Ben Hogan once said, “Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.”
This is the problem I see daily on the lesson tee as clients struggle with the concept of feel and real. Grown men who have excelled at sports throughout their lives, or are leaders of industry, are reduced to four-year-olds at kindergarden with no clue as to why they cannot master the game of golf. I regularly meet first-time clients sitting at the mad hatter's tea party with Alice, Johnny, and the rabbit, with the slow realization that the rabbit looks like the best bet to get them out of there! After patiently rescuing my client from this rabbit hole, they are reluctant to let go of the the very thing that got them out, the mechanics of the golf swing, those big compound movements, that help you, at long last, connect with the ball in a fashion that causes golf’s greatest illusion...
“I have it now.”
Let me tell you a story, we all know a golfer called Joe, and Joe swings the club, well pretty much awful! But twice a year, at the most unexpected moments, Joe has a score and wins the competition of the day. How is this so? This is the next conundrum for the would-be club champion, sequencing, the timing of swing. I have seen some truly awful swings over the years, but they make the same truly awful moves consistently and on the rare occasion, time their swing well, it unravels from the top in a somewhat orderly fashion and the ball is dispatched somewhere close to the intended target, throw in a couple of long putts holed, a chip in here and there and hey presto, a winning score. But it doesn’t last and I know you know this dear reader because you have been there!
So, how do we stop falling for the oldest three card trick in the book when we all know the ace isn’t actually there? Knowing what the problem is would certainly be a good start to solving the problem. I see golf being made up of four parts when starting out...
Golf takes time to learn properly, give yourself time, do some research, find a good coach and put the time aside to learn the game properly. You will thank me for it!
"The paradox of golf’s greatest illusion is that it is actually real and can be mastered over time."
This weeks question from Keith concerns ball flight! “Hi Tadhg, I play most of my golf on a links and it tends to be quite windy all the time, how do I hit the ball a bit lower and with a draw for those tough shots into the wind?”
Well, Keith, it is possible to change ball flight with a few adjustments to
- alignment
- body tilt
- swing arc/ball position
A caveat here, you need to have a pretty good standard of ball striking before changing these swing settings as you can get lost along the way! As always, check with your local club pro that you are not overdoing or misinterpreting the instructions! There are nine different shotmaking windows made up of draws, fades and straight shots, multiplied by high, medium and low ball flights. So, let's start with the easy one!
Alignment, set up with your feet AND body closed to your target line to encourage a draw. (NB – check that you understand my railway tracks analogy for lining up correctly mentioned in Blog 5, Voodoo Golf.) Do the opposite for a fade and the railway tracks is perfect for a straight shot.
Next up is body tilt, for high shots, tilt your torso away from the target, (your left shoulder will sit higher than the right shoulder.) This tilting away from from the target will shallow out your backswing path and add loft to the clubface through impact. For you Keith, the opposite would be appropriate, tilt the upper body towards the target, the left shoulder will now be lower at address, this will decrease loft and will launch the ball on a lower trajectory. Moving the ball back in your stance will also help to encourage that lower flight you desire into the wind.
Swing arc and ball position come into play, your clubhead travels on an arc around your body and through the impact area. As an image, think of a hula hoop sitting on top of your shoulders as you are in golf posture. The further back the ball is in the stance, the earlier you will strike it and more draw based it will be (assuming you are following the arc), the more forward the ball, the more up you will hit it BUT also the more left the club will travel. This explains why if you have the driver set up with the ball opposite your lead toe, you are now ascending but also going left through impact, which could cause a fade or a slice. Ball position is crucial when attempting different shots. As always practice is key!
Finally, don’t set up with too much weight forward as this will increase the angles in your backswing and finally, take a couple of clubs extra, grip down for more control and swing shorter and easier through impact. The temptation is to hit it hard into the wind, this is fatal as this will spin the ball up in to the air!
I hope this helps Keith!
Swing Myths
More and more each week I get questions that lead me to believe that a lot of players have certain beliefs about the golf swing that are just not true, so each week I will try to dispel those myths!
Let's start with that old chestnut, THE TWO WAY MISS. You stand up on the tee and you just don’t know where you are going to hit it, left or right. Swing Myth #1, I am doing something different to cause different shots. Not always true, you can hit a big block right and also duck hook the ball left with the exact same swing fault (mostly hanging back through impact), the hands take over through impact (as your upper body has taken a back seat) and turn over excessively (flipping) causing the duck hook. Do this for a few holes and then on your next drive, you will instinctively hold onto the clubface for dear life through impact so as not to go left, voila, massive block right!
Solution = local club pro + some practice = less shouts of FORE!
Around the World
Quotes of the week
"Not a great week" but…
"It's just kind of a blah week. I just didn't make anything, sometimes you're going to have those weeks where you just kind of ho-hum it, and you just kind of finish middle of the pack."
Brooks Koepka will remain as World#1 for another week after a T-16 finish at the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai.
“It doesn’t get better than this” type of week…
"Truthfully, I cannot put it into words, It still hasn't hit. It's definitely one of the best days of my entire life. I can finally check that off of my list, winning an LPGA event, something that I dreamed of ever since I started playing."
Nelly Korda wins the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan for her first LPGA Title!
"Yes, it does!"… a dream week for the Tours latest prodigy…
“It’s pretty unreal,” he said. “I can think back to the second stage (Web.Com Tour school 2017) when I kind of almost choked with three holes to go. I made a great putt on 17 to move on to finals.”
Cameron Champ, dusts the field by four, at the Sanderson Farms Championship, leading from the gate to gain his debut win on the PGA Tour only a few short weeks after graduating from the Web.Com Tour. And to think it nearly never happened! With a round to go in 2017, at second stage tour school, he was outside the cut line but a closing 68 got him to the 3rd and final stage, he finished 6th on the season-long Web.Com tour in 2018 and now he has a guaranteed home on the PGA Tour.
Dreams do come true!
Last Word
This week goes to Scott Parel, Scott who? Parel, who is 53 years of age never made it to the PGA Tour, in actual fact he didn’t turn pro until he was 31 years of age, has just won his second PGA Tour Champions event at the Invesco QQQ Championship and is now second in the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup standings with only the mighty Bernhard Langer in his way to the most unlikely of victories. Consider this, just two years ago he was Monday qualifying on the Champions Tour and such is his run of form lately, he has only had two rounds over par in his last thirty rounds of golf!
“As long as I keep playing like I am, I think I’ll have a chance,” he said, looking ahead to the season finale, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club in two weeks. “Golf’s a fickle game, so you never know. But right now I feel pretty good over the ball and over the putter, so I’ve got as good a chance as anyone.”
So far, he has banked nearly two million dollars proving that life does indeed begin at 50! Thank you for your company today!
We shall talk some more golf Friday!
Tadhg
Tadhg Harrington is a full time, professional golf instructor, and owner of the Harrington Golf Academy, based in Dublin, Ireland. He is a graduate of the Titleist Performance Institute and Setanta College. He is the eldest brother of three-time time Major Champion, Padraig Harrington.
He succeeds, employing empathy, passion and exceptional customer service, teaching above the noise, the quick tips, and the latest fads and is truly unique in the Irish golf industry.
The Harrington Golf Academy provides long term coaching programs designed to bring sensory processing to motor learning skills. Tadhg teaches the long game at Drynam Park Golf Centre and short game at Roganstown GC. His business partner, Ex European Tour Player, Rebecca Codd, also teaches full time at Drynam Park Golf Centre.