Golf is a game where your mind, body and clubs combine to produce your golf swing. This is what might be called the foundation of modelling golfing excellence. A golf swing has a series of processes or routines that need to come together from address, takeaway, backswing, downswing through the ball to your follow through.
Add to that your mental game, what you are thinking throughout the whole golf swing, the emotion you are feeling going into your swing and what your body is doing and your physical capabilities. Routines and good physical conditioning are a vital part of setting yourself up for success.
Most golfers focus on hitting the ball and that is it. It should be simple, just hit the ball. Smash the ball should make it go a greater distance, right? Yes it will if you can build club-head speed at impact and the face of the club is true, square at impact and you are playing to your line.
Most golfers make it more difficult than it needs to be.
Here are just a few ways you might be playing against yourself even before you swing your driver off the first-tee.
You are not fit, a bit or a lot out of shape, short muscles, tight joints so you are not physically capable of a full golf swing. You have not put in the time or practice with the right coaching to have a reliable golf swing sequence that never changes. You are having thoughts in your swing and caught up trying to think it through instead of focussing on the target. Your golf clubs are poorly fitted to you in length, shaft flex and type or grip. This impacts your golf grip and how you hold your posture over the ball. The golf ball you are using is second hand, out of shape or worse cold which means less distance or worse.
As far as your golf swing goes get back to the basics. Here are a few things you can do.
Work on finding a groove for a swing you can repeat every single time without fail. The simplest thing is to break your golf swing routine into 5 or so easy chunks you can master one at a time.
At the very least stretch and warm up before you play. Stretch and warm your muscles and joints, particularly hips, shoulders, wrists, elbows backs and legs. Practice a few shots with each club in your warm up too.
Start with a solid address of the ball with your feet aligned to the target, your club face square to the ball and line. You really want to have all of your decisions done with by the time you are over the ball and have your emotions in check too. Breathe to let go, relax, get into your body. Focus on your target and the shot you intend to play.
Sometimes it is worth swinging the golf club from shoulder to shoulder and focus on accuracy and control. Take a shorter backswing and you can build strength and power over time.
Know what starts your backswing. You want your hands, arms, shoulders and chest to move as a triangle. A low and slow backswing with your arms out straight is best.
You want to build your club-head speed in your downswing. At the same time keep your timing, rhythm smooth throughout your swing. Your natural rhythm can be found through the breath. Breathe in on the backswing and out through the downswing through the ball to the target.
The golf swing is a rotation of the body around a straight spine as the axis of turn. Rotation is impeded if the spine is not straight and the result is often too much movement up and down or sideways of the arms, hands or head.
Make the effort to build a solid golf shot routine and focus on the golf swing basics. Slow is fast what I mean is we learn best often in slow motion one step after another to build a repeatable golf swing. Remember your mind, body, clubs and swing all work together to create a result.
Need more information on golf swing basics? Visit golfing-excellence.com and learn everything about golfing excellence that you’ll need to know.