Preparing for the 2014 Golf Season – 3 Great Tips Anyone Can Follow To Improve Their Game

As we are in the grasp of Winter, now is a great time to dig out the clubs and start doing a little work in preparation for the warmer weather, longer days and the start of the 2014 golf season for most amateur golfers.

Sure, the professionals are already well in action, but for the majority of us, its either a choice of winter golf (if available) or a wait until the weather improves and the snow melts to head out onto the course.

That said, there’s still lots you can do to prepare yourself for the new season and in this article, we’ll look at three great ways you can get yourself in shape ready for the better weather.

1. Evaluate your Average Distances with each club in your bag.

Hitting balls at the range is all well and good but it is actually very difficult to measure how far your ball went on a shot as you aren’t allowed to venture out onto the range to measure.

A great tip here is to venture to your local course where they may have some spare practice ground and hit through your bag from Driver through to lob wedge, 10-15 balls per club and then take out of the balls you hit, work out the average distance of each club.

If you have a rangefinder device, this can be very useful for getting accurate measurements, especially if your course practice area doesn’t have distance markers.

Knowing how far you hit each club on average is an invaluable tool in course management and stops amateurs from committing the cardinal sin of overestimating how far they hit each club, thus leaving the vast majority of their tee or approach shots, well short of their intended target.

It’s an especially good idea to do this if you have worked on your swing over the winter or have new clubs in the bag as you may find how far you hit each club has changed.

2. Use Technology To Help Review Your Swing, Posture, Grip etc.

If you are not able to have the services of a golf professional to hand and rely on self-diagnosing faults in your swing, then it can be incredibly difficult to do this while practising. You can’t review your swing effectively while taking the shot. You need a second pair of eyes to view the entire process.

This is where new technology, like tablets and smartphones can prove to be invaluable. Ask a friend to video your swing from the rear and each side and do this while hitting different clubs (Driver, 3-iron/hybrid, 7-iron, pitching wedge etc) and you can build up a far more accurate record of your swing and then use this video to compare it to others.

There are lots of apps available where you can compare your swing to other golfers.

Also, get a close up of your grip on the club as this is often a fundamental flaw in the game of many amateur players, then compare it with how the ‘proper’ grips look in the books, or on video.

There is so much you can do now with technology to help inform you, or better still a professional, about your golf swing, so take the down time in winter to use it and you’ll definitely feel the benefit when you next step out onto the tee.

3. Get Fitter and Stay Fitter

It is often thought as a somewhat lethargic sport, but actually golf can be somewhat physical for some players. The distances walked, often hauling  a good 10kg of equipment with you, up and down hills, not to mention the strains and stresses on the body of swinging the club mean that to play well, you need to feel great.

As such, while you are still on the Christmas diet, why not tone up a bit for golf too?

There’s lots of great golf exercises you can do specifically to target the muscles you need for the sport, while working on your stamina will help you get round even the hilliest of courses, without feeling tired walking up the 17^th and 18^th.

This is important as fatigue can often be the cause of a round falling apart in the latter stages.

It may not be as much fun as playing the game, but working hard to stay fit for golf this winter will certainly pay dividends when you hit the course next time around.