ARCHIVED ILLUSTRATED TIPS

The golf swing is merely the baseball swing tilted forward. If you're having trouble with fat or thin shots, you have a problem transferring your weight correctly. But don't try a different swing, try a different plane. Go to your nearest empty silage pit (with concrete walls) and take a few baseball swings at your golf ball. The upright plane will make it easier to correct your weight shift. When you can hit the ball as it comes at you or past (rather than through) you, you'll also discover an important truth about your game: you should give up golf and take up squash.

This tip will save you heaps of money by teaching you how to find golf balls in hazards.
Divert your cowshed washdown slurry into a spare vat. The graduated bottom will mean that the substance ranges from 1 inch to 2 feet deep. Depending on where your ball lands, when you chip it into the vat, you will hear a splash of differing pitch. (Tests show that the combination of water, diluted cow excrement and the metallic vat-echo perfectly mimic golf hazard splashes.) Eventually you'll be able to pinpoint, by the sound of the splash, precisely where your ball has disappeared. Then you will be able to row straight to that spot and retrieve your ball. And anyone else's you've heard. (For those who golf where the hazards are deeper, take note of the vat on the left. Just make sure it's empty before you open the hatch.)

Contrary to popular opinion, lifting your head is not the most common fault when chipping. The most common fault is moving the lower body too much. Your lower body, especially legs, must stay 'quiet' throughout this shot.
To ingrain this habit, practice chipping from a front-end loader. This will not only enforce a solid base, it will also stop you from taking too long a backswing and then quitting on the ball.
Start with the shovel only one foot off the ground. If you sway, you will fall out but shouldn't do serious damage. Usually only one fall will fix the fault but some golfers need stronger incentives.
Raise the shovel by one foot after each fall. By the time you get to ten feet, if you fall out your legs will end up in plaster casts for six weeks. At this stage you can do away with the loader and practice on the ground. By the time the casts come off, you'll have a sound base.

Do you have trouble getting the ball off the tee? The golfhumour.com tee-tree will teach you how to hit great tee-shots by varying the height and difficulty from which you hit. For example, shift the ball to the 'c' shape just to the right and below where the ball presently lies, and you'll have to fit the club perfectly through that gap to make solid contact. Once you can make clean contact of clubhead on ball at each of the fifty designated spots, without breaking your clubs, you'll find conventional tee-shots a piece of cake.

© Kay Wall 2005