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Golf Instruction’s Great Imbalance

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Golf instruction suffers today, as it has from perhaps its beginnings, from a fundamental imbalance which has hindered its potential effectiveness — too much emphasis on form, and not nearly enough on function. To highlight the sentiment, let’s draw an analogy between striking a golf ball and another task, which most would consider fairly uncomplicated.

Let’s call this fictional task “hammering.” Let me explain quickly how it works. We’ll be using a long-handled hammer to drive a spike into the trunk of a tree. The head of the spike will be roughly a foot above the ground, and already inserted into the trunk in some pre-specified direction. The object of our “game of hammering” is to drive the spike into the tree without bending the spike.

For now, let’s simplify the game further by saying that it hardly matters how FAR you drive the spike in, only your efficiency in doing so. A hammer strike with 100 percent efficiency will see three specific conditions met:

  1. The head of the hammer should be delivered accurately to the head of the spike (you might call this hitting the nail on the head).
  2. The direction that the hammer head is travelling at the moment of the strike should be in the same direction that the spike is pointing.
  3. The face of the hammer head should arrive flush or square to the direction that the hammer head is traveling.

Any deficiencies in one or more of these three conditions will result in more bending and less driving-in of the spike. So the RESULT we are after is the spike being driven in straight, and the ACTION that achieves that result is described by the three specific conditions of the strike. Fairly simple, right?

Not coincidentally, for ball-striking, the same three user-controlled strike conditions are the factors that create your ball flight, besides speed. And your ball flight creates your results, which in turn, creates your scores. Yet in a lesson for the beginning golfer, how often do you think it is explained that the sole purpose for the swing is to achieve just three conditions at the strike point, plus speed; or what those conditions should specifically be; or how to determine them on your own?

All too often, I find the form of the golf swing — the position and movements of the body, or biomechanics — are over-emphasized at the expense of the function of the swing. Ask yourself, given the task of hammering as described, do you feel that the average person would feel like they would have a decent chance of achieving good results equipped only with the intention to create the three strike conditions described, with no formal instruction on how to achieve those conditions? Do you think that person would feel intimidated to even try? So then why is it that although the criteria for the two tasks, hammering and ball-striking, are virtually identical, one task seems fairly straight-forward and achievable for persons of average physical ability, while the other (golf) is generally perceived as difficult to learn?

Now let’s say a new “hammer player” makes some strikes that reveal a noticeable bend in the stake. To the expert observer, that player’s next question might likely be, “What did I do wrong?” Ask yourself, if the expert answer/analysis were a report of the actual strike conditions against the known ideal, would that seem to be lacking? Would it be enough, on its own, for you to feel better-prepared for future strikes, equipped with a new/different intention(s), based on the findings?

In golf, the question, “What did I do wrong?” is asked all the time to teachers and friends alike. Very rarely is the answer a factual report of the strike conditions such as “You struck it on the heel,” or “Your club face was open.” Rather, the usual answers belong to an infinite number of unverifiable, subjective opinions relating to biomechanics. Ask your buddy what you did wrong after a particularly poor result, and the response is likely to be something like, “You picked up your head.” This approach seems like a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.

Let me share a couple of quotes on this subject from two of the greatest golfers of all time.

  • “The only reason we bother with form and the correct swing is to find the best way of consistently bringing about the proper set of conditions at impact.” — Bobby Jones
  • Whatever any golfer does with a golf club should have only one purpose: to produce correct impact of club on ball.”  — Jack Nicklaus

Now there are probably plenty of people reading this who are thinking that the strike conditions required in golf are obvious, but the real secret is HOW to consistently achieve them. But in order to improve one’s ball-striking, it would be wise to first make an accurate assessment of the present strike conditions, for any given stroke, and on average. In my experience, very few players, including good ones, possess the level of skill required to determine this on their own without falling into common traps. And most aren’t even trying, skipping this critical step entirely and moving right on to the biomechanical self-analysis.

Case in point: when a slicer produces a ball flight that starts fairly on-target and curves well to the right, why is the self-correction almost always to strike in a MORE leftward direction when the ball flight indicates a strike direction which is ALREADY leftward of ideal? Or what of the player who commonly intends to strike upwardly a ball lying on the ground? Could you imagine intending to hammer the spike upward into the tree if it were clearly pitched downward? A golfer doing this is not even clear on the required direction of the strike!

Very often, struggling players will swear that they know “what they’re doing wrong.” Yet almost never does the self-analysis relate to the actual strike. Apparently, this has been going on for some time. More from Nicklaus’ “Golf My Way,” published in 1974:

I got into a discussion with a pro-am partner about his slice … He’d tried just about every method or gimmick ever invented. But what he’d obviously failed to comprehend were the simple, basic mechanics of impact-what causes the ball to fly a certain way. He was forever changing his swing without really considering what he wanted it to achieve for him at impact.”

As a player, your ball striking is driven by your intent or intentions. And these are all that an instructor ultimately passes on to a student. There are mainly three types of intentions a player can have. The first is internal or biomechanical. This involves the intention to do something specific with part(s) of the body. This is all that most golfers seem to think golf instruction is or can be. They’ve learned this by the historical methods of golf instructors, which in turn, have influenced “what my friend said.” The second is what you might call an abstract intention. An example would be the intention to swing at a specific tempo. The third is an external intention. This involves physical objects outside the body, like the club and ball. An example would be the intention to push the club head downward through the ball.

As you may have guessed by now, my favorite intentions for my students and for my own striking are usually external. Recent research testing on athletic cuing has also found that external intentions easily outperform internal types. And this is why I feel that it is a mistake to present a biomechanical analysis before determining what intention(s) will be best to improve ball-striking. Remember, most people only have room in their conscious mind for one or two intentions. So if it is ultimately determined that the best intention(s) for improvement are not internal, then introducing a biomechanical analysis will only serve to confuse and constitutes too much information.

It’s usually at this point where skeptics might come back at me with, “So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter what you do with your body?” Hardly. EVERYTHING matters. What I do for my students is to teach them to strike the ball better, more efficiently. I evaluate ball-striking from strike conditions, then instruct what I feel is the best intention — sometimes more than one — to improve specific strike conditions, and thus the strike as a whole and on average. Your consistency can simply be summed up as your average strike conditions for ALL strokes played.

Sometimes my instructed intention(s) is purely biomechanical, and the video camera and V1 software become important tools. But most of my students are regular people who don’t have the time or desire to embark on a major swing change. They just want to hit the ball better. I find that these folks, like just about all golfers, have wandered down the wrong path in their progress to varying extents, drawing the wrong conclusions about their own performance, stemming from a lack of knowledge.

Knowledge of the game, not talent, is the equalizer that eludes the many who strive for excellence.” — Moe Norman

The comment of one of my recent new students sums-up my approach perfectly. He said, “I can’t believe how much better I’m hitting the ball and you haven’t tried to change my swing!” But of course, his swing DID change. Only he wasn’t aware of it because his only intention, per my instruction, was to strike the ball in a specific, new way.

The following is from Ernest Jones’ instruction classic, “Swing the Clubhead:”

“Ernest Jones had happened upon the then-little-understood fact that the human brain need only experience a persons’ desire to perform a task. On its own the brain devises a means to create the muscular action to achieve the task. The individual is only aware of ‘what’ they want to do. The brain’s action in deciding ‘how’ it will accomplish the task is completely unconscious.”

But you see, very rarely is it enough to simply have the intention to achieve a final result, such as to hit it on the green. WHERE you want to go is quite obvious. More than that, you should be clear on HOW the ball must be struck to achieve a desired flight. And this is where I find much room for improvement, especially for recreational players. Now, I’ll concede that if the name of the game were primarily speed, then biomechanical intentions would surely dominate. But the vast majority of my students tell me that they just want to hit it straight and be consistent. Top speed is usually the LAST strike condition I would seek to improve.

At the present time, golf instruction largely has no formal standardization. This is not such a good thing. My wish is that it becomes standard practice to make a formal assessment of the strike conditions as the basis for analysis. These conditions are a question of fact and subject to physical law. And while launch monitors from the likes of Foresight, TrackMan and Flightscope can largely make that analysis for you, it is not difficult to make actionable determinations without them with the acquired skill. Once the proper analysis is made, instructors are still free to teach whatever they like as no intention is wrong, per se, if it improves performance. But the continuing measure of performance lies in the strike conditions, the true beacon for those seeking the path to improvement.

What about stats and scores as the ultimate performance measures, you say? As these are affected by influence outside the player’s control, they are not the best measurement of pure performance. There is an element of luck in golf, albeit a relatively small one. Besides strategy, the strike is the aspect of performance for which the player is in total control. That’s why when people ask me for my teaching philosophy, I’ll often say, partly for effect, “Three keys: impact, impact, and impact!”

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As an independent contractor based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Todd Dugan provides video swing analysis as a player gift to groups hosting golf tournaments and also is available for private instruction. * PGA Certified Instructor * Teaching professionally since 1993 CONTACT: [email protected] vimeo.com/channels/todddugangolf

15 Comments

15 Comments

  1. BIG STU

    Sep 3, 2016 at 10:32 pm

    Nothing new here AJ Bonnar has taught the ‘hammer” theory for years and basically Mo Norman had the same theory he said you need to put this guy (the club) on this guy here (the ball)

    • Todd Dugan

      Sep 4, 2016 at 2:15 am

      To be clear, my teaching style does not rest on a “hammer theory”. I am simply making an analogy. A “theory” is unproven. My approach is built on proven science.

    • Andrew Cooper

      Sep 4, 2016 at 3:17 am

      Of course it’s not new- the game has been played for over 500 years! Swing path, club face angle and centered contact has always been the basic task.

  2. Mat

    Sep 2, 2016 at 7:20 am

    I’d take it a step further.

    Because 99% of instruction is based on where the club head travels, and not what the club is designed to do, most people learn the whole “swing like the ball isn’t there” nonsense. It leads to players scooping, time and again. Same thing with slice/draw mechanics… understanding what a ball does midflight tells you how the ball exited on impact.

    Next time you see someone struggling, tell them they have to smash the ball like starting a basketball dribble from the ground. You must smoosh the ball, not catapult/sling it. Magically, as the article says, Brain fixes Body.

    The total instructional disconnect is that the ball tells you what you did at impact 100% of the time. BALL DON’T LIE. It was a revelation to see and understand tour-level impact in slow motion. Yes, biomechanics matter, but novice instruction is woefully inadequate in explaining ball and club at impact.

    I sound like Bobby Clampett, don’t I… ¯\_(?)_/¯

    • Todd Dugan

      Sep 2, 2016 at 2:16 pm

      I would caution that the ball-flight can indeed “lie”, when the contact point is away from the “sweet spot”, especially for woods, due to the phenomenon known as “gear effect”. And while it is straight-forward to determine whether the face is open or closed for solid strikes, I find many will make errors in determining path. For example: solid strike…ball starts straight, then curves right. Few would correctly determine that path is left of target, in my experience.

  3. Sumsum

    Sep 2, 2016 at 4:17 am

    How about this concept:
    Some have it, some don’t. Some can, others can’t. As simple as that.

    Mind blown.
    Over and out

    • Mat

      Sep 2, 2016 at 7:21 am

      Categorically tripe.

      • Mm

        Sep 2, 2016 at 12:24 pm

        Because it’s real and you can’t handle it

    • Todd Dugan

      Sep 2, 2016 at 2:28 pm

      If by “it” and “can”, you are referring to the ability to strike the ball reasonably well with good consistency, then I would say that virtually everyone CAN. A high percentage do not. My passion is for changing that trend.

  4. Philip

    Sep 1, 2016 at 11:51 pm

    Nice article, I use that metaphor all the time whenever I feel I’m playing golf swing and not golf – that golf is no harder to our body than hammering a nail. For any other action in life we just think and immediately allow our body to do it – ah, but not golf … superior species my a$$

    Today was an eye opener. I was practicing my distance control with my putter and was so focused on the target and visualizing what I wanted the ball to do that I forgot to make sure my alignment was correct, that my stance was correct, that my ball position was correct (not that I’m a bit of a control nut) and after a streak of great putting I happened to look down at my stance and saw a setup up that I would never have imagined or any instructor would ever of suggested – but apparently my body prefers it. I decided at that point to only focus on the club face at impact and club path – to let my body figure out everything else and was finally able to ace the bunker, lob shots and delicate flops from tight lies (even little 5 foot long flops that landed ever so gently) instead of the shanks or tops I tended to get lately.

  5. mr b

    Sep 1, 2016 at 1:07 pm

    wait wait wait. huh?

  6. bogeypro

    Sep 1, 2016 at 11:09 am

    Sounds like a shrink wrote this article. I find that this is the problem with golf instruction… it is either too vague or too many details at one time. Too many instructors want to tear down the golf swing in one session. Ask the student what they want to accomplish and how detailed to they want the lesson to be. Some just want some type of repeatable ball flight while others may want to be the next Jason Day. Some people like details while others just want to feel what is right and will recreate it. Stop trying to make us all swing like the perfect model golfer -work on the basics (setup, grip, alignment). Then, fix any major swing flaws that may be preventing consistent contact at impact. There are, and have been in the past, many great golfers on tour that don’t have a perfect swing, but they get it right coming through impact.

    • Dennis Corley

      Sep 1, 2016 at 12:33 pm

      That’s pretty much what the article was saying: “impact, impact, impact” was how he summarized his approach.

    • ReadingComprehensionMuch?

      Sep 1, 2016 at 4:01 pm

      Ummm, did you read the article? That’s pretty much exactly what the point was.

    • Jim

      Sep 6, 2016 at 11:34 pm

      No good teacher trys to make everyone swing the same way, but find ways to get them to stop doing things that are screwing up their ability to make good impact more consistently. There are things that I refuse to accept from certain swings. I know I can show, and clearly get them to understand and even feel WHY it needs to change. If they can’t handle that or don’t want to try – then what’s the point of lessons? Honestly, I don’t want that person as a student. I’m too invested in what I do and my students are too.

      If Furyk comes to me for a lesson and during his interview he says “I suck – I’ve never broken 100”, we’re ‘tearing’ that swing apart. Period. If he says “well, I won a bunch of tour events – and just shot a 58 – but I’m just not striking it right ast couple of weeks…..well, that’ll be interesting….

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Instruction

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

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Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?

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How a towel can fix your golf swing

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This is a classic drill that has been used for decades. However, the world of marketed training aids has grown so much during that time that this simple practice has been virtually forgotten. Because why teach people how to play golf using everyday items when you can create and sell a product that reinforces the same thing? Nevertheless, I am here to give you helpful advice without running to the nearest Edwin Watts or adding something to your Amazon cart.

For the “scoring clubs,” having a solid connection between the arms and body during the swing, especially through impact, is paramount to creating long-lasting consistency. And keeping that connection throughout the swing helps rotate the shoulders more to generate more power to help you hit it farther. So, how does this drill work, and what will your game benefit from it? Well, let’s get into it.

Setup

You can use this for basic chip shots up to complete swings. I use this with every club in my bag, up to a 9 or 8-iron. It’s natural to create incrementally more separation between the arms and body as you progress up the set. So doing this with a high iron or a wood is not recommended.

While you set up to hit a ball, simply tuck the towel underneath both armpits. The length of the towel will determine how tight it will be across your chest but don’t make it so loose that it gets in the way of your vision. After both sides are tucked, make some focused swings, keeping both arms firmly connected to the body during the backswing and follow through. (Note: It’s normal to lose connection on your lead arm during your finishing pose.) When you’re ready, put a ball in the way of those swings and get to work.

Get a Better Shoulder Turn

Many of us struggle to have proper shoulder rotation in our golf swing, especially during long layoffs. Making a swing that is all arms and no shoulders is a surefire way to have less control with wedges and less distance with full swings. Notice how I can get in a similar-looking position in both 60° wedge photos. However, one is weak and uncontrollable, while the other is strong and connected. One allows me to use my larger muscles to create my swing, and one doesn’t. The follow-through is another critical point where having a good connection, as well as solid shoulder rotation, is a must. This drill is great for those who tend to have a “chicken wing” form in their lead arm, which happens when it becomes separated from the body through impact.

In full swings, getting your shoulders to rotate in your golf swing is a great way to reinforce proper weight distribution. If your swing is all arms, it’s much harder to get your weight to naturally shift to the inside part of your trail foot in the backswing. Sure, you could make the mistake of “sliding” to get weight on your back foot, but that doesn’t fix the issue. You must turn into your trial leg to generate power. Additionally, look at the difference in separation between my hands and my head in the 8-iron examples. The green picture has more separation and has my hands lower. This will help me lessen my angle of attack and make it easier to hit the inside part of the golf ball, rather than the over-the-top move that the other picture produces.

Stay Better Connected in the Backswing

When you don’t keep everything in your upper body working as one, getting to a good spot at the top of your swing is very hard to do. It would take impeccable timing along with great hand-eye coordination to hit quality shots with any sort of regularity if the arms are working separately from the body.

Notice in the red pictures of both my 60-degree wedge and 8-iron how high my hands are and the fact you can clearly see my shoulder through the gap in my arms. That has happened because the right arm, just above my elbow, has become totally disconnected from my body. That separation causes me to lift my hands as well as lose some of the extension in my left arm. This has been corrected in the green pictures by using this drill to reinforce that connection. It will also make you focus on keeping the lead arm close to your body as well. Because the moment either one loses that relationship, the towel falls.

Conclusion

I have been diligent this year in finding a few drills that target some of the issues that plague my golf game; either by simply forgetting fundamental things or by coming to terms with the faults that have bitten me my whole career. I have found that having a few drills to fall back on to reinforce certain feelings helps me find my game a little easier, and the “towel drill” is most definitely one of them.

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Instruction

Clement: Why your practice swing never sucks

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You hear that one all the time; I wish I could put my practice swing on the ball! We explain the huge importance of what to focus on to allow the ball to be perfectly in the way of your practice swing. Enjoy!

 

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