Three Simple Tips by Nick Price

1. Make note of your normal misses (slight hook, slice?).
   Use this knowledge to your benefit.
2. When in doubt, always go up one club. It's worse to come up short.
3. Be realistic about your capabilities. Don't be a afraid to lay-up. You'll probably make more pars this way.

    Nick Price

    48 professional wins
    3 major wins (2 PGA, Open Championship)

Reader's Top 10 Lessons: Golfdigest.com

Reader's Top 10 Lessons Golf Instruction: Golfdigest.com

Having been a Golf Digest subscriber for the last 6 months, I've learned that the community is pretty hardcore about their tips and tricks. Here's a round-up of the top 10 reader favorites. Good stuff.

The Path to Impeccability

Excerpt taken from the book, "Golf for Enlightenment" by Dee Pak Chopra

The Path to Impeccability

• Be willing to redefine yourself everyday.

• Watch yourself falling into old habits and beliefs, then stop as soon as you catch yourself.

• Accept total responsibility for every response and feeling you have. Do not cast them onto anything or anyone external to you.

• Take the world to be a true mirror of who you are at this very instant.

• Receive whatever is trying to come in. Messages are everywhere. Your next step doesn't have to be thought out. It will simply appear before you at the right time.

• Don't act when you are in doubt. Don't make decisions when you are uncertain. Practice patience until you know for sure.

• Assume that God has His total attention on you.

These are not techniques but states of mind, and if you write them down and look at them regularly, they can become as ingrained in you as any habit—for impeccability is first a habit,then an instinct, and finally a spontaneous way of living in the world that needs no reminder.

"Subtle body" exercises

Excerpt taken from the book, "Golf for Enlightenment" by Dee Pak Chopra
In the context of this passage, "subtle" is synonymous to the word "imaginary".

Subtle hands - putting

• The next time you have to make a putt, crouch and pretend to feel the texture of the surface with your flattened palms. Now, leaving your hands in place, move your subtle hands an inch forwards an inch forward and pretend to feel the grass with them. Next, move your subtle hands back into alignment with your physical hands. Then have them go out again, only a bit farther this time. Do this repeatedly (a practice green is recommended, naturally, since you can't usually take as much time as needed for this exercise during a round). Even practicing on your front lawn is good.
  
  The object is to trust your subtle hands enough that they can feel the putting surface the way you can feel the fuzz of a peach. Starting with a few inches, some players eventually fins themselves able to feel the whole distance of the putt. Combined with a good visual read, your sense of subtle touch will add to your ability to asses distance and direction in one smooth moment.

Subtle body - swing

• Take your stance and swing with your favorite driver just as you would in taking a practice swing before teeing off. Experience the swing as natural and comfortable. Feel what it's like when the club head hits the ball square. Do this a few times, then take your swing with your subtle body only, leaving the club at address.
  
  Put as much power into the subtle swing as you would if the club actually moved. Use touch and sight together, but mainly touch. Feel yourself gripping the club and driving its weight around into a complete follow-through. Hold the pose at the end until you can feel the weight of the club head. Repeat this exercise, first with a physical swing, then a subtle swing. Try swinging then together, then separating them again. Almost anyone can feel his or her subtle swing the first time out, and as you get good at it, you will be able to align your subtle swing with your real swing much better.

"When insight is added to sight, you double your game."

Excerpts from the book, "Golf for Enlightenment" by Dee Pak Chopra

Repeat these steps every time you address the ball, until they become second nature.

• Stopping the random activity of the mind that surfaces in a constant inner dialogue with yourself.

• Calming your emotions, which fuel the inner dialogue with fears, doubts, and remembered feelings from the past.

• Resting your attention so that it comes to reside at a point of clear focus.

• Playing the shot from stillness. 

Efforting vs. Non-Doing

• Efforting muscles the swing. When the ball gets out of control, less power is required to regain that control. Non-doing builds power gradually, starting with a gravity-driven swing as the foundation.

• Efforting requires constantly monitoring the body, trying to correct its inevitable mistakes. Non-doing assumes that your body is wise enough to carry through with what you tell it to do.
  
• Efforting controls the swing. Non-doing allows the swing to happen. 

Quotes 

"Concentration comes naturally when your desire to see is unblocked."

"Golfers will often lament that they putted much better at the age of 12 than they do now as adults. Doubt had not yet produced its corrosive effect on a player's self-confidence." 

"It is said that when a player is struggling to remember all the tips he's been taught about a model swing, no more than two can be held in the mind at the same time."

"Thoughts of distraction are attempts by your ego-mind to preserve its dominance."

"Tension blocks the flow of information from the unconscious...a golf swing demands as much relaxation as you can bring to it."

 "Being impeccable involves being new at every moment. Play each game as if for the first time." 

"I know of corporations that won't hire a CEO until he is taken out on the golf course to be observed, unbeknownst to him, by a psychologist."

 "In just one round you can find out how someone handles crisis, how they deal with others, how much value they place on finesse as opposed to brute force, whether they will bend the rules under pressure, and above all, what they really think of themselves." 

"A good shot and a bad shot are the same." 

"Can a bad shot and a good one bring equal joy? Absolutely, if what you want out of the game is liberation." 

"If you can step outside the complexity of the game, you will transcend your limitations." 

"In its soul, golf is a way for one to transcend."

The Gravity Swing

"Analysts have examined and measured old movies of Bobby Jones's swing, and they've determined that its speed was only 3 percent faster than gravity. This is an amazing fact. It means that allowing the club to fall naturally from its top position in the backswing would accomplish 97 percent of what the greatest player could accomplish."

–Dee Pak Chopra, excerpt taken from the book,
"Golf for Enlightenment"

Rewinding the Tape

Now, I'm in no position to be giving tips on how to play golf, but I do come across some valuable bits from time to time. Recently, I've been going back and watching tournaments that I've recorded on my DVR cable box. I can admit to have watched some tournaments (2010 U.S. Open, Ryder Cup, Chevron World Challenge) over 10x each. And I know what you're thinking... you're friggin' obsessed. I agree, totally. But, my problem with watching a golf tournament on TV, is they switch to and from so many different golfers throughout the round, that it's hard to follow the player's approach on most of their shots. Granted, they provide a lot of slow motion reviews and detailed analyzation, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Being able to go back and watch the program again, allows me to pick up on things I missed before. It's the same as watching a movie again or listening to an album repeatedly, you pick up on new things every time. Give this a try. Next time a golf tournament is on TV, record it, and watch it a few times. You'll learn something new, I swear.

New Year's golf resolution for 2011

BREAK 90

My best score to date is 95. I think breaking 90, this season, will be very attainable. In order to do so, I'll need to hit more greens in regulation and short putts.

The 2010 season was my first official season playing the game. If I could of made a resolution for the year, it would of been to make a birdie. Luckily, I did, just once, on the 8th hole at the Red Course at Pequot Golf Course, in Connecticut. Geoff and Joe were my witnesses :D