Is it possible to continually get better and better every time you go to the golf course or driving range? Yes, I believe that every Golfer has the ability to make small improvements every time they go to the golf course. This is not to say that you have the ability to continually improve one stroke each round you play – as that would have limits.

However, if you look at improvements in your golf swing as being based on continually increasing the length in which you hold consistency before reverting back to bad habits – yes, you can continually improve.

For example: in week one you’re able to make 4 good golf swings in a row before reverting back to making a bad golf swing … then in week two you’re now able to make 5 good golf swings before reverting back – that is improvement.

And how do you accomplish the above? Well, if each time you went to the driving range you discovered a little more about a bad habit in your golf swing and what is causing it – you are improving. Or another way to picture what we’re talking about is to think about a Golfer that has an “over the top move” on their downswing. This means (for a right handed Golfer), that your clubhead moves too far to the right as you start your downswing and then most likely moves to the left as you approach the golf ball.

It is one thing to know that you have an “over the top move” – it’s another thing to start diagnosing the cause of it. As many Golfers often brag about how they can’t get rid of their “over the top move” as if it’s an honor – “yeah, I got this over the top move in my golf swing that I have been working to fix for the last 2 years!” “2 years? That’s nothing. I have been working on fixing my over the top move for the last 6 years!”

The key is that you start to understand what is causing it. As most of these Golfers that are stuck with their “over the top move” are trying to fix the way they swing the club down towards the golf ball … they will never fix the problem. As their “over the top move” is not fixed by simply trying to practice dropping the golf club more to the inside.

The golf swing consists of Cause and Effect – Manipulations and Compensations – Over Corrections and Under Corrections

Your “over the top move” is not something that you should actively be trying to fix … there is something else that is causing this movement before you even get to that movement. That is why most Golf Instructors fail to help Golfers coming to see them for help because most Instructors can only see the obvious.

Thus, the Golfers they work with often get worse as all the swing tips these Golfers are receiving are just additional compensations disguised as fundamentals. Or in other words – they really are just forced manipulations … as opposed to fixing the root cause.

So going back to the very first paragraph: Yes, you can make improvements every time you’re at the golf course if you understand how to make small improvements as opposed to trying to fix your golf swing. The key is that you know how to practice to uncover the multiple effects in your golf swing that are covering up the one cause.

An analogy to improving your golf swing maybe like saying that you buried a valuable treasure 100 feet beneath an area the size of a football field. But, because the dirt is packed really tight, you initially can only scrape away 1 inch of dirt each day. However, each day you show up to scrape the dirt … you learn something about becoming more efficient in the way you scrape the dirt. Each day you learn how to better position your body to become more powerful – each day you learn how to make better, more precise movements with your shovel – each day your muscles get stronger – each day you find out something new about how to better scrape the dirt.

And because every time you go to scrape more dirt, you learn some thing, after a couple of weeks you’re now able to scrape 1.1 inch of dirt a day. And after another couple of weeks you’re up to 1.2 inches per day and after another couple of weeks you’re up to 1.3 inches per day. And after 20 weeks you’re now scraping 2 inches per day … you have become twice as efficient.

Your golf swing is the same way in that you need to take your improvement one scrape at a time … unfortunately most Golfers are trying to excavate the entire 100 feet of dirt every time they go to the golf course and/or driving range. And because it’s impossible to dig that far at one time … they never break the surface – thus they go nowhere with their game and become frustrated that they never improve.

The Monkey is looking for something miraculous to happen each time they go to practice or play

The Player is looking for .01% improvement each and every time at the golf course because constant improvement (regardless of how small it is) is better than no improvement

Go ahead, Be a Player!

Regards,

Marc Solomon