The Meadows Golf Club of Blue Island

Golf pro Gil Davis didn't start playing golf until he was 21, but he didn’t let a late start temper his ambition. Instead, he set his sights on qualifying for the 2002 US Open—a lofty goal for anyone, let alone someone who just started playing in 1995—and began to build his swing. For the next four years, Gil hit 3,000–4,000 golf balls a day, five days a week (for a frame of reference, PGA champion Vijay Singh reportedly hits around 2,000 balls a day). Though the US Open berth eluded him, the work paid off in other ways: his coach urged him to turn pro, and he’s been teaching golf ever since. From the driving range at Chicago's Marquette Park, Gil passed on some of his best advice for building an effective golf swing, which we broke down into five tips any golfer can use. Do the Stance Dance Gil calls setup fundamentals—that is, grip, posture and stance, ball position, and alignment—the most critical aspects of the golf swing. "If one of those fundamentals is off, right off the bat, you have to manipulate the clubhead on impact to make the ball go where you want it to go," Gil says. It all starts with posture and stance, which Gil teaches with a very simple method: stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and place your palms flat on your thighs. While keeping your back straight, slide your hands down until your fingertips touch just above your kneecaps. This should cause you to flex your knees and stick out your rump ever so slightly. Put a club in your hands and voila, you've found the right posture and stance. Position the Ball Based on the Club You're Hitting Ball positioning refers to the ball’s location on an imaginary line that runs parallel to your feet. The length of the club determines the distance between you and this line: you’ll stand farther away from the ball when hitting a 45” driver than when you’re holding a 34” wedge. Let’s say that line is a ruler marked 1–10, with the 1 lined up with your front foot and the 10 with your back foot. The ball is “in the middle of your stance” when placed directly on the 5, which is where Gil starts when teaching ball positioning. “Play your middle irons—6, 7, and 8 irons—in the middle of your stance, and use that as a frame of reference. When holding a 9-iron or any wedge, move the ball back in your stance about the width of one golf ball. For the 3, 4, and 5 irons and hybrids, move it up one ball width towards your front foot. For fairway woods, line the ball up inside your front heel. When hitting driver, tee the ball up in line with the big toe of your front foot." As you get comfortable in these default positions, you can make minute adjustments to change the trajectory of your shot. Scoot the ball back in your stance, and it will fly lower and spin more; nudge it a touch forward, and it will fly higher and spin less. Let the Ground Be Your Caddy It may seem simple, but even the world's top golfers struggle with lining their feet up with their target. "Alignment is probably the number-one fundamental that goes awry for every golfer there is,” says Gil. “You always see [PGA Tour] players with something on the ground to help get them to line up when they practice, and the majority of [Ladies’ PGA Tour] players have their caddies line them up for every shot." For those who don't have caddies to make sure their aim is true, Gil has a tip: instead of fixing your gaze on the target in the distance, look closer. "When lining up your shot, pick a spot [on the ground] a foot-and-a-half behind the ball or a foot-and-a-half in front of the ball that is in line with your target, and use it as a guide for placing your feet. The second you go outside of that [range of vision], you have to turn your head, which changes your perspective and compromises your alignment." Hold Your Club Like It’s Toothpaste When asked to name the most common problem he notices in the swings of novice golfers, Gil is unequivocal: they swing too hard. "Golf is a recreational sport, we do not want to work hard. We should sweat because it's hot outside, not because we're swinging as hard as we can." He suggests trying to swing smoothly—which puts less stress on the body and typically leads to more solid contact—and to eliminate tension by gripping the club gently. "I tell my students to hold the club as if they're gripping a tube of toothpaste with the cap off. They should squeeze a little paste out, but they don't want to empty the tube." Swing Like the Ladies You can find just about any pro golfers’ swing on YouTube, and there’s a whole cottage industry devoted to marketing these videos as learning tools. But, most likely, you don’t generate the same torque and range of motion as the guys who drive the ball 350 yards, so you might not be able to execute their mechanics. "I like people to look at LPGA players rather than PGA players when finding a swing to model. In general, LPGA players swing in a more efficient way, so it's a more sensible example for golfers, male and female, to use.” Though every golfer is different—and may benefit from a different model—Gil considers Stacey Lewis’s swing to be the gold standard. “She gets the club in perfect position.” Photo: © Andrew Nawrocki, Groupon

The ancient Scotsmen who invented golf weren’t afraid to take creative liberties with their sport. (How else to explain the seemingly random number of holes in a game?) That said, even they might shake their heads in disbelief at some of today’s miniature-golf courses. Words like “creative” only begin to describe the spiraling tunnels and gravity-defying double loops that characterize the oddest holes in Chicagoland. We’ve braved madness and botched our share of bank shots to arrive at this list of the weirdest around: Paint Job Most Likely to Recall a Fever Dream: The Dragon Hole at Putting Edge in Norridge Putting Edge gets medieval on its mini-golfers with a trio of psychedelic dragon cutouts rendered in fluorescent neon paint. If this isn’t enough to send your mind spinning, the rest of the black-lit indoor course should do the trick. Nearly all of the obstacles—including a kraken with a pulsating frontal lobe—glow in the dark, and booming music can be heard loud and clear from each of the 18 holes. The overall experience approximates what it might be like to show up with a putter at a rave—a rave with dragons, that is. Obstacle Most Likely to Level the Playing Field: The Giant Roulette Wheel at Par-King Skill Golf in Lincolnshire Par-King’s claim to have “The World’s Most Unusual Miniature Golf” is a bit audacious, given the game’s penchant for upping the ante on weird. But the Lincolnshire course backs up its case by strapping balls into roller coasters, feeding them to carved wooden tikis, and funneling them through the tunnels of a miniature Mount Rushmore. The course’s final hole is arguably its most inventive. Players must putt away their points on the greatest of equalizers—a giant roulette wheel that determines the score. Best Place for a Bigfoot Sighting: The Eagle Course at Wilderness Falls in Bolingbrook Though most photographs of Bigfoot are blurry, one thing is clear: he rarely goes anywhere without his mini-golf putter. The ape-like creature makes his home at Wilderness Falls, taking shelter in a darkened cave behind a 40-foot waterfall. Of the park’s two courses, the Eagle Course promises the best views if and when Bigfoot decides to emerge from his lair. He climbs all the way to the mountaintop, forcing players to cope with the most unforgiving of hazards: gravity. Most Harrowing Water Hazard: The Congo Rapids at Congo River Miniature Golf in Hoffman Estates If you don’t want your ball to take an unintentional bath in Congo River’s rapids, you’ll have to tune out the distractions that abound near Hole 13. Granted, that’s like asking Indiana Jones to tune out a boulder that’s rushing toward his head. Thundering waterfalls, rope bridges, and a stalled safari jeep surround the multilevel hole, making it hard to focus on the task at hand: keeping your ball from being swept away in the steady current. Most Visually Terrifying Obstacle: The Humpty Dumpty at Novelty Golf in Lincolnwood Novelty Golf’s Humpty Dumpty obstacle once drew unfortunate comparisons to Norwood Park’s own John Wayne Gacy. In an ironic twist of fate, Humpty Dumpty actually fell off his wall recently, cracking his head and a few of the teeth in his evil grin. While he’s getting patched up, Chicagoland’s most historic mini-golf course remains perfectly safe for children. They’ll likely fall in love with the giant Frankenstein head and tyrannosaurus rex, both of which somehow manage to instill less fear than the out-of-commission egghead.