Golf All-in-One For Dummies^®

Golf All-in-One For Dummies^®

by Gary McCord, Shirley Archer, LaReine Chabut, Georg Feuerstein, PhD, Michael Kernicki, Liz Neporent, Larry Payne, PhD, Suzanne Schlosberg, Michael Patrick Shiels, and John Steinbreder

Golf All-in-One For Dummies^®

Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River St.
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774

www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930550

ISBN 978-1-118-11504-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-20632-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-20633-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-20634-8 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Authors

Gary McCord: McCord is a player, television announcer, instructor, author, and speaker. He’s well known for enduring 23 years and 422 tournaments on the PGA Tour without nabbing a single victory. For 25 years, McCord has provided color commentary for CBS golf events. When he isn’t broadcasting or playing golf, McCord keeps busy with myriad other projects. He portrayed himself in and served as technical director for the golf movie Tin Cup, starring Kevin Costner. In addition to writing Golf For Dummies (Wiley), he’s the author of a collection of essays about his life on tour, Just a Range Ball in a Box of Titleists. His bestselling Golf For Dummies was released in DVD form in 2004. Gary brings a sense of fun to everything he does and never takes himself too seriously. He and his wife, Diane, share the “ups and downs” of a busy life together at their homes in Scottsdale and Denver.

Shirley Archer: Archer is a former New York City attorney who traded the fast life for the fit life. A survivor of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from stress and overworking, her recovery helped her become a champion of fitness for health and to live fully in body, mind, and spirit. A coauthor of Weight Training For Dummies (Wiley), she is a health educator and fitness specialist at the Health Improvement Program at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, the author of ten fitness and wellness books, an international trainer of fitness instructors, and a frequently quoted media spokesperson worldwide. Archer believes that healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and that you can live a longer, happier, and better life by choosing fitness every day.

LaReine Chabut: A fitness and lifestyle expert, model, and mom, Chabut is also the author of Exercise Balls For Dummies (Wiley), Core Strength For Dummies (Wiley), Stretching For Dummies (Wiley), and Lose That Baby Fat! (M.Evans). Chabut is a leading contributing fitness expert for Shape and Fit Pregnancy magazines and is most recognized as the lead instructor for America’s popular exercise video series, The Firm (with more than three million copies sold worldwide). She has appeared on Dr. Phil, Chelsea Lately on E!, CNN, ABC, FOX News, EXTRA, Access Hollywood, Good Day LA, and KABC. To read more about LaReine Chabut, log on to her website at www.lareine chabut.com.

Georg Feuerstein, PhD: A practitioner of Buddhist Yoga, Feuerstein has been studying and practicing Yoga since his early teens. He is internationally respected for his contribution to Yoga research and the history of consciousness and has been featured in many national magazines both in the United States and abroad. The coauthor of Yoga For Dummies (Wiley), Feuerstein has authored over 40 books, including The Yoga Tradition, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, and Yoga Morality. Since his retirement in 2004, he has designed and tutored several distance-learning courses on Yoga philosophy for Traditional Yoga Studies, a Canadian company founded and directed by his wife, Brenda (visit www.traditionalyogastudies.com).

Michael Kernicki: A PGA member for over 25 years, Kernicki has spent most of his career as a Head Golf Professional and General Manager at some of America’s finest golf clubs. He has served as a member of the PGA of America National Board of Directors and on the Rules of Golf Committee, where he has administered the rules at 13 PGA Championships, and he is a coauthor of Golf’s Short Game For Dummies (Wiley). Today, Kernicki is the Head Golf Professional at one of the nation’s most prominent country clubs, Indian Creek Country Club in Miami Beach, Florida. His primary objective is for his students to enjoy the game while they improve and make golf a game for a lifetime.

Liz Neporent: Before becoming a well-known corporate fitness consultant, designing and managing fitness centers worldwide, Neporent was a personal trainer, received a master’s degree in exercise physiology, and was certified by the American College of Sports Medicine, National Strength and Conditioning Association, American Council of Exercise, and the National Academy of Sports Medicine. She was named Club Industry Magazine’s Woman Entrepreneur of the Year and was appointed to the board of directors and faculty of the American Council on Exercise. She is coauthor and author of several books, including Weight Training For Dummies (Wiley), Fitness For Dummies (Wiley), and Fitness Walking For Dummies (Wiley), and writes frequently for the New York Times, Family Circle, Shape, and others.

Larry Payne, PhD: Payne is an internationally prominent Yoga teacher, author, workshop leader, and pioneer in the field of Yoga therapy since 1980. He is co-founder of the Yoga curriculum at the UCLA School of Medicine. Payne was named “One of America’s most respected Yoga teachers” by the Los Angeles Times, and was selected as a leading Yoga expert by Dr. Mehmet Oz, Reader’s Digest, Web-MD, Rodale Press, and the Yoga Journal. In Los Angeles, Payne is founding director of the Yoga Therapy Rx and Prime of Life Yoga certification programs at Loyola Marymount University. He is coauthor of five books, including Yoga For Dummies (Wiley), and is featured in the DVD series Yoga Therapy Rx and Prime of Life Yoga. His website is www.samata.com.

Suzanne Schlosberg: A contributing editor to Shape and Health magazine, Schlosberg is the coauthor of Weight Training For Dummies (Wiley) and Fitness For Dummies (Wiley) and the author of The Ultimate Workout Log. She is also an instructor in the UCLA Extension Certificate in Journalism program. Always happy when she has a barbell in hand, Schlosberg has lifted weights in Zimbabwe, Morocco, Iceland, and Micronesia, among other locales. She is the women’s record holder in the Great American Sack Race, a quadrennial event held in Yerington, Nevada, in which competitors must run 5 miles while carrying a 50-pound sack of chicken feed. Schlosberg also has bicycled across the United States twice and cycles about 200 miles a week near her home in Los Angeles.

Michael Patrick Shiels: Golf’s Short Game For Dummies (Wiley) was Shiels’ fifth book. The Los Angeles Times called his Good Bounces & Bad Lies, written with Emmy Award-winning golf announcer Ben Wright, “perhaps the best sports book ever,” and a Washington Times review sardonically compared Shiels and Wright to Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. His travel articles have appeared in publications such as Golf Magazine, Travel + Leisure Golf, www.pgatour.com, and Sports Illustrated, and he’s written scripts for The Golf Channel and ESPN. Shiels has traveled the world — from Thailand to the Middle East to his beloved ancestral Republic of Ireland — in search of rich stories to tell. You can contact Shiels at Mshiels@aol.com.

John Steinbreder: A senior writer for Golfweek magazine, Steinbreder is the author of six books, including Golf Rules & Etiquette For Dummies (Wiley). A former reporter for Fortune magazine and writer/reporter for Sports Illustrated, he has been honored by the Golf Writers Association of America for his work and has had his writing published in a number of top periodicals, including The New York Times Magazine, Forbes FYI, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Sky. Steinbreder also served for a time as a special contributor to ESPN Television and is a contributing editor to Met Golfer, Sporting Classics, and Chief Executive magazines. An avid golfer who carries a 5 handicap (most of the time), he lives in Easton, Connecticut, with his daughter, Exa.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Vertical Websites

Compilation Editor: Connie Isbell

Senior Project Editor: Victoria M. Adang

Acquisitions Editor: Stacy Kennedy

Copy Editor: Megan Knoll

Assistant Editor: David Lutton

Editorial Program Coordinator: Joe Niesen

Technical Editor: Derek Carlson

Editorial Manager: Michelle Hacker

Editorial Assistants: Rachelle S. Amick, Alexa Koschier

Art Coordinator: Alicia B. South

Cover Photos: © iStockphoto.com/Anne Clark, Andrew Penner, and vm

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Nikki Gee

Layout and Graphics: Claudia Bell, Mark Pinto

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Melissa D. Buddendeck

Indexer: Steve Rath

Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies

Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director

Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel

Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel

Publishing for Technology Dummies

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Welcome to Golf All-in-One For Dummies, your guide to everything you need to know to be a great golfer. If you’re simply thinking about embarking on your journey into the world of golf, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re one of the millions and millions of people who play golf but can’t quite master the game, you’ve also come to the right place. (You folks know who you are — the type who throws clubs and/or tantrums after a bad moment or day on the course.)

Although we’ve written this book for beginners, we’ve made sure that the chapters within offer something for golfers at every level. From expert tips on technique and form to anecdotes from veterans such as Gary McCord, this book has something for everyone.

About This Book

Golf All-in-One For Dummies isn’t your average book about golf. We go beyond the mechanics of the swing to present the big picture of golf. Read the chapters on fitness to get yourself in shape and not only improve your swing and your score but also keep your body from falling prey to pain and injury. Check out the chapters on gear, lessons, and course choices to save yourself from wasting time and money on clubs, instruction, and green fees you don’t need. And because a good portion of the game of golf is played in your head, we offer solid guidance about keeping your nerves calm and your mental game strong.

Of course, the way you swing a club is important, so we dissect and highlight the grips, stances, and strokes you need to get started. But we also go farther and cover the finer points of the short game — strokes and strategies that help keep your scores down and your opponents impressed. Plagued by slices, shanks, and hooks? No worries. This book also offers fixes and solutions to those and many of the other common problems faced by frustrated golfers.

The exercises, tips, drills, games, and other tidbits of advice in Golf All-in-One For Dummies get you started on the path to great golf and also bring you back for quick refreshers along the way on your journey to golf greatness.

Conventions Used in This Book

To make the text even more accessible, we’ve used some handy conventions throughout the book:

New words or terms are formatted in italics and accompanied by a definition.

Bold text denotes the specific steps of processes that we’ve spelled out. It also highlights keywords in bulleted lists.

We’ve used monofont for web addresses. When this book was printed, some web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that we didn’t put in any extra characters (like a hyphen) to indicate the break. When using one of these web addresses, type exactly what you see on the page, pretending that the line break doesn’t exist.

What You’re Not to Read

We’ve put this book together with your convenience in mind, including highlighting the stuff you don’t have to read to understand golf. These sidebars, which are shaded boxes of text, are added attractions. We’ve tried to make them fun and informative, but they aren’t crucial to the rest of the book. Feel free to skip them.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, we have made some assumptions about you, the reader:

You’re interested in golf.

You’re not already a great golfer.

You’ve played golf before, but you’re looking for ways to improve your game.

You prefer straight talk over jargon.

If any or all of these statements describe you, keep reading!

How This Book Is Organized

Golf All-in-One For Dummies is organized into six books that lead you through the process of becoming a golfer. Beginners need many questions answered as they navigate through the steps of preparing for and learning the game. These divisions help you take those steps one at a time and let you flip to them anytime for quick reference. Here are the books and what you can find in them.

Book I: Getting Started with Golf

You say you’re ready for tee time? Stop and think about that for a minute. First you need clubs and gear. Then you need to know how to swing those clubs. You may want to take a lesson to see whether you really like the game and then find golf clubs that fit you. In this book, we sort through the choices in clubs and give you helpful tips on the questions to ask before you make a purchase. We also give you the lowdown on the types of golf courses and ways to save money on green fees. If you’re embarking on your golf journey, this book is a good place to start.

Book II: Focusing on Fairway Fitness

This book explains how to tune your most important piece of golf equipment: your body. In this book, we cover the keys to getting into shape for golf, with chapters on stretching, core strength, and weight training. Whether you’re a fitness freak, a bit out of shape, or a lot out of shape, this book is an important stop along your journey. In it, you find exercises that improve your swing, help prevent injury, and may help you avoid the aches and pains that come when you’re hitting the course.

Golfers are crazy about golf, but a bad day on the course can also make a golfer crazy. This book also covers some exercises, visualization methods, and breathing tips to help with your mental game.

Book III: Playing Golf: The Swing and the Short Game

This book gets right to the point: We present you with a close look at the workings of the golf swing: the grip, the strokes, the stance, all of it. You also get a good look at the short game (everything within 70 yards of the hole), where most of your scoring takes place. We show you how to refine your pitch shot and your chip shot. We outline techniques for blasting your way out of bunkers, and we show you how to develop a sound putting stroke.

Book IV: Rules and Etiquette

In this book, we offer some great insider information about the rules of the game. You discover how to conduct yourself on the golf course, cope with penalty shots, and handle the fine art of betting. You even get the do’s and don’ts of golf-course etiquette, both for players and for fans. With the info in this book under your belt, you can walk onto any golf course and look like you know what you’re doing — because you do.

Book V: Hitting the Course

Okay, now you’re ready to hit the course. Get started on the right foot by following our routine for limbering up before that first swing. Check out tactics for teeing off like a pro, and do it all without losing your composure along the way. Think you don’t need to practice? Think again. This book outlines the importance of practicing; we even provide you with some great games that make practicing less of a chore.

Book VI: Easy Fixes for Common Faults

In this book, we tackle the tough shots — the terrible tees, slices, hooks, and more — and offer advice to help you deal with bad luck, bad moods, and bad weather. You’ll develop many faults during your golfing life, and this book tells you how to fix most of them. You also find a glossary of golf terms in this book to help you decipher any jargon you may not be familiar with yet.

Icons Used in This Book

The following icons appear throughout this book and point you toward valuable advice and hazards to watch out for.

This icon flags quick, easy ways to improve your game.

This icon marks moves or myths that can derail your golf game. Be careful!

This icon alerts you to missteps that may cause you physical harm.

When you see this icon, be on the lookout for Gary McCord’s recommendations and personal stories from his years of playing and covering professional golf.

This icon flags information that’s important enough to repeat.

Where to Go from Here

Feel free to flip through this book. It isn’t designed to be read like a novel from cover to cover. If you’re a complete novice, you may want to start at the very beginning. If you’re a little more advanced and need help with a specific aspect of your game or swing, you can find that information in Book III. Have some skills but need help navigating the social nuances of the game? Head to Book IV, which covers the rules of the game and the finer points of etiquette. The rest of the book helps you make that vital jump from golf novice to savvy golfer.

Book I

Getting Started with Golf

In this book . . .

Book I explores the basics of golf. We show you how to buy clubs and accessories that can help make you play and look like a pro. We take a look at the many options for learning the game of golf, from evaluating your beginner skills and making the most of your lessons to using books, magazines, and technology to improve your game. We describe a typical golf course and give you a whirlwind tour of playing space options, from the driving range all the way up to a full 18-hole course, including the penthouse of golf: the private country club.

Here are the contents of Book I at a glance.

Chapter 1: Choosing Your Golf Gear

Chapter 2: Looking into Golf Lessons

Chapter 3: Exploring the World of Golf Courses