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This Week's Video Golf Lesson - Shot Out Of Wet Sand

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This Week In Golf - by Kevin Ferrarotti, Owner of the Premier Golf Academy

STENSON WINS MATCH PLAY

Henrik Stenson is having a good year so far. After beating a star studded field at the Dubai Classic three weeks ago, Stenson beat Geoff Ogilvy 2 and 1 on Sunday, to win the Accenture Match Play Championship. The win has many people looking at Stensen as a favorite for the Masters, being held in just over a month's time.

While the world's top 64 players were in Match Play competition, the rest of the PGA Tour traveled to Mexico for the first time ever to play in the Mayakoba Golf Classic. In a field that showcased dozens of the Tour's youngest, 50 year old Fred Funk lead wire to wire to come out on top to win the event. Funk's counterparts on the Champions Tour played the ACE Group Classic, won by Bobby Wadkins.

This Week's Golf Tip - by Kevin Ferrarotti, Owner of the Premier Golf Academy

PROPER PRACTICE

Knowing how to approach each shot, and aligning our body with a square clubface, neutral grip, and balanced approach is developed with only thing: practice. Being able to practice efficiently and effectively is the key to keeping your body healthy and free from injury, but most importantly, your swing mechanics in check and in tune. Follow these tips for an injury-free and flawless golf swing:

1) Your body is the engine of your golf swing, and just like an engine in

a car, the engine must be finely tuned in order for everything to work properly. One way to accomplish this while practicing is to begin your practice session by not immediately hitting golf balls, but by stretching your golf muscles. Many times a bad golf swing is the result of tightness in your “golf muscles”. Take at least five minutes prior to hitting balls, and work on stretching your back, arms, and legs, which helps to further increase your flexibility and maintain your “engine”. A great warm-up for this tip is to take your driver or fairway wood and rest it on your shoulders. Holding onto the club, slowly make a deliberate back swing, holding it at the peak stretch, and then finish by making a deliberate follow through. Then repeat.

2) Now that you are ready to hit balls, start by practicing chip and pitch shots, slowly moving up to a mid-iron, and finally to shots off of the tee. This not only helps work on your overall game, but also keep in mind that your swing is the same swing for every club, the only thing that changes is the length of the arc and width of the stance. If you can develop good tempo and hit solid chip shots, you can carry that over into each of the other clubs.

3) It is not advantageous to your golf game if you spend the whole time hitting your driver. This is simply because you do not play on a course with just your driver. Try spending an equal amount of time on both your irons and woods, and finish your session with either some on-course scenarios, or some chip or pitch shots.

Establishing A Handicap

The most common way to go about this is to go to any public club in Connecticut. For a fee that ranges from $25-$40 annually, you can register your name on the CSGA handicap system. As soon as you are registered, you can input all of your scores on line at www.csga.com and not have to go back to that club each time you want to add a score. As long as you have what is called a GHIN number, you can go on-line to check your handicap at any time.

What you have to understand is you will not have a valid handicap until you input at least 6, 18-hole rounds. Also, your handicap will vary from course to course, because what the handicap number means, is not your "average" score, it is what you are capable of playing at, not what you normally score. It is determined basically by the difficulty of the course. So for example, your handicap at Goodwin Park in Hartford is going to be lower than if you play my course - Great River in Milford.

Feel free to email me with more questions - thanks for visiting the site.

Best regards and best of luck for 2007!

Kevin Ferrarotti

Golf Professional

Great River Golf Club

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