October is one of my favorite months. You get the leaves changing colors, crisp fall days and, best of all, playoff baseball. Even though my New York Yankees aren't in the playoffs this year (for just the first time in 13 years, thank you very much), I still love October baseball.

If you're a baseball fan and still remember what it's like to swing the bat, you can actually improve your golf swing. It's a drill I do with my students all the time to teach them how to unwind their hips and increase their lag.

The first thing I have a baseball-loving student do is swing his golf club like a baseball bat and take a video of him doing this. If he's an over-the-topper with the usual slice, he'll see in the video how in his baseball swing he unwinds his hips and creates lag perfectly. "All you need to do is transition from a vertical spine (baseball) to an inclined spine (golf posture)," I'll say and I can usually see the light go on. Then I ask him to bend slightly from the waist and make more baseball swings with his golf club, until he's in his golf posture and swinging with the lag and hip movement he needs to get longer and more accuarate.

Try it yourself on the range. The transition is pretty amazing.

Top 100 Teacher Tom Patri is director of instruction at Friar's Head Golf Club in Baiting Hollow, N.Y.