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The hardest thing in golf is not hitting the ball...
Many people who play golf have never taken a lesson! They get
introduced to the game by a friend or family member and learn to play
by going along to the golf course and playing.
When you learn this way, by instinct as it were, you develop a muscle memory of your technique and a discovery process of what works and what doesn?t, hopefully repeating the positive patterns that achieve roughly what you want to achieve. Someone who finds that there ?natural? swing slices the ball, will compensate by aiming to the left of the ball so that it will slice back onto the fairway.
The hardest thing in golf is not hitting the ball, it is consistently hitting the ball straight - or at least in the direction intended. You'll hear many a golfer say something along the lines of "I was hitting the ball really well today, but my score doesn't reflect it". The reason for most is that they aren't aligning their body and their swing with the target.
If you can clearly see your goal, both in your mind's eye and in reality - it would be strange if you faced your club at a 90 degree angle to it? How about 5 degrees? How about 1 degree? Perhaps if you are compensating for your very "natural" slicing habit but let?s take a quick trigonometry reminder. You see, those maths classes were going to prove useful!
Let's assume, for a moment that you have a clean fairway shot to the green 135 yards straight ahead and plan to use your trusty 7-iron in that straight line, oh, and you would strike the ball clean and straight. Aligning yourself and your club just 5 degrees away from the straight line will put your ball about 6 yards away from your target - assuming that you still hit the ball the full yardage. You don't need me to tell you that 6 yards from the hole is usually the rough, or a bunker, or a pond. And this is when everything else is working very very well indeed. The added complication with alignment in golf is the club face alignment. 5 degrees off centre alignment with an open or closed face, will reduce the yardage of the ball because the ball will not loft as high - it'll hit the ground sooner which robs the ball of some momentum depending on the friction between the ball and the ground. You don't need me to tell you that a ball landing on the fairway rolls further than a ball rolling in the rough. Oh well, I told you anyway.
So how do you ensure alignment with your target. In the words of Harvey Pennick, "Take Dead Aim". Well that's pretty simple and something you can easily practice on the range. Many practice ranges have sticks or plastic arrows - you align one with your feet and another with your tee or ball, directing them both in parallel to your target. Swing, thwack and low and behold, on the practice range, the ball flies straight to the target. You do it again, and again, and again - eventually removing the visual markers and "imagining" them. Settling yourself calmly and your G.A.S.P. (grip, address, stance, posture) and "thwack" off the ball flies straight to target. If it were that easy, we?d all be able to do it. The physics is unarguable, the theory straightforward, the requirements from you are not overly demanding - yet, somehow, the swing just doesn't align to the target. You spend a small fortune on your highly-engineered custom clubs to eradicate the anomaly, and still you miss the target.
The physical process is important, don't let anyone persuade you different. A good golf coach will see if there is anything to correct in your swing that may be causing the problem, but only if the problem is physical. 95% plus of the problem is not physical, it's mental. It comes back to your unconscious giving your body instructions. When you're on the range, you're hitting ball after ball after ball. Concentrating on your technique and getting into a rhythm.
Out on the course, your hitting a ball, club back in bag, pick up bag, walk, walk, walk, chatter, talk, "oh that's interesting", thinking, "I wonder if my better half is still angry with me?", "I must finish that report". oh and that email I received. so and so was a bit odd today. walk walk walk, and then getting closer to your ball. "ah there it is, a bit of long grass around it, but otherwise, a pretty nice lie, hey and not bad - a couple of feet further to the side than I wanted, but I'm getting better. I wonder if I'm going to get this right, now which club, hmm" and on and on. How much of your game is hitting balls, and how much is not hitting balls?
See, if you play a game like squash, say. You don't have much time after hitting the ball, before it's your turn to hit it again - and that short time is spent focusing on where the ball is, your opponent is and so on - a few seconds at most. Now the brain works very very quickly, but essentially you don't have much time to drift into other matters - it's all about the ball.
How much time do you spend aligning yourself - and by now I think you realise that I mean mentally and physically, before each shot.
Alignment is not just a physical process - that funny little waggle that golfers do. It's about training your mind to align as well. Taking each goal for each and every shot, envisioning how it is going to be successful. Settling the body and focusing your mind - trusting your technique to deliver what it delivers. What you focus on, you will get more of!
In training your mind to give you an advantage, there is an important element. Do NOT reinforce the bad. Now if you've stayed with me so far, you know that the unconscious cannot process negatives, and I just gave you a negative. But that's to get it out of the way so we can now focus on the positive. Reinforce the good.
Dr. John Kenworthy
CCO
GAINMORE Leadership
GAINMORE Golf
When you learn this way, by instinct as it were, you develop a muscle memory of your technique and a discovery process of what works and what doesn?t, hopefully repeating the positive patterns that achieve roughly what you want to achieve. Someone who finds that there ?natural? swing slices the ball, will compensate by aiming to the left of the ball so that it will slice back onto the fairway.
The hardest thing in golf is not hitting the ball, it is consistently hitting the ball straight - or at least in the direction intended. You'll hear many a golfer say something along the lines of "I was hitting the ball really well today, but my score doesn't reflect it". The reason for most is that they aren't aligning their body and their swing with the target.
If you can clearly see your goal, both in your mind's eye and in reality - it would be strange if you faced your club at a 90 degree angle to it? How about 5 degrees? How about 1 degree? Perhaps if you are compensating for your very "natural" slicing habit but let?s take a quick trigonometry reminder. You see, those maths classes were going to prove useful!
Let's assume, for a moment that you have a clean fairway shot to the green 135 yards straight ahead and plan to use your trusty 7-iron in that straight line, oh, and you would strike the ball clean and straight. Aligning yourself and your club just 5 degrees away from the straight line will put your ball about 6 yards away from your target - assuming that you still hit the ball the full yardage. You don't need me to tell you that 6 yards from the hole is usually the rough, or a bunker, or a pond. And this is when everything else is working very very well indeed. The added complication with alignment in golf is the club face alignment. 5 degrees off centre alignment with an open or closed face, will reduce the yardage of the ball because the ball will not loft as high - it'll hit the ground sooner which robs the ball of some momentum depending on the friction between the ball and the ground. You don't need me to tell you that a ball landing on the fairway rolls further than a ball rolling in the rough. Oh well, I told you anyway.
So how do you ensure alignment with your target. In the words of Harvey Pennick, "Take Dead Aim". Well that's pretty simple and something you can easily practice on the range. Many practice ranges have sticks or plastic arrows - you align one with your feet and another with your tee or ball, directing them both in parallel to your target. Swing, thwack and low and behold, on the practice range, the ball flies straight to the target. You do it again, and again, and again - eventually removing the visual markers and "imagining" them. Settling yourself calmly and your G.A.S.P. (grip, address, stance, posture) and "thwack" off the ball flies straight to target. If it were that easy, we?d all be able to do it. The physics is unarguable, the theory straightforward, the requirements from you are not overly demanding - yet, somehow, the swing just doesn't align to the target. You spend a small fortune on your highly-engineered custom clubs to eradicate the anomaly, and still you miss the target.
The physical process is important, don't let anyone persuade you different. A good golf coach will see if there is anything to correct in your swing that may be causing the problem, but only if the problem is physical. 95% plus of the problem is not physical, it's mental. It comes back to your unconscious giving your body instructions. When you're on the range, you're hitting ball after ball after ball. Concentrating on your technique and getting into a rhythm.
Out on the course, your hitting a ball, club back in bag, pick up bag, walk, walk, walk, chatter, talk, "oh that's interesting", thinking, "I wonder if my better half is still angry with me?", "I must finish that report". oh and that email I received. so and so was a bit odd today. walk walk walk, and then getting closer to your ball. "ah there it is, a bit of long grass around it, but otherwise, a pretty nice lie, hey and not bad - a couple of feet further to the side than I wanted, but I'm getting better. I wonder if I'm going to get this right, now which club, hmm" and on and on. How much of your game is hitting balls, and how much is not hitting balls?
See, if you play a game like squash, say. You don't have much time after hitting the ball, before it's your turn to hit it again - and that short time is spent focusing on where the ball is, your opponent is and so on - a few seconds at most. Now the brain works very very quickly, but essentially you don't have much time to drift into other matters - it's all about the ball.
How much time do you spend aligning yourself - and by now I think you realise that I mean mentally and physically, before each shot.
Alignment is not just a physical process - that funny little waggle that golfers do. It's about training your mind to align as well. Taking each goal for each and every shot, envisioning how it is going to be successful. Settling the body and focusing your mind - trusting your technique to deliver what it delivers. What you focus on, you will get more of!
In training your mind to give you an advantage, there is an important element. Do NOT reinforce the bad. Now if you've stayed with me so far, you know that the unconscious cannot process negatives, and I just gave you a negative. But that's to get it out of the way so we can now focus on the positive. Reinforce the good.
Dr. John Kenworthy
CCO
GAINMORE Leadership
GAINMORE Golf
Dr John Kenworthy
CCO GAINMORE™ Golf
GAINMORE™ Leadership
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