After you’ve been playing and practicing for a while, you should start to notice some patterns to your shots. Bad shots tend to be caused by one swing fault or another, so I thought I’d cover some of the basic issues.
The Slice
For a right handed player, a slice typically starts to the left of the target and then curves back to the right. It is most pronounced with the driver because the lack of loft on the driver results in the creation of more side spin.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of golfers slice the ball. This is due to a couple things. They’ve received very little instruction or poor instruction and they do not have an understanding of how the golf swing works.
Most golfers try to control the club with their arms and upper body, and they try to steer the ball. This results in an open club face at impact, and the body out of position as well, leading to a slice.
Without getting too technical for now, the Kinematic Sequence most often comes into play for golfers who slice the ball. There are quick fixes, but ultimately, a golfer needs to improve their sequencing to avoid constantly slicing the golf ball.
Inability to get the ball in the air
Many new golfers struggle to even get the ball airborne. This is due mainly to the fact that they do not have an understanding of how the golf club is designed to get the ball in the air.
As a result, they tend to try and “lift” the ball into the air by trying to hit every shot on the upswing. Then, they get bad advice such as “keep your head down” and the result is that their upper body becomes disconnected from the lower body.
Again, this all relates to the Kinematic Sequence. I can’t stress enough how important it is to train your body to move properly and in sequence. Otherwise, you’ll have no chance at becoming a scratch golfer.
Reverse Pivot
Since most new golfers want to control the club with the hands and arms as much as possible, and they think they need a big long back swing to hit the ball far, the end up with a back swing like this…
This is the classic reverse pivot, where, at the top of the back swing, the upper body is leaning toward the target. Nothing good can happen from this position and inconsistent ball striking is the result.
The cause is generally too much lifting of the arms and not enough turning of the shoulders. Keep in mind though, you don’t need to have a big shoulder turn, and you don’t need to get the club to parallel to the ground at the top of the back swing to generate power.
I’ll describe the fix to this down the road, but training such as I describe in Golf Lesson 2 in the Free Training section on this site will go a long way.
Take some video
A good idea to help your development is to take some video of your swing. Throughout the lessons on my Free Training page, you will see a number of photos of the proper positions in the golf swing.
Compare your video to those photos to see what you need to work on.
When you are taking video, you’ll want to be sure that the camera is set up properly. For the face on shot, set the camera so that you can see from the golf ball at the bottom to about two feet above your head at the top. A video that doesn’t encompass your entire swing, or one that makes you look too far away is useless.
In the down the line video, you set up the camera so that it is aligned with your hands as you address the ball.
It is very helpful to use a high speed camera that can take video at no less than 30 frames per second. That way you can watch the video in slow motion and pause it at appropriate points in the swing.
I’ll get more into video analysis down the road, but it will be a very useful tool for your improvement going forward.
