Golf is a bit like chess, you have to constantly analyze your moves and your position, in the case of golf, that means, in a general sense, analyzing your swing and your course management abilities.
This, believe it or not, is one of the many enjoyable parts of our favourite game, too many golfers get their enjoyment only from a good result which leads them to feeling frustrated most of the time.
The pros, at least the top pros, all have help from a lot of different sources, eg. swing coach, mental coach, coarse analysts, and of course not forgetting their caddy who does a lot more than just carry their equipment for them.
Most of us, however, have to rely on nothing more than ourselves and maybe a few lessons from the local pro now and again, so getting to know our own swing and adapting what we have is imperative and a good pro will help us achieve this when we do get a lesson.
Our local pro is not with us when we are playing golf, so his advice on correcting our swing faults is not available when we most need it. This is why we have to be able to analyze our own swing and get to know each and every part of it.
As far as our swing goes, it's the basics that we struggle to get right, if we don't know the fundamentals then we have nothing to rely on when things go wrong, that fundamental method that we know works every time and gives us a straight shot, no heroics, no great distance, but something that we know will produce a certain outcome.
In order to get the basics right, we have to be aware of our swing, the path it is taking, and whether the club face is square at impact. Getting our stance right is less important, an open or closed stance should not matter if the swing trajectory and club face is right, it is still possible to produce an accurate and straight shot, the only part of our stance we need to get right is what they call the athletic stance, straight back, chin up, bend from the hips. Apart from these, it's your personal swing that you have to work with.
When most golfers are preparing for a shot, they take a couple of practice swings and concentrate on... what?
Usually, a lot of things like, are they lined up right, is the club head just skimming the grass at the right spot, is their left arm straight..., and a whole collection of other things. What they should be concentrating on is the swing, they should be aware of what the club is doing during it's complete journey from being at rest all the way through the back swing until it returns to the impact zone. Not just the trajectory of the club, but also what is happening to the club face.
Once we stand up to the ball, get our balance right and take a look at the green, trust in your own natural ability that you will be lined up correctly, you really don't have to worry about that, our brains are well capable of doing this automatically.
So next time your on the course or at the driving range, trust your mind to control the things it can and concentrate instead on what your swing is doing, once you get proficient at that, the basics will become obvious and, more to the point, you will understand them and be able to return to them whenever you need to.
My own golf site is young and still growing, but it has some information, some quirky and some of a more conventional nature, but it still has a long way to go with more being added as time permits, most of all it is supposed to be fun. I hope you enjoy it.
