Get Every Putt to the Hole
In team formats, it pays to get the ball to the hole, if only to give your partners a good read. Most putts come up short because the player decelerates on the through-stroke. Instead, make sure your through-stroke is as long or slightly longer than your backstroke.
Minimize Your Swing Thoughts
Keep your game plan simple. Put it on a piece of paper on the cart steering wheel and refer to it before each full shot.
Preshot: Visualize what you want the ball to do.
Address: Align the clubface where you want the ball to go.
Swing thought: Freely swing the clubhead.
Survive The First-tee Jitters
Nervousness makes you speed up your tempo, which affects consistency and accuracy. Take several deep breaths as you get ready to hit, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. Swing your driver smoothly, like you want to hit it only 100 yards.
Make More Tough Short Putts
Playing a format that requires you to putt everything out? Set your putterface square to the desired line, then square your feet and shoulders to that line. Make a smooth stroke while looking at the target, not at the ball.
Take More Club on Par 3s
Few amateurs hit the ball over or through the green on par 3s; most come up short. Select a club that will get you to the yardage at the back of the green. If you hit it flush, you're on; if you hit it less than solidly, you still might make it to the putting surface.
Score Lower on Par 5s
Take a "do the math" approach. Most par 5s are 500 yards or more. Make the last shot your favorite yardage into the green. Subtract that yardage, then divide the difference by two. With this strategy, you're hitting lofted clubs that are easier to hit and more accurate.
Get Out of the Sand in One Try
Good greenside bunker players accelerate the clubhead through the shot, letting the sand "splash" the ball out. Set up with the face of your sand wedge slightly open, the ball slightly forward in your stance. Hit the sand behind the ball, and finish your swing like you're hitting a full 5-iron.
Chip with Your Putting Stroke
To avoid chunking or skulling your chip shots, take a lofted club like a 7-, 8- or 9-iron and grip it like your putter. Lean the shaft and your body toward the target for a slightly descending blow. Make your putting stroke, allowing the loft of the club to carry the ball over the unpredictable turf onto the green.
Get Your Irons Airborne
Most topped shots occur when you try to help the ball into the air with a scooping motion. To hit down on the ball, set up with more weight on your left foot than your right. Take the club back more vertically and return it on a downward angle of attack.
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Simple Steps to Shading Like the Masters
Copyright 2006 Todd Harris
Shading is an important skill for every artist to develop. Every artist realizes or should realize the importance shading makes in his/her drawings. Without good shading techniques, drawing people and faces masterfully, is a moot point. Shading is a technique that every artist should attempt to master and practice continually. Shading requires certain tools and steps to be developed in order to master.
The ability to shade is determined on how well you can see value relationships, along with a basic understanding of how light works. Value, or how light or dark something is, is relative.
Like many things artists experience, no single value can exist by itself. Our eye will automatically lighten or darken. A medium grey will look almost white next to black and very dark next to white. When determining value, it is important to squint or open your eyes very wide. This keeps you from focusing in on a single value and look at all of the value relationships together as a whole. Without doing this our eye will play a trick on us. For example, if we focus in on a shadow area of our subject, our eye will adjust to that specific value field and give us a false reading. We will have a tendency to start averaging our values, making our lights to dark and our darks to light, failing to see the over all relationships.
Your sensitive touch to the pencil is very important in shading. Shading can range from blacks, dark grays, middle grays, lights, all the way to whites. Each of these tones is usually represented in your drawings. Your pencil and the pressure applied to it, is another key to shading. It is important that as an artist you understand pressure and pay attention to how it affects your drawings.
Blending is also a skill in shading. Blending graphite can be done easily with the correct method. Laying pencil on smoothly with the strokes close together (so much so that it's hard to tell one stroke from another) is essential and necessary to good shading. A controlled stroke laid carefully with even pressure is important. I also recommend using the end of a kneaded eraser to help you blend.
Again, practice is the most important advice I can give any artist. Passion and practice will overcome any lack of talent.
If you have questions, feel free to contact info@learning2draw.com.

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Todd Harris is a master artist who is currently working for a multi-billion dollar corporation as a concept art director. He is trained in the Florence Academy Method and loves art. Learning2draw.com is a site devoted to aspiring artists who want to learn to master the human form. It's jam-packed with free info, tips, tricks, newsletters, and more. For more information and to view our many free resources please visit http://www.learning2draw.com or feel free to email us at info@learning2draw.com.


Building bigger and stronger rugby players - the Sydney University experiment
It is widely acknowledged that the average body weight of rugby players has increased considerably over recent years. Less recognised is the extent to which modern defensive alignments and strategies have transformed rugby matches into contests of attrition where bigger and stronger teams tend to wear down their smaller and physically weaker opponents over the course of a game. Perhaps the most notable change has been the increased importance of physical dominance in the backline.
Responding to this, Sydney University's rugby club has been able to demonstrate that with the right combination of coach and infrastructure, it is possible to fast track the physical development of players outside a professional playing environment. In fact within a couple of seasons these players are able to achieve a body mass comparable to that of seasoned professionals together with a solid foundation of basic strength.
In late May, Sydney University announced its team for the first round of the Tooheys New Cup, the premier competition in Sydney club rugby. All of the fifteen players are past or current students who had been developed through the Club's Colts and lower grade teams. None of them are paid to play for the Club, although the eleven who are still students receive modest scholarship assistance. Only three of the players are on professional contracts.
It is instructive to compare their body weight and age profiles with those of squads from four major rugby countries, those of Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa. The average weight of the international teams varies from 101.2 to 102.9 kgs while their average age is from 25.5 to 27.2 years. Comparative figures for the Sydney University team are 100.5 kgs and 22.5 years.
It can be seen that the part-time, unpaid Sydney University players, though three to five years younger, weigh only a couple of kilograms less than the world's best players. This is quite extraordinary as normally a much greater weight disparity would be expected.
For the past three years Sydney University Football Club has been operating an Elite Development Squad (EDS) program for its top grade and colts players. Utilising one of the best equipped gymnasiums in Australian rugby, players train for eleven months of the year and undertake four weights sessions per week off-season and a lesser number while playing.
The program's strength and conditioning components have been devised and administered by Martin Harland, a sports scientist who has previously worked with professional rugby league, Australian football and basketball teams. His programs for rugby players place a high degree of emphasis on basic strength development and rugby-specific fitness. A distinguishing feature of his approach is a concentration on heavy lower body work through exercises such as squats, deadlifts and cleans. In addition, both backs and forwards make intensive use of the MyoQuip ScrumTruk, a rugby-specific apparatus that targets the large mass leg extensor muscles, specifically the gluteal and quadriceps groups. Hypertrophy or increased muscle mass is a natural and not unintended by-product of such training.
Another distinctive feature of Martin Harland's rugby training regimen is his requirement that backs undertake the same rigorous basic strength routines as forwards. Many strength and conditioning coaches reserve the heavy "grunt" work for forwards, or even restrict it to the tight five.
Exposing backs to very serious weight training has produced a quite extraordinary outcome at Sydney University, as evidenced by comparing the body weights of their forwards and backs with those of the Wallabies and the four Australian Super 14 franchises, the ACT Brumbies, NSW Waratahs, Queensland Reds and Western Force.
Not surprisingly, the University's young forwards are outweighed by each of the five professional squads, 105.3kgs compared to 109.1 to 111.1 kgs. However, in the backs the situation is reversed with the University players averaging 95.1 kgs as opposed to 90.9 to 92.9 kgs. Thus the Sydney University backs outweigh Australia's national and provincial squads by between 2.2 and 4.2 kg per man.
If we look at the difference in body weight between backs and forwards it can be seen that for Sydney University it averages 10.2 kg, against 16.2 to 19.4 kg for Australia's professional squads, a very substantial difference.
The Sydney University experiment seems to be providing clear evidence that the body weight of rugby backs can be dramatically increased through serious weight training, but the question arises as to whether this has benefits in terms of playing performance.
One answer is that the other strength-oriented football code, American football, has traditionally used training methods similar to those of Martin Harland. All players, whether linemen or running backs, are required to do heavy gym work. No one would seriously suggest that their quick players have inferior dynamic abilities to rugby players.
Another justification for building heavier backs with superior leg drive lies in the already mentioned importance of physical dominance in the rugby backline. With the modern emphasis on structure and coordination in defensive alignments, bigger and stronger backs are better able to continually repel opposition attacks and also over the course of a game are likely to create physical and mental fatigue in their counterparts.
Having achieved a strong foundation of basic strength and greater body mass, Martin Harland is then able to focus on speed and explosiveness in his players. It is clear that the Sydney University approach yields results on the playing field. 2005 was the Club's most successful year, winning the Sydney Club Championship, the First Grade Premiership and four lower grade Premierships.
Even more importantly, players who graduate from such a program are much better equipped to withstand the rigours of modern rugby.