I haven't had a lag double post in years

[BerenTebogo]

I didn't consciously work on my arm movements until I was down to around a 15 and only ever got down to a 6 at my best with minimal involvement. Just a bit of a coil and a lead with my left elbow. Its been years though and I played the majority of my life when I was too small to be concerned with the length of my drives (short size = shorter arc, etc). Just played to pretty much hit every drive 220 down the fairway and played my short game.

To be fair though for every hour I spent at the driving range I spent 15 between the practice greens/chipping mounds/practice traps.

Every time I talk about golf I want to get back into it so much money to play as much as id need to to get my game back.

[Plow]

Yeah, the cost these days is kind of ridiculous, there's basically no such thing as a cheap course anymore.

I'm not that great, I'm inconsistent, but once I learned how to work the ball I made massive strides. Problem is on a good day when I've got my draw working, I'll hit 300 average, then go to shit if my approaches aren't right at my sweet spot.

I remember one hole not too long ago, had a pretty strong tailwind, on a hole with an elevated tee and an elevated green, hit a 360 yard drive down the middle of the fairway... then skulled a 60 yard sand wedge straight across the green out of bounds lol ><

[OWS_Tonx]

Day late, but bust out some happy gilmore. He can do it, so can you

[Sepukku]

Are you good at any other sport, particularly basketball, soccer, or hockey? Decline golf, mentioning casually that you're not much of a golfer but offer if he ever wants to join you for hockey or basketball or what have you, he's more than welcome to - and then the ball is in his court, you don't have to play golf, but you don't look like a dumbass. Not being an older man, I can't say for sure, but I suspect older men WISH they could play legitimate active sports still rather than being relegated to shit like Golf.

[aru]

No, they love golf. You might be able to talk them into a softball type thing if your company is large enough but I seriously doubt that any company would go for basketball, soccer or hockey. Racquetball or tennis are really the only two alternatives.

[Sythe]

If you dont plan on playing just rent the clubs.

[Alvein]

Golf is a rich man's game, avoid at all costs, unless you like wasting money.

[OWS_Tonx]

Golf is a rich man's game, avoid at all costs, unless you like wasting money.

Not true at all. I am by no means rich and have a decent enough club set.

[Alvein]

it's just a really difficult game to master I think without being able to put a lot of money in. Easy enough to go to the local school and shoot hoops, throw a football around, kick a soccer ball around, stuff like that. Sure you need equipment to play all of those games as a professional would, but it's not the basis of the game.

Tennis, golf, and hockey aren't like that.

You gotta have the right equipment, setting, and setup to be able to play, which requires investment. It really has to be a financial priority. Some neighborhoods may have free tennis courts, but around here they're scarce. Golf, always costs. Hockey, unless you're in a really cold a climate with icy ponds, it costs a lot too.

[chazzyphizzle]

If you are really serious about getting better on a budget, it doesn't cost anything to chip and putt at a local course or range, plus you can buy practice balls that fly like 20 yards, and give you pretty good feedback on how you hit it, slice, hook, etc. A decent, but more importantly, fitted set of clubs is very important, can cost about 5-600 bucks, more for higher end clubs. It is expensive, but not prohibitively expensive unless you want to practice by playing at the nicest course in your area twice a week.