Stan Utley's new golf instruction book doesn't lack for innovation

Short-game guru Stan Utley has a new book out and it doesn’t just cover the short game. In fact, Utley disagrees with some who say the short game has a different set of rules than the full swing. And in his new book, “The Art of the Swing,” Utley explains how teaching and learning the fundamentals of the short game almost always automatically improves one’s long game.

“The Art of the Swing,” published by Gotham Books ($26), has another interesting twist as well. Encouraged to find a way to add video clips to the written lessons, Utley includes 30 Microsoft Tags, which can be captured by a smart phone to download video from YouTube to supplement the instruction. You simply need an iPhone, Blackberry or Android type phone, download the free application and snap a few pictures of the barcodes on the pages. The apps aren’t necessary to reap the benefits from the book, which outlines a 30-day process to improvement, but they’re a nice bonus.

For those who don’t know anything about Utley, he spent a few years on the tour, where he gained a reputation as a short-game wizard. He was so good around and on the greens, in fact, that other players started to come to him for advice. Today, Utley continues to work with many of the world’s top players, including 2010 U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia. Golf Digest senior writer Matthew Rudy, who has worked with Utley on previous instructional projects, co-wrote the book

In “The Art of the Swing,” Utley, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., demonstrates that the sequence and squaring of the clubface are similar in all swings, from the driver to the putter, only it’s much smaller in the putter. He dispels many of the myths that golfers believe, and explains how you can learn through drills and theoretical knowledge to have a golf swing that works for you.

I don’t often recommend instructional books because they seem to rehash the same old stuff, but this is a refreshingly different approach, both in the method and the presentation.