Instruction
File your good golf shots, forget the bad ones
Most of the joy in golf comes from great shots. Everyone knows the feeling of a pure shot. Many of us even remember the shot that got us addicted to this great game.
Despite the enjoyment great shots bring, golf is a game of misses too, and it always will be. Finding a way to balance the “good” with the “not so good” is critical for golfers to play their best golf and get the most out of their mental game.
At the Gary Gilchrist Golf Academy, we teach our juniors and professionals that this balance can be reached with mastering the understanding of two simple words – filing and forgetting.
One of the biggest keys to understanding the mental side of golf is learning to file away great shots and forget bad ones. This will help golfers lower their scores and increase their enjoyment of the game. Every golfer has the power to choose what they focus on. Once they know this, all they have to do is focus on the right things.
Following each shot, golfers have a choice: Is this a shot they should file away, or is this a shot they should forget? Golfers should file away shots they like for future use. Shots they dislike, they should forget about and leave in the past.
So how exactly do golfers file and forget shots?
Let’s start with shots that golfers want to remember. Every great golfer has a personal highlight reel of their best shots. Some professionals will go as far as making videos of their best shots to watch later on. To get the same effect, golfers don’t need to hire a video crew to follow them around. All they need to do is create a mental folder where they file all the shots they want to remember.
At GGGA, we teach our students to feel the joy of each great shot. This is called emotionalizing.
If golfers really want to supercharge their filing system, they should close their eyes and replay the shot in their mind and feel the positive emotions. Once they have done this, the shot is in their mental folder and ready to be remembered whenever their game needs a spark of confidence.
The first step to forgetting a shot is this: golfers should promise themselves that they aren’t going to leave the previous shot until they are ready to forget it. If they need to blow off some steam, they should take a couple deep breaths. If they think their swing is the culprit, they should rehearse several swings the way they want them to feel. If they need a pep talk, they should give themselves one. Once they have accepted the shot, they can begin walking and leave the shot behind.
Practice filing and forgetting after every shot — on the range and while playing — and you will soon have a personal highlight reel for each club in your bag.
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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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