Many golfers see golf as a low-risk way to relieve cabin fever. After all, you can only stay home so much. Some courses, of course, are closed thanks to COVID-19. Others are open but have issued new guidelines and policies to help golfers stay safe and healthy while playing. Here are golf tips during COVID-19.
Below are some guidelines from an article in Golfweek discussing if it’s safe to play golf during the pandemic. The article offers input from a doctor on whether it’s safe to play:
- Leave the flagstick in.
- Don’t pick up playing partners’ clubs.
- Pass on the friendly post-round handshake (of course!).
- Many courses have taken the rakes away. Smooth the sand with your feet.
- Some courses have set limits on one person per cart, or they’ve eliminated carts.
- Many courses have shut down their food and beverage options.
- Some have turned cups upside down within the hole.
Check with the course you’re playing to see if it has its own set of guidelines or policies to follow while playing. A local course that’s open near us, for example, eliminated water stations and carts. If a local course has COVID-19 guidelines or policies, follow them and those above to stay safe and healthy.
Lower Golf Scores With this Simple Golf Drill
Are you spending more time at home these days? If you’re like many people, you probably are, thanks to COVID-19. This virus is keeping even the most ardent golfers at home to avoid getting sick. Staying indoors more, however, doesn’t mean you can’t improve your game.
The simple golf dill below, which you can work on at home, improves distance control—a key to sinking more putts. Improve distance control and you’ll not only shoot lower golf scores but also take your game to another level.
King of Hearts Golf Drill
Take the King of Hearts from a deck of playing cards. Place it on the floor about several feet from you. Try to putt the golf with just enough speed so that the ball will stop dead on the playing card. Keep working on the golf drill until you’ve mastered that distance. Now move the back a foot or so. When you’ve conquered that distance, move the card back again, and so on.
Putting to the King f Hearts improves distance control and boosts putting accuracy since the playing card is the size of a golf hole. Improving your putting not only lowers golf scores and take your game to a new level.
How to Drain More Putts and Shoot Lower Golf Scores
Nothing pumps up golf scores more than poor putting. So, if you’re serious about breaking 80, improve your putting. It’s the fastest way to go low. Improving your putting is easier said than done, however. One way to become a better putter is by practicing golf drills. They can help you not only refine your putting stroke but also boost accuracy and distance control.
To help, we’ve provided three of the best putting drills around. All will help you sink more putts and shoot lower golf scores. You can do two of them at home with some modifications. Check your setup before practicing them, however. You want one that feels comfortable and suits your putting stroke. Using the right setup can help drain more putts and lower golf scores.
Here are the three proven putting drills:
1. Speed Golf Drill
Speed is a big factor in putting. Some experts feel speed is the most critical factor in sinking more putts. Here’s the drill that will help you with both speed and distance control. Find a hole with a straight putt. Now put a club about a foot and a half beyond the hole. Your goal is to sink the putt. But if you miss, you want to make sure the ball doesn’t hit the club. Many experts feel that a putt has the best chance of dropping when it goes about a foot by the cup.
2. Gate Golf Drill
Squaring the putter face at impact is critical. You cut your chances of sinking a put if you’re not square at impact. Here’s the drill: Stick two tees in the ground a few inches apart but parallel to each other. Line them up with the hole. The two tees create a gate through which your putterface must pace. Now putt a ball through the gates. The only way the ball will go through the tees is if the putterface is square at impact. Place the tees about six inches apart to start. Narrow them as you gain consistency.
3. Backstroke Drill
The key to sinking more putts is using a short backstroke. Then accelerate though to impact. Developing a short backstroke improves accuracy, especially with your mid-range and short-range putts: Place a tee about 10 inches behind a ball and practice making mid-range putts. Your goal is to putt the ball without hitting the tee while maintaining a smooth tempo with no steering or decelerating before impact. For longer putts, place the tee about a foot beyond the hole. Then putt the ball without hitting the tee. Practicing this golf drill refines your stroke and boosts putting accuracy.
These putting drills will help you drain more putts. Practice them as often as you can, depending on what skill you want to hone. Doing that will help you sink more putts, lower golf scores, and break 80.
Learn More:
5 Little Known Tips That Can Lower Golf Scores
If you’re like most golfers, you’d love to drive the ball 20 or 30 yards farther. That would certainly bump up your game. It would be like playing from the forward tees. You’d get simpler and easier approach shots with shorter, more controllable clubs. Nothing wrong with that. Having easier approach shots boosts your chances of making more birdies and pars, increasing the likelihood of you shooting lower golf scores and breaking 80.
To drive the ball farther, however, you must increase your swing speed. The average amateur golfer’s swing speed is only 93.4 mph. The average swing speed for a professional golfer is 113 mph. But swinging the club harder to boost swing speed doesn’t work. In fact, it slows your swing down. Instead, you want to use effortless power off the tee. The key to doing that is to start slowly then gradually accelerate clubhead speed right up until impact.
Gradual acceleration keeps your swing in sync while boosting ballstriking and accuracy. It’s called effortless power and it can help you generate more distance off the tee.
Below are five little known golf tips that can help you generate effortless power off the tee:
1. Loosen grip pressure before swinging
Weekend golfers often ignore the role grip pressure plays in generating power. The wrong grip pressure can cause a severe power leakage. Squeezing the club too tightly tenses your hands and forearms arms. Tension in those parts of your body prevents you from rotating your forearms during the swing. Forearm rotation plays a crucial role in generating clubhead speed. Work on keeping your grip pressure light even when trying to bomb one off the tee.
2. Use the right angle of approach
The angle of approach is the angle at which the clubhead strikes the ball. A poor angle of approach robs you of power. If you come into the ball with a swing that’s too shallow or too steep, you’ll add spin to the ball. That, in turn, impacts carry and distance off the tee. Instead, use a swing shape that looks like a parabola. This swing shape minimizes ball spin and lengthens ball flight. In other words, changing your attack angle boosts carry and distance and shoot lower golf scores.
3. Hit the sweet spot every time
Missing the driver’s sweet spot costs you distance. The sweet spot is the area on the clubface found within the perimeter defined by the grooves. For every half-inch you miss the sweet spot by you lose 10% off your distance. Missing the sweet spot also generates sidespin, which kills the impact of whatever swing speed you create.
To hit the sweet spot every time, you need to use your core and your legs to drive the downswing. That produces solid contact. A simple drill to encourage solid contact is to put two tees in the ground. Then tee up a ball between them and swing away. If you hit either of the tees, your swing was off and you missed your clubface’s sweet spot.
4. Plant your front heel before swinging
Does your front foot lift when you make your backswing? If it does come up, that’s okay. But you must plant your heel before making your downswing. Otherwise, you’ll sap power from your swing. Unfortunately, golfers don’t always do this. Many weekend golfers slide away from the target or lunge forward instead of planting the heel back down. Both ruin a good body turn on the downswing, sacrificing clubhead speed and power. Good footwork also leads to good body sequencing during the swing.
5. Make a great turn to store power
Making a great turn is paramount to gaining distance. Turning behind the ball stores power in your swing. But you have to turn correctly to generate that power. To make a great turn, you need to make sure your front shoulder passes your back foot on the turn. If your one of those weekend golfers that slides back as you swing, you’re asking for trouble. Sliding back can activate your upper body. That saps power from your swing. Here’s a drill with a visual cue to help ingrain the feeling of staying behind the ball.
Below is a golf drill to help you learn to make a great turn:
Use a 6-iron or 7-iron for this drill. Take an address position similar to what you would if you were hitting the club while on the course. Now slide your feet together to where they’re almost touching. Take some practice swings while standing this way. After taking several practice swings, hit some balls while standing with your feet together. Keep practicing this way until you’ve ingrained the feeling. Then go back to hitting shots as you usually do with all your clubs while remembering the feel.
These five little known golf tips can help you generate effortless power, resulting in longer drives. Longer drives produce shorter, easier approach shots into the green, setting you up for more birdies and pars. Pencil in more birdies and pars only your card, and you’ll shoot lower golf scores. That, in turn, would bump up your game and increases your chances of breaking 80.
Golfers mix up this swing fundamental with another fundamental: Keep your head as steady as you can. (Moving it a little is not a problem. You don’t want to move it a lot). The mix-up results in a lower body slide, which in turn causes your upper body to become a lot active, sapping power from your swing. Here’s a drill with a visual cue to help ingrain the feeling of staying behind the ball.
