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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: Practice Thoughts - Tour Greens: - Tour Quality Synthetic Greens - Tom's Bonus Tip: The Bump - Lesson Comments: What Students Have To Say - Sponsors: Plum Creek Driving Range Batavia Country Club Tour Greens Western New York Genesee Community College Golf Management Program 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: Practice Thoughts For simplicity, all advice on actual swings or drills is provided from a right handed perspective. Recently I've had what I'm going to call "remedial" lessons with a couple of good players, and some with not so good players. I call them "remedial" because at one time all of these players had fundamentally sound swings, but technique errors had crept into their swings, producing problems. After a recent successful lesson with a good player, he said to me that he thought that even good players have some negative tendencies creep into their swing, and that he feels that he needs to catch a lesson or two at well spaced intervals just to keep his fundamentals sound. He's absolutely correct, and here's why. If you don't practice or play enough, tiny errors start to creep into your swing. They don't produce any outrageous problems at first - usually there's a loss of distance and weak misses to the right. Then the player tries to make adjustments, most often by bring the wrong type of hand action into play, then everything gets drastically worse. The solution is to review your fundamentals regularly to make sure everything fits your concept of your swing. I know that for my better students, we keep advancing their swings by hyper-focusing on fundamental details. Excellence occurs in golf when a player masters the fundamentals. That takes a lot of time and practice, and good players plan the work and work the plan. No magic there, just good sound practice habits and specific knowledge of what you want to do. If your swing is self taught, review the books or DVD's that provided the basis for your knowledge on a regular basis. For me, there's almost nothing more enjoyable than going through my instructional DVD collection. I learn something new every time I do that. Or maybe I just re-learned something that I forgot, it's tough getting old :-) If you learned from a teacher, schedule an appointment for a fundamentals review lesson once or twice a year. Jack Nicklaus, arguably the best golfer of all time (my vote still goes to Tiger), did that with his teacher Jack Grout every spring. If it was good enough for him it should be good enough for us mere mortals. I've also changed some of my practice recommendations to my students this year. In years past I would recommend that a student do a certain number of repetitions of a drill we did at a lesson. Now I recommend 15 to 45 minutes of very concentrated practice, with about 75% of their swings or movements being done in very slow motion. For short motion drills like the Inverted Praying Hands Drill, as little as 5 minutes of focused practice will produce significant benefits. I made these changes because I felt that some students were rushing through their reps with a low level of concentration in a well meaning attempt to do what I asked them to do. Rushing through reps, however, is a total waste of time. Fully concentrated practice for shorter periods of time is time wisely spent for building skill. Just keep in mind that when you practice that way in slow motion, you must make sure that everything is done with perfect technique and precision. Follow these recommendations and you will build skill for your swing. And by the way, if you are looking for a golf teacher I have a few openings in my lesson book, give me a call or contact me via email. 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 Would you like to be able to practice with purpose in your own back yard? Would you like your short game to progress from bad to good, or from good to great? Would you like to get the ball up & down with more frequency? Would you like 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? Click here TourGreensWNY.com for photo galleries and more information. 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. Click here to 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 - and they LOVE Western New York weather! For more information please click here: TourGreensWNY.com, or feel free to call, text, or email me to discuss your needs. Comments: ttucker@rochester.rr.com Love your practice, own your swing, own your health, Tom Tom's Bonus Tip: The Bump For simplicity, all advice on actual swings or drills is provided from a right handed perspective. This is another tip that falls into the short but sweet category. In the swing that I teach, the student is required to bump their hips laterally to initiate their downswing transition. Other things happen then also, but I want to focus on the most common error I see when the student bumps their hips forward in the general direction of the target. Until they have it pointed out to them, most students bump their hips laterally and open them slightly (or a lot) at the same time. This can be a death move because it usually starts casting the shoulders - and thus the club - outward. The correct line for the hips to bump on is in the direction that the hips are pointing at the end of the backswing. For most right handed players, this will be right of their aimline. This promotes the proper inside attack angle for the downswing. Practice the correct bump direction before you start your natural downswing rotation, and your swing speed and ball flight consistency will improve. 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. Tee times online or by phone in season. www.bataviacc.com (585) 343-7600 Tour Greens Western New York Practice with purpose in your own back yard on your own synthetic practice green. Our greens LOVE Western New York weather! Genesee Community College Golf Management Program Click on link for more information if you or anyone you know is interested in a dynamic career in the golf industry, or in teaching golf. 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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