Ronald Bruce Romberg

http://ronaldbruceromberg.eblogus.com/

Ronald Bruce Romberg Info

For most shots out of the sand, use your 60-degree wedge unless the flag is across the green, then you might go to your 54-degree or pitching wedge. Start by addressing the ball with an open club face. Play the ball off your left heel and set about 60 percent of your weight on your left foot.

Next, pick a spot approximately an inch behind the ball, as this is where you want the clubhead to enter the sand. From there make an outside in swing, making sure to use a full wrist hinge on the backswing.

As you swing the club head through the impact zone let the club head release to create the proper speed through the sand. Most golfers don't swing hard enough in bunkers to let the sand propel the ball out of the trap. Feel like you are pounding the sand and accelerating the club head through the shot to improve your bunker play.

Bruce Romberg

As we head into the colder months, and we leave thoughts of playing golf again till the spring, there is now a great opportunity for those of you who live in the colder climates, and those of you who get home from work too late to slip down to the course for a little practice, to work on that putting stroke, and improve it once and for all. Non of us want to make a change to our putting stroke during the season just in case it ruins rather that improves our score. However, we now have several months to perfect the stroke without worrying about score, only the correct stroke.


I have set up two 3x2x4" boards, standing them on the 2" side so that I have a high wall on either side. The width is determined by the width of you putter. Leave only a very small margin of error on each side. The cup is set up approx. 10 feet away (you do not want to practice longer putts, as this will effect your feel for long putts next spring).



I am making sure that my eyes are directly over the ball by holding the putter on the bridge of my nose and making sure the shaft falls directly over the ball.

Goals:

1. To get the putter head moving between the boards without touching

2. To finish the stroke with the putter face still at 90 degrees to your intended line.


and not with the toe out in front of the hell.


3. To set yourself a target of holing at least 50 in a row. This will build the self-confidence in your subconscious to make it believe that you cannot miss from that range.

Work on this and the chipping drill I will give next month, and your short game should be sharper than it has ever been come next spring. Good Luck!!

Ronald Bruce Romberg Bio

Bruce Romberg Articles:
With today's oversize drivers, it is much easier to hit the ball a long way. But if you suffer from a slice, that extra distance will probably have your tee shots not only missing the fairway but also rob you of your new-found distance.

A sliced shot is mainly caused by two factors: starting the downswing from an over-the-top move - causing an outside-in downswing - and a clubface that's open at impact.

For a quick fix, start by gripping the club with a baseball grip, and address the ball as you would hitting a baseball. From this position, make a few full swings as though you were hitting waist-high baseball pitches. It's important to keep the arms and hands relaxed so you encourage a full release (turning over) of the hands through the impact area. This drill will encourage your hands and arms to rotate as they pass the center of your body.


By taking these baseball practice swings, above the ball, you're experiencing the feel of how your hands and arms should rotate though the hitting area. This release movement effectively helps speed up the hands through the impact zone enabling you to increase your power.

Try this drill as a practice swing before all your full shots the next few rounds, and you'll see and feel longer and straighter tee shots in no time.

About Bruce Romberg
Bruce Romberg Articles
Ronald Bruce Romberg Profile


Have you ever had the yips?

No. I've worked with a number of golfers who have, and I'm a technical advisor to the German Science and Motion Academy headed by neuroscientist Dr Christian Marquardt, who is highly regarded on the PGA Tour and the European Tour for his high-tech medical approaches to the yips in golf.


You've written that you've taken more than 3.5 million putts. Are you obsessed with putting and, if so, how did it start?

Fifteen years ago, I decided to learn how to putt, as part of learning golf. Once I started delving into the books, articles, and tapes on putting, I discovered that the existing lore is vague, inconsistent, and repetitive, and only rarely gets beyond the rudiments of talking about what should happen in good putting to describing insightfully how to do it. This irritant sparked me to survey the entire lore of putting since the beginning to today in search of simple answers to simple questions, and to try out the various suggestions, tips, and drills, in a daily regimen of putting between two to five hours every day.

I found that the books and magazines just don't come to grips with these basic questions: How does a person read a putt? What happens in accurate targeting and aiming? What is the relationship between setup and targeting and between setup and stroke movement? What is an optimal stroke and how is it best performed for accuracy and consistency? How does a person best control the distance of his putts? The great players and teachers of the past decades have a lot to say about different techniques and preferences, and even about the physics of putting, but the missing element has always been about how the brain and body actually work for targeting and stroke movement. So in my daily putting explorations, I have been incorporating in-depth research into how the brain functions in putting, and what this means for techniques, learning, and teaching.

My objective is to be the best putting instructor in the history of the game, so I am committed to mastery of the art and science of putting as a student, teacher, and golfer. Steve Lowry, noted commentator on the martial arts, has written about how the regimen of practice towards mastery becomes second-nature, and George Leonard, well-known golf teacher and akido expert, has written similarly that the master loves the journey itself. I love what I'm doing and I "work" very hard at it.

How are the other parts of your game?

Not bad. I now have a pretty good driver shot, hit my irons pretty straight, but I need a lot of work on chipping and bunker play.

What are your thoughts on "long putters?"

I have seen some golfers use long putters with great skill and effectiveness, and that makes me want to understand what is going on in the targeting and stroke movement processes that is different from those involved with conventional putting style. On the one hand, I agree with Arnold Palmer that golf needs to be fun for the amateur, and equipment that promotes success for the amateur should be allowed with only modest restrictions on gimmickry. On the other hand, I'm also a traditionalist when it comes to competitive golf, so I tend to agree with Ernie Els and others that equipment-based differences that make the human task substantially different between competitors should be disallowed. If at the professional level at least the consensus arises that long putters in comparison to conventional putters involves a significant unfair advantage, then either everyone should use them or no one should use them.

But I don't think long putters really present a significant advantage just from the nature of the design or the technique of use. Sure, some golfers benefit from switching to a long putter or a belly putter, but this doesn't mean a golfer with a conventional putter needs to switch in order to outperform those with long putters -- clearly, golfers using conventional putters typically outperform those using the long or belly putter. The take-away lesson from Vijay Singh's magnificent year in 2004 is that using the belly putter is a very good way to learn how to get better with a conventional putter. What's the most difficult putt you've ever made?

To me, all putts are the same basic task of effective targeting and stroke control for line and distance, and I give the same effort on a short straight putt as I do on a long monster snake of a putt. I especially enjoy the challenge of staying committed to a target outside the hole on a mid-range putt involving subtle touch. My most astonishing successful putt to date was a 250+ foot putt to a 4.25 inch "cup" on Daytona Beach in June 2000. Tom Olsavsky of Taylor Made Golf had just given me a new Rossa "Daytona" putter and I was trying it out on the fine-grained sand of Daytona Beach shortly thereafter. As it happens, the surface there stimps above 15, faster and truer than Augusta National on a Sunday in early April! The beach can be as wide as 500 feet on occasion and slopes around 2.5 to 3 percent. At low tide, I dug a small '"cup" at the top of the high-tide line and then walked down to the water's edge, over 85 paces, and putted two balls uphill to the cup, located at the feet of a man in a lounge chair who was nursing a beer. The first ball I blasted uphill and it then slowed and eventually toppled casually into the cup. The second putt missed a foot to the right.

What do you tell yourself when you miss a short, easy putt?

It depends. If I did what I needed to do to give the putt its best chance of sinking and it still missed, that's just "the rub of the green"-something beyond my current ability to control. I then take another look to see if I can find out what I might should have seen beforehand, if anything, so I can improve. If the miss was within my ability to control, then I made a bad putt on that occasion -- something in my effort wasn't as good as it could have been. Then I try to assess why I didn't put forth my best effort, so I can improve and reduce the number of times I have this less-than-best effort, but otherwise I accept that these letdowns will occur and move on. As Tony Lema once said, just because I missed a putt on the last green doesn't mean I have to pull my next drive out of bounds.

What is the first thing you look for when analyzing a student's putting stroke?

A general comfort level with the task. Some veteran golfers who lack this are very good learners of changes in technique that bring welcomed comfort with it. Some novices who have this comfort are easily molded towards a technique that preserves the comfort. Veteran golfers who are comfortable with sub-optimal putting are the greatest teaching challenge.

What is the most common putting mistake for newcomers to the game?

Misunderstanding how little effort should be used in making a good stroke.

What is the most common putting mistake advanced players make?

Believing they are good enough putters not to worry about getting much better, and instead focusing on maintaining their present level of skill out of fear of going backwards.

How can you help the golfer who has absolutely no athletic ability?

By showing him or her how normal adult skills, like reaching the hand out and opening a door or turning to pick up a glass of water on a nearby table, really underlie top athletic performance, and that the decades of experience with these processes of the brain and body can be used quite instinctively in sports to great effect, with appropriate guidance and practice.

Why did you decide to become a golf instructor?

Golf is choked with swing teachers, but top putting coaches are as rare as hen's teeth. I'm independent and driven to be the best there is in the world at what do, and I love learning and teaching and helping people enjoy a high degree of success in golf. I am probably some sort of nurse.

What's your own handicap?

As a professional teacher, I don't have a USGA handicap for amateur competition. For a while, my game was down near scratch, but that was when I was playing 54 holes a day, four or five times a week on the same golf course. These days, I certainly expect to break 80, think of myself in terms of a "single-digit" handicap, but don't get too upset if I shoot higher. But I plan on getting a lot better!


Ronald Bruce Romberg
Ronald Bruce Romberg:
Do you struggle with your bunker play? This may be because you are being given the wrong information. The technique that a (usually) stronger man will use in a greenside bunker is often the kiss of death for most women golfers, who generally have a lower club head speed.

Have you been told to open your clubface? Open your body? Swing the club more up on the back swing? All of these suggestions work great for Vijay Singh and even Annika Sorenstam because these players generate tremendous speed. They don't work for the average female golfer, who cannot even begin to relate to this power game and would simply be happy to be able to get out of the bunker and onto the green most of the time.

Players with slower club head speed often struggle with bunker play. Because the sand acts as such a buffer between the club and the ball, it's necessary to generate a minimum of speed to be able to extract the ball along with some of the sand.

Bunker play tips

Set up so that you will be able to splash the sand:

* Hold your hands high on the grip of the club. By placing your hands toward the top of the handle, you maximize the length of your sand wedge, which will help it to be able to hit the sand firmly.
* Position your golf ball in line with the instep of your forward foot, just like a tee shot. Playing your ball more forward in your stance will help to position the ball later in the swing so that the club head will enter the sand before striking your golf ball.
* Dig your feet into the sand. Digging your feet into the sand also helps to lower the bottom of your swing and will help you to contact the sand before the ball and helps to ensure a nice long divot in the sand. A divot in the bunker is ideally 12 to 15 inches long.

The necessary adjustments for low club head speed players are:

* A square face at address. You will not want to open the face of the sand wedge since this will produce more loft and less distance and due to the fact that you do not generate a lot of speed for most bunker shots you will need all of the distance possible.
* A square stance. In other words, your feet should be parallel to the target line just as they are for a normal full swing. Due the fact that you will not open the club face to maximize the distance it won’t be necessary to open your stance.
* A little attitude with a full finish. Since the sand acts as such a buffer between the club face and the ball, it will be necessary for the low club head speed player to take what feels like a very full swing with a full finish. To ensure that the swing has all the speed that you are able to generate, you will lift your trailing foot so that your heel comes up as your body turns forward and as the foot rotates up to the toe.
* Change to a less lofted club for greater distance splash shots. If you don't generate a lot of swing speed you will find that your splash shot with your sand wedge won't travel far, maybe only eight to 10 yards. If this is the case you will need to change to a less lofted club, like a pitching wedge or a gap wedge, for your longer splash shots.

By having a plan that will work for your game and club head speed, you'll have more success. When you know how to handle a greenside bunker and you are less worried about going into one, you may be surprised how much less often you find yourself there.


Ronald Bruce Romberg Contact

You've probably heard that real improvement in golf takes time, especially to make wholesale changes to your swing. But what if you could get a lot better in just one day?

Well, that's exactly what the folks at Simple Golf LLC say about their Symple Power Swing technique. It eliminates several parts of the traditional golf swing, keeping the most important elements and providing an easy-to-repeat motion so you can improve quickly.

In fact, the worse you are, the more hope this method has for you. Instead of trying to figure out positions, much of this swing is preset in the stance and grip. Instead of rotating the club open and closed, it stays in the same position throughout. And instead of generating power through the legs and hips, power comes from the core, or more specifically, the shoulders.


Here are the claims, which are more valid for the mid- and high-handicapper: Convert to the Symple Power Swing and you will quickly gain 20 percent to 30 percent more distance, stop slicing, become 50 percent more accurate, eliminate fat shots and tops and take the timing out of the swing.

The Symple Power Swing has two major components, according to Director of Instruction Mike O'Leary.

"Our grip eliminates clubface rotation," said O'Leary, who is based in the Orlando area. "And our stance eliminates weight shift."
Symple Power Swing isn't Moe Norman's Natural Golf

The genesis for Simple Golf came from trying to solve a problem. The problem, the way Joe Davidson, president of Simple Golf LLC (the company says it uses the normal spelling of Simple to get more Web site hits), saw it, was that golf was too complicated.

Davidson, whose background is in education, wanted to develop a way to effectively teach a simple golf swing in a short amount of time. He had experience with Natural Golf, which used the late great Moe Norman as its swing model, but thought there might be an even simpler way to play golf.

What Davidson and his colleagues figured out is that golf would be easier to learn by teaching a shortcut to a good impact position.

"We wanted to create a more accurate swing by reducing the complexity of the swing," Davidson said.

The major difference between Simple Golf and Natural Golf is that Simple Golf is a left-sided swing for right-handed players. Natural Golf teaches a right-sided hit, as if you were using a hammer.

In order to achieve a more simple swing, Davidson figured that the clubface needed to stay in the same position throughout the swing. Some may call that position closed at the top of the swing, but Davidson said it's square to the swing plane. Plus, this motion is more compact, so rotation really isn't necessary to alleviate tension.

In the setup and impact position, Simple Golf seeks to emulate the homerun hitter, with an extended front leg and the weight more centered just behind the ball. The head is set up over the right knee and remains there throughout the swing.

Grip is key. In the Symple Power Swing, it's known as the power thumb position, which is set (for a right-hander) on the right side of the grip. The right hand overlaps with two fingers instead of one, with the idea of taking the right side out of the swing. Finally, the hands are positioned so the left arm, hand and club form a straight line from the left shoulder. From there, it's simply a left shoulder turn back and a shoulder whip through.
Symple Power Swing taught from green to tee

This all sounds simple enough, and it is, but Davidson and O'Leary stress that these new moves should be learned in chipping and pitching first. For the short game, Davidson said, the feet are together, and there's very little wrist break until you get to the longer pitches.

The idea is that when a student can master the short shots, the full shot swings become fairly easy because it's the same motion. The only major difference is that the stance is wide instead of having the feet together; and in the short game, the weight remains on the front foot.

"In an hour or so we can give you a top-notch short game," Davidson said. "And if you can learn to chip with this motion, you can pretty much learn the full swing."

According to O'Leary, this method becomes intuitive quickly.

"Good athletes don't think when they perform," he said. "We've made the traditional golf swing way too complicated."

Ideally, the best way to learn Simple Golf would be through one the company's clinics conducted nationwide, or from a Simple Golf instructor. In lieu of a live lesson, you can purchase instructional DVDs through www.simplegolf.com.

The Web site also offers clinic schedules, information on how to find an instructor as well as a number of free video tips. Students who subscribe also receive regular newsletters and tips.







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