Golf Training Aids
Golf training aids have become vastly popular with golfers everywhere. Golfers of all ages and skill levels are constantly looking for ways to help them improve their scores and reduce their handicaps.
The playing professionals have the talent and coaching to help them hit massive drives off the tee straight down the fairway, or consistently drop putt after putt in the hole. But, for the average golfer, we have to use a variety of proven training aids to help us lower our scores.
All of the TV and magazine ads for golf training aids can be quite overwhelming for the average person looking to improve their golf game. Training aids come in every form and fashion, from the Medicus Dual Hinge Driver, to Footjoy socks to help keep your feet comfortable.
But don’t fret, it’s really not as overwhelming as it appears. Although you may be tempted to buy every golf training aid in sight, it’s not necessary or practical, unless of course money is no object. The more prudent option would be to look at your overall golf game and decide what training aids would benefit your particular golf game.
For example, if you’re driving the golf ball long and straight but you’re having problems with your chipping, you may want to purchase a chipping aid. A product like the Chip Mate Net, or Chip-N-Pitch will help you achieve much better accuracy.
If you’re having problems driving the golf ball and keeping it in the fairway, consider the Medicus Dual Hinge Driver. This tool works great for those who may be slicing the golf ball.
There are also many PGA pros who endorse various golf training aids as well. Most of these products are of very high quality and will provide the needed help for your golf game.
Vijay Singh, the winner of several of golf’s majors, advertises and uses the Speed Stik. This training device is a golf shaft that measures your swing speed and helps you quicken your swing speed. This in turn will allow you to improve the distance of your drives. Ernie Els, another winner on the PGA tour, uses the Tempotimer. This device wraps around your golf club and will also improve your golf swing.
If you’re having difficulty with your entire golf swing, whether off the tee or near the green, you might want to consider looking at the 8 Board. This particular training aid will help optimize the swing plane for your individual stroke.
While various PGA playing pros advertise golf training aids, you may want to consider talking with the golf teaching pros in your area. They use several different training aids on a daily basis as part of their profession. These teaching pros are an excellent source for advice on what may work for your particular need and what may not.
Several putting aids are also available such as the Eyeline Putting Laser, as well as Path Pro. These are a couple of golf training aids that are endorsed by P.G.A. Professionals of America. Their job is to find the best training aids available for their students.
Golf equipment is not the only training aids available. There are also fitness routines, mental and physical programs and other methods of building the body and mind to improve your golf game. These are also considered to be golf training aids. Tiger Woods is big on physical fitness. He has helped lead the way in golf fitness for the past 10 years.
The golf training aids industry is huge. Several billions of dollars are spent each and every year in this industry. The Internet has been immensely popular as an advertising medium for training aids. Websites are everywhere that sell all sorts of golf aids.
So, if you’re looking to improve your golf game and lower your scores, then take a good look at all of the various training aids available. Get one that suits your needs and your game. You’ll be glad you did!
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Golf.
Does the Tour de France Matter Anymore
Does anyone really care? This most elegant and awe-inspiring contest of individual will and physical endurance has so sullied itself in drug abuse, both proven and accused, that it’s falling apart under its own deficiencies.
Lance Armstrong may end up holding three records
* Only man to win seven (consecutive) times
* Most accused of drug abuse without proof
* Titleholder at the collapse of the event.
Oscarpereiro Okay, maybe the last isn’t likely, although he may well be the last definitive winner. If Floyd Landis is put down for drug use, as is probable, Spaniard Oscar Pereiro will get the kissing-your-sister elevation to winner. A dreary way to tack up the prize in your trophy-room, as a default by drug-test.
No victory laps, no champagne, no kiss on the cheek by a French babe as the world cheersjust a win.
Pereiro seems, as does everyone who checked in early on this issue, to have a high degree of regard and personal admiration for Landis.
“While I don’t receive a fax confirming a win, I’m not going to celebrate anything. I have too much respect for Landis to do otherwise.”
But cycling is as self-serving a sport as any other, a big-money draw in Europe, where Landis’s team spotted him $2.5 million for the win. Endorsements by brands (not already committed to Lance Armstrong) were likely to add more millions.
Tsunami is the metaphor of choice.
Floydlandis2 As quickly as fame, money and his fascinating life story rolled across the sports pages of world media, so much faster have they sucked his name and reputation back out to sea. Landis was fired by the team who no doubt had a hand in slipping him the mickey that cost him the title.
Standing firmly behind him until they suddenly disappeared, Phonak’s was as cynical a move as pretending womanhood to escape the Titanic. Anything for a buck in the world of sponsorship.
Phonak, is the Swiss sponsor of Landis’ team and they ostensibly replaced the team management in 2005 because they were gaining an untenable reputation as dopers. According to the AP,
The International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, refused to issue Phonak a racing license for 2005 because of the team’s doping record. Three Phonak riders - Hamilton, Oscar Camenzind and Santi Perez - were all found guilty of doping violations in 2004 and fired. The team was only allowed to race after appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled last year that Phonak should have a two-year license.
Andy Ris, who prefers sunny weather and is the owner of Phonak (a Swiss hearing-aid manufacturer) hears without any aid at all, when it comes to damage done to his brand.
“Think hard before you get involved in cycling, because there are never any guarantees when it comes to doping. Where there’s money, there’s doping.”
Phonak Too late to think hard, Andy. Only time to duck quickly. Landis, who may or may not have been using illegal substances and may or may not have even known he was enhanced, has been universally dropped like the hottest of potatoes. Suddenly, his upcoming hip-replacement operation is compared to Armstrong’s victory over cancer, as though he was attempting to emulate Lance. Equally abruptly, his doggedness and up and down careera matter of some celebration and presumed ‘proof’ of clean competitionis disparaged, along with other aspects of his rise.
Others in the sport, the guys you peddle against, are pretty good references when it comes to who might be capable of competing unfairly. In that regard (not that it matters in the long run) Landis has the respect of his competitors.
It would be a tragedy, if only the world gave a damn. But Floyd Landis will be yesterday’s news in an eyewink, a mere footnote to the miserable decline of a once-famous and once-honored French bicycle race.
The Tour de Syringe is on its way out.
The Masters golf tournament could hardly survive if, just prior to tee-time, Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson were all ushered off the course and banned for hitting the long-ball under the influence. Yet just prior to the Tour de France, favorites Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Oscar Sevilla, along with manager Rudy Pevenage were all suspended by T-Mobile on doping charges. With Roberto Heras riding out a two-year ban after winning the Tour Spain in February, the winners of three of cycling’s major Tours are banned or facing bans.
Meanwhile, Barry Bonds takes Babe Ruth’s record while pumped full of steroids. Meanwhile, the Olympics are constantly under threat of doping scandals and nearly all professional sports (in which stamina or power is a factor) are suspect. Meanwhile, the continuing drama centers not on cleaning things up, but finding drug enhancements that are untraceable. Which means, as soon as a way to trace the untraceable catches up with dopers, a whole new starring cast bites the dust.
Not given much coverage is the dilemma of the clean athlete. What does one do in the sport of choice without enhancement? Settle for a lifetime of second-best? How often can one peddle one’s heart out, hit the cross-court backhand or throw fastballs against the dopers before giving in or getting out?
More to the point, can the public be expected to get excited about the Tour de France when, from Armstrong’s first win to Landis’ controversy, the race is run in rain or shine, but always under the cloud of substance abuse.
Maybe an answer is to usher in an anything-goes era to professional, as well as (supposedly) amateur sports and may the best prescribed athlete win. The first ever Olympic games were held almost 800 years before Christ and the first winner (according to my scorecard) was Karoibas, a guy who beat out all the current favorites in the Stadion Race.
And how do are we supposed to know what he was on?
As a political commentator, Jim Freeman’s op-ed pieces have appeared on the pages of The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The Jon Stewart Daily Show, The New York Review and a number of magazines. His commentary is available at http://www.opinion-columns.com/
Tags: doping, drugs, Floyd Landis, Jim Freeman, Opinion Columns, Oscar Pereira, Tour de FranceGetting in the Zone
On August 15, 2004 Vijay Singh won the 86th PGA Championship.
In an interview earlier that day Singh said, ‘My focus two months ago was the wrong thing.
I was focusing so hard to get to the No. 1 spot that I started not focusing on my own game.
Every time I teed it up, I didn’t want to play bad. I started making simple mistakes.
Now, I am totally focused on what I am doing, my game, and not worried about the rankings…it doesn’t bother me at all.’
Singh’s experience is what we are all seeking on the golf course: to be free of our need to be good enough.
Freedom from this fear has many names: the zone, the zen moment, enlightenment.
Exceptional performers understand how to be present on the golf course. They move through the golf course fully responding to whatever the moment requires of them.
They are one with the ball, one with what they are doing, one with the Now — the present moment.
Re-training Your Mind
Getting in the zone sounds simple, and it is.
Simple…but not easy.
Freeing yourself from the fear of inadequacy and failure means re-training your mind.
This is why the Dahlai Lama is so peaceful. Since the age of 4, he’s been training his mind towards enlightenment.
You can do the same.
Mental Toughness Exercise
Play the next round of golf by yourself. In addition to your score card, take a pocket notebook.
Play the round as you normally do, only this time listen to your mind each time it pays attention to your ego (the part of you that wants recognition) instead of the game itself.
Here are some typical thoughts you might have:
“Why do I always fluff my approach shots?
Why do I always land that bunker?
Why can’t I get more distance on my drives?”
Don’t attempt to stop your mind; simply listen in. When you hear your mind move its attention to the score, the outcome of your shots, or winning, write down these thoughts.
The greater part of your fearful thinking in golf is involuntary and automatic.
When you shine the light of consciousness upon it with self-awareness, it cannot help but wither.
I’ll talk to you again soon.
Your friend,
Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is a professional speaker, author, and coach
who helps people achieve their aspirations using mental toughness. Visit her golf site at http://www.golfgamesecrets.com
