Tee Time for Beginners

   Hey everyone! Thanks for coming back to my page for another week. My focus for this past week has been on driving the ball. Driving the ball for those who are not familiar happens at the start of the hole when you tee up the ball and hit it for the first time. For the majority of people this is your chance to get your ball  the farthest distance. The club that you use normally varies by hole. On a par 4 or 5 I always choose to hit my driver, and when it is a par three hole, I either hit my 3 hybrid,  7 or 9 irons. Again it just depends on the distance to the flag.

   As I was saying this past week I was only working on my driver, so the bigger distances. As I was looking for different sources to learn from I picked up on one common thing. Every single person, teaching someone how to use their driver or improve on their drives, has a wide range of different tips and tricks. I honestly don’t really know where to start so I tried learning from two different people this past week.

     The first video I chose to learn from was from Rick Shiels Golf. He started off by making it clear that you should not be setting up to hit your drives the same way that you would your irons. You should begin by creating a good stance. Your ball should be lined up with the inside of your front heel. One tool that has worked for me is having someone else lineup another club from the inside of your foot to the ball to see if you are accurate. The second tip he gave was to not just swing your arms, you should be using and rotating your hips and arms. I honestly struggled with this step and I thought that it was not that well explained. I personally needed a bit more explanation or an analogy to think of, not just saying move your hips. This tip did not work for me but it could work for others! The third top he gave was to not hit down on your club. This was something I found myself constantly doing but instead of feeling like you are trying to hit down to meet the ball, feel as though you are trying to lift the ball up once you make contact with it and your club will do the rest. The fourth tip he shared was a simple one. It was to only think about speed because that it ultimately what you need to get the ball far. The fifth and final tip that he gave was to hit the ball in the middle of the club face. Overall, I took away a few tips from this video but did not love it. For a newer person to golf I found that I need more in depth explanations. Again I thought that the video would be useful for some of the viewers watching but for myself I need to look for more.

 

     The second video that I found was on Instagram. The video was fairly short but straight forward which I liked. The first tip that he gave was to line up the ball with your front toe. Again, this point will differ from person to person. I liked lining up the ball with my front toe. It helps me hit the ball fairly straight every time. The second tio he gave was to then touch your back knee to tilt your shoulders back. This was the kind of tip that I was looking for. For myself there is a difference  from saying tilt your shoulders or actually giving you a tip on how to tilt your shoulders. Having your shoulders back will naturally put more weight into your back foot which will help you later on to transfer your weight to your front creating a more powerful swing. He showed the viewers in the video that you still want to feel like you are lifting the ball. Overall I really liked this video. I took a lot more away from it and thought that it was much easier for me to follow along with. I really like when the tips are easy to remember a quick check that you can say to yourself before hitting the ball.

 

 

 

   I thought that this was a great week for myself. I golfed twice this past week and went to the driving range once. This week I am going to challenge myself to go to the driving range three times and practice my swings even more. Next week we are going to be working on different iron shots. Specifically using a 7 iron. Thanks again for following along.