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Prepare to play your best golf by doing something now! To comment or respond to this newsletter, please click here ttucker@rochester.rr.com In This Issue - Tom's Featured Tip: The "Core" Putting Stroke; Impact Confusion - Tour Greens: - Tour Quality Synthetic Greens - Health, Wellness, Fitness: Progressive Resistance - Nutrition: Get Your Daily Essentials - Tom's Bonus Tip: Driver Confidence - Lesson Comments: What Students Have To Say - Sponsors: Batavia Country Club Chestnut Hill Country Club Plum Creek Driving Range and PGA AboutGolf.com Golf Simulator Click here: INDOOR GOLF LESSONS for details on how to improve your game over the winter. PLUM CREEK DRIVING RANGE IN BATAVIA, NY, IS OPEN ALL YEAR Check out the Equipment & Apparel and Simulator Course Play Specials: http://www.plumcreekdrivingrange.com Call 585-993-0930 or email Mark at plumcreek4@rochester.rr.com to reserve your simulator time! Buy Gift Certificates for Lessons Sample Gift Certificate Golf lessons - Outdoor and Indoor - are available at Plum Creek, please call me at 716 474 3005, email me at ttucker@rochester.rr.com, or visit my website at http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/lessonrates.html for details. Subscribe - http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/signup.html If you like this newsletter, please do me a favor and forward it to your friends so that they may subscribe, thanks! The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this newsletter. Tom's Featured Tip: The "Core" Putting Stroke; Impact Confusion For the sake of simplicity, all advice on swings and drills is provided from a right handed perspective; lefties .... well, you know what to do! Last week I had conversations with two students that I currently coach. I say coach rather than teach, because after a student has taken my Four Fundamental Lessons package we usually get together to feather more detail into the techniques they have learned. Although I'm sure this qualifies as teaching, I feel more like a coach at that point in time. One of my students - Kim B. - called me last Friday for information on getting a Tour Green installed at his home when the weather breaks. We agreed to get together to go over details, then the conversation turned to the results from his lessons last year. He said that he was hitting his 3 wood as far as his buddies are hitting their drivers, and that he has dropped his handicap very significantly due to improved chipping and putting. The funny thing is that he was killing his driver during our driver lesson, but for some reason he wasn't confident enough with it to use his driver when he played. We are getting together for another driver lesson to help him build enough confidence to pull it out of his bag. This is purely a confidence issue because as I said he was killing it on the range. Check the Bonus Tip in this issue for how to gain confidence with your driver. The "Core" Putting Stroke During the discussion of his success, he said that one area where he has really shaved strokes was on the greens. He said that the "core" putting stroke was working especially well for him. Here's where the conversation got very interesting for me, because he had put his own twist on it. He said that he had practiced his ten foot stroke so much that when he went to a new course, he would simply hit several putts on the practice green with his ten foot stroke, then determine if he needed to hit his putts harder or softer for the green conditions on those greens on that day. Normally the "core" stroke is not defined purely in the precise feet of rollout. It's defined by simply making a repetitive ("core") stroke then visually observing the result - which should be consistent after the stroke is nailed down through enough practice reps. As a result of this conversation, I'm going to add another option for expressing the "core" stroke concept during a putting lesson as follows: to develop a stroke that rolls out four paces - or other specific distance in the 9 to 12 foot range - rather than a non-specific distance. I plan on using this optional method judiciously for students that can't grasp the original "core" stroke concept, because it makes perfect sense to me. In fact, it might even be a better way to teach the concept. Thanks to Kim B. for mentioning it. Impact Confusion Last week I also got a call from another student - Jim M. - to set up an indoor lesson schedule to prepare him for the golf season. During our conversation, Jim brought up the fact that on the Golf Channel, Michael Breed was a proponent of hitting the ball with your irons at the bottom of the swing arc with no divot, and Martin Hall supports a ball first, ground second strike with the resultant divot being forward of the ball position. The latter also happens to be the way I prefer to teach ball striking with irons. Michael teaches a method to pick the ball, Martin teaches a method to pinch the ball against the ground. Each has it's own merits during certain conditions. I favor the pinching method because it minimizes the chances for fat and thin strikes - more so than the other method when done properly. Jim pointed out the propensity for confusion with two instructors on the same channel teaching two very different methods for ball striking, and he's right. This is precisely why you need to "own" your own swing - so that you can recognize information that relates to your specific swing technique as opposed to changing your swing every time you see a golf tip on television. As the old saying goes "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything". One more point on this confusing information, in my opinion they each seem to gloss over a very relevant point of information when they give these ball striking tips - specific ball position. To make great contact at impact that gives you a ball strike with a divot that begins ahead of the ball, not behind it: make sure that you have some forward shaft lean at the strike. If your shaft is too vertical, your clubface angle at the strike will be too shallow to produce a solid strike and a proper divot. Also, nail down specific ball position for your stock swing with each club. I would make some suggestions here, but they might not apply to your method - so I'll leave it as know your specific ball positions for your own swing. You need to nail down ball position and it needs to be practiced - something that can be done with great success indoors over the winter. Once it becomes automatically correct for each club, your score will improve. Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Tour Greens: Tour Quality Synthetic Greens For Superb Short Game Practice How great would it be to have a short game practice area in the privacy of your yard for practice and for friendly competition with your kids, your wife, and your friends? Perhaps even a friendly wager or two at home parties? Click here for Tour Greens Photo Gallery If the thought of having a beautiful tour quality practice green in your yard appeals to you, you're in luck. In addition to my golf instruction business, I am also the exclusive Western New York sales associate for Tour Greens Western New York. With Tour Greens you can experience the ultimate home short game practice solution. Read what Tour Pro's Fred Couples, Rich Beem, Boo Weekly, Blake Adams, and Chris DiMarco have to say about their Tour Greens. You all know me well enough to know that I don't affiliate with any product that I don't have a passionate belief in. These greens are the real deal. They are extremely durable - they can even withstand our challenging WNY winters. For more information and a photo gallery of installed residential Tour Greens, please click here: Tour Greens Photos and Information, and feel free to call, text, or email me for more information. Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Health, Wellness, Fitness: Progressive Resistance Disclaimer: DO NOT PERFORM ANY STRENUOUS PHYSICAL EXERCISE LIKE THE ONE LISTED BELOW, WITHOUT CONSULTING YOUR DOCTOR. Here are some interesting thoughts on progressive resistance that I read in an article on Strength Strategies by Eric Cressey: "You need to do more than you did last time. That’s the basic premise anyhow. With that, a plan can be formed by looking at the past training and improving on it. At a certain point, weight cannot be continually added to the bar in the same fashion. Therefore, training will revolve around two kinds of sessions. The first is geared toward the amount of weight on the bar. The second is either on the speed the weight moves, and or the amount of times weight is moved." "In any plan, there will be times when things don't go as planned. At those times, simply keep in mind what the purpose of the training is. If the goal was to move a certain load, and you can't do it for the planned amount, move it less times that day. If the goal was to move it fast and it’s slow, adjust to a weight you can move fast. If the goal was to move it a certain amount of times, lower the load, and move it the required amount of times." To read the whole article click here: Strength Strategies - Part 1 Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Nutrition: Get Your Daily Essentials Do you lack energy, sleep poorly, or feel generally lousy a lot of the time? If that describes you, maybe it's time to try the Isotonix Daily Essentials Kit supplements that I personally use daily. If you haven't tried them yet, why the heck not? Note that they are called Daily Essentials - not Daily Optionals - for a reason! Simply said - if our body doesn't make it, we need to take it. These all-natural supplements have made a profound difference in my health. I used to take high blood pressure and cholesterol medication, and I now have normal blood pressure and normal cholesterol levels and take none of those medications anymore. In fact, all of my blood work is perfect. The only change I made to get off these medications was taking my Daily Essentials, and that's not even why I started taking them, it was a side benefit. I started taking it to increase my energy, and it did that too! Why the heck not give it a try? How to take your Isotonix Daily Essentials For more information or to buy your Isotonix Daily Essentials Kit, click here. And when you check out, make sure to enter 10OFFMA in the discount code box to get the 10% discount that I offer to family, friends, and newsletter subscribers. Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Tom's Bonus Tip: How To Gain Confidence With Your Driver For the sake of simplicity, all advice on swings and drills is provided from a right handed perspective; lefties .... well, you know what to do! This is simple but work intense tip, and I guarantee that if you do this your confidence with your driver will soar. A pre-requisite to success with this tip is that you have a concept of how you want to swing your driver - there are several valid ways to swing that club. Learn one, then study the laws of ball flight, which state that a ball starts in a specific direction due to the direction the face is pointing (90% of the time), and it curves due to the relationship between the clubface angle and your swing path at impact. Here's the tip:
Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Golf Lessons I conduct lessons at The Plum Creek Driving Range & Practice Facility there's a link for Plum Creek info here: http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/ Lessons are available for all ages and skill levels, please contact me - Tom Tucker - at (716) 474 3005 or email me at ttucker@rochester.rr.com for more information. Outdoor Lessons Details and Rates: http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/lessonrates.html Indoor Lessons Details and Rates: http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/indoor.html Driver Fitting Rates: http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/indoor.html Testimonials: http://www.tomtuckergolf.com/testimonials.html Sponsors Plum Creek Driving Range and Simulator Outdoor range and play indoor golf on any of our 40 Simulator Courses. Call 585-993-0930 or email Mark at plumcreek4@rochester.rr.com to reserve time for simulator play or practice! Batavia Country Club Great rates, the best greens in WNY, Golf Digest Four Star rating for public courses to play in New York State. Make tee times online in season www.bataviacc.com (585) 343-7600 Chestnut Hill CC Great rates, 20 minutes East of Buffalo, NY . All the best, Tom Tucker Teaching Pro, Plum Creek Driving Range & Practice Facility WGTF ' "Top 100 Golf Teacher" USGTF Class "A" Teaching Professional Cell: (716) 474-3005 Email: ttucker@rochester.rr.com http://www.TomTuckerGolf.com http://www.usgtf.com/top_100_wgtf.html "There are no substitutes in the quest for perfection!" ~ Ben Hogan |
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