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.

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.