Instruction
Creating A Little Chaos Can Be Good For Your Golf Game
Doesn’t it seem at times that golf is the ultimate game of randomness and that the way you play is total and utter chaos? One day you are in perfect control, and the next day you are so frustrated you want to go Happy Gilmore crazy and beat up Bob Barker.
In Jurassic Park, the character Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) uses “Chaos Theory” to explain occurrences in the world: “seemingly random and unpredictable occurrences that nevertheless follows precise rules.” I certainly see players take unpredictable, random actions on the golf course and in practice that create less than perfect outcomes.
But what if introducing a little chaos is a good thing for your golf game? What if it can make you focus better and can improve your aim? As a player’s coach, I try to limit the chaos a player deals with on a day-to-day basis on the golf course. Golf introduces chaos as an outside influence, however, and it makes what I try to control uncontrollable… unless I create awareness.
Things like the cut of the grass, the direction the tee markers point, or how the hole is designed create can create chaos for golfers. I have to help golfers find order in the chaos so they can keep their golf ball out of the water, the trees, the palmettos, the creek, and the Haverkamp’s backyard. To do this, I have to get them to focus. This is where my chaos drill comes in. It can help golfers see where they want to go instead of allowing the tee markers or the cut of grass to point them in the wrong direction.
The Chaos Drill
Start by laying down a bunch of clubs or alignment sticks in front of your ball. The more it looks like a game of pickup sticks, the better. You want them to point in a lot of different directions. Your job as you stand behind the ball is to fight through all the random lines pointing you in the wrong direction and see the ideal line, which is where you want the ball to go. You can even hold up your club and use the shaft as a pointer if that helps you see the correct line.
Seeing through all the chaos will help you learn to visualize the right line of play, which will get you on the right track before you even address the ball. And when you take the “chaos” away, it will be that much harder for an outside influence to get you off track.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
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
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.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
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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Rob Strano
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:30 am
Thanks for the comments and feedback.
I have just one thing to say:
Dont comment until you have tried it
If you struggle with focus and seeing where to hit the ball this works wonders on making you see past the sticks and see your line only. It works 100% of the time I have to use it. I guarantee you if I had any tour players do this they wouldn’t even see the sticks. That is how focused they get over the shot. When getting someone to aim better and focus I will try anything that will get the job done. This gets the job done.
And regarding the length of the article being shorter than my bio…I guess I have a really good bio and also can get my point across without being overly “wordy”. And that is a good thing! Plus I have editors lol…
Micky Stuart
Sep 21, 2017 at 12:16 pm
Rob! Is that a new driver? I hope that you didn’t get that because of me!! I gotta tell ya the time spent with you back in July has helped me tremendously. I do the finger point to the sky drill every day and the improvement in my putting from just the literally 5-10 minutes we spent is amazing. You are the man and I will be back next time I am on vacation.
Rob Strano
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:31 am
Thanks for the great feedback Micky! Keep up the good work and see you next time you are at the beach!
AllanA
Sep 20, 2017 at 2:13 pm
Interesting psycho-experiment you teach. What you are doing is messing up with the mind, the brain, by asking the student to allow chaos to reign, consciously.
It’s conscious chaos versus unconscious orderliness. One way to eliminate conscious chaos is to practice intensively, in an obsessive-compulsive manner. If you survive massive practice and ingrain your brain and neuro-muscular system with proper golfswing mechanics, chaos is mostly eliminated or well controlled.
The problem with recreational golfers is they don’t know how to control their mental states and invariably crash into chaos. They get frustrated and angry with their clubs, but not themselves because to do so would be to psychologically admit they are incompetent to play golf. Off to the golf store to buy ‘better’ clubs.
SoloGolfer
Sep 20, 2017 at 6:14 pm
Yup, and the first sign of mental chaos is the guy who obsessively buys new clubs annually or semi-annually to get rid of his swing problems. The same goes for searching for ‘golf tips’.
Allananoob
Sep 21, 2017 at 6:39 am
You know nothing AllanA. You are psychologically incompetent to post a cogent comment.
X-out
Sep 21, 2017 at 12:54 pm
No, it’s you who is “psychologically incompetent” because “your” comment is not cogent nor mature. You have the intellect of a snobby 12 y.o. …. so obvious.
Boss
Sep 20, 2017 at 1:20 pm
I can ignore all those things in front me no problem like I do when I am in the trees so what’s the point of this drill? lol
Rob Strano
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:34 am
Thanks for the question and comment Boss…
If you can do what you say above then this drill is not for you. I use this for the folks that are not able to find the line and focus on whats in front of them. You have succeeded in training yourself to do something a lot of players have not.
Continued success on the course
Double Mocha Man
Sep 20, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Hey Rob… good start on an interesting concept. But remember one rule of journalism: The article should always be longer than the author’s bio.
Rob Strano
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:35 am
I guess I have a really good bio, and on the positive side can say what I want to say without using a ton of words. Which is good right?!!!
Also, I have editors that do a really good job.
Thanks for the comment and laugh
TheCityGame
Sep 20, 2017 at 9:01 am
If you gave me that drill, I’d find a butt end of one of those sticks to make my “aim point” and just fire right over it. If you want to mess with my head, find a pristine surface that gives me no marker or blemish or spot to aim over.
Introducing “chaos” is an important idea, IMO. It’s particularly important if you practice off mats which give you a built in alignment aid (the square mat itself). When I’m on a mat, I like to make sure I’m hitting at targets that are at an angle to the mat, usually one left, one square, and one right. Even a rope on a grass range can provide a type of alignment aid you don’t normally get.
The more you can screw with your head while practicing, the better you’ll deal with stuff on the course, but people want to go to a range and practice their swing, hit positions, etc. They don’t want to hit balls from bad lies, or try to hit 3 different clubs the same difference. or practice things that really translate to the course, or go play a round with 5 clubs in their bag, or whatever.
I’ve got a million ways to mess with my practice. I’ll stand way too close to the ball, stand too far from the ball, stand with legs too close, too far, start the backswing with the clubhead hovering a foot off the ground, start the backswing with the club already in motion, rapid fire balls, stand over the ball a LONG TIME before starting the backswing, etc etc.
None of that directly might come up on the course, but it’s like golf-athlete-cross-training — working on being athletic and reactionary.
John
Sep 20, 2017 at 3:49 pm
Well put, +1
Rob Strano
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:38 am
Thanks for the comment
Even finding the ability to aim over the butt end of a stick and fire right over it is dialing in your focus. That little end is a small spot in the middle of lots of lines and angles that all go off in different directions. By picking an end you are creating a start point that lines up with YOUR end point. Now we have order out of chaos and you are going where you want to go.
Continued success and keep up the good practice