This just in:  In keeping with my tradition of blogging about stuff I know nothing about, today I will talk golf.

My skill level?  On a bad day…I’ll shoot 105.  The last time I played, I shot a 92.  Tiger Woods has nothing to fear from me.

Here are my tips…written as if I know something.

If you golf right-handed, your right hand should be just tight enough so that it can move with the club.  Act as if you are holding an egg with it.  This “super soft” grip applies to the back swing as much as the downswing.  A tight grip may cause you to let that hand get involved with swinging the clubhead through…which is not what you want to happen.  The soft grip also reminds you to relax.  Tension at any point in the swing will change the path of the club.

On the driving range, spray foot powder on the club face.  It dries quickly into a white powder.  When you hit the ball, you can tell where it struck the club face.  Are you to close?  Is the ball too far forward in your stance?  This trick can help a lot.  Before, I would hit a good one and then a bad one and have no idea where I went wrong.  Turns out, this trick gives you a lot of information.  It’s the single best trick I have learned.

Take a lesson where they will digitize your shots.  I did this and told the instructor “I’m not looking for help.  I just want to see how far I hit each club when I hit the club well.”  The instructor spent the hour on his phone while I dialed in the correct distance for each club.  Now, if I want to go 150 yards, I don’t try to muscle a pitching wedge because I know a smoothly hit 9 iron is what I really need.

On your drive, stand with your feet no farther apart than they are when you hit your irons.  I used to have a super wide stance with my driver.   The plan was to have a strong stance so I wouldn’t come up and out of my shoes when I swung as hard as possible.  Turns out to be a bad idea.  A wider stance inhibits your rotation and thus…messes up your shot.

On the putting green, use two balls and ignore the flags.  Don’t putt at a hole/flag.  Instead, putt one ball at the other.  Since a ball is a much smaller target than a hole, you will have to be more accurate.  It’s been my experience that this alone shaves about 5 to 10 putts a round off of my score.

So, there you have it.  I don’t know what a real golfer would think of these hints.  It really doesn’t matter to me.  My game is becoming more and more consistent as a result.  So…at least these work for me.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim