You look outside your window in your bedroom or living room and the birds aren’t singing as much as they were the last few months. The grass isn’t as green or, heck, maybe you can’t even see the grass because there’s a foot of snow on it. Your golf game is beginning to atrophy from weeks of cold weather. But spring will come again soon enough and you want to be in mid-season form when you embark on your mid-winter golf trip. You’re counting down the days already, and here are some tips that will both help pass the time and help you be ready to beat your buddies right out of the gate:
Tip #1: Swing Maintenance
If you don’t swing a golf club for a month or two after you shut it down for the winter, when you do finally get back out there, you are going to find you are a solid club or even two full clubs shorter, due to your lack of interim practice. To combat this, look into investing in a weighted club that you can swing indoors. Many companies, such as Momentus Golf, make weighted clubs that are between 25 and 30 inches long, so that they can be swing beneath eight-foot ceilings with no worries. Some of them are even collapsible and can fit in an overnight bag. Thirty swings a day with one of these clubs will stave off any mid-winter distance loss and may even give you a couple extra yards for the new season.
Tip #2: Putt for Dough
If you have even a five-foot stretch of decent carpet somewhere in your home, you have no excuse not to practice your putting. Just take a plastic cup, turn it over, and presto: you have a target to putt to. Do you have a yardstick or a long wooden dowel? Now you have a putting stroke trainer. See how many four-footers you can make in a row. Some pros will not leave the putting green until they make 100 consecutively.
Tip #3: Visual Learning
If you find yourself spending a little more time on the couch watching television or browsing the Internet in the winter, make the most of it by looking up videos of your favorite PGA Tour players’ swings on YouTube. Many of them are captured from tournament broadcasts and feature insights into what makes certain swings so effective. If Golf Channel is part of your cable package, watch a few of the tournaments broadcast over the winter and see if you can spot some players’ swing characteristics that might help your game.