Tip of the Month/ Golf News

Turning with Purpose

Every golfer knows that turning your body is an important part of the golf swing. It directly affects your swing plane, path of the club, where the club bottoms out, and power. The turn is easy to get wrong, so here are a few ideas you can use to practice correctly.

1. Posture is important – Your goal is to turn your shoulders fully back and through the ball, and that is only possible if you have good posture at the start. The most common error is slumping the shoulders instead of keeping the back straight and tilting forward from the hips. To get a feel for proper posture, try this: stand erect, feel your shoulders blades pinch together and down, and then tilt forward while keeping the same feel.

2. Turn on your spine angle – The spine angle you use to address the ball will be tilted forward toward the ball. Some players are more tilted than others, but the important thing is to turn while keeping the same tilt you established at address. The common errors are standing up too much, or tilting down instead of turning. Since these errors can happen on your backswing or downswing, it’s difficult to feel when things go haywire. Here is a good drill to feel the correct turn: Get in address position with good posture, and cross your arms in front of you so your fingers touch opposite shoulders. Now grab a club and hold it across your shoulders, and practice turning back and through. Watch the club as the grip end and clubhead take turns moving in front of you…they should trace the same path as you move back and through.

Weight shift – Less or more? Many golfers have the idea that a big weight shift is needed for the golf swing to create power, which is not always true. Many PGA Tour players have a fairly equal weight distribution on the backswing…some even have more weight on the left foot. So don’t go nuts trying to shift your weight for all you are worth… staying more centered may help create a simpler swing, which makes your shots more     consistent.                                                                               Happy turning!

News

Congratulations to Dennis Countryman and Walter Jungbauer who teamed up to win the Memorial Classic by a single Quota point over the second place team of Brian Schepperle and Brian Schepperle Junior. Jason Hoechst won individual honors with a phenomenal score of +12. Thank you to all participants as we had wonderful weather and a great field of 86 members playing in this year’s event. A summary of results follows:

2014 Memorial Classic Results

OVERALLTEAM

1st    Walter Jungbauer/ Dennis Countryman
2nd Brian Schepperle/ Brian M Schepperle
3rd Greg S Anderson/ Bob Krussell
4th Dewayne Gappa/ Jack Schmidt
5th Jake Hansen/ Delaney Metcalf
6thMike Martinez/ Ethan Severson
7thBrian Sweeney/ Joel Newby
8thMark Duea/ Jason Gahm
9thMike Hanson/ Stan Hollen
10thRoger Vadnais/ Don Odegard

OVERALL INDIVIDUAL
1st Jason Hoechst
2ndBrian M Schepperle
3rdDennis Countryman
4thJoel Newby
5th Mark Duea