Golf tips, instruction, and commentary for any golfer looking to improve.

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How to get Backspin on Your Ball: Attacking the Pin like a Pro

We’ve all seen it; a pro golfer flies their approach shot 15-20 feet past the cup only to spin the ball all the way back. While we might only see this on television, in reality, getting backspin on your approach shots is something that any golfer can do with a little technique and some practice.

So, let’s spend today talking about how you can add backspin into your approach game repertoire.

How Does Backspin Even Work?

Backspin has mistified golfers for years by turning very bad shots into nearly perfect ones around the green. So how does this “magic” happen?

In the past, we’ve talked about what causes hooks or slices, however, backspin is a little different.

Where hooks and slices impact your ball’s flight in the air, backspin has to do with what happens to your ball after it lands on the ground. Thankfully, backspin is much easier to understand.

Backspin truly boils down to the spin your swing puts on the ball. After contact is made with the ball, your shot flies through the air spinning backward; in the same way, a basketball shot spins through the air on its way to the hoop.

After your shot lands, this backspin (if it’s powerful enough) will cancel out the balls forward motion and even roll the ball back towards you.

How to Get Backspin on Your Shot

So, with all of the physics behind us, let’s use this basic understanding of golf physics to figure out how we can get backspin on our shots around the green.

Since we just talked about how the backspin from your swing results in backspin when the ball lands, all of our tips will focus on putting the most spin on our approach shot without jeopardizing our distance or accuracy.

Stance

First, let’s talk about the setup. While you would normally stand with the ball in the middle of your stance for an average iron shot, we are going to move the ball back in our stance slightly for this shot.

By moving the ball back in our stance, we force our bodies to take a steeper swing arc during our stroke. This steeper swing arc will result in higher levels of compression on the ball and improved backspin on your shots.

Club Selection

With our stance properly aligned, let’s talk about club selection.

To be most successful spinning the ball back, focus on using the higher lofted clubs in your bag.

Intuitively this should make sense. In order to get backspin, we need to stop the forward movement of the ball and still have some spin left to bring the ball back. By using a lower lofted iron such as a five or six iron we are hitting much flatter, further shots.

This results in more forward momentum and less backspin once the ball lands on the green.

To fix this problem, start practicing with high lofted clubs; I would recommend mastering your backspin with a lob wedge or a sand wedge before you move to 9 or 8 irons.

The Swing

Our final piece of advice for improving your backspin has to do with your swing.

Now, while you absolutely should not be changing your swing dramatically to get more backspin out of your shots, there are a few adjustments you can make to get the most out of your current swing.

First, we need to talk about the angle of your hands. While our setup from above has placed our hands slightly in front of the ball, resist the temptation to amplify this effect my pushing your hands forward, as you would in a bump and run chip.

This can result in a very flat shot which, again, produces too much forward momentum and prevents our shot from spinning back towards the cup once it lands.

Instead, let your hands hang neutral as you normally would. This results in a ‘slightly’ closed clubface from our stance but a very strong grip through contact; something that will translate into higher levels of consistency on your swing and increased levels of spin on the ball.

In addition to neutral hands, focus on placing slightly more weight on your front foot during your setup. This extra weight will help facilitate your weight transfer and ensures that you attack the ball on contact.

One great way to make sure this is happening is to look at the divot your swing leaves after contact. If your divot is in front of the ball’s previous location then you know you properly transferred your weight during the shot.

By doing so, you ensure the club touches the ball before it touches the ground at contact. This will help you put the most spin on your shot while also minimizing errors with your shot’s consistency that can result from hitting the ground first during contact.

What Next?

Now that we’ve laid out information on your stance, club selection, and swing you should be all set to hit the range and try out your newly discovered shot.

While it might not happen overnight, a few weeks of consistent practice and a little bit of experimentation should be all you need to start working on some beautiful, high loft, backspinning shots.

And before you know it, you’ll be attacking the pin just like the pros do on TV.

Which Golf Grip Should You Use?

From the very first moment you touched a club, your golf game has been dramatically affected by your grip.

Given this obvious fact, it’s amazing to me how many golfers discount how important this part of your game is. After all, why would you spend hundreds of dollars and hours of your time with lessons and practice when the basics are truly what is holding you back from improving?

Thankfully, all the confusion surrounding golf grips is easily fixed with just a little information. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Importance of a Grip

Before we talk about the three main types of golf grips, we should really talk about why your grip is so important.

Simply put, your grip is what allows you to transfer your body’s movement into your club, and through your club, into the ball.

While it might be obvious, this really is worth emphasizing as your grip will determine your success or failure when it comes to the physical consistency with your swing.

Strong or weak grips might heighten or negate the effect of a shaky swing. Too much pressure from a grip can over or under rotate your wrists, leading to errant shots. And the list goes on and on.

So, with that said, let’s take a look at the three main golf grips a golfer can use.

The Baseball Grip (Ten Finger Grip)

baseball gripWhether you look back at playing t-ball as a kid or your first golf swing an overwhelming majority of golfers start their careers with the baseball grip, otherwise, known as the “ten-finger grip”.

For a right-handed golfer, simply grab the club with your right hand stacked on top of your left and then approach the ball.

While the baseball grip is simple, other benefits of this grip include greater leverage from the absence of interlocking fingers. This can create more clubhead speed at impact; something that improves distance.

Finally, the dominance of the right hand in the baseball grip helps prevent a fade. This makes the baseball grip especially useful for golfers that struggle with a slice or fade.

However, while the baseball grip is simple and powerful for new golfers, this comes at a price. Since you lack any connection between hands with the ten-finger grip, you run the risk of sacrificing your grips consistency for the positives listed above.

If you’d like to keep that consistency with your grip, however, we may have a solution for you down below…

The Overlap Grip (Vardon Grip)

vardon gripNext up after the baseball grip is the “overlap grip” or the “Vardon grip”. This grip was popularized by Henry Vardon in the late 19th century and is the most popular grip of professional golfers. A picture of the grip is shown on the right.

To do the overlap grip, first, grab the club as you would for the baseball grip. From there, slide the little finger of your right hand into the space between the index and middle finger of your left hand. After, just move your finger around until the grip feels comfortable and you should be all set.

While the Vardon Grip, like the baseball grip, is also simple to adapt, its overlapping nature adds to the structure and stability of the overall grip.

This might seem like an improvement over the baseball grip, however, this grip removes the leverage created by stacking your hands in the previous grip. Although this isn’t a big deal for most golfers, losing the extra distance, especially with the driver and long irons, is a significant tradeoff.

All and all, the improved stability and comfort of the overlap grip is usually worth the decreased distance. This, along with the ease of adaptation, has caused the overlap grip to be one of golf’s most popular grips.

The Interlock Grip

Our final grip today is the one I personally use when I golf, the interlock grip. interlock grip.jpg

While the overlap grip promoted the tradeoff of consistency for distance, the interlock grip takes this one step further.

As you can see to the right, the interlock grip features an interconnection of the left index finger and the right pinky finger. This interlocking set-up not only increases the strength of the grip itself but, more importantly, this grip forces both of your hands to work together during a swing.

This forced cohesion between hands is, in my opinion, the interlock grip’s greatest strength. By forcing a golfer to use both hands in unison, this grip dramatically improves the consistency of a golfer’s ball-striking at impact. It’s for this massive reason that I only teach the interlock grip during my lessons.

Unfortunately, all good things inevitably come with a tradeoff. For this grip, in particular, it is exceedingly difficult to adapt to. Where other grips might not cause any inconvenience when you switch to them, the interlocking grip will take months of consistent practice to start to feel normal.

For this reason, I would recommend learning this grip during the offseason if you are interested in trying it out. If that’s not possible, even just grabbing a club and taking a couple swings a day will help reduce the time it takes for this grip to feel natural.

It might seem like a little bit of work, but I promise the pay off from improved ball striking will be worth it.

The Wrap-Up

While there is no shortage of grips to try out in the golfing world, I’m confident that one of the three grips will help you find what you’re looking for in your golf game.

Whether you’re looking for improved distance, comfort, consistency, or some of each, the above grips will, hopefully, help you achieve your goals the next time you step on the course.

So, while it might be inconvenient to leave your trusty old grip from the past, it might be worth it to try out some of the grips we listed above.

After all, you never know when you might come across your new favorite grip.

Our New Ebook – A Golfer’s Practice Plan

With the new year upon us and 2019 already off to a busy start, I thought now would be a perfect time to unveil the newest project we have been working on.

While we spoke about an ebook in the works over a year ago, up until early December it really was something that had been pushed to the back burner. Thankfully, a few long flights and a handful of days off gave me the chance to finally finish up the manuscript.

After all the time spent on writing, cover art, and proofreading I am extremely excited to announce our first ebook from The Golf Academy:

A Golfer’s Practice Plan: Drills and Insight to Slash Your Scores

 ______________________________________________________

Our Design

At the root of our design for this ebook was really finding a solution to the average golfers struggle to improve; their stagnation, we ultimately found, was due to a shortage of practice time coupled with the lack of focus many golfers have while they practice.

This guide speaks to both of these problems and provides advice to help you get the most out of your practice sessions and your golfing season.

By grabbing insight from practice theory, psychology, and almost a decade of teaching experience I think my team and I have hit the nail on the head when it comes to the content inside this guide.

With that being said, my team and I would be extremely happy to share our newest project with all of you.

And, to make things even sweeter, we’ll share it with you for free.

We want to share all this great information with you and we don’t want it to cost you a dime. In fact, we’ll even send it to your email if you’d like us to!

If you are interested in getting our new ebook delivered to your inbox, there’s a sign-up form below that’ll get you your new ebook automatically. Not only will this get you our new ebook, but it will also sign you up to get all of our new blog posts in your inbox as well (something we would love to have you on board for!).

Subscribe below for your FREE Ebook!

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Otherwise, if you don’t want to sign up for another mailing list, the download for a PDF is also down below. This way you’ll always have it with you and, better yet, it’ll be all set for you to send to a friend or playing partner (we’d appreciate that also!)

The Golfer’s Practice Plan

At the end of the day, we truly want to share our experience and advice with golfers that are looking to improve; hopefully, this guide helps do that for you.

If it does, please come reach out to us in the comments below or on Twitter and let us know! We’d love to hear what you think of our guide or anything golf related in general!

With that said, I really do want to thank you for coming along with us through the golfing world. We’re so grateful you’re at The Golf Academy with us and we hope you enjoy our newest guide.

Cheers,

Sully

2018 Ryder Cup: How Should the US and Europe Pair Up Their Teams?

With the 2018 Ryder Cup only a handful of days away it’s about time we talk about the pairings for US and European teams. Luckily, our friends across the pond at Betway.com have already given us their opinions on this year’s Ryder Cup pairings

With teams selected, Jack Green has given us his insight into the history of Ryder Cup pairings as well as who he thinks should be paired up for the 2018 Ryder Cup. Make sure you check out his article above along with the Ryder Cup website for official pairings Thursday morning and coverage throughout the week.

 

EUROPE

When picking Ryder Cup pairings, it can be tempting for a captain to turn to what worked in the past.

Having seen Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose win all three of their matches in 2014, or Rose and Ian Poulter claim two points as a pairing in both 2008 and 2012, Thomas Bjorn could go with the tried-and-tested partnerships that have won Europe three of the last four Ryder Cups.

History suggests, however, that being bold and forming new duos is the right way to go for the Europeans, meaning they are favorites to lift the Ryder Cup.

At the last 10 Ryder Cups dating back to 1997, 21 European pairings claimed at least two points. Of those, 14 had never previously played together in the competition.

In fact, the majority of successful pairings in recent years have included rookies.

Five of the seven pairings to have won two points or more for Europe since 2008 have included exactly one player making his Ryder Cup debut.

None of those 21 pairings since 1997 featured two rookies playing together, though, so it’s important for a captain to get the right blend of experience when picking his partnerships.

The formula looks simple for Bjorn: pair each of the five rookies in the team with a player who has played in the Ryder Cup before.

The Dane should also aim to pair players who are of a similar age.

Of the last 21 pairings to win two points, 16 were separated by 10 years or fewer.

There’s one rule, however, that Bjorn should stick to at all costs: don’t split up the Spaniards.

All-Spanish pairings – most of which were comprised of a combination of Seve Ballesteros, Jose Maria Olazabal, Miguel Angel Jimenez, and Sergio Garcia – have a phenomenal record at the Ryder Cup, with an overall record of 20 wins, seven defeats and five halves from 32 matches.

The greatest pairing of all time, Ballesteros and Olazabal, earned a total of 12 points from 15 matches across four Ryder Cups between 1987 and 1993.

This time around, Bjorn has a ready-made duo at his disposal in Garcia – who has a 3-1-1 record when playing with Spaniards – and world No. 8 Jon Rahm.

The pair has spoken about their friendship in the past, having played three rounds together at the 2017 Dean & Deluca Invitational, and Bjorn can roll them out in the Friday morning fourballs and be confident of an early point.

ryder_cup_pairs_final_texture_v2 (1)

USA

The USA hasn’t been quite as successful as Europe in pairs matches over the past two decades, with 14 pairings scoring at least two points for them over the past 10 Ryder Cups.

The trends suggest, however, that Jim Furyk should follow similar rules to the ones that apply to Bjorn’s team.

Matching experienced players with rookies is also the best course of action for the American team.

Of those 14 pairings who have won two points for the US since 1997, nine featured at least one rookie.

Only one featured two rookies playing together, though: Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed in 2014 (more on them later).

Newly-formed pairings also fare better for the Americans. Just one of those 14 pairings had played together in the past: again, Spieth and Reed, this time 2016.

Like Bjorn keeping the Spaniards together, Furyk should aim to pair players from the same place: in this case, the South.

Six of the nine pairings that have won at least two points for the US since 2010 featured two players born in the Southern states.

Furyk should have no problem with that, as his team features seven players from either Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas or Kentucky.

Two of those are Spieth and Reed, which brings us to Furyk’s final rule to live by: never split up his best pairing.

Together, the two Texans won 2.5 points from three matches in 2014, and they took another 2.5 from four matches two years later.

Their all-time Ryder Cup record is four wins, two halves and just one defeat from seven matches, and their five points is the joint-best total haul of any American pairing in history.

2018 Ryder Cup: Official Team Roster and Analysis

With the 2018 Ryder Cup approaching in the next few weeks, we think it’s only fitting to present a piece from the European website Betway.com, regarding their opinions on how wildcard selections should have been made this year.

While it might not have panned out that way, make sure you check out the full article along with the rest of their website for the latest Ryder Cup news. In addition, keep an eye out for the second part of our Ryder Cup coverage here at The Golf Academy in the coming weeks. Go USA!

ryder_cup_final_final

With Ryder Cup 2018 selections completed, how do you think the captains did? Who do you think should have been named as a Wildcard?

The final team breakdowns for the 2018 Ryder Cup can be seen below with non-playing captains underlined and wildcards in italics.

Team Europe

  • Captain: Thomas Bjørn
  • Paul Chasey
  • Tommy Fleetwood
  • Tyrrell Hatton
  • Rory McIlroy
  • Francesco Molinari
  • Alex Noren
  • Thorbjørn Olesen
  • Jon Rahm
  • Justin Rose
  • Paul Casey
  • Sergio Garcia
  • Ian Poulter
  • Henrick Stenson

Team USA

  • Captain: Jim Furyk
  • Brooks Koepka
  • Dustin Johnson
  • Justin Thomas
  • Patrick Reed
  • Bubba Watson
  • Jordan Speith
  • Rickie Fowler
  • Webb Simpson
  • Tiger Woods
  • Phil Mickelson
  • Tony Finau
  • Bryson DeChambeau

 

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