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| Relax Man!!! |
I would love to have the opportunity to talk to Charles and
fix that thing that he has that is sort of referred to as a golf swing that is
like no other persons on the planet, but I have seen many that bear a close
resemblance to this wonderful man’s efforts to try and play the not so simple
game of golf.
For many years I had the privilege of working at a golf
course that catered to mostly what we affectionately referred to as casual
golfers. Most of them were just plain bad mainly because they didn’t play that
often and never got instruction on how to hit a golf ball properly. That little
round white thing has a nasty habit of just reacting to whatever physics
experiments that you unknowingly apply to it and all it does is react in kind.
And I use the plural experiments for a reason since most causal golfer’s swings
have a multiple of things going wrong all at once so the ball is ultimately confused
and refuses to go in a straight line as you were expecting it to do.
So as a starter and course marshal, I saw thousands of that
type of swing. I always hated the term marshal which implied that I was some
sort of golf course police. I still did all the time management stuff required
to keep the course flow moving as well as can be with this type of golfer but I
felt that it was my responsibility as representative of the course, which is in
the hospitality business, to do a bang up job of making sure that the players
enjoyed themselves while on the premises. It made it easier to deal with the
few corrective actions necessary if they didn't show the course or other customers
the proper respect they deserve and I seldom ever had any problems since they
would have to let down a new friend that they just made if they acted like a
bozo. Regular customers were more like family.
But let us go back to the golf swing and how to correct it.
When you see a lot of bad golf swings and where the ball goes from a position
behind the player (NEVER STAND IN FRONT OF A PLAYER HITTING A GOLF BALL) it all
comes into place quite quickly. Standing in front of the player means anywhere
in a zone that is equal to or slightly ahead of where the player is and is sort
of 9-3 o’clock and that arch in between. It always surprise me how casual
golfers would stand in front and off to one side of another casual golfer about
to swing. Even the pros sometimes hit an “oops” and utter the most common word
you will hear on a golf course. Yes it is only 4 letters long and this is a
family show.
So when a player starts the motion of his back-swing and it follows a path that now cuts across the
direct line to the hole and finishes far to the left of a right handed swing,
the ball is going to start straight and start curving to the right which is the
classic slice. That is because that action imparts a clockwise rotation on the
ball and those little dimples in the ball react with the resistance to air and
cause it to perform a physics experiment that makes the ball do that bending curve.
What did you think they put the dimples on the ball to make it look pretty? And
any wind only increases the left to right flight action of the ball.
The correction for that is to get the golf swing to finish
in a more straight line that matches the desired path and to finish high
instead of left. So my simple correction is to advise the golfer to try
finishing towards the sky and about 5 holes later they are saying thank you so
much. It only lasts for a few more holes because they completely forget that
and revert back to their old swing and the ball goes hunting in the woods on
the right again.
Another one that gets misconstrued is don’t move your head
when you swing or you are lifting your head which are both misinformation. You
can’t possibly hit a golf ball properly if there isn’t well-timed head movement
and you don’t actually lift your head, you end up standing more erect and top
the ball. So the correction is more like keep your focus on the ball until
pretty much directly before impact and stay down in the swing and smoothly move
through the forward motion that is actually quite natural when you don’t try
starting to think about every single step.
And that is where Charles comes into the story now. He does
not take a basketball jump shot that looks anything like that even after his
playing career has ended. And that is where I would try to start with Charles
getting him to understand that the golf swing is a very fluid motion not unlike
a well-executed jump shot in basketball. Apparently Charles has a mental image
of an actual earthquake taking place at the point of his backswing stopping for
way too long and moving forward into motion that generates the power behind a
well-executed golf swing. Nothing else really explains that hitch he has or had
in his swing.
Looking at the picture I would also take that 3 metal out of
his bag and let him hit with maybe a 5-metal, 7 and 9 iron and putter and that
is about it. Use the driver maybe on a
tee and that would be pretty much it. No point in using all those clubs if you
can’t even hit with one now is there? Looks like the ball may be too far back
in his stance (hard to tell with angle of the photo) and get him to stand more
erect. His grip doesn’t look all that terrible so it may need less work. And
get him to relaxxxxxxx. He looks more like someone who is going to visit a team
of doctors about to perform a prostate examination than someone who is supposed
to be playing a game. Games are about having fun and that picture doesn’t look
much like a man having fun, in my opinion.
So my approach would be to work with him on his rhythm and
swing fluidity and use basketball analogies because that is a language he
totally understands. He speaks basketball fluently so why not try to teach the
game of golf in his language. And that is what is different about my approach
to helping a golfer improve his or her swing. I do not have my card nor was my
game any better than a 15 handicap mostly (maybe 12 if I played regularly) so I
am not allowed to teach at a course.
I cannot be considered an instructor but more of a coach as
one player/employee at the course said of me when I was helping him correct his
putting stoke a the practice green one day just before he successfully gained
his card. He had this unnatural stance that had him standing behind the ball
and looking at the hole as he hit the ball which resulted in the ball either
pulling slightly to the left or curving to the right if he hit across the ball
on impact just like the players on the tee.
And after all of that I would direct any casual golfer to
his nearest golf teaching professional to work on fine tuning his swing. So you
might think of me as a rough carpenter would be to building a well-carved
wooden sculpture. I would do well at getting the basic shapes of the sculpture
in place and the teaching professional would fine tune all the nuances that
give the sculpture its final shape and form.
The key to a good golf swing is to do it naturally and not
think about it so much during the actual motion. So learn how to have a nice
relaxing time out there on the course
and keep up with the group in front of you and everyone will have a great day.
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