Instruction

The best approach to working on swing mechanics

Published

8 years ago

May 5, 2016

When I was in college and playing full-time, I was notorious for leaving the course early to “go work on my swing.” This tendency did me no favors in learning how to score, but it did help me to understand how to practice. As with anything, too much or too little of something can be an issue in golf. I’ve watched many good players practice too long and ruin any good work they have done. I’ve seen many others ignore their swing mechanics entirely, which is just as dangerous.

In this article, I’d like to help you understand how to work on your swing mechanics for the fastest-possible improvement. In my 30+ years of experience as an instructor, I’ve learned that focusing on swing mechanics is not always the best idea, whether you’re working on your swing by yourself or with an instructor. A better path is to focus on the feels that create better mechanics, and ideally, those feels should come from you.

There are endless swing issues that hamper golfers from hitting the ball straight. For the sake of this article, we’re going to say that your problem is caused by a face-to-path issue and your swing analysis is the one above. If you’re trying to hit a straight shot or draw, the club path (blue line) is too far left of the target at impact for your club face. This causes a fade or slice. Assuming you’re making center contact, the red and green arrows show club-face positions that will cause you to hit a fade or slice with your left-ward path. And if the club face is pointed where the black arrow is, you’re going to hit a monster slice that doesn’t go very far.

To hit straighter shots, we know we must move your swing path in line, or slightly right of the club face if you want to hit a draw. Now, we must figure out how to do it.

This is the point where you have a decision to make on how to fix your issue: with feel or with mechanics. As a teacher, I’ve always wanted my students to learn through what’s called guided self-discovery. I point them in the right direction and give them checkpoints to audit. They then come back to me with the best feel that works for them. When I was a younger teacher, I used to immediately give students mechanical thoughts to fix their issues, but I found the scientific approach to the swing wasn’t always the best. By encouraging them to feel things on their own rather than spoon-feed them an answer, they often got better faster.

So let’s go back to our example, and what I would do. Provided the path is a few degrees left and not extremely left, I would tell you we need to shift the path back to the right. I would put a training aid on the ground to make you feel what I want you to do, compared to what you are currently doing. After you have made a few swings, I would ask you what you feel and have you focus on this feel for a few more swings. After we have identified the best feel, I would take the training aid away and ask you to repeat the process and see if the feel sticks.

The key to the process is allowing you to identify your own feel and fix for your swing issue. If I instantly tell you to do “X,” you will only focus on that. Since I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling, I cannot accurately describe what you need to feel to fix what you’re doing.

If you can’t feel the fix

If this works, great, but as golfers who have taken lessons know, students can’t always find the feel that fixes things for them. What happens then? At this point, I use my experience to help them find the right feel, and this is where mechanics can come in. It’s also here that we often must break the swing down into smaller sub-skills that golfers need to master in order to fix the bigger problem. So let’s say that your backswing is too far inside and behind you on the takeaway, and this is causing your leftward path. I might have you work on taking the club back straighter and focus on what parts of the body drive this motion.

When working on your swing on the range, try to focus on feels in order to perform your motion. If you’re not sure what you’re feeling, or the results aren’t getting better, then maybe it’s time to see a qualified golf instructor. Remember, he or she has probably seen your exact issue in hundreds of lessons. It’s ultimately that experience that will help him or her guide you on the proper path.

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Tom Stickney II

Tom F. Stickney II, is a specialist in Biomechanics for Golf, Physiology, and 3d Motion Analysis. He has a degree in Exercise and Fitness and has been a Director of Instruction for almost 30 years at resorts and clubs such as- The Four Seasons Punta Mita, BIGHORN Golf Club, The Club at Cordillera, The Promontory Club, and the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. His past and present instructional awards include the following: Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, Golf Digest Top 50 International Instructor, Golf Tips Top 25 Instructor, Best in State (Florida, Colorado, and California,) Top 20 Teachers Under 40, Best Young Teachers and many more. Tom is a Trackman University Master/Partner, a distinction held by less than 25 people in the world. Tom is TPI Certified- Level 1, Golf Level 2, Level 2- Power, and Level 2- Fitness and believes that you cannot reach your maximum potential as a player with out some focus on your physiology. You can reach him at [email protected] and he welcomes any questions you may have.

5 Comments

Mbwa Kali Sana

May 18, 2016 at 9:45 am

You have to develop a “repeat,repeat ,repeat “swing from sound initial mechanics .
The best sound basic teaching is to be found in the ancient book of famous Golf Pro and champion JOHNNY REVOLTA .
Just practise the simple “JOHNNY REVOLTA formula ” 100 times a day ,and I guarantee you will develop a super grooved and consistent swing!

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Tom

May 6, 2016 at 9:48 pm

Tom,
I was a 9 in the pre-index era at my home course (equal to about a 7 index). I was always a feel player and did not learn a lot of mechanics. I did not play much then for about 30 years. Upon returning to the game, when I did make a good swing I knew it but I could not for the life of me tell you what was wrong with my many bad swings and proceeded to get worse until I got help.
I have been working with my pro now from Oct 2014-June 2015 then again from Feb. 2016 to now on a weekly basis. (Gap in time was a health issue.) Anyhow I have had to learn a lot of mechanics so I understand things better and can get to that good feeling swing. There are many many things I wish I had known at a younger age and while I can support looking for a feel, it seems like when one goes off the rails knowing the mechanics is just as in not more important.
The very best things have been a combination of drills that ingrain the feel and explanation of the mechanics so I can self diagnose a bit.

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Jim

May 6, 2016 at 1:27 pm

Tom,

It seems like almost all instruction talks about a left swing path and fixing a slice. I have a horrible inside out swing path, that comes from too far behind me and way too shallow to the ball. I have worked relentlessly to try to fix this by weakening my left hand grip, moving the ball well forward, keeping my right shoulder higher, and trying to swing left. The results after working on this for over six years, is that I still greatly fear the left, still hit fat and thin shots, and way too many flip hooks off the planet. I’m good with anything teed up, but tight lies are almost a non starter. I find it very difficult to turn through the ball and I’ve had a significant lower back injury. What am I doing wrong?

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Bob Jones

May 6, 2016 at 11:53 am

Yes, find the “feel” during the lesson so it is attached to the right mechanic. Feel is the only way we can know that the things we can’t see are the right things to be doing. The big problem with feel is that it can drift over time — the mechanic gradually changes but the feel stays the same. I’m not sure what the answer to this is.

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Josh

May 5, 2016 at 9:25 am

Interesting read. A new look at teaching feel vs just mechanics. I’ve always had a hard time with feel. What has worked for me personally is to use the extremes in order to develop the feel and/or the correct mechanics.

For example I’ll over exaggerate a strong grip that will after several weeks settle to a slightly stronger grip, which is what I wanted. However; what doesn’t work is just starting off with a slightly stronger grip. I’ve found in my own endeavors that small subtle changes are the hardest to keep because you can easily revert back, but using the extreme change, you body and mind is forced to use the change, and therefore, more likely to stick without reverting back.

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Instruction

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

Published

1 week 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

1 month 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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