Instruction

Focus! It’s the key to good golf

Published

11 years ago

Nov 24, 2012

Golf is a game that is played over a long period of time, but each shot takes a very short amount of time.Therefore, there is a lot of ‘down time’ in golf where you walk from shot to shot, wait for playing partners or wait for the group in front to move on. In this time, and for many reasons we can lose our focus.

Losing your focus can have a large impact on your game and can happen for many reasons. One debilitating reason is know as forecasting. This can take the form of scripting your acceptance speech after five good holes, or other times by simply thinking about the next shots and how a couple of good shots will give you par, which will help you break 80/90/100 for the first time. Nevertheless, you duff a few shots and before you know it your good day or good shot is a distant memory.

Regardless of the manner by which you lose your focus, there are some home truths you need to know to help you stay focused and get the job done.

Truth No.1: We never lack the ability to focus

Those of you who have Facebook will know that when you are involved in a number of different conversations and have an online game going, plus you are keeping up to date with your wall, you never at any time are you unable to explain what is going on in your social network. You are able to stay fully abreast of multiple stories and rarely do you cross conversations or forget who you were taking to. others who don’t have Facebook hopefully have seen a movie before or read a book. In these experiences, we are able to follow multiple story lines and complex plot twists with relative ease. In all these scenarios, we are intently focused and most of the time this is rather effortless. It is by virtue of this that we know we can focus.

Truth No.2: We don’t always focus properly

Now, if you were to be this intently focused on Facebook or a movie when you should be studying or at work, then we may have an issue. The desire to maintain an appropriate focus is the key issue with which most golfers struggle. If you are focused on what you will say in your acceptance speech, are you focus on hitting the next shot onto the green?

The short answer, NO! The long answer, NOT LIKELY!

Truth No.3 – Do you know what to focus on to produce your best results?

In ensuring you are appropriately focused at all times, you must know what to focus on. For example, in your swing should you focus on your pivot, right arm, hands, clubhead, target and so on. This is an intensely personal decision that should be made based on previous success and feedback. Basically, you must determine what is the best course of action that will return you the best result possible. For a shortcut, discuss it with your coach and workout some likely options.

Truth No.4 – Routine, routine, routine

Creating an appropriate level of focus for each shot is as simple (and complex) as creating and utilising an appropriate routine. Tiger Woods speaks of having imaginary lines on the ground which he used to control his focus; as he walks over one heading to his ball he “puts on his game face.” After hitting the shot, he makes his way over the next and chills out. Other golfers use a shot bubble, others use physical cues, e.g., taking out their glove, whatever you decide to apply make sure you limit the amount of time you are switched on for, as 5 hours of solid focus will drain you of all your energy. From here, when you are switched on, focus only on those things that will help you to hit that one shot as best you can.

Your score can be largely influenced by how focused you are on the day. If you are not convinced, think about some of the silly mistakes you made on your last round and try to tell yourself you were in the zone and completely focused, and the result was just out of your hands.

Click here for more discussion in the “Instruction & Academy” forum.

Domenic Crouch is a mental game coach. You can follow Domenic on Twitter @domenic_crouch. For more information on Domenic, visit his website www.thinkfeelperform.com

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

2 days ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

4 weeks ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

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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