Instruction
Are you sure it’s your technique?
There are a couple of common phrases I often hear when meeting a new pupil on the lesson tee for the first time
“I know my problem is a slice because the face is open,” is one. Another popular phrase is: “I should be able to hit it farther. I am just not flexible enough.” Then there’s my favorite, “I keep lifting my head.”
These are all great phrases that every golfer, including me, has heard or said in their golfing careers. The funny thing is that most golfers continue to say them time and time again, year after year and see no improvement. What’s more, each year they go to their golf professional and ask for a technique change, and sometimes that technique doesn’t improve their shot, so they’re back to square one. Here come those sayings again!
So why are golfers not improving?
As a coach, I feel golfers need to understand where their problem really is and what actually needs to be done to change it. There are four reasons why golfers struggle to improve their game and ball striking, shoot lower scores and reduce their handicaps. For me it is not always technique.
The four areas I want to share with you are:
Concept
Whenever a player tells me they are slicing, my next question will almost always be, “So your ball starts left of target?” This often brings a puzzled look, generally because they don’t know; they see the curve and assume that it’s slice. My advice for any player who struggles with direction is first understand two things: where the ball starts relative to YOUR target and how the ball curves. Once you know this, you’ll understand that the club face is responsible for the initial start direction, and swing direction is more responsible for curve.
Look at the shots below and identify your own shot pattern. Are you naming your shots correctly?
Check out picture below.
Another example of a concept issue for golfers is how a ball gets in the air. When I ask a player who struggles to get the ball in the air what they think is wrong, they often say, “I didn’t get underneath it.” This is a clear misunderstanding of the concept of how a ball is hit in the air, which often see leads to the technical fault of “flicking” or “scooping.”
Here is the correct answer: A ball on the ground hit with an iron gains height due to the angles created by the loft of the club, a DOWNWARD action of a club, club head speed and good solid contact with some shaft lean.
Check out your club line to help you with this concept:
Place your 7 iron on the ground and notice the natural angle of the shaft. It will lean forward. If it is designed with that in mind, it would make sense that it needs to get to something similar at impact.
By changing concept, you could go from the left picture to the right picture. That will help with your ball flight.
So if you know that a downward action helped to create a shot that gets in the air, would you try to “get under it?”
Next time you’re wondering why your golf isn’t improving, don’t go straight to your old technique tips. Find out what needs to happen, whether you or anyone else attempts that shot, and it will have a bearing on your technique.
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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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JHM
Oct 2, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Good first article. Look forward to reading more.
Alan
Sep 24, 2013 at 10:20 am
Jack, great comment the article is a basic overview. The path and face are relative to each other and the target line. We are also are forgetting the angle of attack plays a part in swing direction. I think players have a confusion on path vs plane. Without being too technical swing path is the direction CoG is travelling through impact. Check out some of Joseph Mayo’s videos on you tube, or by all means feel free to email me for a Skype chat. Thanks
Thanks for all the comments folks on my first article though
Jack
Sep 23, 2013 at 12:50 am
“understand that the club face is responsible for the initial start direction, and swing direction is more responsible for curve.”
I know there’s been literature written that agrees with this. I’m still stuck in the old school. Please help me understand. So if I swing a straight swing path (not inside out or outside in) and my clubface is open the ball would go right and straight (with no curve)? Seems weird. I usually find that if I do an inside out swing, and keep the clubface neutral it results in a push. I’ve tried doing an outside in swing path and if the clubface is more neutral to slightly open I hit a fade. If I accidentally close the clubface at impact (which is a habit of mine) the ball starts left and curves left. So this new idea baffles me. Please help me understand. Thanks.
naflack
Sep 17, 2013 at 1:49 am
the 2 best things that ever happened to my game were 1)watching david duval hit balls with his head turned towards the target and 2)watching a video explaining that lag happens on its own, you cant force it. that was the last time i ever tried to keep my head down or create lag and my push fade disappeared…ive consistently broken 80 ever since.
paul
Sep 17, 2013 at 12:25 am
My friend had a 30-40 yard slice. i told him it wasn’t the face angle it was his path. so i put a head cover behind and to the outside and told him to not hit it. he hit 20 draws in a row before he hit a slice, followed by more draws again. he’s a good student.
Tom
Sep 16, 2013 at 2:36 pm
this is a great article. Now I have too re-think my set-up..hmmmmm
Alan
Sep 24, 2013 at 10:21 am
appreciate it Tom, best of luck