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Do you have the yips,

either putting or chipping? A simple technique having to do with unblocking energy flow in the body will be tested through Awareness Golf. If you are interested, call 450-0111 and indicated you would like to participate. There is no cost.
Click here for a video on this amazing technique

Prices and Programs

For All Golfers

One lesson: $65

Series of three; $165

Supervised Practice: $25

UPCOMING SCHOOLS at Penn Hills

Saturday, Aug 2 Full Swing School
Thursday August 14 One Day School
Friday, August 22 Slice-No-More School
Aug 23 Full Swing School
Aug 29 On-Course School

Golf around the World is a company that specialises in the best and most effective golf training devices. Awarenessgolf is now an affiliate, and as such can offer a discount for the vast array of tools sold on-line here, many of which I use in my teaching.
Hit the logo to enter site and get 10% discount.

Indoor Golf Training

450-0111 for information

How NOT to practice indoors!

We are located at 10 Akerley in Burnside. THE STUDIO WILL BE OPEN ALL SUMMER FOR LESSONS, in addition to Penn Hills Schools and Lessons

How much do you know about golf???
This is multiple choice. If you select a wrong answer, the ball moves only so far down the fairway and stops and you are charged with one stroke.
Keep selecting the answers that you think are correct and the ball moves down the fairway until you get the right answer and the ball goes in the hole. If you have the correct answer right away, the ball goes directly in the hole - a hole in one.

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The Evolution of a Golf Swing

Solid Contact

In this series, I have followed the evolution of a golfer, from the first attempts to make contact, all the way through to high performance competitive golf. To each of these levels I have assigned a corresponding `belt’ color, similar to the sequence used in karate.

Each level also has corresponding illusion(s) that are obstacles to advancing to the next level. Without overcoming the illusions, movement to the next level is not possible.

This installment is associated with the blue belt. The golfer who has gotten to this point is a pretty good player, assuming a decent short-game.

The next level is learning to hit it `pure’; that kind of ball-striking known as `dead solid perfect’.

Success story

In his recent book Teeing Off, golf writer Tom Boswell tells of a successful British tournament golfer who was stuck at a certain level. `Recognizing the need to entirely remake his swing, he discovered he was incapable of trying to fix suspected errors whenever he could see the entire flight of a `missed’ shot, as on a course or driving range.

Accordingly, for 15 straight months and on a daily basis, he hit balls only into nets, for hour upon hour, thereby eliminating any temptation to depart from his pre-planned regime through knowing how the ball would have behaved. Relying entirely on the feel of impact to tell him he was progressing, he swears that he never hit a shot outdoors once during that period-but does proudly admit to wearing out the faces of 3 five irons.

The good news is that he went on to win a fortune over an unusually long and enjoyable pro career.’

Relying entirely on the feel can be said another way; he learned to compress the golf ball consistently on the sweet spot of the club. Solid is a feeling (and sound) that comes from two of the earlier steps in this series, and one new concept;

Swinging the club on an arc. If you bring the club down too sharply on the ball, or not sharply enough, pure compression won’t happen, and

Cutting across the ball with an open face. Do that and it won’t compress either, because it is hit with a glancing blow.

But there is something else, an illusion at this level that can hold a 14 handicapper back from becoming a 5 or 6.

The blue belt illusion

Golfers who hit the ball OK, but not pure, are carrying over 2 related illusions from an earlier level.

They feel the bottom of the arc should be under the ball

They think the address position and the impact position are the same

Both are incorrect, and will lock you into a game that never gets to single digit. I will discuss these one at a time. First, bottom of the arc.

In the first article level of just making contact, the bottom of the arc was at the ball. But as the golfer evolves to being able to hit it every time, and straightens out the direction, it’s time to move the bottom of the arc to a new place

That place is past the ball for most fairway shots. You want nothing between the sweet spot and the ball but air. Catch it on the upswing, and you are in for a whole lot of mediocrity. As my coach Norrie Wright would say, hit the small ball first, then the big ball. The big ball is the earth

How do we do that?

The first way to overcome the bottom of the arc illusion is to know the truth of what I just said, and believe it. The second way is to understand that impact and address are different. The third way is to feel the magic of lag.

Thanks to Jeff Gove for this utube video of a great drill to show this:

Notice how impact is further along, is actually past impact. His hips are forward, his hands are forward, and the club shaft is angled forward. Knowing this is the first step to getting that special sound, the click of compression.

Lag

Pick up a hammer and pound a nail. Notice how both ends of the hammer do not travel together; the handle gets there first, then slows down as the head catches up and bangs the nail. The same applies in golf; the grip end beats the head to the ball. The more the head lags behind, the more compression is possible. Compression equals a great strike.

Learning lag is a challenge for people with a lifetime of habitually picking the ball. Pickers/lifters/early releasers may have progressed to a certain level that makes the game enjoyable. But if you are like the pro who wanted to progress to even better golf, this is the next step.

A lag drill

Like I said, learning lag is not easy, especially if the neurons of your brain have developed patterns that are hard to overcome. One of the quickest ways to change is to first identify that you want to change.

Second,to accept that it may take a while (15 months in the story above), And last, to not be hard on yourself if it doesn't come overnight.

Slow Motion Golf Swing

As the subtitle suggests, swinging first away from a ball, with a swing that takes 10 seconds, will show you a lot. You will find where your `blank spots’ are located, and will also identify those places in the swing that confuse you.

If you only get one thing right in this exercise, make sure it is impact. Your front hip will have turned over your front heel, your shoulders will be square (chest facing the ball), and the club will be angled forward, that is the handle will get there before the club head.

Do this until you can get to that dynamic place without thinking, and you will be on your way to learning the secret of amazing ball-striking.

Ed Hanczaryk comes to us from Jacksonville Florida. He is a certified PGA and CPGA teaching professional with years of experience (including the past years here in Halifax).

Named by the National Post as one of the top 50 Golf Instructors in Canada.

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Golf Stories

So many funny things happen on the golf course, that it's high time we start sharing them.

This space will be the home to those stories. Send in your true golf tale, and we will print it here.

Hopefully there will be a new one to share every couple of weeks or so.

Send yours to ed@awarenessgolf.com, either as a microsoft word attachment, or directly in an e-mail. The best 50 or so might make it into an eventual book.

Story #7: Dried out Sods and Lines in the Dirt

In the winter of 2007, I had the good fortune to have been selected to teach golf in the Kingdom of Bhutan, deep in the Himalayan Mountains. Largely because of travel weight restrictions, I had none of my training devices with me. Add to that the language obstacles, and I really had to learn new ways to get my point across. Even though everybody spoke English, there were many terms and intonations that were totally different. Even the simplest gesture like shaking ones head up and down was different. Here, yes was more of a side-to-side movement that reminded me of a Bollywood Indian dance. Many times I took a yes to be a no, a pretty big mistake in communication!

To get my point across, I found myself using shadows on the ground a lot, in some ways better than a mirror because you don’t have to look up. This was a trick I had learned from my mentor in Jacksonville, Norrie Wright years before, but I dropped it because of the inconsistency of sunshine in Nova Scotia. I began to use this shadow tool for showing body motion, especially swaying of one end of the spine or the other. Luckily it was sunny nearly every day I was here.

To fix problems with the golfer’s swing path, I used a large, dried out sod that happened to be lying on the range. It was just the right size to show the same thing that the much more expensive `inside approach’ can do. I can picture the ad on the Bhutanese Golf Channel: `for 3 payments of $19.95 (900 nultrim), we will send you the training sod, and act now to receive a free shadow’.

I also found myself drawing lines in the dirt to show target line, swing path, bottom of the arc, using golf tees to show a proper grip, and much more.

There is a game played in Bhutan, of throwing a large dart, very long distances, to a small target. When I watched the men playing this game on a Sunday afternoon, what struck me was the similarity between their throwing motions, and the way the right arm (trail arm for lefties) works in a golf swing. Even the grip was similar, held in the fingers with the index finger curled around like the trigger finger.

The only difference was of course the plane, rather than overhand, a golfer’s right arm works in a side-arm fashion. So I purchased a dart (kuru in Dzongkha) in a corner store, set up a target on the ground where a golf ball would be at address, tilted at a slight angle, and had the juniors learn to hit bulls-eyes with that side arm throw.

This taught them how to load and release the right arm, to me a key element of good ball striking. It showed as well that the instrument should be held softly, not strangled. This is a drill I will definitely be bringing back to Canada. The sod, I will probably leave here for the next coach.

Ed Hanczaryk

Golf Story #6, from Tucson Arizona

This one is from my dear friend, Irv Mermelstein- Ed

`As for story telling, you take a risk asking me for a story. Chaucer was my mentor and I follow his rule that if the humor outweighs the filth it's okay. All of my classic golf stories ask a bit riske'.

But, I will give you an incident that suggests the All-mighty might be involved in our games. It happened on the 5th hole of the Tucson National Championship course. One of my regular weekly games included a friend named Dick. His tee shot left him about 150 yards from the elevated green (a wide, but shallow green that required a high shot to land softly). An up hill lie helped his 6 iron trajectory and he holed it out for a duece.

Our next game was two days later and my tee shot landed within a few feet of his lie. I played a 7 iron and it, too, holed out. Two friends - on two successive games have the same shot and the same result. So much for theism.' or non-theism.

Thanks, Irvy!

Golf Story #5, First Game

Here is a true experience that I had on a golf course that I will never forget:

I had gotten totally enthralled with golf when I was just a teenager many years ago and had tried for quite some time to get my father out to try this sport with me. He was always working very hard, and it was a struggle to secure some quality time. Well, I finally succeeded in getting him out to a course for his very first round. It was the Currie Park municipal course in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a beautiful summer day.

He tried and struggled and hacked his way around 8 holes had a stroke count of well above a 100 when we came to the 9th tee. I remember it was a uphill par 4. I don't remember how many strokes it took - but he wound up about 120 yards from the green, when he topped yet another shot. It kicked and bounced and threaded its way to the green and then dropped right into the cup.

I turned to him and exclaimed in wonderment, "Dad - that was fantastic - you sunk your shot".

He turned to me without hesitation, and I will never forget his response, "That was what I was just supposed to do, wasn't it?"

That was the only game of golf he ever played.

Harvey Silverstein

In the winter of 2007, Ed taught golf in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, from December 28 to May 1. To read his blog of this fascinating adventure, click here.