This past Fall we hosted a junior golf exposure camp in Pinehurst, North Carolina called College Golf Camps®- BIG 5. Myself and a couple of other college coaches were watching junior golfers play during the competition portion of camp. One particular junior golfer stuck out more than the others. Why, you ask…. this group of coaches all said “he swings like he doesn’t care……” Hold on to that concept for a second.

Virtually, every college coach will agree that they want golfers to swing freely from takeaway to follow through. How can you swing freely without forcing it. The words “freely” and “force” seem like they should not be used in the same sentence.

The coaches all were keen on how this particular junior swung the club so freely. Essentially, there was no difference between his practice swing and the swing when he hit the ball. Did he not care about the result of the shot? Of course not…..as the coaches continued to talk about this junior and others, it brought up a very exciting topic in golf called “ball bound”.

The concept of “ball bound” is relatively easy to understand from this discussion. Others might have a different description but for this discussion it was simple. “Ball bound” was when the golfer limits his/her natural athleticism because he/she is so focused on hitting the ball precisely the correct way. Therefore defeating the bodies ability to swing freely and loose during the swing, specifically at the moment when the club strikes the ball.

As we watched other juniors, you could tell some had a small glitch or hesitation right at impact. The previous junior we spoke about didn’t have any glitches or hesitations…..There “real” swing did not replicate their practice swing.

Continuing the discussion with the college coaches, one coaches says “how do you get a golfer to swing freely?” One coach immediately said “tell the player to stop looking at the ball”. Another coach immediately says “WHAT?”…..The other coach began to paint this illustration below in our minds……

If you normally fix your eyes on the ball, illustrated by looking at the College Golf Camps®logo. Move your fixed eyes to the red star, which is about 1 inch inside and 1 inch forward of the ball. The coach went on to say that the distance will vary for every golfer. His point was to get the golfer’s mind off of hitting the ball and onto swinging freely.

Later that day during the competitive practice portion of the camp. This same group of coaches implemented this drill at one station during the practice rotation. You should have seen the campers faces when the coach told them to not look at the ball……Most were shocked, some thought the coach was kidding….. Ultimately, the junior golfers followed the instructions of the college coach(which was wise). Guess what happened? Nearly every junior golfer began to swing freely which created more crisp strikes on the golf ball. No glitches, no hesitations, just precision shot, after shot, after shot.

So here is the drill: Use any club in your bag with a series of 4 balls. With the first 3 golf balls, fix your eyes somewhere inside and in-front of the golf ball throughout the swing. Then on the 4th and final ball fix your eyes on the golf ball. See what happens…….

Stay in touch with what college coaches want, click here

Incorporate this practice drill into your golf game. Remember, college golf coaches all want players who swing carefree and loose…..most of all they want players to be coachable!

Cheers,

Wizard of Junior Golf
CGC Staff

One of Chris Zambri’s favorite competitive drill for all golfers. Coach Zambri is the Head Mens Golf Coach at University of Southern California.

College Golf Camps®is excited to have Coach Zambri attend our San Diego Junior Golf Exposure Camp, July 24-26, 2016 at La Costa Golf Resort in San Diego, California.

yourpargolf.com and Preston Combs

Improve Your Putting with tips from Preston Combs

In light of the recent release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, it seems fitting to re-publish this article on the real force that is going to help you make more putts.

How many times have we had a putt power-lip-out or crash into the back of the hole only to see it pop out and come to rest on the other side of the cup? The answer is probably more times than we care to admit, but a simple understanding of the Force can solve those problems. Don’t think you’re a Jedi? Well, good news is there Jedi experience is not required.

We don’t need to be in a galaxy far, far away to learn how the force of gravity affects our putts. We all know what gravity is, but what does it mean for your putting? When a ball is rolling towards and over the cup, gravity needs time to pull that ball down into the cup.

This is where capture speed, the pace at which a ball is rolling, comes into play. If a ball is traveling at the proper pace for gravity to pull it down into the cup, we call that effective capture speed. If a ball is traveling faster, the cup size will become smaller and the capture speed is not as effective. How much smaller does the cup become? Let’s take a closer look.

To the guy in your scramble that hammers it six feet past the cup and exclaims “I gave it a run!”: He had as good a chance of making the putt as a guy that left it short. Six feet by is too much speed for the cup to handle and the ball simply will not go in.

That said, we’ll just make sure every putt drips over the front edge of the cup, right? Wrong. The last thing we want is a minor imperfection in the surface or gust of wind to keep the putt from reaching the hole.

To measure about what proper speed is about, 6 to 12 inches past the cup is a safe reference point. You’ll be making the cup larger and have an element of predictability on your short putts. And if you were wondering…

The Force will be with you. Always.

Preston Comb, Your Par Golf

Every golfer has two golfers in them. Are you a growth minded golfer or a fixed mindset golfer?

Growth mindset golfers typically have confidence built over time through a building process. Fixed mindset golfers tend to have fragile confidence because they believe you’re either born to be great or you’re not.

We all know that golf is a crazy, mental game. I hope you’re making your mental game a priority in 2016.

So many college golf coaches want confident players who like new challenges and are ok with change. For example, how would you respond if you’re playing a college golf tournament with a weather delay? Would you look to complain about the weather bringing your teammates down and/or start making excuses as to why you won’t play well? Or would you be the golfer/teammate looking at the delay as an opportunity to practice putting in the pro-shop or getting to know your teammates better or whatever…..ultimately, you’re looking to turn a negative into a positive for growth.

Let’s face it, how many aspects of golf are within your control? A golfer can hit a perfect shot with the perfect club and still have a poor result! It’s a funny game, shooting 68 is so close to also shooting 80……below is a short episode with Dr. Mark Guadagnoli about “Grit”…….

Cheers,

Nick, College Golf Camps™

5 Phase Plan For Junior Golf with Adam Young

As author of The Practice Manual – The Ultimate Guide for Golfers, I spend a lot of my time designing practice plans for elite level golfers. Based on the science of motor learning and my coaching experiences, I have 5 staples in a practice plan that I like to see players conduct.

Technical

This phase is where you refine the body motion or club motion directly. During this phase, the result of the shot is not as important, so this phase is usually periodized to the off-season, or periods in the season where the player is not trying to peak for an event.

Lots of repetition with a movement-changing focus is the call of the day here. We are trying to ingrain the new moves so that we can be more prepared for the later phases. However, we are not just making our swing pretty during this phase – the changes must serve a function to improve ball flight, consistency and/or injury prevention.

Experimental

During this phase, we are opening up our skill and coordination via use of exploration. I use two methods in this phase – differential practice and variability practice.

Variability practice is where you try to do what you desire, but in different ways. For example, shaping a shot onto a target, or trying to hit the sweet-spot while standing different distances from the ball during set up.

Differential practice is a little wilder, but there is evidence showing improvements in skill over traditional practice. This is where you try to do shots that you wouldn’t normally use in the course of play, such as intentionally hitting the toe, or attempting the biggest hook/slice you can hit.

If you have ever seen Tiger or Seve demonstrate in clinics, you will understand that the best players can not only hit standard golf shots, but they’re very inventive with other shots.

Calibration

As we get closer to tournament play, we may decide to hone in on a more stable technique.

During this phase, players will focus more on calibrating a stock shot (straighter ball flight, or modestly shaped flight). The main focus will be on club and ball impact – so a working knowledge of ball flight laws is necessary here.

Performance

Not a lot guarantees successful performance in golf, but performance training does. For this reason, we enter this phase pre-tournament.

During the performance phase, we A/B test our game for different thought processes, techniques and/or strategies which produce the best performance. For example, do you produce a tighter dispersion when thinking about the target, or about a component of your swing?

This is essentially polishing your game before an event, but players often see huge leaps in performance using these strategies (hence the name). I often see jumps of 10-30% fairways hit simply by changing a thought process.

Transference

During the days before a junior golf tournament, the focus is shifted to transference training – so called because we are learning to transfer all of our learning to the place it matters most – the course.

During this phase, we play games with pressure which simulate a course/tournament situation. We also switch predominantly to random practice (hitting different clubs to different targets each time), as science has shown this to be beneficial to performing better on the course.

Summary

These 5 phases are often scheduled to be more dominant during one part of the season. For example, technical refinements would not typically be done before a tournament, as it is too late to ingrain them by that time, and it often causes performance disruption due to the increased self-awareness of the movement.

I also design plans where each phase may be conducted during the week. For example, Mondays may be dedicated to technical refinements, and Fridays may be transfer-training dominant.

If you would like to learn more about these advanced methods of training, as well as many other golf-improving methods, “The Practice Manual – The Ultimate Guide for Golfers” is available from Amazon. Click Here to be directed.

Cheers,

Adam

adamyounggolf.com

Adam has worked at some of the top facilities in the world, including the Leadbetter Academies and the World famous Turnberry Resort. He currently teaches at one of Europe’s most prestigious resorts in La Manga Club, Spain.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Jay Goble, Baylor University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Baylor University Women’s Golf is currently ranked 65th in Golfweek and is the 2015 NCAA National Championship Runner-Up.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Kelley Hester at Furman University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Furman University Women’s Golf is currently ranked 32nd in Golfweek.

College Golf Camps®interviews Head Golf Coach, Greg Sands at Texas Tech University about the upcoming Spring 2016 season.

Texas Tech Men’s Golf is currently ranked number 33 in Golfweek.

Chris Tyler from Rotary Swing shares his knowledge on recent PGA tour winner Rickie Fowler. This is a great article for all golfers, including Junior Golfers.

The most simple way for you to increase your clubhead speed in golf is taking advantage of leverage. Lag is a giant source of leverage and can help you pick up 30-40+ yards of the tee if developed, preserved and fired in the golf swing properly.

Have you found yourself struggling with lag? Do you constantly find that your throw the club from the top of the swing and you get yourself into a scooped impact position that is lacking any sort of impressive power?

I have great news for you…

In the video below, I will show you how to focus on slowly developing lag and then how to preserve it properly in your downswing so you can pick up some easy clubhead speed just like Rickie Fowler.

Now that you have seen the importance of slowly building lag into your swing and how to use width and rotation to your advantage in the development process, it’s time for you to get to work!

Keep Reading Rotary Swing Now

Chris Tyler – See his full bio here: http://rotaryswing.com/rst-certified-instructors/50 Understanding the golf swing and how the body works is a fascinating concept that I have devoted my life to and in turn have helped thousands of students reach their goals in the game of golf. Teaching a golf swing that allows you to extract the timing, create consistency, maximize power through efficiency all while protecting and preserving the body has become the face of golf. Get better at golf with better instruction!

Here is more great information from Adam Young and possibly the most important golf article you will ever read. This article could be read over and over and over again…..keep reading below

Using an experience to sabotage yourself

You just played some of the best golf of your life and are in the lead of a two day tournament by 3 shots. In the final round, you are pretty nervous, this is a big amateur event. The first tee, you tentatively step up to the ball – your mind is all over the place. You can’t decide whether to play safe or aggressive. Bam – snap hook out of bounds.

You then continue the round striking the ball less than optimally. All your attempts to change the swing make it worse. You finish tied 10th after shooting an 80.

Afterwards, your parents talk about it with you. “What happened to your swing today? We need to do some hard work on the range tomorrow to improve it, it’s obviously not good enough”. You start thinking, “You know what, they’re right. My swing is not good enough”.

Is this really true? Is this swing which got you in the lead after one round really in need of a re-haul? What do you think is going to happen to this player?

Please do yourself a favor and keep reading this article, more info

Adam Young at AdamYoungGolf.com

Adam currently teaches golfers the importance of developing skill as well as technique, and builds their games as a whole – including strategic and psychological strength. Adam’s theories are cutting edge, utilizing much of the newest research in the field of learning. He presents them in an easy to understand way that will make you revolutionize how you learn the game.