Golf Video Guide

The golfing tip I would like to give in this article is that by working on improving control over your body, you will in effect also gain more control over your mind.

This is simply because the mind gains more confidence that the body will be able to perform whatever instructions the mind communicates to the body.

This is the single golfing tip that has the potential of transforming any golfer’s game literally overnight. Many times golfers work very hard on their minds and preparing them for the ideal golf game they would like to enjoy.

In fact many business executives, who have used the power of the mind to improve their businesses or even to build huge successful businesses, fully understand the potential of the mind in improving their golf games.

Still, many of them end up feeling discouraged and puzzled when things do not work out with their golf game quite the way they do in the corporate world.

They lack the simple golf tip that the game has a physical side to be taken care of, if one is to reap the full power of a mind prepared for ideal golf.

The second part of this golf tip is that there is only one known way of gaining better control of your body and it involves exercise.

Simple weight training that is golf-specific will instantly give you much better control over your body. When you strengthen your muscles, you improve functional strength which automatically gives you more control and balance. Some people believe that weight training will cause them to lose feel.

The weight training I am talking about in this golfing tip is not a program for weight-lifters and to build colossal muscles. This golfing tip is about the weight training specific to golf that conditions muscles used in golf and builds up strength.

This kind of program rather than making somebody lose feel, in fact increases feel tremendously.

This is an amazing golfing tip that is bound to have an profound impact on your game.

Even as you read this article, golf fitness exercise programs continue to positively revolutionize the games of many golfers around the country and indeed around the world. A golf fitness exercise program plays a major role in helping many golfers achieve consistent and good results on the course with their swing.

Still many golfers are yet to fully appreciate the potential of a golf fitness exercise program and many are not aware of the fact that they usually have a huge impact on a golfer’s game.

A golf fitness exercise program will tend to concentrate on the muscles and parts of the body used when playing golf and especially during the golf swing. A useful golf fitness exercise program will be able to help any golf attain more flexibility as well as strength on the course. It is important to remember that most of the body is used for a golf swing.

Right from the feet to the knees, hamstring and hip, the lower part of the body is critical to the golf swing. Then there are the more obvious participants in the body like the arms and upper body and neck.

A golf fitness exercise program does a significant job of ensuring that most of these muscles are ready for the strain that golf usually exerts on them.

Usually a golf fitness exercise program combines dynamic strength and flexibility exercises, as well as stabilization and core strength. Most of these exercises can be done with simple handweights (dumbbells) and exercise tubing.

No gym required!

Too many golfers go to the gym, plop down on a machine and hope their game will get better. It usually doesn’t. You’ve always got to keep the golf swing mechanics in mind when doing a golf fitness exercise program.

In my game I have adopted the simplest possible swing and have insisted that as many shots as possible should be played with fundamentally the same movements. Now that I have outlined the idea of teaching by feel you will better understand why I attach such importance to this point.

Now these four points together make up the top of the swing, and I was talking about the waggle—which is the bottom of an imaginary swing! But do not think I was digressing. I was not, the two are linked together. And why? Because unless you feel the whole of the swing in your waggle, your waggle is failing in its purpose.

This controlling feel is built up through the constant repetition of the correct movements. We do not know just where in the system it resides, but whether it is muscular memory, or the wearing of certain grooves or channels in the mind, or—as is probable—a combination of the two, it is obvious that the more often the same succession of movements can be repeated the clearer the memory will be. Also, and this is most important, it is highly desirable that the memory should not be confused by the frequent or even occasional introduction of other and different movements—as happens when the swing is fundamentally changed for certain shots.

It is mainly for this reason that I teach and preach and practice that every shot from the full drive to the putt should be played with the same movement. Of course in the drive the movement is both more extensive and bolder than for the shorter shots, but fundamentally it is the same. The result must be a feeling of “in-to-out” stroking across the face of the ball—played not at the ball, but through it. The “in-to-out” refers to the relation of the feel of the path of the club head to the desired line of flight of the ball.

The only shots in golf which I have been unable to play or to teach as sections of the fundamental “in-to-out” swing are certain shots which call for cut pulled under and across the ball.

But for ninety-nine out of every hundred shots a golfer must play, the swing is the movement necessary. So to clear the ground I will list what I consider to be the essentials of the swing:

1. It is essential to turn the body round to the right and then back and round to the left, without moving either way. In other words this turning movement must be from a fixed pivot.

2. It is essential to keep the arms at full stretch throughout the swing—through the back swing, the down swing, and the follow through.

3. It is essential to allow the wrists to break fully back at the top of the swing.

4. It is essential to delay the actual hitting of the ball until as late in the swing as possible.

5. It is essential not to tighten any muscle concerned in the reactive part of the swing (movement above the waist).

6. It is essential to feel and control the swing as a whole and not to concentrate upon any part of it.

In a sense this last point is the most vital. The swing must be considered and felt as a single unity, not as a succession of positions or even a succession of movements. The swing is one and indivisible.

Now I consider that our golf is liable to go wrong if we lose sight of any of these essentials. There are of course innumerable incidentals that could be added that are important enough to have a considerable influence on one’s game, but I will go so far as to say that if you have these six essentials well embedded in your system and if you have developed some conscious control of your swing by getting the feel of the right movements—your game will rarely or never desert you.

Of course the comfortable, reliable, right feel is not a thing that comes all at once. For instance, it takes years—though not if your teacher teaches by feel—to

feel nicely set and comfortable before the ball; weight between the feet, perfectly free and active and yet firmly planted.

Then the waggle. About the waggle a whole book could be written. Every movement we make when we waggle is a miniature of the swing we intend to make. The club head moves in response to the body and the body opposes the club head. It is a flow and counter flow of forces with no static period, no check.

There is no check anywhere in a good swing. There is no such thing as the “dead top” of a swing—there are four points each one of which might be so considered if it were not for the other three! They are: (1) When the pivot (feet to shoulders) has reached its top, the arms are still going up. (2) When the arms have reached their top, the body is on its day down. (3) When the arms begin to come down, the wrists have still to break back, and (4) When the wrists break

To put the lesson of the concept of control by feel as briefly as possible, we must give up thinking about our shots. In place of thinking there must be conscious control, obtained by building up (by constant repetition of the correct action) a comfortable and reliable feel, a feel that will tell you infallibly through appeal to your muscular memory, what is the right movement —and which will remain with you and control your shots whatever your mental state may be. Not being a matter of thought, this control stands outside the mental state.