How To Stop Hitting Pop-Ups With Your Driver
NO MORE POP-UPS!
Popping-up your tee shots can be very frustrating and perplexing. You’re standing on the tee of a Par 5, ready to hit your longest drive of the day. You rear back and unleash the fury onto the ball. You anticipate watching your ball soar down the middle of the fairway only to see head straight up towards the clouds. The ball then lands only 80 yards from the tee. Frustrating, right? Was the ball teed up too high? Did you swing up on the ball too much? Ball placed too far forward in your stance? Most likely, none of those caused that pop-up.
When you pop-up your driver, you’re getting too much underneath the ball, but it’s caused by coming down too steeply into the ball. Simply, your swing was more of a “V-shape” rather than a “U-shape”. To hit the driver properly, it’s imperative to come into the ball much more shallow than you would with your irons.
Potential causes of the pop-up:
- Standing too close to the ball
- Ball too far back in your stance
- Picking the club up too abruptly on your backswing – not turning your shoulders enough
- Coming out of your posture
- Swinging too hard
- Hands getting too far away from your body on the downswing (outside-to-in downswing)
Pop-up cures:
- At address, make sure the end of the grip is pointing to your belt buckle, AND is about 5 inches away from it
- Ball position should be about one inch off your left heel with your driver
- Start your backswing turning your shoulders level, not picking up the club with your hands
- Maintain your knee flex to remain in your posture
- Try to have a smooth transition into your downswing resisting the urge to hit it too hard
- Keep your hands closer to your body on your downswing
These are not all the causes and cures for pop-ups, but they are some of the most common.
A different way to think of a pop-up is thinking about skipping rocks off water. When you skip a rock, your right arm will drop low and you will release the rock low so it skips along the surface of the water. Popping-up a tee shot would be the same as taking that rock and just throwing it straight down into the water. It was too steep. Skipping a rock requires a shallow angle to the water when the rock is released.
Drill
Here’s a simple drill to shallow out your downswing when hitting your driver:
- Tee up your ball and take your normal stance
- Take your normal backswing
- On your downswing, swing the club one foot over the ball – don’t hit the ball!
- Continue swinging about one foot above the ball for a few swings
- Finally, go ahead and hit a few
This drill will shallow/round-out your shoulders making it much more difficult to hit pop-ups. It’s actually a great drill to hit your driver better even if you’re not popping it up.
Good luck and thanks for reading!
Srixon’s Yellow Ball
Tonight, I played a few holes at Sharon Woods using Srixon’s yellow ball. The visibility was not too good tonight as it was raining off and on. I have to say that the yellow ball is much more visible than the normal white golf ball. I’m not sure this would help my ball-striking or my scoring, but I do know I like seeing the ball better in flight and after it lands. It’s also a little easier to locate in the rough. It almost looks like the ball is glowing when it’s on the ground. The yellow ball is pretty cool and I would definitely consider playing this ball in the future.
Fundamentals of Driving
FUNDAMENTALS OF DRIVING
Definition: A shot hit off a tee to start a hole. Usually this shot is hit with a driver, although some may prefer to hit with a 3-Wood. This swing is more rounded sweeping the ball off the tee unlike an iron swing that strikes the ground.
Goal: To maximize distance without giving up accuracy.
Setup:
- Place feet a couple of inches outside your shoulders
- Have slightly more weight on your back leg, about 55%
- Ball position is about one inch off your left heel – this can vary as some prefer it slightly up or back from this spot
- With the wider stance, the end of the grip will point towards your belt buckle – allow your arms to hang naturally under your shoulders, not pressing them forward (pressing them forward delofts the driver = bad)
- Have square shoulders – with the wider stance and the ball up, it’s easy to have open shoulders so you may have to practice squaring up your shoulders
Execution:
- Make a full backswing feeling that your swing is wide and round
- With the wide setup, you only have to turn on your backswing – a shift of your weight is not necessary
- On your downswing, try to swing back to the ball from the inside – feel like you’re swinging in-to-out keeping your hands in close to your body
- Keep your head behind the ball until after impact to ensure you’re getting the proper launch on the ball
- Hold a balanced finish until the ball lands
Welcome UC Communiversity Beginner and Intermediate Students!
Welcome the 80+ students I taught this week in my UC group classes. This website will have all your class notes and more. If you scroll down, on the right side there is an Archived Categories section. One of the categories is UC Class Notes. There you’ll find articles written specifically for our classes. Feel free to read more articles as you advance through the class. See you soon!
Kyle
Stop Your Slice – Use Your Right Side More (Dominant Side)
USE YOUR RIGHT SIDE TO STOP YOUR SLICE
In a good golf swing, I believe the upper body, lower body, and arms should work in unison. Another way to think about it is your left side and right side should work together turning through the ball. Makes sense, right? Would you want just half of your body doing all the work? Or just your arms flailing at the ball? I didn’t think so.
A sliced shot, a ball that curves left-to-right, occurs when the clubface is open, pointing right, at impact. This open clubface can be caused by many things like open shoulders at address, swinging across the ball on the downswing, coming down too steeply into the ball, etc. Today, I’m going to cover another reason a slice may occur and how to fix it.
A large percentage of golfers I see that slice the ball tend to pull down using more upper body than lower body. When this happens, the upper body is pulling away from the lower body. More to the point, the left side (weak side) is pulling down and left. To hit the ball better, the right side must contribute.
Why Pulling With Your Weak Side Is Bad
There are two reasons why pulling with the left side is bad. One, it tends to leave the clubface open. It’s very difficult to rotate through the shot when the left side is pulling. The second reason is you’re losing a ton of power. Think of it this way. If you had to move a large box that weighed 80 pounds, would you rather pull it or push it? Push it, right? You get a lot more power that way. Back to golf, pulling left not only opens the clubface, but it also lessens the force you’re putting into the shot (I want to make it clear I’m not necessarily advocating pushing on your downswing, I just want you to stop pulling.)
The Fix
To fix this problem, you have to activate your right side. This is not as difficult as it seems.
- On your downswing, I want you to feel your hands are coming down more from the inside – closer to your right thigh. If your hands get away from your body too much, you’ll have to pull left. I want you to feel you’re swinging a little in-to-out.
- Once step one is done, you have to turn your right side through the shot. To get the right feeling, I would like you to make swings with the golf club with your right hand/arm only. Take a wide backswing and swing all the way through to your finish. If you’ve ever played tennis, I would like for you to replicate a topspin tennis shot. Notice how the right arm and clubface are releasing/rolling over, not staying open – clubface pointed right or up to the sky.
- At your finish, if turned your right side through, your belt buckle will be pointed to the target, your weight will be over your left leg, and the shaft of the club will be perpendicular to your spine. If you pull coming down, the shaft will be closer to your spine angle.
To summarize, try to swing through the ball using your dominant side rather than pulling across the ball with your weak side. Done properly, you’ll start hitting the ball straighter and further hopefully adding 10 yards of distance to all your clubs.
Good luck, thanks for reading, and practice hard.
Tip-Of-The Month April ’10: Stopping The Shanks
NO MORE SHANKS!
Alright, let’s just get it out-of-the-way right now. Shank, shank, shank, shank, shank, shank, shank. Say it with pride and conviction. Shank, shank, shank! Embrace it. Let’s not call it the “S-word”, or anything else that doesn’t justify the pure dreadfulness of the shot. Just get it out and be done with it. Shank! Say it again. Shank! Shank! The first step in recovering from a shank is to accept it in all it’s glory. It’s happens. In fact, it’s happens to the best of us. I’m good for a few shanks a year. It’s no big deal. I saw Jim Furyk shank one on the 72nd hole of his recent victory in Tampa. It happens to everyone. It’s obviously no fun to hit one, but hey, shanks happen. Today, I’m going to explain the major causes of the shank, how to go about fixing them, and how to recover when this lateral shot occurs.
What Causes A Shank
First of all, let’s clarify that a shank is hit off the hosel of the golf club. This is the area just below the shaft. Now, I have seen shanks off the toe, but they’re pretty rare. When you shank a shot off the toe of the club, it’s usually short and soft off to the right. A shank off the hosel comes off with a ton of steam and curves way off to the right, much more penalizing.
Simply, a shank is a shot where the hosel of the club comes in contact with the ball first before the clubface hits the ball. This can happen two ways: the clubface has gotten closer to the ball at impact compared to the address position, or the clubface is very open at impact with the hosel leading the way. Here are some of the ways this can happen:
- Starting with your weight on your heels - When you start with your weight on your heels, you will rock back and forth like a teeter totter during your swing and will usually be on your toes at impact. When your weight is on your toes at impact, you’ve usually gotten closer to the golf ball. This pushes your hands towards the ball making it easier to hit the ball off the hosel.
- Standing too close to the ball – Standing too close to the ball at address gives you very little space to swing down into the ball. The force of the swing will either cause your hands to go up or out resulting in a steep swing or a shank. Neither is preferred.
- Aiming too much to the right - When you aim right with your body and look to out to the target, your eyes will subconsciously tell you to swing left. When you do this, it causes you to pull left. When you pull left with the club, it causes the hosel of the club lead the way back to the ball. It’s much harder to release/square the clubface when you’re making a pulling motion with your left side.
- Swinging outside-to-in (across the ball) - The swing that causes the slice can also cause the shank. Sorry slicers! But, like I just stated, when you swing across the ball (outside-to-in) the hosel has a much better chance of hitting the ball first.
How To Fix These Faults and Stop The Shanks
- Proper Posture at Address – Generally, when your weight is on your heels, you’re bending too much from your knees. Proper posture involves leaning over from your hip joints (waist), not sitting down in your knees. To do this, stand tall with the club resting along your right shoulder. Lean over keeping the club there and your knees locked. Then slowly drop the club down to the ground. Last, bend your knees about an inch, no more. This will evenly balance your weight and allow your arms to hang from your shoulders.
- Standing the Proper Distance From the Ball – When you’ve addressed your ball, there should be ample space, about 5 inches, between the end of the grip and your belt buckle. If you’re bending from your waist and not your knees, while allowing your arms to hang naturally you should’ve created this space. This space allows you to return the club from where it started instead of it being pushed outward by the body when jammed up.
- Aim Correctly – Place a club on the ground pointing to your target. Place another club parallel to this club about where your feet will be placed. Remove the first club and put a ball down. Your feet should be parallel to your target line. At first, you’ll feel like you’re aimed 40 yards left, but it’ll show you just how much you were swinging left on your downswing. After some practice, you’ll start swinging down the line longer decreasing the chance of a shank.
- Swing In-to-Out – The golf swing is a circular motion. The swing goes up and in and back down to the ball on the same path. Due to the fact the ball is off to our side, you will swing back to the ball from the inside. To hit the ball properly, you should be hitting the ball slightly from the inside. When you slice the ball, most likely, you’re swinging from the outside-to-in. This motion can also cause the shank. Try hitting the inside part of the ball out to the right. It’s hard to do when you fear right (the normal result of a slice), but it’s how to properly stop the slice.
What To Do After A Shank
First, look to see if anyone saw the shot. Maybe, just maybe, no one saw the shot and you can meander over to your next shot without shame, just a new challenge from a different spot. Second, if your playing partners saw it, laugh it off. How did that happen? Obviously, everyone knows how, but act as if it’s the first shank you’ve every seen. Just craziness. A total freak of nature shot. It’ll never happen again. Third, get determined. If you’re ball is still in play (I will admit, shanking it out-of-bounds, into a condo, lake, or woods is pretty discouraging. At this point, it’s best to just pull your hat down a bit, shed a quick tear, say a prayer, re-tie your shoes, choose a different club for the next shot and go onward.) flip your attitude to the opposite and accept the challenge. Try to make a par or bogey after shanking a shot. It feels pretty good making a par after shanking one. Accept the shot, deal with it, and go forward challenging yourself to not allow it to affect the rest of the hole or round.
Simple Tip To Stop The Shanks: Use These Tips When Struggling Mid-Round or On The Range
- Keep your hands in close to your body, backswing and downswing
- Feel heavy, balanced feet at address
- Try rotating/closing the clubface sooner on your downswing
It’s been said that the hardest shot in golf is the shot after a shank. Sometimes, this is very true, but hopefully these clarifications and tips will eliminate your shanks for good.
Thanks for reading and good luck!
Fundamentals Of Iron Play
FUNDAMENTALS OF IRON PLAY
Definition: A full swing with an iron using about 80% of your maximum effort to maintain balance and control of the club.
Goal: The goal of an iron shot is accuracy and distance control. Accuracy is achieved by having a repeatable golf swing that goes back and through on a similar swing path. Distance control is achieved by striking the ball in the center of the club using a controlled swing. Strike the ball with a descending blow from the inside allowing the clubface to hit the ball first, then the ground about an inch ahead of the ball.
Setup:
- Ball position should be placed about 2 balls off your left heel.
- Stance is shoulder width apart (outside of shoulders over shoe laces) with your 6 iron. With your longer clubs, your stance will increase a half an inch per club, and it will decrease a half an inch per club with your shorter irons. This is based on the half-inch increments in length in your irons.
- Flare your feet out about 20 degrees to allow your body the ability to turn correctly.
- Bend over from your hip joints (waist), not from your knees, so the end of the grip points to your belt-line.
- Your balance should be equally distributed on your feet. If done correctly, you should be able to wiggle your toes at address without feeling your weight shift back.
- Your arms should hang comfortably below your shoulders.
- Your hands will be positioned slightly ahead of the golf ball to simulate the impact position.
Execution:
- Start your backswing with your center turning back. Turn don’t shift.
- Allow your wrists to hinge up creating a 90 angle between your left arm and the club shaft.
- Keep your right knee flexed and stable on the backswing.
- Stop your backswing where you have the most control.
- Swing down from the inside to allow you to release the club properly. You can achieve this by keeping your hands close to your body on your downswing.
- Strike the ground about 1 inch after the ball to achieve correct contact with the ball.
- Turn all the way through to a full finish. Your shirt buttons, belt buckle, right knee, and shoe laces should be facing the target at your finish.
- Hold your finish until the ball lands.
Make More Putts Finding The Fall-Line On The Green
THE FALL-LINE
Do you know what the fall-line on a green is? If so, do you know how it can help you read a green better? Learning to find the fall-line on the green is an important step in taking your level of green-reading up a notch or two. Allow me to explain what the fall-line is, how to find it, and how it can help you make more putts. This is not the easiest thing to understand at first so take your time reading this article. This is, without a doubt, the most important thing I’ve learned about reading greens.
What the Fall-Line is
The fall-line is an imaginary straight line on a green where gravity would take a golf ball, water, or anything else that would roll, flow, or move down hill. Thinking of the fall-line as a water-line is good visual. Visualize a tiny river flowing on a green after a big rain. Where will the water flow? It will flow downhill, right? This is the fall-line on a green.
When putting on a fall-line, whether uphill or downhill, your golf ball will roll straight. Almost every green has a fall-line; some flat greens may not, but it’s very unlikely. To make matters more complicated, greens can have more than one fall-line. I know, this is tricky, but bare with me. Believe it or not, every cup on a green has at least two areas that a putt would enter the cup on a straight line. Some really flat greens could have multiple straight putts, but most greens are sloped to some degree.
How To Find The Fall-Line
Most of the time finding the fall-line isn’t that difficult. What I like to do is stand on the high side of the cup. I then look at the cup and the slope of the green. I then try to imagine what would happen to golf balls if I dropped them. Where would they roll? Straight, left, right, etc. I demonstrate this when I teach how to read a green and it’s pretty clear after the demonstration where the fall-line is. Try it sometime. Stand above the cup and drop golf balls. They will roll to the same place. What they’re doing is rolling down the fall-line.
An important note I’d like to make is an entire green can have a fall-line and each cup can have a fall-line. They are not always the same thing. Viewing the green as a whole can give you a general idea of how a putt will break, but the fall-line around the cup will give you the best idea of what your putt is going to do around the hole. 60% of the break occurs in the last 3-feet of a putt so it’s important to understand how you putt will break at the end of the putt.
Make more putts using the fall-line to your advantage
Once again, every putt on the fall-line is straight. Now, what about breaking putts? If you’re standing on the fall-line below the hole, every putt to your right will break right-to-left and every putt on your left will break left-to-right, regardless if the putt is uphill or downhill. I need to reiterate this fact as it’s the most important point of this article. If you’re on the right half of the fall-line, every putt will break right-to-left whether the putt is uphill or downhill, and vice versa being left of the fall-line.
If you’re ever confused on what way a putt can break, try to find where a straight putt would be first. Once you find where the straight putt is, you can determine which way your putt will break. If your ball is on the right side of the straight putt, your ball will break to the left and vice versa.
Another important note to make is how much your putts will break. When putting uphill, your putts will break considerably less than downhill putts. Uphill putts are hit much harder and don’t take the break as much as downhill putts. The faster the greens, the bigger difference there will be in the break of a downhill putt verses an uphill putt.
Thanks for reading, now go out and make more putts!
Tip-Of-The-Month March ’10: Set Up Correctly To Launch Your Longest Drives Ever
HIT YOUR DRIVER FARTHER BY SETTING UP TO LAUNCH THE BALL
Would you like to hit your driver longer, higher, and straighter? Of course you would, right? Well, then why are you setting up to drive the ball low and crooked? You’re probably wondering how I know you’re set up incorrectly. You may not be, but most likely you are. Almost every amateur I teach is not set up correctly with their drivers. It’s truly amazing how golfers would love to hit the ball longer off the tee, yet a large majority are set up to drive the ball into the ground or to hit the big, bad, ugly slice.
To optimize your distance off the tee, you should be increasing the effective loft of your driver by 2-4 degrees at impact. Example: If you have a 10 degree driver, the launch angle of the ball at impact should be 12-14 degrees. I’m not recommending you to hit up on the ball to accomplish this, but to set up in such a way to allow it to happen naturally. Today, I’m going to help you do this by going over some of the most common errors setting up with the driver, the causes of this poor set up, and how to fix these errors.
PROBLEM
Most of the amateurs I see set up improperly with their drivers. The most common faults I see are playing the ball too far back in the stance, too narrow of a stance, open shoulders, weight favoring their target-side foot, or hands ahead of the ball. All of these common faults can drastically affect the success rate of a golfer’s tee shot. Setting up with these faults will tend to either make the swing too steep coming into the ball, or make the swing too much from the outside-to-in. Not ideal to launch the ball long and straight.
FIX
Setting up correctly with the driver really isn’t that difficult, it’s just a matter of taking the time to do it correctly once you know how. With your driver, the goal is to fly the ball as far as possible with low spin so the ball rolls after landing. Here are the keys to set up correctly:
- Position the ball up in your stance off your left heel or one ball off that heel.
- Widen your right foot so your stance is wider than your shoulders. It should be a few inches wider than the stance used for your irons. With your driver, you may be swinging over 100 mph. That’s fast. Setting up with a wider base will allow you to maintain your balance much easier.
- Allow your hands to rest comfortably between your arms which will leave them at or slightly behind the ball.
- Let your arms hang from your shoulders or slightly outside leaving about 5-6 inches of space between the end of the grip and your belt-line.
- Weight distribution should be 50/50 or slightly favoring your rear foot. Favoring your target-side foot can open your shoulders and could cause you to swing too steeply ball. Common shots from this set up position would be pop-ups, slices, and very low tee shots.
- Ensure that your shoulders are square at address. This is overlooked by many, but very important. Most have open shoulders at address which also leads to a slice. Practice squaring up your shoulders by checking to see if they’re parallel to your toes, hips, and target line.
Setting up in this launching position will allow to swing in such a way that you will hit your driver on a slight upswing from the inside. The angle of attack will be pretty shallow which decreases the side-spin on the ball lessening the chance of a big slice. This may be a big change for you, but if done correctly, I guarantee you’ll hit the ball longer and straighter.
Good luck and thanks for reading!
New Cleveland CG15 Wedges: Tour-Conforming
Over the past week, with the snow finally gone, I’ve been able to practice with my 3 new Cleveland CG15 Tour-Conforming wedges. I’m currently playing with 48, 54, and 58 degree wedges that have the new V-grooves instead of the soon-to-be illegal U-grooves (U-grooves are now illegal on the PGA Tour). I thought I’d give a little review of my thoughts on them.
I wrote a couple months back how I thought this would be an overblown issue on Tour this year. And guess what? I still feel that way, especially after hitting them. I personally never played the Zip-Groove wedges because they spun too much for me. These new wedges spin less than those, but they actually spin more than my previous Cleveland wedges, the 588 and 900 models. With these new wedges, I’m getting plenty of spin and haven’t had any issues out of the rough yet. Overall, I’m very pleased with their performance.
Stop Your Slice With This Golf Tip: Hit The Inside Quarter Of The Ball
HIT THE INSIDE QUARTER OF THE BALL
One of the simple misconceptions about the game is what part of the golf ball to hit. Most would answer the back of the ball, and I would say they’re wrong. To hit the ball properly, you should hit the ball slightly from the inside.
The game of golf, just like baseball and tennis, is a side-sport. Unlike bowling and tossing a ball underhand, these side-sport games swing around our bodies, not up-and-down. Due to this fact, the golf swing goes back and up to the inside then returns back down from the inside. Shortly after impact, the golf club returns back to the inside. Imagine a hula hoop is wrapped around your body on the same plane as the shaft at address. Can you see how swinging up and down along the hoop would have you coming back down to the ball from the inside? It’s not drastically from the inside, but it is enough that not doing it properly will cause poor results. And that’s no fun.
Now, let’s get to the part where we stop that slice. When you slice the ball, your golf swing is not going up and down along that hula hoop I just spoke about. It may be going back along the hoop, but on the way down, most likely, the golf club is swinging over/on-top of the hula hoop too much. This makes the club swing across the line causing left-to-right sidespin on the golf ball. Another way to say it is you’re hitting the outside of the golf ball with an open face. Hitting the outside of the ball with an open face = slice. It’s as simple as that.
GOLF TIP
A simple golf tip to fix this problem is to actually try to hit the inside quarter of the golf ball (*hint, hint* – you actually want to hit the inside part of the ball). If you can hit the inside part of the ball, you’ll have a much better chance to hit the ball straight or even hit the coveted draw. When you hit the inside part of the ball, you’ll swing down the target longer and, by doing this, you’re in a much better position to release the golf club instead of holding the face open. Releasing the club properly will allow you to hit the draw.
DRILL
The next time you go to a driving range try this drill. Take a range ball and place it on a tee. Turn the ball so the red, green, or black range ball stripe is positioned on the inside of the ball. Then, hit the stripe trying to send the stripe out to the right. Yes, I said that. Try to hit the ball to the right. The odds are you won’t be able to do this right away, but once you can hit your ball a little right you’re not too far from hitting that draw you’ve dreamed about. I know, it’s hard because you dread seeing the ball curve off to the right so you can’t fathom trying to hit it there, but this is how to fix that slice. Swing to the right. Hit the inside quarter of the ball. Once you get that down, just roll the club over. Walla! Draw every time. Have fun with it and hopefully your draw will come soon.
Thanks for reading,
Kyle Voska, PGA
About
KYLE VOSKA, PGA PROFESSIONAL
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated from St. Michael’s, St. Xavier, and Miami University. After graduating from Miami with a Finance degree, I moved to Florida to pursue my professional golf dreams. After a few successful years and a couple of difficult years, I stopped playing full-time. After a year of caddying on the LPGA Tour for Young Jo, Kim Williams, and Angela Stanford, I moved back home to Cincinnati. Currently, I live near Sharonville with my lovely wife, Lindsay, our kids, Maclin and Ellie, and our dog, Nora.
Teaching golf for over a year in Florida and having taken and watched many lessons from PGA Certified Master Teaching Professional Carl Rabito, becoming a golf instructor was something I really wanted to do. Fortunately, I was able to find a home at Sharon Woods Golf Course in Cincinnati, my old home from the 90′s, to further this new career path. As I enter my 6th season as a golf professional, I’m excited how my role is taking shape. I assist in managing and supervising a staff of nearly 40 while teaching golf lessons to over a 100 students. Hopefully, someday I’ll have the opportunity to mentor some future golf professionals like myself.
Email: kvoska@hotmail.com
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
- PGA Member – June, 2009
- 2008 PGA National Assistants Champion
- 43 Professional Tournament Victories
- 2010 Southern Ohio PGA Section Player-of-the-Year
- 2010 Southern Ohio PGA Southwest Chapter Player-of-the-Year
- 2009 Cincinnati Chapter Match Play Champion
- 2009 Southern Ohio PGA Assistant’s Champion
- 2001 and 2010 Southern Ohio PGA Open Champion
- 2000 PGA Buick Open Contestant
- 1998 Miami Athlete-of-the-Year
- 2-Time NCAA Division I All-American
- Mid-American Conference Sportsman and Player-of-the Year (1998)
- 2-Time Cincinnati Met Amateur Champion (1997, 1998)
- Cincinnati Met Amateur Medalist and Runner-Up (1996)
- NCAA low scoring average on Par 3′s (2.91) in 1998
- Low competitive round – 62 (3 times): Four Bridges CC (’01), Oasis CC (’09), and Juniper Hills GC (’02)
- Low non-competitive round – 61: Browns Run CC – White tees
- Won a 54-hole Developmental Players Tour event by 9 shots shooting 19 under par with no bogies (64,64,69)
- 4 career Holes-in-One and 3 career double eagles
MY PGA MENTORS:
Tom Bach – Head Professional at Sharon Woods Golf Course
George Long – Kenwood CC PGA Professional/Head Pro at The Mill Course (17 Years)
Carl Rabito – PGA Certified Master Teaching Professional (Top 100 Instructor)
Mike Bender – 2009 PGA National Teacher-of-the-Year (Top 100)
Craig Shankland – 2001 PGA National Teacher-of-the-Year (Top 100)
Jim Suttie, Ph.D - 2000 PGA National Teacher-of-the-Year (Top 100)
Bill Madonna – Bill Madonna Golf Academy (Top 100)
Andrew Park – The David Leadbetter Golf Academy
Chris Toulson – Jim McLean Golf School at Doral
As you can see, I’ve been very fortunate to have learned from some of the best PGA Professionals in the country. I feel privileged to pass on the wealth of knowledge I’ve gained from spending time with these great gentlemen.
