The Golf Slice

A flop shot is basically a high flying shot that doesn’t go very far and lands with very little extra movement. It’s great for those times when you need pinpoint placement and you are a short distance from the green.

You’re going to need a golf club with a lot of loft to hit a good flop shot. I’m talking about using either a wedge or maybe, if you need some extra distance, a nine iron at most.

Here are some swing tips for hitting a good flop shot:

1. Your stance should be similar to what you use for any regular pitch shot. Try and target the area slightly to the left of where you want the ball to eventually land.
2. You’ll want to open up a bit more clubface for this shot than you normally would. Make sure your hands are a bit ahead of the ball as you strike to make sure maintain the open clubface.
3. As you swing keep the club at a steep angle to make sure you get under the ball.

As they say, practice makes perfect so you might want to give these steps some trial runs at the driving range sometime.

A lot of golfers, when they’re first starting to play the game, can’t justify the cost or time investment to take proper lessons. As time wears on they develop bad habits and poor swings and their games spiral out of control.

Remember that old habits die hard so the longer you wait to get proper instruction the worse things are going to get.

If you’re interested in taking golf lessons start by checking with your local golf course. Their resident golf pro might offer lessons to the public. If not, you might want to try calling any area driving ranges and see if they have lessons available.

Most places offering golf lessons have individual and group plans. If you’re worried about embarrassing yourself (or others) you might want to go with the private lesson. It’ll probably be more expensive but you’ll also get more out of it.

There are days when I could put on an absolute clinic on how to hit the ball fat. I have had rounds where I left nothing in my wake but fairway ditches. It’s embarrassing.

The worst part is that I know exactly what causes a fat shot. If you’re hitting the ball fat you are probably moving your head during your swing. It’s just that simple. All you need to do is keep your head steady. Most people hit fat shots when they either dip their head down or their head sways to the right during their swing.

The easy way to stop the head dip is just through concentration. There’s no need to do it so quit it. A neat tip for stopping the sway is to push down hard on the inside of your right foot while you’re in the middle of your backswing. Try that out once and see if it helps.

If you aren’t sure what your head is doing during your swing ask someone to watch you take some practice swings. They should be able to spot right away what’s going on.

The sand in bunkers never seems to be the same. At some courses it’s nice and soft and at others it’s like gravel. The courses I frequent have bunker sand that they apparently ship in from rock quarries or something. The stuff is awful.

If you’re going to follow the letter of the law you can’t test the texture of the sand in the bunker before taking your shot. My circle of golfing friends isn’t quite that hardcore when it comes to our bunker shots so we like to give the ground a little tap with our club head first.

If the sand is especially hard in the bunker you’ll probably want to slow down your swing. Try not pulling back so far in your swing because the ball is going to come out much quicker without soft sand to cushion the impact. Soft sands requires you to take a faster swing. The light sand creates more resistance to the head of your club.

As you can tell, I went ahead and just made changes to the default theme instead of installing a brand new one. I’m now including images with most of the posts too.

The new theme just wasn’t working out behind-the-scenes so I’m scrapping it for now. I was fooling with it throughout the morning with no luck. Maybe I’ll try it again in the future.

Regular posting should resume tomorrow.