As the seasons change, the temperature dips and underfoot conditions get softer, winter presents a whole host of different challenges to the golfer. Here are the 9 things all golfers must do… to play well this winter!
9 Things All Golfers Must Do… to play well this winter!
As the seasons change, the temperature dips and underfoot conditions get softer, winter presents a whole host of different challenges to the golfer. Preparing for these and knowing how to overcome the difficulties will help you shoot lower score throughout. Here are the 9 things all golfers must do… to play well this winter!
9 Maintain Your Rhythm
With the golf course inevitably playing longer in the winter, the temptation can be to hit the ball harder than usual. During the normal course of a round this can affect your rhythm. To help, when you are having a good practice session, give the tempo of your swing a rating out of 10 – 1 being the slowest you can swing the club, 10 being the fastest. Most players find that when they are at their best, they swing at around 6 or 7 on this scale. One of the best things you can do is to take this number with you to the course. Then if you are feeling like your rhythm is getting a bit fast, practice swinging the club one less on the scale than your optimal speed. This should get your rhythm back under control.
PING’s Mellor Half Zip Fleece, as worn here, is a mid layer with thermal SensorWarm technology and stretch properties to keep you swinging freely and with a good rhythm in cold weather.
8 Pitching From Wet Lies
Short pitch shots from wet lies are one of the great challenges of winter golf. You can guard against fat strikes here by playing the ball a fraction further back in your stance and then not swinging the club quite as far in the backswing. The key when you do this is to still rotate through to your normal finish position. This should provide you with the angle of attack you need for a good strike and the right speed through impact to ensure good distance control.
PING Autumn/Winter 2020 Apparel Revealed
7 Use Modern Technology
Over the last decade or so, golf clothing has come on leaps and bounds. Gone are the days of heavy, bulky garments causing restricted swings. Modern cold-weather fabrics are designed to be both lightweight and warm. They should stretch with the movement of your body allowing you to swing just as you would in the summer months. If you haven’t updated your winter golf wardrobe for a while, you’ll be surprised by how much of a difference it makes!
The lightweight Norse S2 Zoned jacket from PING features PrimaLoft Gold insulation with Cross Core technology, to keep your core warm and provide protection from the wind. It has also been designed to be breathable and to stretch with the movement of your body, during the golf swing.
6 Reassess your yardages
The starting point here is to make sure you understand how far you hit the ball in normal, summertime conditions. Not every golfer does but it is a must and crucially, you need to know how far each club carries, not the overall distance as that will depend on ground conditions. The general rule of thumb is that you will need to add an extra club to your usual expectations during the winter. Alternatively, you could use a harder ball designed to offer more distance.
PING Heppler Putter Range Review
5 Hole out on wet greens
The problem many players face when the greens start to get wetter is their usual speed becomes a little too slow. More pace in the winter is a must as the ball will be less likely to be bumped off line by any imperfections on the green. A great drill is to place a club down on the green so the thinnest part of the shaft is in front of the hole. The ball should hit, jump over the shaft and go into the hole – too slow and it will not get over the shaft, too fast and it will jump over the hole. If you can start to train this speed, you will develop a much more positive pace to help you hole out better this winter.
Place a club in front of the hole, as shown here, and practice hitting the ball just hard enough so it bounces over the shaft.
4 Playing from compact sand
When the sand gets wet, it settles down and becomes more compact. This makes greenside bunker shots more challenging so you will need to make some adjustments. You need to strike the sand a fraction closer to the ball and to present the club with less bounce. To do this, move the ball back in your stance by about an inch and square up the face at address. From there, make a normal swing and you should avoid those disastrous strikes that can really cause you trouble in the sand.
3 Stay warm and dry
Keeping yourself warm and dry while you are out on the course, exposed to the worst of the conditions is a must. The temperature and ground conditions will both prevent the ball from going as far as it would in the summer. If you let yourself get too cold or you start to feel uncomfortable in the wet, this will also have an impact. Think carefully about the clothing you wear and try to pick garments designed to help you perform in different weather conditions.
These Vision winter golf trousers from PING offer both water resistance and protection from the cold whilst also being lightweight and breathable.
2 Choose the right shot
When choosing what sort of shot to play around the greens, the advice is that less is more. If you take a big swing with a lofted club there is more that can go wrong than a shorter swing with less loft. In the winter, when the ground conditions are softer, this becomes even more important. So choose a less lofted club and then restrict your hand action as much as possible. You should feel that your wrists remain quite wooden during the swing but that your lead shoulder rotates nicely through the ball. Pick a spot on the green to land the ball on and let it roll out like a putt.
The combination of the Norse S2 Vest and Corey long-sleeved polo shirt from PING, offers warmth for the core while allowing your arms to swing with freedom.
1 Playing from soft ground conditions
When the ground conditions are soft you should think about moving the ball a fraction further back in your stance to ensure a good, ball-first contact. However, when you do this, you will have a tendency to push the shot a little. To negate this, simply aim a few yards further left. This is the best way to find the consistency of contact and accuracy that you are looking for.
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