Reiterating a realisation

I had a mixed day on Saturday. My score was ordinary, mainly because I limped the last ten holes after wrenching my knee badly getting out of a bunker (that I should never have been in). But I was fortunate enough to hit a few good shots late in the round - and by good I mean 'real' golf shots.

'Real' golf shots are the ones that result from a full swing from point A (a completed backswing) to point B (a balanced finish) of the swing - and I'm referring to full shots here. I call them real because too often I hit shots with a poor, incomplete backswing or an unbalanced, jerky, sawn off follow through, which I don't regard as real golf shots.

Real golf shots have an appropriate trajectory, speed and spin for the club in question. They are not necessarily straight at the target or even hit the correct distance, because lots of judgement and other factors come into play, but they will still have been hit with authority and balance, and they will feel good.

The challenge for many average players is to increase their quota of these real golf shots. The better player will often be able to count on one hand (or maybe two hands) the number of shots they DIDN'T hit with this real authority. The average player might go an entire round without hitting ANY real golf shots. I've done this myself many times.

To my knowledge the only way to increase this quota of real or authentic golf shots is to develop a real golf swing - one that is basically technically correct, and which incorporates a decent backswing and follow through.

By technically correct I don't mean pretty necessarily, but a swing that looks balanced and relatively effortless - because the correct swing dynamics will have been in place. See my earlier blogs for discussion of the key aspects of the good golf swing.

My emphasis on a real golf swing having a completed backswing and follow through is because this is what you feel and can observe when you hit a good shot. You feel like you have committed to the shot, stayed down and through the hitting area, and finished with your weight on the front foot. It will also be a swing that will have felt relatively effortless, yet the ball flight and distance will be far better than usual.

On Saturday, I played poorly until a superior player in my group commented (slightly illegally) on my failure to stay down on my shots. For some reason, the comment struck a chord and I started to think about completing my backswing and follow through and making sure I hit down and through the ball (nothing else). This was when my few real golf shots happened.

Anyway, I'm more and more convinced of the dangers of hitting at the ball - and more and more convinced of the need to think of the golf swing as a dynamic whole - a complete action A to B - with a commitment to that process above all.

I would like to think I can increase my quota of real golf swings and real golf shots. I think this is what golf is really all about.

Getting a grip

Moving slightly away from the mechanics of the golf swing, including my slight reservations about the suitability of Paul Wilson's pitching technique for average golfers, there is another point of contention I want to address.

For many years, golf instructors have been advocating adoption of the Vardon (overlapping) or the interlocking grip for all golfers, except perhaps for children or rank beginners. The argument for these grips as opposed to the ten finger or 'baseball' grip revolves around the alleged need for the hands to work together and some restriction of the power of the usually stronger lower hand.

I believe that aspects of this view are representative of the failure of much golf instruction to explain the real reasons for adopting a particular approach.

The ten finger grip (which I was forced to use for some months because of a hand problem) is actually not ideal because of the restriction it places on the freedom of the wrists. When the hands are separated it is not as easy to feel the freedom that is so essential in the effortless and fluid golf swing. Separated hands can work together, but will probably slightly reduce the wrist cock at the top of the backswing and can potentially encourage tighter grip pressure than is ideal.

I don't subscribe to the view that the power of the right hand (for right handed golfers) should be limited - other than for expert golfers who happen to have a tendency to hook the ball. The average player (generally a fader of slicer) is not likely to be adversely affected by a slightly stronger right hand. After all the slicer needs to release the club better and the stronger lower or right hand can help with this.

There is, of course, one advantage of the ten finger grip that can be overlooked - the fact that this golfer will be gripping down a little on the club. Gripping down can help with control - and is actually important in much of the short game. A ten finger grip is an automatic grip down, but the astute golfer will know when it is advisable to grip down, and can easily do so with her or his more conventional Vardon or interlocking grip.

Some conventional golf wisdom and the instruction that flows from it is sometimes a little lazy. That is, explanations given for certain procedures can be hackneyed or incomplete, and sometimes just plain wrong. Never accept a 'do this' or 'don't do this' golf instruction without fully understanding and evaluating the theory behind it.

A bridge too far

I am a firm believer in Paul Wilson's 'Swing Machine Golf' and his concepts of unwinding from the lower body and powerless arms, to name just two. However, when it comes to his concept of varying the speed of the body rotation, especially in relation to the short game, I have some reservations.

I'm sure that Wilson is capable of maintaining his rhythm and timing while varying his rotational speed (1, 2 and 3 mph are his speeds). And he does say that the average player can probably only manage two speeds (slower and faster). But is this a good approach for the average player who probably currently swings too fast and would benefit from finding a constant, unhurried rhythm?

I think the rotation speed variation approach is actually risky for the average player in that s/he will have enough trouble finding a swing rhythm that is not too fast, let alone try to ingrain the feeling of two or three swing speeds. Any attempt to create a faster swing speed could lead to over-swinging or hurried swings, and trying to find a slower swing could very easily lead to the very destructive deceleration of the swing.

In the full swing these dangers are probably not going to be insurmountable; careful practice and vigilance could produce the desired swing rotation speeds. But in the short game, where the swings will already vary from a full to a three-quarter down to a half swing, adding a swing speed element might be complicating things too much.

When chipping and pitching any tendency to speed up or slow down the swing (particularly slow it down) is likely to have disastrous consequences. Deceleration in any aspect of the short game (from pitching to putting) is the enemy of the average golfer. Hurried and quick chips and bunker shots are similarly counter-productive. My view is that there are safer ways to regulate distance in this area of the game.

Don't get me wrong, I think the lower body is important in chipping and putting. Golfers who try to chip or pitch with their arms alone are dicing with inconsistency. The turn of the legs is important in these shots (for reasons that others can explain), but trying to vary the speed of this turn is my quibble.

My preference would be to achieve distance variations by changing club (first of all), then length of backswing (though not in the bunker), and finally by the length of grip taken (up or down the grip). The other short shot considerations like where to land (or direct) the ball and how much spin is likely to be imparted give the golfer more than enough to think about without having to think about turn speed.

I know Paul Wilson doesn't agree with me, but here again we have the problem of the expert golfer (despite his best efforts) not quite understanding the barriers most golfers face in improving their game. Paul's commitment to simple approaches is exemplary, but I think some of his short game ideas might be taking us to a bridge too far.

A realisation

When Paul Wilson said the golf swing is not about hitting the ball, but about swinging the clubhead from point A (top of the backswing) to point B (finish of the follow-through) I thought 'Ok, that's fine', but thought nothing more about it.

It turns out that this idea of the swing as moving the clubhead from point A to point B is very important, particularly for the irons, including the pitching clubs.

The bunker shot that Wilson and others advocate comes with the directive 'swing right through to the finish - don't quit on the shot', and this is good advice. The tendency to quit on bunker shots is common, and it almost guarantees a poor shot, or at least inconsistent shot-making from bunkers. But the quit tendency affects not only bunker shots.

I found today that the only decent short or middle iron shots I hit were the ones where I swung through to the finish, that is, the ones where I fully completed the follow-through. I found that to do this I had to stop thinking about the ball as the target and just concentrate on the full swing of the club. I had to trust that the club would bottom out in the correct place (as with bunker shots - see previous posts) and not worry about the ball.

The really poor shots I hit, and there were a few, were where I was ball focused and failed to complete the swing. It really brought home to me the importance of the A to B concept and the need to see B or the completion of the swing as the goal.

This idea of not hitting the ball, but swinging the club through the ball, takes some getting used to, but I think it is much more important than I ever realised.

Swing effortlessly.

Clarifying three things to think about

I said in the previous blog that the swing plane controls the direction the ball takes (or words to that effect). It should be noted that ball flight laws make it clear that the clubface is 80 - 85 percent responsible for the direction at which the ball takes off.

What I should have said is that the rotational turn of the body contributes considerably to the ability of the golfer to return the clubface to square or nearly square at the point of impact. The rotation of the body and the flexible wrists work together to create consistent and square contact with the ball.

The rotation of the body is mostly responsible for determining the speed at which the club will be swung. Basically, the Swing Machine golf concept is a package, it all fits together. Again, I highly recommend it to beginning golfers and more experiences golfers who might be stuck in a rut, but want to improve their golf swing.

Swing effortlessly.