The School of Golf is back with a new curriculum for 2015. Here is a tip from last night’s episode that deals with what your hips and shoulders should be doing when you turn back and forward swings.

In my opinion, the most important part is the shifting of the hips to start the downswing.

School of Golf’s Martin Hall and Sara Brown teach a drill to get the arms and shoulders moving properly in the swing.

School of Golf’s Martin Hall presents what might be one of the simplest tips for squaring up the clubface that I have ever heard.

I really like the School of Golf.  Martin Hall is full of great tips and this is a great tip, and runs somewhat along the lines of the Lift the Lead Heel for Power tip. The key to power and better ballstriking is having the lower body initiate the downswing.  So planting the left heel for power, and box-before-ball are two great ideas or swing thoughts to work on and use.

Martin and Sara of School of Golf talked about the myth of never lifting your heel of your lead foot in the golf swing, and Martin suggested that lifting the heel could generate more turn in the back swing and more power overall.

There are two keys to lifting your heel.  You should start the downswing by planting your heel back onto the ground, and also you have to make sure that you put your foot back in the same position it was in at address.

There was a magazine many years ago called Golf Illustrated (I think there have been other Golf Illustrateds before and since) and I remember one issue where the banner story was John Daly’s tip to slam the heel for power (which is essentially the same thing as this lesson).

Another Golf Illustrated classic banner story was “Chi Chi’s Chip Tips”, where Chi Chi suggested using your fairway woods to hit bump-and-runs (this is back about 25 years ago in the days before hybrids existed).

I’ve always been interested in how to read greens better. There are lots of tips on how to have a better swing, how to pitch and chip better, how to have a better putting stroke, but not many about how to read the green better.  You can have the best, purest putting stroke in the world and never make a putt if you aren’t good at reading the greens.

School of Golf’s Martin Hall and Sara Brown describe 4 keys to reading the green.

The keys are:

1. Find the uphills and downhills along the line.
2. Look at the putt from the side to help find the break.
3. Look at what’s going to happen around the hole (the putt should be moving slowly near the hole, so any breaks affect the ball more).
4. Think about the speed of the greens and the putt.  The faster the greens are, the more the putt will break.

There is almost nothing more important to achieving solid ball-striking in the golf swing as having good timing. The Golf Channel’s Annabel Rolley shows how putting a slight pause into the top of the backswing can help improve the overall timing of the swing.

Towards the end of the season I consciously was trying to put a slight pause into the transition from backswing to downswing and did notice that my ball striking did improve.