No, not how I react to good shots and bad ones, but how I make good shots and why I make bad ones.

All the technique you read about and try out gets reduced to a feeling. Actually, any physical skill you learn is the same way. You have to learn, step-by-step, the right thing to do, and work from there to (a) repeat it, and (b) attach a reliable feeling to it, so when you feel X, you know that means you’re doing it right.

One of the problems with trying to find the feeling too soon is that as you adapt and get used to the right movement, the feeling changes. As you learn to perform the movement more reliably, the feeling is quite different from the one you had when you first started.

I have many examples from my own investigations in golf, but my current one is getting a flat left wrist at the top of my backswing. I’ve been working on it for about six weeks now. At first, it felt like the left wrist was curled over, but that was a reaction to my habit of the wrist being severely cupped. Now, if I put that same feeling in the left wrist at the top, it is curled over. The feeling of doing the movement correctly is now more subtle.

The final step in getting the feeling right is to have done the movement correctly so many times that it feels like the natural thing to do and you don’t have to check on it anymore. You can rely on it always being right.

That, of course, takes many thousands of repetitions. And that doesn’t take skill, it takes perseverance. but that’s another post.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.