Resting the putter on the ground at address means you have to lift it slightly when you make your stroke. That can cause a disturubance that throws off your stroke by enough for you to miss the putt.
Instead, address the ball so the sole barely grazes the grass and the weight of the club is already in your hands. This makes it easy to start the club back smoothly and calmly.
Before any shot, check your grip visually, and aim your shot by looking across the ball to the target.
ANY shot. EVERY shot.
This is a video of my golf swing, taken in 2010 when I was playing 9-handicap golf. I watch it regularly to remind myself of what my personal swing is, because like so many golfers I drift occasionally, and I need to know where to get back to. Best to watch it with the sound turned off.
These are the things that define this swing for me.
First comes swing speed. This swing takes about 1:18 seconds from takeaway to impact. That’s not very fast, but this is the speed that makes sense to me while holding the swing together.
At the end of the backswing my shoulders have turned less than 90°. I could turn them more, but my swing sense says this is far enough. At the start of the forward swing, my hips do not turn ahead of my arms. Everything turns together.
Both of these are back-saving moves. I had back surgery in 1971, so I needed to have a swing that put the least stress on my lower back. I had two more in 2012 so the need now is even greater.
My head turns but does not move from side to side. This is a point of disagreement. Some teachers and pros say it is alright to let it move back in the backswing, while others say keep it in place. While both methods work, what I do is what feels right to me. I also get one less moving part to maintain.
Notice the rhythm of the swing. This is important. There is no pause in the middle. The first half of the swing flows neatly into the second half as if it were all just one movement, which I feel that the golf swing is.
There are other things that a swing analyst could comment on, but the only things that matter to me in re-creating this swing are what I explained above.
Do something like this for your swing. Make a video of it when you’re playing well. It will be the biggest favor you ever did for your golfing self because believe me, one day you will be glad you have it to look at.
You need four skills to have a working golf swing:
1. A swing that keeps the clubface square up to the top of the backswing.
2. A swing that starts forward without over-accelerating the club.
3. A pivot that coordinates the turning of the body with the swinging of the arms.
4. A swing swings the club through the ball with a ball-first-ground second impact.
1. The right grip is vital for this, and it must be personalized. See A Basic Golf Swing (video) to learn how to get yours. After you have that, learn what it feels like to swing back with the clubface staying square to the swing path all the way back.
2. Pause at the top for the barest moment. Start down as slowly as you swung up. Think you are going to swing through the ball in slow motion. This thought will not slow you down. It prevents you from speeding up.
3. In the forward swing, everything is turning and flowing through the ball toward the target, from the very start in coordinated way. The forward swing must feel like it is one movement, not a collection of separate movements working together. And the club, especially the club, is included in this unified feeling.
4. Do not think of hitting at the ball, but swinging through it. Your forward swing up to this point has been a flow. Continue that feeling through the ball to the finish.
Check out the Golf Sidekick channel on YouTube. This guy knows what he is talking about. He’s not into technique, but into playing the game.
Raymond Floyd wrote that “If somehow I was given your physical (golf) game, and we had a match, I would beat you 99 times out of 100. Because I know how to play the game better than you do.”
Golf is a game you play.
My mind moves in directions other people don’t take. How else can I have kept this blog going for fourteen years?
This thought occurred to me last night.
We have the backswing and the downswing. Those two are opposites, because they take our swing in opposite directions. Shouldn’t they have opposite names?
If you like the word “backswing,” which implies that we swing back and forth, which we do, the swing part that hits the ball should be called the forthswing.
But maybe that’s awkward, so forswing. That’s awkward, too, so how about forward swing? But to be consistent, we would need to relable the backswing as the backward swing.
Hmmm… Let’s start over.
With the downsing. This one is easy. The opposite of down is up, so the downswing would be preceded by the upswing. But those might suggest swinging the club in exaggerated directions that we don’t want.
(This is turning out to be harder than I thought.)
(Five-minute pause.)
How about this? The windup and the release? Perfect description of what we do.
Except that the word “release” is already taken in golf, so we would have to come up with a new word for what it now means.
But that’s another post.
In my multi-media piece, A Basic Golf Swing, I talked about assuming a grip that is based on the way your arms are built. Taking your grip that way, and not in a generic manner like you see in books, contributes greatly to keeping the clubface square throughout the swing.
This is something I figured out by studying functional anatomy, but later I did find references to this advice in three golf instruction books I have, none of which you may never have heard of.
Here are the ways that each one describes what to do.
“The whole purpose of the grip is to position your hands upon the club in such a way that they will return to their original natural position at contact. Throughout any swing, no matter how you grip the club, the hands tend to return to their normal position at the hit. Normal position of the hands is how they fall naturally when you stand up straight and let your arms dangle to the sides of your body.”
Mickey Wright, Play Golf the Wright Way.
“Your hands should be placed on the club the way they hang naturally at your side. Try this out for yourself. Bend slightly from your hips and let your arms hang in front of you. Note where the back of your left hand and the palm of your right hand face in relation to an imaginary target. That’s the natural position in which your arms and hands hang. They are going to want to return there at the bottom of your swing, just when you are striking the ball. So if you make any radical departure* from that position when you put your hands on the club, you’re asking for trouble.”
Al Geiberger, Tempo.
* Better: “…make any departure…”
“The trick is to find out at what angle your left hand is in while it is relaxed, for this is the angle your hand should be in as it holds the club. Leaving the left hand where it is as it hangs down, place a golf club in your left hand. As long as you do no conscious turning of the left hand* as you hold the club handle, you have the correct hold with your left hand. The same applies to the right hand— there should not be any turning**.”
Phil Galvano, Secrets of the Perfect Golf Swing.
* Better: “…turning of the left forearm…” and
** “…not be any turning of the forearm.”
Do this. It will change everything for the better.
One more note. The first two excerpts say your hands and arms return to their normal position at the hit. They return much earlier than that, literally moments after you take the club away.
There is one thing you can do in your short game that will make every shot easier and better. That thing is to hold the club lightly. Maybe hold it softly.
What do I mean by “softly?” Hold the club so the handle barely compresses the soft pads of your palm and fingers, but not so softly that the club flops around when you swing it.
Stop reading, get a club and try that before you go on.
In addition, relax your arms and shoulders completely.
If you get all this right, I promise you will make good contact with the ball much more often than you do. You will be in a position where you can learn to control your short shots to an amazing degree.
You can get away with less-than-perfect contact from the tee and the fairway. But the short game requires, (demands?), precision when the club meets the ball.
When you set up for a short shot, the perfect address position of the clubhead is also its perfect impact position. The problem to be solved is how to return the clubhead to that exact spot.
If you grip the club tightly, the tension in your hands puts tension in your arms and shoulders, which shortens your arms. When you swing back, you subconsciously know something is wrong and the forward stroke is a desperate attempt to get the clubhead back where it belongs. Every so often, you get it right.
But if your hands, arms, and shoulders are completely relaxed, the length of the arm-club lever does not change.
All you need to do from there is swing back and through gracefully with an unhurried rhythm and tempo, and ideal contact is yours. It’s that simple.
Everybody knows that Nelly Korda’s swing makes her one of the best ball-stikers in the world. PGA Tour pros who played with her last year couldn’t figure out why she doesn’t win every week.
Although she is the midst of doing just that lately.
Unfortunately, I can’t make the image bigger. Magnify your browser window to get a good look.
I’m showing you this video for only one reason–to show you how simple the golf swing really is. Swing the club back, turn your hips, and swing through the ball.
From there, watch it as often as you want and draw your own conclusions.
In the golf swing, the hips turn and the arms swing. In the backswing, the arms swing back first and the hips follow. In the forward swing, the hips turn first and the arms follow.
When the rhythm and tempo of the swing are correct, each of those movements happen at the right moment and have the chance they need to develop fully.
When that is the case, we say the swing is correctly timed.
Rhythm is the relative duration of the backswing to the forward swing. Tempo is the overall speed of the swing, measured by how long it takes in total.
Rhythm, as explained in part 1 here, is the same for all golfers. Tempo is an individual characteristic, which depends on athleticism, flexibility, and strength.
Good timing is a consequence of proper rhythm and tempo.
What does is mean for the arm and hip movements to develop fully?
For the arms, it means for them to reach a consistent finished backswing position. For the hips, it means turn to the extent that they are slightly open at impact.
The evidence of good timing is clean contact on the center of the clubface. Granted, there is more to that than good timing, but you will get more out of good timing and so-so technique than good technique and a mis-timed swing.
To get good timing, you must give up the idea of hitting the ball as far as you can with the club in your hand, and instead hitting it as accurately as you can with that club.
The key to all this is in large part not rushing the arms at the start of the forward swing. Let the hip turn carry them until the momentum of the turning action releases their swinging action.
And swing through the ball. Don’t try to clobber it at the last moment.