I found this tip on GolfChannel.com.
If you have trouble getting out of bunkers, you may be swinging too wildly. Mike Malaska, Director of Instruction at Superstition Mountain Golf Course in Mesa, Arizona, has a drill to keep your body under control in the sand.
If you do this drill, you’ll have no problems getting out of sand traps.
Lydia Ko won the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open by two shots over Amy Yang. With the win, Ko solidifies her number 1 world ranking, but also managed to claim the top spot in our Power Rankings. I am sure Lydia will mark this as one of her great career milestones (yeah, right).
Lydia only had to move up one spot, displacing Rory McIlroy. McIlroy is scheduled to play the PGA Tour this week at the Honda Classic. I am sure he will be extra motivated to re-take what was just taken from him.
On the PGA Tour, James Hahn defeated Dustin Johnson and Paul Casey in a playoff at the Northern Trust Open (formerly known as the L.A. Open) for his first victory on the tour. With the win, Hahn rose from 378th to 70th.
And Anirban Lahiri won on the European Tour at the Hero Indian Open (who knew India was in Europe?). It is Lahiri’s second victory this season, and of his career, and moves him to 20th in the rankings.
Who wouldn’t like to make every 3-foot putt? School of Golf’s Martin Hall shares three drills that will help you make the 3-foot putt every time.
Last weekend was the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. This event it unlike any other on the PGA Tour in that the PGA tour pros, while playing their regular tournament, also play alongside amateur partners in a pro-am tournament.
It seems that the amateurs used to be much more famous than they are today (where are the new celeb golfers?) but there are still pretty entertaining.
Here are a few highlights, which need to include Billy Murray, the most entertaining participant,
In the past week, two golf legends have passed away.
Charlie Sifford, who broke the colour barrier on the PGA Tour, passed away on February 3rd.
Billy Caspar, winner of 3 major championships and 51 career victories, passed away on February 7th.
Before the last week, I cannot remember the last time I heard either of their names mentioned during a golf telecast, or saw them referenced in an article. Both Charlie Sifford and Billy Casper are Hall of Famers, and I find it a little unfortunate that it takes their passing for the golfing community recall their lists of accomplishments.
So I was reading today about the latest Tiger Woods withdrawal, this time at Torrey Pines after 11 holes (Tiger was in obvious discomfort and was 2-over par on the easier North Course) and found a Golf Digest article called “5 things we didn’t know were problems until Tiger Woods told us they were“.
The article is basically a list of excuses Tiger has given over the years after bad rounds of golf, including his latest excuse of “deactivated glutes” (which is going to be my excuse for every single poor shot I hit from now on). And in the portion about the “deactivated glutes” was something that every golf fan needs to follow, Tiger’s Glutes’ twitter feed.
Not activated 🙁
— Tiger’s Glutes (@tigerglutes) February 5, 2015
So if you want to know how Tiger is feeling, just check Twitter.
Tiger has withdrawn from Torrey Pines this week due to his “glutes” being “deactivated” (more on this in another post). But even before his withdrawal he was struggling once again with chipping. And last week in Phoenix, Tiger’s short game was painful to watch.
School of Golf’s Martin Hall and Sara Brown appeared on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive show this week and discussed how to fix the problem of bad chipping (or at least how to make better contact). Here is the video of that visit:
Hopefully this might help you if you struggle with chipping and pitching.
The weather wasn’t great in Arizona, but it was much better than it was in 2002 at Muirfield (I was there) when Tiger shot his only other over-eighty round as a pro.
How did it happen? A triple, a couple of doubles, hitting it in the water, hitting it out of bounds, lots of poor chips and putts.
For most of his career, meaning up until the last couple of years, Tiger was the best chipper and putter in the history of golf. Now, I would be embarrassed to chip and putt like Tiger has his last couple of tournaments. And I barely practice, much less make a living by playing golf. Tiger claims to have hit thousands of practice chips since December.
In case you’re wondering, Tiger is dead last out of the 132 players in Arizona.
Here are the “highlights”.
And this tweet below pretty much sums up what appears to be the proverbial “changing of the guard”.
Nothing more telling than this. Picture courtesy of Steve Elling. pic.twitter.com/AjyWr6KoLw
— Alex Miceli (@alexmiceli) January 30, 2015