Tweet
Historically, it is it is taken for granted that the moment someone starts having golf lessons their game will go to the dogs for a lengthy period before they see any signs of improvement. Why? Lessons have tended to start with the statement, let’s see you hit a few shots and lets see what’s wrong!
Instead of dealing in negatives, and looking at faults is a negative, lets look at how to go forward and build. In theory, if a golfer is working towards building a new swing, their old faults will disappear anyway.
The one big problem with fixing a fault is, which fault do you fix as every swing is made up of compensatory faults. One fault in an otherwise perfect swing would cause a problem, either accuracy or quality of strike, so another fault steps in to try to ‘plug the gap’ as it were.
With a world class swing, there is a chain reaction of movement with the whole body being involved. Note the full follow through position of a top player, the higher handicap golfer never gets there. We talk of a ’chain reaction of correct movement’. Faults interfere with this chain reaction and what we see as we move up the handicap scale are swings that look ungainly and incorrect, the faults interfere with the natural chain reaction.
The statement I have heard most over the years is consistency, or in fact, lack of. Why? Some days the game feels easy and yet the next time you play its back to the same old stuff. It might even be just one shot that effortless strike that sails away leaving you puzzled because you don’t know how to repeat. We know we are capable of hitting the ball well but can’t seem to produce the good stuff often enough and certainly not at will
Practising a lot will make things marginally more stable but will not produce substantial results if the golfer is just standing hitting balls. The chances of stumbling on ‘it’ are extremely unlikely and sadly the faults are being further ingrained into the subconscious.
When we identify a fault and try to eradicate it, we upset the chain of compensatory faults and bang goes whatever game the golfer had. Our experience has show that eliminating one fault tends to introduce other faults, other compensations, so as one goes another introduces itself.
Instead of dealing in negatives, and looking at faults is a negative, lets look at how to go forward and build. In theory, if a golfer is working towards building a new swing, their old faults will disappear anyway.
The one big problem with fixing a fault is, which fault do you fix as every swing is made up of compensatory faults. One fault in an otherwise perfect swing would cause a problem, either accuracy or quality of strike, so another fault steps in to try to ‘plug the gap’ as it were.
With a world class swing, there is a chain reaction of movement with the whole body being involved. Note the full follow through position of a top player, the higher handicap golfer never gets there. We talk of a ’chain reaction of correct movement’. Faults interfere with this chain reaction and what we see as we move up the handicap scale are swings that look ungainly and incorrect, the faults interfere with the natural chain reaction.
The statement I have heard most over the years is consistency, or in fact, lack of. Why? Some days the game feels easy and yet the next time you play its back to the same old stuff. It might even be just one shot that effortless strike that sails away leaving you puzzled because you don’t know how to repeat. We know we are capable of hitting the ball well but can’t seem to produce the good stuff often enough and certainly not at will
Practising a lot will make things marginally more stable but will not produce substantial results if the golfer is just standing hitting balls. The chances of stumbling on ‘it’ are extremely unlikely and sadly the faults are being further ingrained into the subconscious.
When we identify a fault and try to eradicate it, we upset the chain of compensatory faults and bang goes whatever game the golfer had. Our experience has show that eliminating one fault tends to introduce other faults, other compensations, so as one goes another introduces itself.
Comment