no more bad bunker play!

The following Golf tip is for all of you out there who are frightened of green side bunkers. One of the most common mistakes that I see from most golfers when hitting a bunker shot is that they fail to make a complete shoulder turn during the back swing. This will give you the power needed to extract yourself from the dreaded sand. If you allow yourself to swing freely with light grip pressure and a full shoulder turn, you must then let the club fall back down to the ball using only gravity to get there without trying to hit at the ball. The set up for most common sand shots is to open your stance slightly toward your target, play the ball slightly forward in your stance, and open the face of your sand wedge. Taking a normal swing, turn your shoulders fully and make a good rhythmic downswing making contact with the sand first approximately two inches behind the ball. Make sure that you follow through with your swing. Once you get comfortable with the method, you can adjust the amount of the back swing needed for different distances to the pin. The short bunker shot requires a slightly shorter back swing. There are lots of ways to play bunker shots depending on the condition of the sand, but if you try this simple method, I believe that your sand play will improve dramatically.

Wildlife Buffet in Blacklick Ohio

It's been almost nine years now since we moved into our home in Blacklick Ohio and little did I know then that we would eventually be feeding anything that has four legs and fur. We have actually had our backyard registered with the National Wildlife Federation as a Wildlife Preserve. We started out with small amounts of deer corn in a couple of groung feeders to keep the deer from eating our landscaping. As it turns out, the deer must have communicated with their friends from other parts of the region that they knew of a great place to get a free meal. We are now putting out aroung 80 to 100 pounds of deer corn per day along with lots of bird seed and let's not forget the squirells, racoons, and ground hogs. It gets a little crowded on Tuesday because after six P.M. it's Doe night and the bucks show up in mass. Last winter, we noticed a white cat that seemed to be living in our woods, so we began to put out leftover food each morning from our inside cats. White kitty as we so fondly named her, started eating the food that we put out . Then we decided that it was really cold outside and we purchased on line, a cat house that has a heated pad that activates upon her sitting on it. She was a little hesitant at first but once she got used to seeing it on the patio, she started sleeping in it. Another group that comes like clockwork are the hundreds of ducks that come for their dinner every evening around six. It's pretty interesting to watch them work their way around the feeders in order to get a little nibble. There is one white duck out of the entire group. We think she must be something special because she always gets her way when it comes to moving to the front of the line at dinner time. We even have to get someone to feed while we are gone on vacation. Otherwise we would come home to a long line of animals wandering where in the world we have been.

I guess the moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for. The deer quit eating our landsacping, but now we feeding the entire wildlife population in Blacklick.

Maiden voyage for michaelh blog!

I have been wanting to write my own blog for quite some time now and thanks to a little help from my niece Julie, I have decided that now is the time to start!
I have been on this planet now for over 60 years and I want to share some of my most interesting experiences with as many people as I can. I will also share some great tips on how to improve your golf game that I learned from one of the all time great instructors, Mr. Jim Flick. I spent a week with him at his teaching facility in Scottsdale Arizona in 2005, and I have developed a passion myself for helping others play better golf. I'm excited about this new venture and I hope that anyone who reads my blog will find it interesting, informative, and sometimes even humorous.