Is there really a 'Magic Move' in Golf?

As many experienced players know all too well, golf is a very individualistic game. No two players, whether they be elite or beginners swing the club the same way. Their aesthetics are wholly different and vary a fair amount. They do, however, get back to impact all the same way (cue yawns and shouts of 'I've heard this before'). I do emphasise this point a lot during my lessons as golfers tend to perceive that the prettiest swing will provide the prettiest results. I'm not trying to make and develop the prettiest swing in the world when coaching, I'm here to develop the most effective way of getting the club back down to the ball as often as we possibly can.

However, in the age of information and copious amounts written on the game of golf, I see these sorts of headlines a lot on YouTube, golf improvement websites and golf magazines:

'CURE YOUR SLICE FOREVER'

'STOP SHANKING FOR GOOD'

.....but my ultimate favourite is this one..........

'GOLFS MAGIC MOVE TO HELP YOU PLAY YOUR BEST EVERYTIME'

I will give it it's dues, it is a very eye catching headline with the word 'magic' as the main hub of the phrase, sparking elements in our mind of Harry Potter style magic, turning our golf club into a wand and teleporting our ball towards the target in a simplistic flash of time, thus decreasing our handicap like we have never dreamed of before!

Now back to reality! I apologise for bursting many a golfers bubble here but there is no such thing as one 'Magic move' for all parties! It is a pure piece of marketing to capture our imaginations and lead us onto a false journey of the golf of our dreams. 

The reality is that everyone has their OWN magic move in golf. There is not just one of these magic moves that propel us to golfing stardom. Some golfers take the club steep and get back to the ball well, some take the club back shallow and get the job done. See Freddie Couples, Jim Furyk, Monty et al.

Now don't get me wrong, there are ways to swing the golf club back and through to help you gain better and more improved contact on the golf ball. I've seen many a golfer shank the ball as the player has either taken the club too far 'around' themselves on the way back and I've seen golfers shank it as they've taken the club too steep.

And yes, there is a 'correct' biomechanical way of getting club on ball with square face more of the time and more efficiently. See Pete Cowan's 'The Spiral Staircase' below which is the closest analogy (in my opinion) of the most efficient and sequenced way the body moves in the golf swing:

FROM THE TOP OF THE BACKSWING YOU INITIATE THE DOWNSWING BY SIMPLY REVERSING THE PROCESS FROM THE GROUND UP:

RIGHT ANKLE TO LEFT FOOT

RIGHT SHIN TO LEFT ANKLE

RIGHT KNEE TO LEFT SHIN

RIGHT THIGH TO LEFT KNEE

NOW FROM HERE YOUR BODY STARTS TO OPEN UP AS THE COIL MOVES UP AND AROUND YOUR BODY:

RIGHT HIP TO LEFT ABS

RIGHT ABS TO LEFT CHEST

RIGHT CHEST TO LEFT

SHOULDER

RIGHT SHOULDER…

Be warned, however, because if you are consciously aware of these movements during the swing, you will not become a better ball striker. Far from it, your swing will feel mechanical and therefore lacking everything from power to precision. Use this purely for informative purposes, DO NOT TRY ON THE COURSE! Feel free to get a sensation for it at home, practice area, supermarket, wherever you like, just not on the course in the middle of a round.

This is by far the best way of describing a 'Magic Move' in golf, but my point to this article......... Go and find a PGA Professional who can prescribe YOUR magic move. Not anyone else's move.... YOUR MOVE, to help you play better golf and enjoy the game more, whatever your move may be.

'The Flight of the ball tells it all'

Ok, so some of you golf geeks out there will have heard this quote before from the legend that is Mr John Jacobs. A true legend of the game who played to a high standard, coached to a (very) high standard, a founder of the European Tour and was captain of the European Ryder Cup teams in 1979 and 1981. Many a coach hangs by his every word, and rightfully so.

For me, his most famous quote is the one in the headline though. It is quite possibly the most important phrase in golfing folklore. It is the difference between scratch golfers and tour players. It's the difference between high handicaps and low handicaps..... it Is that vital! For you to reach your potential, you HAVE to know how your ball flight is created. It's that simple. You CANNOT reach your potential by simply trying to contort your body into the various positions you think it has to be. You cannot reach your potential by simply adhering to every piece of advice your playing partners tell you to improve your swing. They might indeed help you swing it more like Ernie Els, but will it improve YOUR BALL FLIGHT.

This is what this game is all about. It is not a game of who swings the club the sexiest (although can be admired in many a golfing circle), it is not a game of who can keep their head down the longest (we will come to this in a minute), and its not a game of who can hit the ball the furthest (although, again, admired by many a player).

It is all about what your ball does. The ball has no clue whether you're 10 years old or 90 years old. It doesn't know what your handicap is or whether you're a beginner or not. Your game is wholly influenced by where your golf ball travels.

Now, lets come onto the famous phrase I mentioned earlier that a lot swear by to aid their golfing improvement and send them into elite stardom on the golf course...... keep your head down (or another version is keep your eye on the ball)! It is quite possibly the WORST phrase ever to be used and has hindered far more golfers than it has helped (cue the gasps from readers who have given this advice out to all and sundry to help them play better). I taught nearly 2000 lessons last year, all golfers of various abilities, ages, physical abilities who came to me with a range of issues such as  topping the ball, shanking, fatting, thinning and more. As you can see, many differing array of shots here. And can you guess how many of these bad shots were caused by their head lifting up or taking their eyes off the ball? NONE! None at all. Zero. Not one bad shot was caused by taking their eye off the ball. They were all caused by various other issues, commonly the club being out of position at impact but not due to their original theory of their head potentially looking away from the ball.

For some reason it seems that this phrase has grown like a fungus. Everyone has got hold of it and taken it for gospel as though it is the most important aspect to better golf. It couldn't be further from the truth. In my opinion, this phrase originated and taken very much out of context when a lot of golf instruction books from decades ago encouraged you to keep your head still. As still as can be! This, again, has been proven to be a (slight) falsification as there has to be a little movement of the head during the swing. Not many people have the ability to rotate their body and keep their head in the same place. Still, this is very different from attempting to keep your eye on the ball. Even in other sports you hear it. Footballs a classic. 'He hit it in row z because he didn't keep his eye on the ball'. Nonsense......... he's hit it into row z because his centre of gravity was way behind the ball, striking the ball on the upswing, increasing launch angle and therefore height on the ball.

Please do not tell anyone you are trying to improve (especially beginners) to keep their head down or eye on the ball. It is extremely destructive and will lead to more bad things than good.

Anyway, back to the original post and it's importance.

Whenever I ask a golfer how they are doing and how they feel their golf is going to try and get some feedback into their thoughts and processes they go through, the large majority I would say talk about their golf as to what they are doing in their swing. 'I'm not keeping left arm straight' or 'I'm not turning enough' are very common responses. But the fact is, how do we KNOW we aren't doing these things we think we are meant to be doing? We can't see ourselves swing and maybe get the odd piece of feedback from playing partners to back up our theories. But feel and real are two very different things and therefore it is extremely difficult (but not impossible) to feel exactly what is hindering our best golf in our swings.

So how on earth are we meant to know how to correct our bad shots when we are out on the course if we aren't entirely sure what is happening in our golf swing? 'THE FLIGHT OF THE BALL TELLS IT ALL'. The flight of the ball will tell us exactly what the CLUB is doing. Please note I did say what the 'club' is doing and not the swing. Golfers tend to bypass what the club does and delve straight into the swing. Let me ask you this..................... how do you change a lightbulb? Do you think about simply screwing the bulb in place or do you think about your wrist/forearm rotation and pressure you're holding the bulb with to get it in? If your answer is the latter one, please reassess how you change a lightbulb!

My point to this article................... To improve your golf you need to learn and understand what your bad shot ball flight is, whether it starts right of target and curves further right, starts at the target and curves left, starts left and curves to the right of target and so on, because these can give you the feedback you need to discover what's happening.

My dad always told me when I first started to play the game that 'the ball doesn't lie'. When you were 7 years old you didn't always believe what your dad told you so at the time I was a non-believer in that phrase. How wrong was I!

The club has the biggest influence as stated at the beginning of this article. No two ways about it. But I can hear what you're shouting at your phone or laptop reading this now........ 'the club is influenced by the swing and what YOU tell the club to do'!

And yes, you would be absolutely right. But let me ask you this........... how many things can go wrong in the swing when a bad shot occurs? A LOT! How many things can go wrong with the club when a bad shot occurs? 4.......... clubface open, clubface closed, path of club is out to in too much, path of club is in to out too much. How much easier is it to diagnose a club flaw as opposed to a biomechanical/technical swing flaw? Answer..... A LOT EASIER!

I will leave you with this diagram below. It is a diagram of what the club is doing to influence what the ball does. This should be the holy grail and told to every golfer on the planet because golf is a heck of a lot easier when you are thinking more about what the golf club is doing as opposed to what the body is doing.

View fullsize

Please promise me one thing when you next go to the range or go for a round on course....... when you hit a poor shot (which is inevitable in this game), think about what your golf club did to influence the ball flight and not what your body did to influence it. You will be a lot less frustrated.... trust me!

Trackman and the Philosophers Swing

A lot has been written about Trackman of late. The haters gonna continue to hate (not mentioning any names………..Brandel Chamblee) and the lovers are still gonna love what Trackman can provide to all sorts of golfers. The detail is immense and continues to innovate to become an even better launch monitor to help us all.

As a coach who does a lot of work with Trackman in teaching and as a specialist Callaway custom fitter, I see a lot of benefits to the famous Orange box……….. as long as the person uses it correctly as opposed to distributing every single piece of information Trackman has to give (and that’s a lot)

Trackman has single handedly changed the way golf is taught, simply by proving ball flight laws to be not quite as they seemed (‘path bends it, face sends it’ as it now is compared to ‘face bends it, path sends it’ as it used to be). It has proved that the balls starting direction is majorly influenced by the face angle and the curvature is caused by the path that the sweetspot travels. Revolutionary!

It has also provided the golfer with much needed information about the angle the clubhead arrives at the golf ball, defining the correct angle that a specific club should approach the ball at to help the quality of the contact the club makes with the ground, vital in consistent ball striking.

Trackman has also provided us with information about exactly how far we hit the ball. Yes, many launch monitors can do this, but to the degree of accuracy of Trackman?

So if there are all these benefits to the Orange box, why has it got so many people not even considering parting with a single pound/dollar/euro to purchase?

The argument is golf (as in any sport, but more so this great game), has to be instinctive to reach your potential in achieving what you can, whether it be to break 100 or to achieve a top 50 in the world rankings. And the argument is that Trackman takes away our instinctive abilities and forces us into consciously improving our positions to ensure our spin axis tilt doesn’t go beyond 2 degrees left or right consistently, our swing direction stays fairly neutral and our dynamic loft with a 6 iron remains constant. Forever monitoring and persistent evaluation on every shot is not exactly condusive togood golf.

However, the key to using Trackman to its full potential, helping you perform to your best ability not only technically but mentally as well is discovered in research conducted by Dr Gabriele Wulf of the University of Nevada. Her research focused on 2 keys areas of learning…… internal focus V external focus. Internal focus is placing attention on the areas of the body movements during the golf swing, generally the way coaches have taught since Golf began. The external focus, however, is the way that many a good golf coach is adamant in teaching. The external focus in golf are our ‘tools’, our club and our ball. To get the best out of any golfer, for short and long term gain, learning about what our club and ball are doing is crucial, as opposed to focusing on the movement of the body where it becomes a very conscious, robotic move in any change we make to seek out improved ball striking.

This is where Trackman comes in. Trackman takes measurements of our external factors, it hasn’t got a clue (or even cares) where the body is positioned in the swing. And any coach worth their salt will discuss with their clients what the CLUB is doing to influence the ball flight. The player can therefore then subconsciously do what they need to do by simply applying focus to the external factors and not the ‘mechanics’ of the body movement thanks to the information that Trackman provides to improve their shots. By recognising what the ball is doing (remember, ‘The flight of the balls tells it all’……… John Jacobs), we can correct it fairly easily without having to consciously think about where our hands are or where our elbows are at certain points in the golf swing. Trackman can tell you what the club is doing to influence the ball. Go and see a PGA Pro who has Trackman (or any other launch monitor) and get them (if they don’t already) to explain your club/ball relationship and how, by making adjustments to those external factors, will help you and your game

Distance - is it underestimated?

Who wants their golf ball to go further??? (100% of hands reach to the sky)!!!

Distance is a great thing. The beauty of seeing the ball fly as high and as far as anyone can in your club is a very good feeling (not that I have experience in this). The constant 'ooos' and 'ahhhs' as your playing partners watch in admiration at your Callaway Chrome Soft flying 300+ yards.

But is it a crucial aspect to playing better golf and, more importantly, how do we get more of it?

First of all, distance is a vital aspect in reducing your scores. Recent research (Mark Broadie - Every Shot Counts) has shown that the probability of you shooting a lower score is strongly correlated with the distance that you can achieve. Now, this might not sound good to all you players who believe you don't hit the ball very far. But, I have some good news......... EVERYONE (yes, you) can achieve more distance, whether it be 5 yards or 50 yards, we can all achieve greater distance. And its not as hard as you think!

The foremost reason that golfers do not achieve the distance they are capable of is down to the quality of the contact made with the ball...... in other words an 'off-centre hit' will travel considerably less distance than a centred strike (a centred strike being the ball struck off the middle of the club or the 'sweet spot').

It doesn't matter if you swing the club as hard as you can, you will not reach your optimal distance if the ball is not struck out of the centre of the face of the club. That horrible 'clunky' feeling will ensue and you might also feel the golf club twisting in your hands as the club moves violently when the ball is struck on the outside of the face.

So what do we have to do to ensure we strike the middle more often to achieve greater distance?

There are a number of great drills out there to help you, but first we must know exactly where the ball is being struck off the clubface. To do this, we need a training aid that can be found at your local chemist or Sainsburys!!! (Cue bizarre, puzzled looks). Athletes foot powder (Daktarin spray powder to be exact) can be used to see exactly where your ball is being struck on the face. Simply spray the product on the face of the golf club, take your normal swing and strike the ball and 'voila', a mark will appear on the face to show you where the ball was struck. If its in the very centre of the face then happy days, keep on going and you are reaching optimal distance. If it's on the outside of the face then you have work to do. Simply (and more importantly INSTINCTIVELY) try and hit the ball out of the middle of the club. I don't want you to think about changing your swing to allow this to happen, I just want you to change the area the ball is being struck from, two very different things.

Test yourself. If you constantly strike the ball off the heel, try and strike it out of the toe and vice-versa. If you keep hitting it out of the middle see how many in a row you can hit out of the middle.

Golf is much more fun when you hit the ball in the area of the clubface you are supposed to!

Hope this helps.

Myth Busters - Left arm straight!

I love coaching Golf........ the different swings, the different people and the joy on peoples face when they hit a shot like they've never hit before. A huge satisfaction for player and coach alike.

I also love hearing what people have heard and read about the golf swing..... I'm educated every day. Especially when there's 14 million books been published about how to play golf, no one is going to read them all so I'm intrigued as to what golfers have seen and heard in attempts to help them reach the pinnacle of the game or their potential.

A classic 'swing fix' that always comes up is 'my left arm must be straight' (for a right handed golfer). But no one can give a valid reason for this to be a necessity! Which usually indicates it's another thing to tick off the list of unnecessary swing thoughts that clog up many a players mind and inhibiting their action.

The truth is that keeping your left arm straight is one of the worst things you can do? Why? Because if you try and keep the arm straight in the backswing, especially for players of an un-flexible nature, you risk adding tension into your body and connectors (arms) which causes all sorts of problems including topping and fatting the shot.

The club has to do the work during the golf swing action and if ever tension in the body is part of the equation, bad shots can occur in trying to manipulate the club back to the ball.

I encourage you not to think or try to keep the left arm straight and see how you get on without this destructive myth.

Early specialisation

Junior development in the game of golf......................A much written about subject with a lot of various opinions out there as to how is best to nurture the future of the game whether it be to develop the new Rory McIlroy or simply enjoy the game of golf to the best of their ability, helping them socially and physically in the long term.

I have heard and seen many parents almost desperately wanting their children to be the next 'big thing' for many a reason, but especially to enhance their pension pot! This can lead to only negative effects, including 'pushy parents', children rebelling, falling out of love with the game, pressure....... the list goes on in the quest of leading their little ones to the summit of the game when, realistically, the chance of that happening, no matter how much talent the child has, is less than winning the lottery twice in a lifetime (in other words, the odds are stacked against).

Kids have to learn to love the game, that's the bottom line, and they enjoy the game by not being pressured but by having fun, very little technical input and having very few rules, far fewer than the R and A 'bible' prints out. All that will come with their experience and development but they will never experience that if they don't love the game and give up before they turn into teenagers.

The children of the future need not one sport to play, not two sports, they need a wide range of sports to be able to play. Research has shown that development stems from not just playing and dedicating themselves to one sport, development and improvement and enjoyment come from participation in a range of sports, not just spending 6 hours a day bashing balls on the driving range.

There is plenty of reading on this subject, especially from PGA Professional Adrian Cafaro, who has written a great thesis on talent development and this link from the Titleist Performance Institute:

http://www.mytpi.com/articles/juniors/more_sports_better_development

I run Junior classes every weekend involving children, developing their skills and, most importantly, we have fun. Please contact me to sign your child up, whether they are a complete beginner or an already experienced player.