JMiller

I think dru_ suggested drinking to take the edge off, I don't drink on the course and really don't drink that much in life in general mostly for personal reasons that I don't feel like sharing with the world. I don't see the use of alcohol a good way to relax your emotions and mind, it can turn into a need to drink to be able to function over the long haul. Well, I work on Friday's and don't work on Saturday's I shot the better score after work and not on the weekend, I felt like Tiger Woods on the weekend on a major, I'm good to go on Thursday and Friday but can't seem to go low on Saturday and Sunday Well starting with putting, I actually made a few really great putts to save par and even make one birdie on the front 9 to break 40. If anything was actually working well that day it was my putter which is a good sign as I have been working a lot with it and wanting to putt better it is finally coming around and the confidence is their when the greens are not punched and bumpy. Looking at my chip / pitch game it actually bailed me out a few different times in really hard situations making pars that really had no business getting that score. I think I saved 4/4 from the grass to get up and down. My Bunker game was HORRID, wet compact sand that played more like a powder, I couldn't seem to get out of a bunker and save a par to save my life that day, It cost me two of my double bogeys on the day and a bogey. Anything longer then a 1/4 swing was just flat off, 1/2 swings, 3/4 swings, full swings I couldn't make that great of contact and when I did make great contact it seemed that I didn't have much control on the shots. I hit a lot of fairways with what I would call "great misses" meaning that I completely miss hit the shot but it ended up in the fairway. I ended up not being able to play golf on Sunday or Yesterday (Monday) because my right elbow was sore as heck. I think that gave me the key to what went wrong in the swing on Saturday if i came away from the round with an injury. I feel that my right elbow broke down and folded more then 90* and started getting pitchers elbow or tennis elbow type symptoms after the round. This could also explain the bad tempo and timing, when my right arm folds to much the swing gets longer then what IO was using on Friday to shoot the great score and my timing / tempo ended up being off going into impact, a lot of late release leaks and big cuts.

Golf is a funny game, one day you have it firing on all cylinders and golf is so easy. Then the next day it is a grind just to keep from drowning into a terrible score and round. We here it on the tour all the time "It is really hard to back up a really low round with another low round the next day". I am wanting to know what exactly makes this happen, obviously if it happens to the best players in the world it can't be something in the swing or can it? Anyone want to share their opinion or give advise on this subject? This situation happened to me recently, I played 9 holes after work on Friday shot a bogey free 3 under 33. Then the very next day on the same 9 hole stretch I scrapped it around just to shot a 39. I won't really talk about the back 9 on Saturday as it was a complete disaster. Something was different and it wasn't my mental state. The only thing I have come up with is that my tempo was just a slight bit different from Friday into Saturday, the swing positions felt exactly the same.

Finally had a huge break through in my 9 hole round today... I came out after work like any other day and knew going in "well not sure how this will turn out but I'm gonna try something"... The thing that I wanted to try was keep the shorter backswing rotation I had and just get a touch extra lift with the arms... WOW it paid off big time, tempo was perfect, shots were in control and the shots i missed turned out very well. Not to mention I got it done a lot with the flat stick... So here it is ladies and gentlemen my low nine hole of my career thus far. A bogey free 9 hole round of 3 under par 33!!! I hit 8 of 9 GIR, 6 of 7 FIR, 14 total putts. The sick part is my 3 birdies were 2 par 4s and a par 3 I made par on both par 5s. The one hole where I missed the fairway and green was the first hole i played, missed the fairway by 3 yards bad lie, left it short on purpose, only real good bail out spot. Not too shabby for coming out cold and experimenting with something, I think my experiment panned out pretty dang well.

I agree completely, I think it takes a long time for golfers to finally get it in their head that you don't need to work hard in your body to hit the ball a long way, you just need good swing sequencing. Tour Pro talk about their reserve distance in the tank that when they need a little extra they can reach down and get a little more from it. If you are always swinging at 100% there is no way to leave something in the tank for reserve. So they have to be swinging 60 to 80% of their full potential power. It is always better to have a ball safe in the middle of the fairway then in a place it costs you one or more strokes to recover from. Sitting here watching The Open man you find a bunker you would be toast 9 times out of 10. Thus why a lot of people are playing fairway, hybrid, 2iron off the tee boxes on par 4s and par 5s. A ton of course management and course strategy going on this week, love to see it get talked about so much on TV as it is one topic most players don't even consider.

For a ball above my feet regardless of the amount, I see two main options to making good contact. 1) take more club and choke down on the club some, could be choking down all the way on the steel at some points if it is real bad. 2) take a back swing that has more rotation then vertical lift. When the ball is sitting chest high it is pretty much all rotation. For a ball bellow my feet I just have to add knee flex to get my body lowered to the ball making sure to keep my spine angle normal. There are times where I have had to get down onto one knee with one leg in a bunker and the other out, or even on a really bad slop getting down on both knees to get low enough to make a swing. In either case above or bellow your feet the worst the situation the more your objective is to make good contact and take your stroke to get it back into a more playable location. Make a very smooth swing and don't try to get too much out of the bad situation.

I personally hate it when I see someone falling asleep over the ball. James or whomever wants to answer this, what would you do to suggest to someone on how not to fall asleep over the ball with 100 swing thoughts and alignment checks and silly stuff before making a swing?

Well I don't think it is JUST the fact of a harder course, they are the best in the world at the sport after all. I think it has to do mostly with the rules of golf. It is not like in a tour event they can bend the rules a little at all for the reason of peace of play. You can't just proceed under the assumption that you know the rules, if you get them wrong in a situation it could be a penalty of 2 strokes or worse, maybe even a DQ from the tournament in some cases of rules violations. When you have to worry about a single stroke then you are going to a lot more time more often in picking shots and in situations call a rules official over to make a ruling so that you know that you don't get dinged, take Dustin Johnson at the PGA Championship grounding his club in a bunker and 2 strokes cost him a spot in the playoff. But that is why I don't really agree that peace of play being 5 hours in a tournament of 75+ golfers is really that slow. I would be shocked to see it even get down to 4:30 hours of play it would be great if they could do that but with the way the rules are in golf and with the huge prizes and stuff that can be made on tour it's probably not going to happen. Sorry for getting OT for a second their back to how'd you play

Well shaving even one stroke playing a tee that has a high course and slope rating translates almost into I handicap point per stroke. At my home course the par is 72 and the course rating is a 73.9 with a slope of 141. I have set some goals for myself this season, and I was just venting at how poorly I played. Remove the Penalty Stroke and 4 three putts, you get my round at a 78 rather then a 84. I'll be honest with my objective, I want to shoot 20 rounds in a row that break 80. That sounds like a tail order but it's really not that bad. I know with my full swing coming around (evidence of 11 of 14 fairways and on a shitty day 8 GIR), I need to keep working hard on putting and short game. Here is the list of differentials for my course from the tips, when we sit here and talk about lowering a handicap espesually as a single digit it comes down to 1 or 2 strokes off the round on average. I tossed in sub-70 rounds for the heck of it so you can see what a tour pro might shot and the best scores recorded on tour. 79 (4.1), 78 (3.3), 77 (2.5), 76 (1.7), 75 (0.9), 74 (0.1), 73 (-0.7), 72 (-1.5) 71 (-2.3), 70 (-3.1), 69 (-3.9), 68 (-4.7), 67 (-5.5), 66 (-6.3), 65 (-7.1) 64 (-7.9), 63 (-8.7), 62 (-9.5), 61 (-10.3), 60 (-11.1), 59 (-11.9), 58 (-12.7) You can only imagine that the PGA Tour probably has an average of a 75.0 rating / 145 slope from the tournament tee... I know that the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, this years host to the PGA Champ Major, has a slope of 77.2 / 144 on a normal day. I'm pretty sure it is a par 72 course, to shoot a par round on the course would be 72 (-4.1). It would be interesting to see what the handicaps of tour players actually were, I have the guess that most of them are +3 to +5 roughly others have said +2 to +4, others +4 to +6

That sounds like the old Tiger Woods "o lay" position. By that I mean the hips fire so hard the hands get "stuck" behind the body, the only thing you can do from there is flip the head closed to hit a hook, or push it. Here is a Video of Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon, Tiger mentions this position in the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PplQjd6ZP88

I am about to depress everyone that is above a 10 handicap, I shot a score yesterday that was horrid for my standards. It was an 83 after handicap reduction (84 in reality). That was a 7.1 differential from the tees that I played, so that is sort of why I say that. First off I had about 3 or 4 holes where I had iron swings that resembled a 30 handicap I topped them to be exact knee high to a midget or even ankle high on one it was pathetic. My short game didn't do so hot and putting just sucked. Let me just dive into the stats and why I wanted to shoot myself after the round. Fairways Hit ~ 11 of 14 GIRs ~ 8 of 18 Up/Down Saves ~ 3 of 7 Sand Saves ~ 0 of 2 Putts ~ 36 total, four 3 putts (two lipped out), I played 19 different green speeds yesterday (practice green and 18 holes), each green with the same amount of slope and break with the exact same length of stroke resulted in 19 different distances, impossible to get in a groove. Penalty Strokes ~ 1 (the only tee shot that really got away from me, big push fade) In short all my full swing mistakes came from a fast transition / poor tempo. My short game shots that were not converted were mostly putting errors. The Penalty Stroke cost me Double Bogey (3 from the tee lost ball). I made my Triple from the f***ing center of the fairway on 16. Great drive, terrible 2nd into a bunker, left it short in another bunker, left that short of the green, pitched on and two putts later walked of the hole. Sorry just had to vent this one out, it just totally pissed me off to not break 80 when I drove the ball as well as I did there is no excuse for that at all.

Are you talking to me or James? Are you referring to the change of playing right handed into left handed? My wife wanted to try and play golf, I bought her a RH 6 iron at first and she just had the "kill it" mentality, and a lot of swing faults beginners have a hard time getting out of, it is most of the time from a softball / baseball background (she played softball). I made the call to try it left handed so I bought a 6 iron that was left handed. She really saw some great improvements in the golf swing by making the switch. We have since bought a set of irons that are left handed for her and she hits a 7iron 120 not terrible and I want to say it's a dang draw! I couldn't be more excited to see a draw from her as a very new / beginner that is sweet. Her short game (chipping & pitching) is really good actually as they are lead arm dominant strikes anyways. I haven't gotten her into a bunker just yet don't think she is confident enough to do those shots. I have attempted to make a few shots with her clubs and it is a little funky feeling first few swings, i can't turn of the ball that well, make about a 1/2 to 3/4 swing, my short game is pretty good when doing it left handed and I can turn my RH clubs over and hit a trouble shot left handed pretty easily. With anything you are going to have to develop the feel for correct positions in the backswing that create shots, but over time I think it would be beneficial to anyone that just can't seem to get golf right handed and are right hand dominant players. In ice hockey when you are teaching a child to play you give them a stick that doesn't have any curve to the blade at all so that they can switch back and forth between holding it on the right side of their body or the left side of their body. They will eventually settle into a side that is most conferable for them. A lot of times that is with their dominant hand on top of the stick. In golf I think buying a RH 6 iron and a LH 6 iron allowing the player to make swings with each one then sticking to the one that just feels betters to them is also a great idea to start children out in the sport.

James the lowest two pictures I posted are of Ernie Els grip position. Here is the Leadbetter grip as you see even he does a little bit a of a trigger finger with the right index. Both use some extent of a what I would call a "trigger finger" with the lower hand's index finger. Control of the face of the golf club is always coming from the top hand, most of us use a golf glove on our top hand only, there is probably a reason that is done. I agree with James here that the lower hand is for nothing but power, no face control or attempt to steer the face with that lower hand. The issue is that most people play golf with their dominant hand low on the club, it gives a natural sensation to want to control the shot with that hand. You really pretty much are completely done with the right hand once that arm is fully extended, it does nothing but give power into the back of the ball, you could completely drop that hand off the shaft just before impact and hit the same shot. I used to play Ice Hockey growing up as some of you probably read before in the "talent vs potential" thread. Played for 10 years and played to a AA travel level. In ice hockey you are told as a child that you should use your dominant hand on top of the stick holding the stick to the left of your body as a right hand dominate person. The control of the blade on a ice hockey stick comes from the top hand on the stick. The power of the shots comes from the lower hand on the stick. I personally was a guy that played with my left hand on top of my ice hockey stick I just learned how to control the blade for shot placement, I also had the advantage of my power hand giving me the shot speed my "slap shot" was one of the hardest shots in my league. I have always wondered if players in golf would actually benefit from doing the ice hockey method of which side to hold the club, left or right. Meaning that majority of golfers like NHL players would be "left handed" or holding the stick / club to the left of their body. This would give you the control of the lead hand in golf and then the passive power of the travailing hand.

I found a good image of what I was talking about before of where the grip hits the palm. I move my grip from the C position to the D position and started working like I wanted it too, was able to work the ball how I like. For my right hand it sort of looks like a toned down Erine Else Position with the right pointer, my right pointer finger tip and thumb actually touch each other I am not an expert but I can take a poke at this. I would have to assume that this is being caused from a right handed release and strike. You I would assume that you are a very hand hand dominant striker of the golf ball. Do You feel that you use the right hand to manipulate the face to create shot shapes or the left? I am a right hand dominant player, but over the years I have had to learn how to feel like my right hand is passive just before impact and from that point forward. Really using the left wrist and arm to control the strike and face. Phil and VJ we have all seen videos of their swings where there lower hand is almost completely off the golf club. If you start with a neutral top hand position, at impact. Wrist position of top hand controls the face angle. bowed top wrist = closed face (Hogan was famous for this), flat top wrist = square face, cupped top wrist = open face. You can shape shots by changing the top wrist position, or just changing the swing path to the target line with a flat left wrist. Assuming you have Target A (the line where the ball starts on) and Target B (where you want the ball to end up going). The two methods are close to the same but minor changes. For me I tend to FEEL like I am using wrist manipulation for my shot shaping, but I will subconsciously open my stance a hair on a cut, close it a hair on a draw. Anything more then a 5 to 8 yard movement is going to have to be wrist manipulation for me.

The good thing for me is that it's a lot easier to move where the shaft passes through the palm of the hand then changing where the V is pointing at your body. As Hogan said in his book you should have calluses in 4 major locations on the top hand. One at the base of the middle, ring and pinky finger then one just bellow the fat part of the palm up from the pinky... I happened to be a little shallow through the palm, i didn't have the pinky callus and the one on my palm was in the center of the fat part of my hand... Just translates the shaft being in a position the wrists hing less and don't release as easily, good anti-hook position basically. I Got the grip move more in the pinky finger and fat part of my palm near the pinky on top of the club and been swinging a lot easier with more face control. However yes, I do sit around the house on rainy days right now just gripping and re-gripping the club. I noticed that the more the grip gets into my palm the more the V starts moving to my left ear rather then being more right ear to right collar bone.

I actually figured out what it was on the range yesterday that was promoting my cut and in ability to hit a draw. The shaft actually slipped more into the Palm of my hands rather then the fingers. I used a 9 pane drill, to test the workability and trajectory control of getting the grip more in the fingers then the palm. High cut, High straight, High draw Middle cut, Middle straight, Middle draw Low cut, Low straight, Low draw It worked very well, I even had another pane on the left side and right side on high slice, middle slice, low hook, middle hook. It was amazing practice tee season once I found the grip correction.

I think that most of the time my left hand V points to my chin and maybe my right ear, I am conferrable getting it as weak as my left ear at times on short shots. One thing I didn't consider might be the issue is that my club face is actually slightly open at address rather then square causing the ball to have a fade bias more then a slight draw bias. Anyways, the question still remains really, what are the recommendations that you might give a player that is making a grip change to make it feel more natural on the golf course. I have been at night just gripping and re-gripping my club to the point where I know it is as strong as I would ever want to play it. Reputation seems to be helping a lot.

positionally weaker. My V started my golfing career at my right shoulder then went to my right collar bone, then my right ear, now it sometimes gets to my chin or even pointing at my left ear which is super weak. Ben Hogan over his career become a weaker and weaker golf grip to keep from snap hooking it, by weakening the grip with a one plane swing like hogan had it eliminated the left side of the course espesually when he pulled through impact with his left hand, he would bow out the left wrist to compensate the weak grip position for a draw. In short I need to take my super weak grip with the V pointed at my left ear or my chin and get it pointing at my right ear to my right collarbone again. The reason I said this is a hard change is that on the course when I know it is in a good position, it feel very awkward and like I am going to snap hook it off the planet, my old swing would snap it off the planet but the newer one produces a baby draw, I just have to learn to trust it somehow. I can still hit a baby cut with the strong grip as well on the range, it is a matter of taking it to the course and feeling the proper position and not second guessing it.

Here is a question that I think everyone here can relate to regardless of skill level. I personally find the hardest thing to change and make it feel natural is the grip, particularly my left hand (top hand) grip in terms of getting it stronger on the grip without death gripping it. I am currently attempting to get a slightly stronger grip as over the years my left hand has gotten weaker and weaker thanks to my Ben Hogan like swing over the years. Since changing my swing to have more elevation and getting my arms closer together this also changes the rotation in my body and arms into impact, I no longer have to really worry about a snap hook too often my current shot shape is a power cut or baby cut, very playable shots. However, I do still want the ability to work the ball right to left draw, I have notice I have to swing WAY inside to out to draw a ball on my current grip alignment and sometimes it turns into a push or push cut, any two way miss is going to be terrible. When I turn my left hand a little stronger I feel I am going to hook the ball off the planet and sort of hold onto the release of the club, I can't hit a full natural release draw right now but I can still play that cut in the mean time. I have been able to make the change and see good results on the range, but anytime I think about it on the course i get the Tiger Woods fear of the left side of the course. This results in a bad sequenced swing a lot of times I make good enough contact to get away with it but not the result I really want for the level I am trying to get to. I don't mind playable misses but REAL ugly playable misses can easily turn into a not so playable miss in a hurry. James or whatever pro wants to answer this question, what recommendations do you have for changing the grip position and getting a natural feel for it on the golf course?

I know that for me I learned in a real hurry that I can over power some shafts and other shafts overpower me. When I over power the shaft it tends to flip the head closed and create big hooks, cut shoots where my wrists are held wide open I could sometimes feel shaft twisting through the hitting area and watching the ball flight go dead straight or even baby draw 1 or 2 yards. The minute i stepped into an X it got stable and I could work the ball the way I wanted to. Now where a shaft can over power me is really in feel, I tend to over swing on shafts that feel harsh / boardy on my normal load pattern. On some rare cases i have felt the shaft stay wide open on some shots that I had ripped my wrists over to hit a power draw, ended up being a straight shot or slight push. Finding a shaft that is stable in all situation for your game can be very tricky, espesually when trying to maximize spin rate as well. You can over do it and get too stiff of a shaft which in return tends to lead people to over swing and swing ever harder causing the spry effect to be worse. That is just my personal experience, not really an answer one way or another, fitted equipment takes one variable out of the equation when trying to get better at this game. My set is "built like you play on tour", so I have no reason or excuse for a poor shot in terms of my equipment.

Pros, I have a pre-shot routine but it took a long time to develop and get something that works well for me personally. What suggestions do you have for middle handicap golfers or people that struggle with alignment to get into a pre-shot routine that helps them aim more properly. What benefits are there from having a good pre-shot routine for posture, alignment, relaxation over the ball, etc? My personal pre-shot routine follows in the case you wanted to tweak it or use it for an example either way figured I would share what I do in detail. ~ I get to the ball and do all analytic process of the shot (distance, wind, elevation, etc) ~ I pick a shot and club that I want to play and pull the club out of my bag walking back behind the ball on the target line roughly ~ I pick a target on the line where I want to start the ball trace it back to a spot about 3 feet in front of the ball ~ I make a 1 maybe 2 swings practice swings (I'll take 3 if i still can't visualize and feel the shot) at 20% speed just visualizing the ball flight and feeling the club head weight to get my muscles lose ~ I commit to the shot and walk into the ball at a angle set my right foot forward and set the face square pointing at the spot 3 feet in front of the ball ~ I then look at my target in the distance and allow my body to fall into place ~ I check my alignment one last time with the face pointing at my spot I picked on the target line ~ I think "smooth" then pull the trigger to start the swing Majority of the time this ends up getting me close to square or maybe 1 or 2* open to the target line, a lot of times with my length I don't mind playing a high baby cut into greens or off the tee, sometimes can control it easier then the baby draw.

Interesting comment, never thought about that really. I feel my best strikes on irons off a tee has a divot that starts 1/2" to 1" in front of the tee and the tee stays relatively still. I tend to have my divot start at 1/8" in front of ball like I were hitting it off the turf anyways so by teeing it up lower it resuce the change of hitting it WAY high on the face and still hitting down on the ball. When I say I tee it up an iron I mean it's LOW, like bottom of the ball barley hovers over the blades of grass. like 1/8" the wooden cup touches the turf and only thing that is actually above the ground is that cup so to speak. I have my 19* hybrid tee'd about the same for shots with it off the tee box, will go a touch higher to "swing up" and get a higher ball flight. My 4 metal depends it gets iron height for a low ball, probably 1/4" for an average ball, 1/2" for a high ball. My Driver is the only thing that you'll see a lot of tee sticking out of the ground on.

I had an interesting 9 holes yesterday after work. Let me rant a little before I talk about my round, the course on Monday punched the greens for a 5th time since Me becoming a member in Mid March, some greens are on their 7th or 8th punch this season, now I know that these are bent grass greens but I have NEVER in my life have heard of a course punching greens this much, bent in the south is normally 4 times a year with top dressing and werti-cutting them aggressively with a lot of watering and fans to keep them cool in hot months. Anyways, with that said you can probably see where this story might be heading. I pared 1 - 3 pretty what seemed like routine pars, I get to Hole 4 a par 3 have 8 feet and burnt the lip high side break left myself a 1.5 foot clean up might have been a hair firm on the line but I have a guess that punch holes kept the ball from breaking a few inches that would have resulted in a holed putt. I get onto the 5th tee box and have to wait on the group of 3 in front of me. I got cold and hit my Drive TERRIBLE, ended up with 210 into the pin up hill into the wind,came up short but in a good spot so i thought, made a bad pitch and ended up with bogey. Next hole had to wait on the group ahead of me again, I just started to assume that they were playing for big money or something with how they acted because they were going at a snails pace and didn't appear to be playing poorly 2 of them were playing the tips. Anyways, hit my drive low snap hook that turned out in my favor into the wind, found the left fairway, hit a little punch 9 into the green from 125 into the wind up hill to 6 feet, made putt for birdie. Next hole hit a great drive, hit a great lay-up on the par 5, hit a great low PW into the green that was hole high right about 10 feet (pin was tucked left edge was aimed where i putt the shot), I hit the putt perfect line, perfect speed I see it bounce about 1/2 way to the hole off a punch spike to the right and ball sits dead center of the cup on the right lip 1/2 ball right of falling in. Robbed for birdie by punch marks 100% positive on that hole. Next hole I hit a piss poor tee shot into the par 3, left myself a tricky up and down, gave myself a 6 foot putt to clean up, hit put speed I wanted and line I wanted, ball looks like it is going in until 3" in front of the cup when it make a 90* turn and picks up 3 feet of speed like a poltergeist came out of the cup and back handed it away. I had a 4 foot clean up for bogey and made it, I sat there for awhile putting that thing 7 times lipped it 2 or 3 times low and made it one time, putt was just a weird hole location I guess. So 1 over going into number 9, hit a good drive, hit a decent 2nd shot going for the green in two, left myself a 8 footer for birdie (hard to get close to the pin from my angle where I missed the green), I miss read the putt and made par matched my personal best of 37 on that course front 9 but with how I was playing it was kind of disappointing, felt I left 3 or 4 strokes out on the course, maybe even 5 if I felt like being greedy. As it turns out that slow group in front of me had been playing for a chunk of change at least the two guys from the tips were... $25 trash, $25 birdies or better, $50 a side. I guess for some people that is reason enough to play at a snail pace and be super methodical about your golf game.

I know you are joking around... However, I see way too many people get on par 3 tee boxes with irons in hand and not use a peg. I was taught very young age that the tee box is the only place you can control your lie, why not put it on a peg even using an iron? I just tee up the ball enough so that the bottom barely hovers over the blades of grass, you really can't see the tee with the ball sitting on it when it comes to anything less then fairway metal.

I have a couple topics we can talk about, I am not scared to get the ball rolling this is mostly geared to better players because that's what I relate to the best. TEMPO ~ I personally am using the Tour Tempo Training Aid and it dictates a 3:1 ratio in the full swing that most pga tour pros fall into (27/9, 24/8, 21/7, 18/6 frames backswing/downswing). If the video is shot in 32FPS then the 27/9 tempo is a total of 1.06 seconds that is still pretty fast. I think the big issue for a lot of golfers is that the backswing and down swing are way off. I have a tendency to get fast in transition causing my swing to end up at a 2:1 ratio or 2.5:1 ratio and I never have complete control over ball flight when that happens. Getting to my point, Do you feel that the use of a Metronome and Tour Tempo of 3:1 ratio training aids are the best way to "teach" someone that doesn't have natural good tempo how to get the internal clock working properly? COURSE MANAGEMENT / STRATEGY ~ I personally have the thought process that you don't need to be a big hitter to shoot good scores, you can probably help yourself lower your score some just plotting your way through a course understanding risks and making a high percentage play. I think this is something that instructors tend to also not teach much as majority of students have big swing flaws that cause inconsistencies in distance and accuracy. How would you go about teaching someone else to process and manage their game and the course during a round? What tools might you give them to plan a course strategy that could help them envision the course better?

Well look at it this way, supposedly foresight is the best LM for indoors --> http://www.foresightsports.com/ will run you about $6500... Trackman is the best for outside from what I have heard and that will run you oh a cool $15k - 25k depending on options, that sounds like a lot of extra money when you can just pay $50-$100 for a fitting on one of thus high dollar LMs I can ballpark a spin rate just by looking at the ball flight most of the time, if it stays pretty flat without ballooning to the peak of the shot and doesn't appear to knuckle ball short out of the sky, you are pretty close to the shafts you need. I think E12 is more for people that already been fitted and just want to have some distance and ball speed data with every club in the bag. I was suggesting pairing it with SS Radar to be able to get smash factor as well from it so that it is even more optimal and cheap in terms of tools like this E12 ~ $250 & SSR ~ $100 so you get a LM in two pieces of stuff minus the spin rate and launch angle for $350... I think it is a neat idea for instructors to consider for the practice tee as majority of people have no clue how far they actually hit a club.