The Banana Slice

To slice the ball around trees to a tightly guarded pin placement, which is one of my favorite shots, your setup adjustments should be just the opposite of those for a hook. Once again, align your leading edge square to your ultimate target. This time, open your body alignment so that lines drawn across your toes, knees, hips and shoulders point well left of your eventual target; your grip should be in alignment with your other body parts (that is, turned slightly left on the club handle). The more you need to slice the ball, the more you align left.

Once you've made these adjustments, the swinging action itself is as normal. One additional tip is to grip the club a bit more tightly than usual is your left hand. This is because you don't want much counterclockwise forearm rotation to occur through the impact zone. Rather, you want to hold the clubface open in relation to your body alignment. A firmer grip in the left hand (for the right-handed player) keeps that hand and forearm dominant and prevents the right hand from turning the clubface over. I often think of my sand shot action, which I describe earlier, for this one.

Because you're aiming left, you'll naturally take the club away more outside the target line than normal and also return it with the face very open to the target line. Thus you'll strike the ball with a glancing blow, imparting clockwise or slice spin to the ball. Again, practice to see how much left-to-right curve you can expect from this altered setup.

One final note: remember that when you play a slice, the ball will slide off the open clubface in a higher, softer trajectory and will also land more softly. Adjust your club selection accordingly, taking at least one more club than the distance would usually call for.



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The Hard Line in Hardpan

In setting up to play a shot on hardpan, position the ball back in your stance with your hands ahead of it. Grip the club firmly to prevent the clubface from opening at impact.

Make a fairly upright backswing. Pull the club down and through sharply, using a punching action. A crisp impact should produce a low, rising trajectory, along with good bite on the ball.

An important point to remember is that, depending on your own physical strength, you can only play the punch from hardpan down to a certain length of iron. Most golfers will find it difficult to get the ball airborne using this action off hardpan with longer than a four- or five- iron. What if the shot calls for a long iron or fairway wood?

In these cases, you can opt to hit the sweep from hardpan, clipping the ball cleanly up from the hard ground. To accomplish this, do the following.

1. Set up squarely to your target or a fraction open.
2. Play the ball directly opposite your left heel, so your hands are pretty much even with the ball.
3. Keep your weight evenly distributed at address.
4. Swing the club as you would from a nice normal lie, with your single swing thought being to revolve around a rock-steady spin angle; to ensure that you stay steady, swing at a slightly slower speed than normal.

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The Pitch to a Blind Green

On hilly courses you'll often encounter pitch shots in which all of the green and all or part of the flagstick are obscured from view. This adds greatly to the challenge of getting the ball close. You need to use good visualization skills in addition to making a sound execution of the stroke. Here's what to do.

1. If the shot is totally blind, walk up until you can see the entire flag and green. You want to know not only where the flag is but where you need to land the ball to get it close.
2. Step off the yardage as you walk to the green. When you reach the spot where you have a clear view (say it's forty yards from your ball), estimate the distance from there to the hole. Say it's another thirty-five yards. Now you know you have a pitch shot of seventy-five yards total, and having seen the land in front of the hole, you can estimate exactly how far the ball must carry.
3. Once you're back over the ball, pick the club and visualize the swing you'll need to execute the seventy-five-yard pitch. An extra practice swing or two may help.
4. Keep in mind that if the shot is uphill, you'll need a little more swing force to carry the distance. Concentrating on making a full finish will encourage that stronger swing.

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Sand Savvy

Tailor your control of the distance you hit your bunker shots by developing "sand savvy". Depending on the type of sand, the ball may come out a lot farther or shorter than you thought it would. Basically, these are the points to be aware of:

1. Larger-grained sand means a longer-distance shot. When the sand grains are relatively large, the ball will usually sit up better, because the bigger grains support the ball's weight. The more the ball is up, the easier it is to splash it out. So from good lies in large-grained sand, use a little less swing force than you think for the needed distance.
2. Fine-grained sand means a muffled shot. If you play out of very fine, powdery sand - the kind that doesn't pack well - the ball's impact force will often cause it to be buried to some degree. So you could be playing your sand shot from a less-than-favorable lie. This sand will also give a little more, allowing the sand wedge's bounce to go a little deeper. The clubhead won't move forward as freely, and the shot is somewhat muffled. So from fine sand, add a little extra force than you may think you'd need from a particular distance.
3. Know your depth. No matter what type of sand, remember that the deeper it is, the shorter the shot will come out; the shallower the sand, the more the ball will carry. If the sand is deep, it's impossible for the bounce to get to the sand's base; thus the bounce will go deeper into the sand, so the ball comes out softer. If the sand is shallow, the bounce is likely to hit bottom and bounce back up. This means there'll be less sand between club and ball, so the shot comes out much faster.

Be alert to the texture and depth of the sand, particularly when you're away from your home course, and your sand savvy will pay dividends.


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When It's Wet, When It's Windy

Keep in mind that wet or windy conditions don't affect only your long game. They can wreck havoc with your putting, too. However, if you understand how to adjust, you'll be one up on most of the competition.

Wet Greens

In rainy conditions, the greens naturally soak up the moisture. Everyone understands that this makes the greens slower, so you need a longer stroke to cover the distance. What a lot of amateurs don't realize is that on wet greens the ball will also break less than normal.

There's simply more resistance to the force of gravity when there's moisture on the grass blades then when they're dry. Also, because you're stroking harder to reach the hole, for most of the way to the hole the ball's rolling faster than normal; this helps it resist the break.

My tried-and-true rule of thumb is that if the greens are wet, I plan on the ball breaking no more than half as much as normal. If on a dry green the ball would break a foot, I play no more than a six-inch break. If there would usually be a four-inch break, I play for no more than two inches of curve, starting the ball inside the high lip of the hole. If you do this too, you'll make a lot more putts.

Windy Conditions

I think most Tour pros, including me, would tell you that one of the hidden difficulties of playing in mind is that it makes putting so much tougher. First, it dries out the greens, making them faster and causing putts to break more. Even more significantly, a stiff wind can easily throw you off balance during the stroke and affect the ball's line.

When the wind is strong, you're probably better of giving up a bit of feel by gripping the putter a little more firmly. This encourages a more arms-only stroking action and keeps the putterhead low to the ground. Also, widening your stance will give your body greater stability.

Remember that a substantial breeze behind you can carry a putt farther and that a head wind can make the ball pull up quicker than you might think. Adjust accordingly.

Last, experiment with addressing the ball and do not ground the putter. On fast greens on windy days, I think this adjustment is a great help.


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Left-Side Control

This means being able to produce a backhand stroke with your left arm. The benefit of this technique is that it further nullifies the natural overpowering tendencies of the right side of the body, the dominant side in all other ball games.

A dominate right side is one reason why natural ball-game players find it so hard to adapt to golf. They are used to throwing the overenthusiastic right right shoulder, hand and arm into all their actions. Squash and badminton players have the additional problem of controlling an overactive wrist, the last thing required in golf swing technique.

Left-side control is necessary if you wish to advance beyond the middle handicap stage. It is an invaluable help if introduced as soon as you begin to make a reasonable swing outline. The left arm does what the right arm cannot achieve: it controls the radius of the swing and maps out the arc or plane.

The left hand also controls the angle of the wrist at the top, and, as explained, the left arm starts the downswing. It is also necessary to appreciate the levering effect of this arm so that it can carry the club from half-way to the top without interference from the right hand.

Right-hand interference is a frequent occurrence with many players who simply change from the left to the right and then kill their swing on the way down with their strongest hand. Furthermore, if the left side (arm) is never strengthened or made properly aware of its role, then you will be forever plagued with a rising right hip and dipped left shoulder, which is in effect the right side doing what the left is incapable of. This is a common swing fault among handicap golfers.



CROWOOD SPORTS GUIDES GOLF, BILL BRAMPTON

The Swing-and-Stop Exercise

Perform your backswing from your correct address position, remembering to commence with two short takeaways.

Pause once at the top of the swing, then bring the club down with the hands and arms at an even pace and in sequence of left arm, left heel down, right foot roll, hips sideways. Now stop the club at impact with your hands and with the clubhead totally square. You will notice that you body is positioned almost as it was at address, except that your right knee is in, your right heel off the ground and your weight shifted to the left. Your hips have turned slightly and, most importantly, your shoulders are square.

The shoulders stay passive. Note particularly the start of this action, where the right shoulder stays back and the angle between the wrists is maintained.

If the clubhead is swinging ahead of the arms, (this is called casting or fishing) then it will arrive ahead of the hands at impact and will be virtually impossible to stop at impact without hurting the left wrist. Equally, it will be totally impossible to 'square up' at impact if your shoulders turn first. The exercise is therefore excellent for controlling the upper part of the body.

At first, you will find it impossible to get everything exactly in the right place at the right time. This is the same with learning any set of precision moves, so practice patiently and do not apply too much pressure in the movement. Advanced students can actually 'drop and stop', meaning they have acquired the ability to feel the arms so free to swing down from the top that they can virtually let the arms free-fall into the space provided by the body and 'catch' the club at the bottom of the swing.

If effort was required by top players when striking irons, then they would not be capable of the phenomenal accuracy they achieve. Furthermore, the procedure of the swing-and-stop exercise enables players to strike the ball consistent distances with each club because at no time are they thinking 'hit'.

The swing-and-stop exercise will go some way to getting the feel of swinging the club and controlling your shoulder, but ultimately you have to become aware of 'left-side control'


CROWOOD SPORTS GUIDES GOLF, BILL BRAMPTON