How to Play Golf
A
Real World User Guide to get your
handicap down from 24 to 10
by
Tim Sutton
Copyright
2012 Tim Sutton
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
Further Reading and other swing thoughts:
Here beginneth the final lesson....
*****
After 20 years of on and off golfing, I thought I saw a glimmer of light at the end of my deeply frustrating golfing tunnel and I decided to get my handicap down from 24 to at least 18. This I did mostly by brute force, ignorance and hope, and after hitting a wall at 16 hcp where I basically stopped improving, it finally dawned on me that just wishing I was a better player wasn't going to cut it any further....
I got to thinking that there must surely be a way to learn this game that we are not being told about... (Please let there be!) Well, it took me until I got down to a 16 hcp before I had my golfing Eureka moment and I suddenly realised I really WAS doing something fundamentally wrong. Well, if I am honest, not so much doing something wrong, but more something that I just wasn't doing at all. And now I have figured-out this simple catalyst, I can see that practically every 18+ golfer I see, is also not doing this fundamental thing. Seriously. It really is something you can start doing right away, even as you are sat there at home. Once I really concentrated on nailing this issue (I watch a lot of Golf TV too) I immediately saw that ALL the good players do this thing without fail! Every single one!! I then got down from 16 to 10 practically overnight.......Let me explain further if you have a moment, and you will quickly see if your current golfing mission could benefit from the great hindsight I now have; having just got down from 24 to 10 myself....
Upon deciding to go for it, I put in a season or two of fairly dedicated hacking around the local Swiss public course. I then joined a golf club called Kussnacht as a guest member for two seasons. Every weekend I played this amazing Alpine course in whatever weekend comp was presented. I was down to 13.2 at the end of the 2009 season after a total of 17 comps and probably about the same number of casual rounds. I fought my way to 2nd place in The Club Monthly League by the end of 2009 too :) but I missed out playing in the last comp as I broke my collar-bone falling off my electric bike, I would have taken a 6 point lead going into that last competition too....Grrrrr.
This last season then, I have been back out playing with my friends most weekends, mixed in with some range time and lots of lounge swinging and self-analysis(!)... I am now comfortably playing to a 10 handicap. Not sometimes, every time. Just this last week I won a weekend away at a ***** Austrian Golf and Spa Resort for whacking the men's longest drive at G.C Hoch-Ybrig in Switzerland, at the "Golfer's Choice Pro-Am" 2010 event. So I suppose my how-to-play-golf theory now has a fancy trophy to back it up with too!!
I have also been to the David Leadbetter Golf Academy 4 times in the last 3 years. Each visit was a single three hour video tutorial lesson at the Championsgate Resort in Orlando. At $350 a time I hoped it would make a big difference to my game....
Hopefully though, I have invested that silly amount of cash so that now you won't have to!
Those four visits cleared up a major issue every time I went there and put me in great shape to build my game down to 16. They did not however address this fundamental missed issue that everyone misses?? Why not David?!! Did you just want me to stay bad and keep coming back for more??!! The challenge now then, is to try and pass this knowledge on to you in clear words in order for you to clear your mind of what you think you know about golf and to allow you to instantly realise how the basic platform of a great golf game is actually really easy to find.
As a BASI-qualified ski instructor I like to think I have a good eye for spotting movement, flow and balance and I achieved great results whilst ski teaching by simply teaching everyone how to pole-plant properly. Simple, but very effective. Grasping this single basic element of skiing sorts out your weight distribution, your body alignment, your body position, your overall balance and most importantly, it gives a guaranteed and genuine improvement during a short one hour ski lesson!! I have now drilled the golf swing down to a similar fundamental catalyst that will have you swinging and driving more powerfully and naturally and consistently than ever before. In fact, forever more.
So, to finish my sales pitch, haha, after 20 years of dedicated bloody-minded struggling, interspersed with some chronic bouts of compulsive equipment buying and the odd good round somewhere in the mid 80's, it was only during the last three years that I actually made any real progress!!! How so??! As I mentioned with the ski-pole pole plant that most people weren't doing properly, I realised that if there were a similar catalyst that could be found for golf, it would also bring the rest of the swing smoothly together without all this constant effort and lists of things you need to remember. I knew there must be a simple reason out there why we are all so bad! How hard can it possibly be for goodness sake!! ;)
As I was struggling to keep below the magical 16 hcp so as to be regularly playing off the back white tees, I had a sudden "eureka moment" that got me down from 16 to 10 in no time at all. I immediately knew I had found the "pole plant" catalyst to sorting out my swing.
After getting my own game sorted in quick time, I also knew that I could write my second Real World User Guide to help others easily get over the main hurdles faced when getting from a 24 down to 10. I have started testing my theory on a few friends over the last months and at least 7 of 10 were laughing like idiots within minutes! The other 3 were just crying "Why weren't we told this before!!" Adam, Rene, Arthur, Marc and my Dad (!) to name just a few of my guinea pigs who suddenly "got it" in a matter of seconds just after reading this User Guide.
I mentioned sorting out a big issue with every visit to the Leadbetter Academy; this also led me to base my eventual theory of how to play golf around the four things that really did made a massive difference for me as I progressed.
Unfortunately, I think most golf pros have no comprehension of what it is that actually makes you improve from bad, to OK, to reasonable, to good, as they have always been very, very good! They haven't had to figure it all out like we are having to do!! Ask any pro at what age he had an 18 handicap - I guarantee you that most will answer that they were never an 18 handicap because they were already a 10hcp before they were even 18 years old! How are they supposed to know how to overcome our long ingrained "issues" I ask you?! Answer: They can't know!! The incontestable proof being, that we have to keep going back again and again for more ridiculously expensive golf lessons!
Luckily for you, this won't be necessary anymore :)
How to get from 24 to 10? Just sort out four things. Yup, just four things.
Plenty of good things you can do to augment these four mainstays, and those I'll get on to later as well, but only after you have also had your golfing Eureka moment too.....
"Drive for show, drive for dough" —Tim Sutton 2010
That's what I say, and trust me on this one , it is fully 110% true. So let's start there, with the whooping club. Your beloved /hated Driver. We all want to drive 'em like John Daly and in a few moments you will be doing...(what, this really isn't a scam??!!) No Sir/Madam. It is not.
Prepare to be amazed.....
No need to go anywhere, just grab your driver and put your glove on. A white one if possible.
Now get a marker pen and lightly clench your left wrist and put 2 big black spots on top of your two closest knuckles of your left hand. DO IT I SAY!!! YES YOU!! DO IT, DO IT NOW!!
Thank you.
Here are the four mainstays we are going to use:
1. ALIGNMENT
2. GRIP
3. POSITION
4. POWER
I lied ...there are five things...
5. The LAUNCH !!!
But as I promised, to really start you off quickly, here is the last page of the book first, so you can immediately begin to burn these five biggies in to your brain.....
Hinge, Trigger, Inside Right Thigh, Back of the Ball, —Alisdair CadDuggan.