Golf Hitting Nets

Watch the PGA Tour and you'll see professional golfers get upset with shots you would kill to make consistently. Occasionally, you'll see them hit one into the netherworld and somehow escape with par or bogie.

How do they do it?

It's the biggest difference between professional golfers and amateur golfers. When a pro goes to the driving range, he's there to warm up, check how his swing feels and maybe make some minor tweaks to adapt his shots to the course conditions.

An amateur is trying to find his golf swing. Once he's found his golf swing, his battle will be to keep it working and pray that it doesn't disappear once he's out on the golf course.

The difference is that the professional golfer has a Master Swing locked into memory. He has a pattern to reference every swing by so he knows as soon as his swing feels a little off that he needs to make some minor adjustments to his routines to keep things working.

Now the amateur will say that he doesn't have time to hit 500 balls a day to create his own Master Swing and he's right, but there is a way to do it practicing just 15 minutes per night.

How?

Well, the first trick is to practice before you go to bed. If you do, your mind will continue practicing while you sleep, but on one condition...That you don't confuse it with too much information.

The Master Swing was also Ben Hogan's real secret. He didn't get it by hitting 500 balls per day, he did it by feel, using sometimes as few as 40 golf balls during his practice sessions.

The second trick is a technique used by John Wooden when he Coached the UCLA Bruins. During practice, he would tell his players to identify their greatest weakness, what they should do to correct it, and work on nothing else until they were satisfied with the results. The next practice would start with an assessment of strengths and weaknesses to find what to work on next.

Replacing Your Golf Grips

It’s really easy to change your grips. The hardest part is making sure the grip size is right for your hands. There are different diameters of grips to suit different hand sizes as well as for people who have arthritis. Assuming you’re right handed and you put your left hand on the grip; your last 3 fingers should wrap around the grip and just slightly touch your palm or have a slight gap. If there is a large gap the grip is too big. If your fingers press into your palm then the grip is too small. You can make a grip that is a little too small bigger by adding a couple extra layers of grip tape around the club shaft.

Step 1- This isn’t mandatory but it makes the job easier if you have one. Hold the golf shaft in a vise. There are rubber shaft holders that go around the shaft before you place it in the vice so that it doesn’t damage the shaft. I’ve also changed grips without the vice and it’s not very difficult so don’t worry if you don’t have one.

Step 2- Remove the old grip
A sharp utility knife works great to cut the old grip down the length of the shaft. If you have graphite shafts, avoid cutting or marking the shaft.

Step 3- Clean the tape and adhesive off of the shaft.
A razor blade and/or just using solvent works well for this. I personally use mostly just the solvent because my shafts are graphite and I don’t want to scrape the shafts with a sharp blade. A good solvent that I use is paint thinner. If your shafts are steel, then a razor blade works great to remove the tape and then remove any remaining adhesive with the solvent.

Step 4- Place grip tape on the shaft.
Grip tape has adhesive on both sides. Double sided adhesive tape comes in narrow widths and wide widths. Depending on which tape you get determines the easiest way to place the tape on the shaft. The narrower tape may require you to wrap the tape in a spiral circular motion down the shaft. Try to get it spaced evenly so that it doesn’t overlap or leave big gaps. If you get the wider tape, you can just place a long strip down the shaft a little longer than the length of the grip, and remove the backing and wrap it around the shaft. Place the grip tape on the shaft so that there is an extra ¼” of tape or so extending out beyond the butt end of the shaft. Squeeze that tape together and push it into the end of the golf shaft to seal the end of the golf shaft and prevent anything from getting into the golf shaft. Once the grip has been slid onto the shaft, any tape that protrudes beyond the grip can be easily trimmed with a razor blade or you can measure how far the grip extends down the shaft in advance and put a mark on the shaft and trim the tape a little shorter than the length of the grip before you put the grip on. As mentioned earlier regarding the diameter of the grip, if you need a little wider grip, you can put an extra wrap or two of tape on the shaft to enlarge the diameter of the grip.

Step 5- Slide the grip on the shaft.
While covering the little hole in the end of the grip with a finger, put enough grip solvent into the grip so that it can coat all the inside walls of the grip. Put enough in so that while now covering the holes of the grip at both ends with your fingers that you can shake the grip and feel the solvent slosh around in the grip. Carefully dump/pour any excess solvent that is in the grip out over the entire surface of the grip tape on your golf club shaft. Now both the inside of the grip and the exterior surface of the grip tape should be coated with solvent.

Note: the grip solvent prevents the grip tape adhesive from setting up for a short period of time, so you will only have maybe 10 seconds or so to get the grip on and get it aligned before the adhesive sets and the grip cannot be moved any longer.

Now slide the grip onto the shaft. If your grip has grip alignment marks for your hands on the grip or a grip reminder ridge that runs down the backside of the grip, try to make sure the grip goes on as straight as possible in the first place so that you don’t have to twist the grip much once its on the shaft to get it aligned correctly. If you have a shaft vice, aligning the grip will be a little easier at this point however it’s not very hard to align the grip without the vice. Holding the golf club in front of you with the clubface perfectly vertical pointing upward, places the topside of the golfshaft on top. Line up the alignment marks for the top of the grip down the center of the shaft.

Let the grips cure overnight before using them.