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.