Instant Blog Feeder Test

End Your Putting Yips By Controlling Your Eyes

Looking up or peeking to see if the ball goes into the hole is a sure way to miss a putt. Resist the temptation to watch the ball. Keep your head still over the ball and stare down at the empty spot the ball he used to occupy long before you hit the putt.

Listen to hear if the putt falls. You may also catch yourself, one afflicted with the yips, watching your putterhead go back away from the ball and come back through contact. Don’t allow your eyes to follow the putterhead during the stroke. To help focus on the ball, pick a small, noticeable mark on the ball to look at. Keep your eyes fixed on the brand name, printed logo, a simple dimple, or an identification mark throughout your stroke.

Maybe the best way to steady your eyes and to play in the subconscious is to stand over the putt, put your putterhead on the ball, stare at a spot on the ball, and then stand perfectly still for five seconds. During these five seconds of still and calm, let the gaze of your eyes go out of focus. Your eyes still focus on the spot of the ball you were staring at, but everything else becomes fuzzy and soft. Go ahead and stroke the putt with your eyes and mind this blurry, meditative state. You may be surprised by the results!

A Quick Drill For Consistent Shots

Creating consistent shots in golf is a must. What happens with a lot of players is that, as you look from down the line, the golf club has a tendency to get too vertical on the downswing. It leads to taking too much turf, steep divots, and a ball spinning off to the right.

All of this is influenced by your setup. For example, if you have too much bend in the upper body, and the arms are extended far away from the body, there is a lot of tilt. This causes the golf club to get too vertical on the backswing, which will also create the steepness in the downswing, sticking the club into the ground, and the arms tend to reverse rotate.

So by standing taller at address and getting the end of the golf club pouring more toward your belt buckle, that will put you in an ideal position from address. However, this doesn’t mean that your swing will get more rounded to produce a consistent shot, so a simple drill can help.

The 15, 10, 5 Drill

First take a practice shot with the ball 15 inches above the ground. By swinging so high you have a nice rounded swing, almost like a baseball swing, and after swinging through, it allows you to square up the clubface. Next move to 10 inches above the ground, around and through, then 5, around and through, then on the tee, making sure the end of the golf club is pointed at your belt buckle.

The Belly Putter

The belly putter is golf’s latest and greatest idea ? a compromise between the advantage of the long putter and the practicality of the traditional putter. The belly putter is longer than the traditional putter and shorter than the long putter.

You grip the belly putter just as you may imagine by the image that the name conjures up, by anchoring the top, butt end of the club, literally, into your belly. By anchoring the putter in your belly, the motion of the stroke becomes simpler and more reliable, just like a pendulum effect, just as with the long putter.

Vijay Singh, the professional golfer who unseated Tiger Woods as the world’s top-ranked player in 2004, popularized the belly putter more than any other player. Ironically, when Singh took the top ranking from Tiger Woods, he’d recently switched back from a long spell with the belly putter to a traditional putter.

Possible Causes Of Your Yips Part 2

Your putting yips may be easier to fix than you think. Take a look at these 3 common culprits and ask yourself whether or not they are getting in your way of a successful putt:

Over-analysis: You may get so caught up in the mechanics of your stroke that you paralyze your natural movement. You become so self-conscious of your body position, putting stroke, and movements, they can barely take the putter back in any simple, straight fashion, along the target line. You may find yourself watching the putterhead go back and come through the ball or looking up to see how the ball rolls.

Steering: Instead of letting the putterhead freely swing through the ball and propel it toward the hole, you may find yourself trying to steer the ball into the hole. Steering is typically a tension filled attempt to guide the ball into the hole due to a lack of confidence in the putting stroke. Tension can cause you to push the putterhead toward the hole and mistakenly get your wrists or legs into the act.

Insecurity: Getting nervous and insecure over a putt, especially a short one, is a sure way to miss it. Without confidence, you allow all manner of negative thoughts to enter your head and your play. What can you do to make the putt? Will it go in? Can you lose the hole or the match by missing it? Will you feel embarrassed in front of the other players by missing it?

End Your Putting Yips By Fixing Your Alignment

Are you seeing too many angles when you stand over a putt? Have you checked to see if you may be lined up incorrectly? Your conscious alignment may be at war with your subconscious sense of straightness, and your putting stroke is caught in the middle as your body tries to issue a correction.

Pick a hole on a flat spot on the practice green and drop your ball the few feet from the hole. Stand behind the ball and line up the putt. Be sure to use the printed brand name on the ball as a helper. Position the ball so that the name points straight at the hole. When you get over the ball with your putter, match the aiming line on top of your putter to the line of the logo on the ball.

Put the putterhead flush behind the ball on this line. Now take notice of your feet. Are they perpendicular to the line created by the logo? How about your shoulders? Finally, are you taking the putter head straight back and straight through during the stroke?

Used Golf Clubs

As a beginner golfer, you might want to consider buying used golf clubs as a starter set. Of course if you have the money to burn then go ahead and get a new set of clubs, but used golf clubs are more than appropriate for the majority of newcomers to the game. There are quite a few people, especially kids and teenagers, who play for a while but lose enjoyment and end up wasting those new clubs.

The main factors when buying any type of clubs, even used golf clubs, is to make sure that they fit close to your height, arm length, and swing speed. When buying used golf clubs, another important factor is how all of the drivers, irons, and putters feel in your hands and when you swing.

Used golf clubs can be found in most used sporting good stores, weekend garage sales, classified ads in the newspaper, and of course, through online shopping. You can even check some of the local pro shops at the nearest golf course for any available used golf clubs.

End Your Putting Yips By Clearing Your Head

Because the major contributors to the yips are tension, anxiety, and ack of confidence, one way to help rid yourself of the yips is to empty your mind. Play in the subconscious - forget about the stroke, forget about the results, and forget about the circumstances. Just play, in the literal sense of the word.

If you step inside your local pub to play darts or shoot some pool, you probably do not get all bogged down in your technique when you toss the darts or set up for your corner shot. You may want to win the pool game, but you probably do not hang the balance of the world on your shot on the 8-ball, right? You just play casually, sipping a beer, and enjoying yourself, even when you miss.

Try to put yourself into the same mindset when you putt. Just play and let it happen. Let your athletic instincts take over. Trust the practice and effort you have put toward your game thus far. Just step up to your position and make the shot, putting in the subconscious.

Home Golf Lessons

Just because you are stuck at home for some reason and cannot make it to the golf course or the driving range, that does not mean that you have to leave your golf game behind. I’ve spent many afternoons and evenings practicing my putt shots right on my living room carpet, a simple home golf lesson made cheap.

Putting the ball on your carpet as a home golf lesson is a time-honored tradition. In fact, every day there are thousands of executives who bring their home golf lessons with them to the office, secretly putting the ball on their office carpet while discussing import business matters over the speaker phone.

Home golf lessons that include putting should be done on the right type of carpet, one that is short and firm enough to allow the golf ball to travel at the appropriate speed. A sturdy, industrial-type office carpet works just fine, as do Astroturf-type rugs.

You can further specialize in the quality of your home golf lessons by visiting a golf retail shop and purchasing an electric putting cup. These nifty little devices will actually shoot your ball right back to you once you have putt it into the slot.

Possible Causes Of Your Yips Part 1

What exactly causes the yips? Wouldn’t it be great if a pharmaceutical company developed a pill that would automatically make all of your personal yips disappear, especially when you are getting ready to putt?

Anxiety: Your yips may be caused by anxiety over making a putt. If you look up too quickly to see the ball falling into the hole, you may not complete the stroke properly, pulling or pushing with your hands. Your hands may even shake and wobble.

Wrist Breakdown: A breakdown in your right wrist (for right-handed golfers) can result in the yips. Often, a breakdown or flick of the wrist happens just before impact. This is a mechanical flaw that can send the putt off-line.

Alignment: If you line up improperly before you hit the putt, and you misalign on your putterhead, your body may subconsciously cause you to alter the swing path in mid stroke in an attempt to make a correction. Attempting to correct the path of your putter in mid stroke is immensely difficult and likely to result in a push or pull, or the putter head may cut across the ball and cause it to spin.

Custom Golf Clubs

There comes a time in every serious golfer’s life when ponying up the extra cash in order to have a set of custom golf clubs made is a must. It gets old very fast when you have to have your current set of golf clubs repaired because they don’t quite fit your playing style as they should, causing numerous problems on the course.

Yes they are expensive, but having custom golf clubs made with the specs of your personal measurements, height, and swing plane will cure any problems you are having on the course. Gone will be the days where you are forced to play with a set of golf clubs that just don’t fit right.

Having a set of custom golf clubs fitted to your needs is a fairly simple process. The three major factors that will be considered when having your new set of custom golf clubs fitted will be your height, your arm length, and swing speed.

Custom golf clubs can be impeccably fitted to your swing and body type, but may cost you thousands of dollars to have made. Is it worth it? Yes, most definitely!

Once a player reaches a certain level of experience with golf, there comes a time when a huge difference in the quality of their game will depend entirely on how well they play with their respective set of golf clubs. Custom golf clubs can become a big step in the right direction towards improving your score and overall continued enthusiasm of the game.

The most important aspect of having custom golf clubs fitted for each individual is to make sure that it’s done right. Everybody has a different body as well as a different swing. You are investing quite a large sum of money into this project and if you do not have a professional properly fit you for your custom golf clubs, it could turn out to be the biggest regret you have made.