It’s hard as a golfer these days not to pay attention to the array of different mediums promoting some type of new move for your golf swing, the “quick” way to add distance, a philosophy based on success of one or two “tour” pros and all of a sudden, it’s the way for everyone! I mean there are so many posts and reposts and streaming videos of how easy it is to lay the club down in the perfect slot or how to generate “ground forces” by lifting your heel and spinning. I don’t know about you but even I am confused!
After carefully considering what I wanted to write about this week, I thought why not discuss good ole fashioned work on understanding how the body works, and the fact that the instrument tells us how to use it. Let me start by using a visual: I would like you to close your eyes, visualize swinging the golf club, hitting the best shot you ever hit, what does it look like?, What did it feel like? Did your swing look like someone you idolize or picture with the “perfect” swing? I tend to use Nick Faldo as my model for the “perfect” swing, how easy he makes it look. Whatever your model is what it looks like to you is what matters. Why is visualizing this so important? If you can see it, you can do it, right? Well, not exactly but this is what many of the golf teachers are telling you to do without really understanding how and why. So, why should a 10-year-old or a 55 year old golfer be working on the same things that a tour professional is working on? Hmm, you shouldn’t be, unless your goals are the same and you have the same physical capabilities, which is rare that an individual has the same strengths, weaknesses and limitations as someone else. So, then I ask you, why would you try to do the same thing as someone you don’t know, you don’t know how and why they are swinging the way they do.
If you want to be great at something, the first place to start is to assess yourself, perhaps after you have given yourself the thumbs up all systems are good, I recommend having a coach assess you as well, it will help keep you honest with your skill level. Understanding where your skill level is and getting feedback as to how to improve them is critical in your development to become the golfer you see yourself being. Having a coach guided assessment gives you understanding as to where you are currently, why you may be where you are and how you can improve your current state. If you are unfamiliar with who and where you can get a coach guided assessment, check out The Golf Performance Center website, the expert coaches there can help you.
Now back to the visualization thing, it is one thing to see what is happening, it is another to know why it is happening, you see, the tour professionals have created their golf swings mainly through trial and error based on ball flight, and how they can move the club based on how their body moves, the engine that drives it. Think of it like this, you see a car on the road, let’s call it a Lamborghini, it is beautiful, it is a super fast car, or so we believe, its beautiful exterior but we really don’t know what’s underneath the hood, we assume there is a 700-horsepower turbocharged engine, but what if it was only a 350 horsepower Volkswagen engine underneath? It wouldn’t perform so well as a Lambo. To translate, there are a lot of great players who have beautiful swings, but do you know the how and why they are the way they are. In other words, what you see isn’t always what you get! There is one thing I know for sure, how your body functions, dictates the form in which follows! Are you building a Lambo or a Volkswagen? So before you follow some insta pro or youtube sensation, it would make more sense to understand the how and why behind the “easy”. The race to success in golf is full of spectacular crashes, often because the foundation of development is skipped over for style not substance!
Enjoy your journey!
