I'm going to show you that playing golf with little effort, is not only the way to get the most fun out of golf, but also the best way of getting results. None of us here are pros, or even low handicappers, they'll all be reading something else, you're more likely be in the other 80% of golfers that only play once a week or less and struggle to get your handicap into single figures or maybe even just break 100.
If that is the case then you are probably going about things the wrong way by trying to emulate the tournament pros. They're in a different league from us and play a different game, they practice daily and have coaches for every facet of their game, they also know the basics so well that it is second nature to them. When the pros struggle it's with the little tweaks they are using to get that extra optimization out of their performance.
Trying to hit the ball the maximum distance might be great to get rid of some pent up frustration, but it's the wrong thing entirely to produce an accurate shot. Before you try to optimize your swing for distance, you really should try to optimize it for accuracy and predictability first. The most overlooked fault in golf is using way too much effort.
If you are always trying to hit the golf ball as if it was fired from a canon, then you are using far too much energy, your accuracy will be off and your distance for any given club will be erratic with a good chance of producing a slice or a hook.
The pros didn't start off with the swing they use today, they've put a lot of effort and optimization into their swing over a long period of time. First they had the basics, a solid foundation and a solid swing to build on, they had all the basics working and ingrained in their muscle memory before they built it up to the swing they have today. It's these same basic principles that we have to concentrate on first and the most important of them is to get rid of all the variable bits of the swing that can cause problems.
The longer the back swing the more room there is for your swing to be on the wrong plane and the easier it is for you to go out of balance, it's less troublesome to use a short back swing. Using a full back swing would come into the optimizing stage, you will find it more beneficial at this stage to have a full follow through rather than a full back swing.
Speed is another thing that is used wrongly and is better kept for the optimization stage. It is not how fast you can swing that produces power, but how fast the club head passes through the impact zone. There is a great tendency for high handicappers to swing too quickly, both the back swing and the forward swing. This is really important, there is no need for any great speed and the faster you swing the more your timing and balance will be negatively affected.
Finally, hitting the golf ball hard to produce more power is never a good golf shot, golf is a more subtle game than that. You will achieve a greater distance with more accuracy by getting the club to impact the ball correctly on the right plane than you will by trying to hit it hard, club head speed produces power and is something that can best be worked on once the basics are mastered.
Next time you're on the course, try finesse and elegance instead of brute force and you'll have better results and more fun.
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.
