Month: January 2018

How to Practice: During the Winter

On January 29, 2018

It’s awful, isn’t it? You practiced throughout the spring, perfected your golf game in the summer, and really found a groove in the fall only to lose all of that hard work once the snow starts to fly. It happens every year and somehow we never really figure out a way to fight back.

I know that no golfer likes to admit it, but we all get rusty during the winter. We don’t get a chance to play golf while there’s snow on the ground, and the 20-degree weather doesn’t exactly make you jump off your couch to go practice either. So how can we try to keep some of the improvements that we made during the summer months for next year without hating every moment of putting on a small synthetic green in the basement? Join us today as we share some of our favorite ways to get your golf fix during the winter months.

Chip, Putt, and Swing at Home

Even though the weather outside might not be great, that’s no excuse to not work on the parts of your game that don’t require as much room to practice. One of the best things you can do for your game during the winter is just maintaining the feel of your short game by hitting a couple putts either on a putting mat or just at a water bottle. It might seem boring, but it’s a great way to keep a smooth stroke during the winter and pass the time during all those long hockey match commercial breaks.

Along with that, putting, chipping and swinging a club are also great ways to practice at home. While it might not have the same feel as chipping off grass, chipping some whiffle balls into a cup or bucket is a great way to simulate contact with a ball and it’s still one of the ways I like to practice with my dad during the winter months.

Similarly, if you have the space to do so, simply swinging a club without having to hit a shot is a great way to engrain a swing fix that you implemented during the last season. It’s also a great way to get in the 100 swings a day that Hank Haney recommends to help put a swing into memory.

Now, while these may not be the most glamorous ways to practice during the off-season, every little bit helps, and taking 15-20 minutes a few times a week is almost guaranteed to help you shake off the rust quicker once the weather warms up.

Golf Ranges and Indoor Simulators

Low roofs and short distances to walls are problems that plague indoor driving ranges.

Another great (and much more exciting) way to work on your game during the winter is to practice at an indoor driving range. Although they may not be that common, if you live near a metropolitan area there’s likely at least one within driving distance. Indoor ranges are great not only because you get to actually hit a physical ball, but also because you get to feel the full swing of the club and contact with the ball which more closely simulates a real golf shot.

Driving ranges do have their limitations, however. While it is nice to be able to hit a real ball and take a full swing, the shots you’re hitting at the range are not incredibly comparable to an actual course.

For starters, you can’t take a divot at an indoor driving range which can really mess with your irons if you’re used to taking a sizable chunk of grass out with each swing. Along with this, driving ranges almost never have obstacles to hit around or wind and other elements, which means the experience is not incredibly similar to playing a round of golf on a course.

One great way to combat this, however, is to play a round of golf on a simulator. While you might not get to track the ball flight of your shot the same way you would at a driving range, using a golfing simulator is a fun way to get your golf fix in during the winter. Simulators are constantly improving and many now have wind, rain, different lies and ways to track the spin you put on your shot with pinpoint accuracy in order to provide you with a reasonably authentic experience.

These simulators can be fun and entertaining but they are also expensive to rent out or buy and that makes them less of a practical option for consistent practice during the winter.

Go South or Play Real Golf

Our final way to practice during the winter is one of the most obvious and also one of the best options golfers have to keep their game together during the winter. You must simply find a way to play.

Easier said than done!

Although it maybe tough to play during the winter, it’s not impossible, and one great way to get some golf in during the offseason is to a take a trip to a more hospitable golfing climate. Whether this means leaving your state or leaving your country, taking a golf trip can be a great way to enjoy a weekend with friends and keep your golf game in check while you wait to the weather to warm up back home.

There are dozens of golf trip planning websites and many golf courses offer special “stay and play” rates for hotel rooms and golf rounds for those of us looking to take a small vacation. While this option might take a little more planning than the others, it’s almost always a great experience to go golfing somewhere warm during the winter months.

Finally, your last option is to just head out and play golf back home. While this doesn’t necessarily have to be on a course, Golf Digest has determined that a golfer can play a perfectly enjoyable round as long as temperatures are above 35°F. Though this might be a little farfetched at this time of the year, in a couple months spring will be on its way and we may very well get some weather that’s nice enough to squeeze in an early round as we prepare for the 2018 season.

So there you have it, a couple easy ways to keep your game going during some of our colder months. Personally, I love going to indoor driving ranges but I’m sure some of you might have different preferences. What is your favorite way to practice during the winter? And how guilty are you of slacking on your golf game once the weather goes south? Let me know down below and wish me the best of luck staying warm here in chilly Wisconsin.

Will Technology Make or Break the Future of Golf?

By Sully

On January 25, 2018

In Golf Discussions

We love golf for the friendships it helps build and for the memories it helps create; for the proof that hard work will transform into talent sooner rather than later and for the unbeatable feeling you have when you pull off that impossible shot. It’s important, then, to know that technology will never eradicate those things from the game. New devices and contraptions may change elements of it, but as long as new technology preserves and enhances the already great parts of golf, I believe that they should be welcomed into the golfing community with open arms.

In this post, we’re going to look at the innovations that we believe will change golf in the future, along with what we think may never change.

Golf image 1

The advent of microchips and the ability to shrink amazing technology down to the size of a crumb means that tech can be put in golf balls without affecting the weight and flight of the ball too much. These microchips in the future could pair up with a smartphone app to help you locate the balls you lose track of, meaning no more 10-minute long rescue missions in the middle of games. They might not make it easier to get them out of a bush or from the bottom of a lake, but they should speed up regular rounds of golf and save you some money – in the long run, at least.

The virtual reality boom has some industries still shaking, we could only be a short spell away from this changing the game of golf too. You may already aware of the Trackman technology, which measures your swing and ball flight to make improvements and analysis of your swing easy. Imagine this, but with a virtual reality headset included – you’d be able to hit balls with realistic detection and movement in a generated landscape.

You could play countless holes of golf while barely having to move; an auto-travel function could transport you straight to where the ball lands, and you could even have downloadable map packs so you could play the best courses in the world without having to leave your home.

Speaking of virtual reality, it could also change the consumption of the sport; watching it from your couch is one thing, but watching it from the actual course as if you were there is a level of viewership that has previously been limited to a select few physically at the event. This act of faux-teleportation and much more are all possible, and possibly incoming.

Golf image 2

In terms of what won’t change, it’s hard to predict with absolute certainty what the future of any sport holds; one can just hope that the heart of it remains even if everything else is replaced. However, we believe the act of physically hitting a physical ball with a physical club will never change. No simulation or virtual reality will ever match the satisfaction of a good hit, so we should only expect phantom swings to take place in practice rounds or at home; never in an actual game.

We also believe that nothing will fundamentally make the game less fun. Advancements might make the game faster or more convenient, maybe even easier – but after all the come-and-go fads, golf will always be about hitting a ball into a hole and little will change just how ridiculously fun that can be. That’s something every reader of this site can agree on.

This post was written by Jack Bird of Golf Safari SA, who provide quality golf accommodation in South Africa’s most exclusive resorts.

How Do You Use a Chipper?

By Sully

On January 25, 2018

In Golf Tips

The putter chipper or simply “the chipper” has enjoyed a long history with the game of golf but during the most recent era, its popularity has declined significantly. Regardless of this lack of popularity, the chipper is still very effective at doing its job around the green. But what exactly is that job and how do you even use a chipper? We’ll talk about all this in today’s segment of 6 Minutes With Sully.

What is a Chipper?

Before we can explain what a chipper does, we first have to figure out exactly what it is and how that design can make it useful. The chipper is a putter-like club that is usually between 32-37 degrees of loft, which is very similar to a 7 iron. While a chipper and a 6-7 iron might have a similar degree of loft, the weight and center of mass are much different in a chipper. This difference in weight distribution, along with the shallower swing plane used during the swing, allow the chipper to chop through greenside rough without getting caught the way a wedge might.

Using a Chipper

Proximity to the green and a lack of obstacles in front of the hole make this an ideal spot to use a chipper.

Now that we have a better idea of what a chipper is, we can look at how to use a chipper to score around the green. A shot using a chipper is very similar to another greenside shot, the hybrid chip, and produces a ball flight that is also similar (although slightly higher). While both of these chips produce similar ball flights, they are both based on the simple bump and run chip that most golfers are familiar with. The chipper is perfectly designed to perform this shot and excels at chipping the ball over short patches of rough or fringe around the green. You can see one example of this to the right.

While choosing when to use a chipper is slightly arbitrary, actually hitting the shot is the easiest part of the entire process. Unlike a flop shot or other types of chips, there is almost no difference between hitting a shot with a chipper and hitting a putt. To hit your chip simply address the ball how you would normally and strike the ball slightly softer than you would if you were putting from that distance. The difference in force that you put on the shot should cancel out the fact that the ball will face less resistance as it flies through the air than it would on the ground during a putt.

Other than this one small change, everything about hitting a putt and using a chipper is exactly the same, and that’s one of the reasons I think people like using a chipper; if you’re a good putter, there’s a great chance you’ll be a good chipper too.

So that’s all there is to it, one small adjustment and a whole lot less to worry about when you’re trying to score around the green. If you want to learn a little more about using a chipper check out the video below, otherwise, I wish you the best of luck as you start practicing with your new chipper!