“I am so inconsistent” – Inconsistency is caused by not understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of your own personal golf swing. Trust me … you probably have heard everything you need to hear about the grip, turning your shoulders, turning your hips, swing path, swing plane, left arm straight, etc, etc, etc.
With the common Golfer reply to the above being: “yes, when I do all those things correctly … I hit a good shot.” However, it is impossible to think about all those things on every golf shot. You need a better PLAN than going through your checklist before every shot.
What you need to know is what aspect of your golf swing is causing you to be inconsistent, how to detect it before it happens on the golf course, and just as importantly … what drill can help you feel the correction within one or two swings. As opposed to wasting 6 holes of frustrating golf trying to find “anything that works!”
“If I could just keep my Driver in the fairway” – As hard as it may be for some Golfers to hear this … I am going to say it again … hitting your Driver into the fairway is not as important to your score as you may think.
Keeping the golf ball in play without penalty strokes is what is important.
This includes not having to chip out of the trees, or pick up your golf ball out of someone’s backyard, or slicing into the water … avoiding those situations are the keys to consistently getting on the green in the least amount of strokes. And after tracking our Golfers on the golf course, as well as the PGA Tour Players … the stats back this up.
As the top 2 scoring leaders on the PGA Tour in 2013 are both ranked worse than 100th as far as hitting fairways. Tiger Woods & Charl Schwartzel both are “only” hitting 8 out of 14 fairways per round … yet are posting the best scores in the world.
Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, they are hitting just one more fairway than 50%. Imagine if you hit “only” 50% of your fairways … you’d be telling everyone how inconsistent you are and “if I could just keep my Driver in the fairway I could start scoring better!”
We see it everyday — Golfers constantly putting undue pressure on themselves to hit the golf ball onto the fairway. Thus sabotaging your golf swing and robbing you of natural swing speed and distance. Yes, being in the fairway sometimes has an advantage over being in the rough. However, many times being off the fairway isn’t as bad as you may think.
“I have trouble sweeping my fairway woods” – You will always have trouble trying to sweep your fairway woods because that is not how you should hit them. The common phrase amongst Golfers is to sweep the golf ball off the ground with your 3 wood, 5 wood, etc.
Except, most Golfers that try to do so … often top the golf ball. Plus, even when you do hit a good shot, you are probably not getting the maximum distance the club can give you.
Now you will probably not take a divot like an iron when you hit a fairway wood … however, you should try to swing the same way: hit the ball first and then the ground. The main reason that you do not see a Player taking a divot with their fairway woods is attributed to the design of the club.
The wider sole almost prevents the club from digging into the ground. Yet, the best Players are hitting the golf ball and then the ground like they do with their irons … but because you don’t see a divot … the frustrated Golfer mistakes this to meaning that the Player was trying to sweep the golf ball off the ground.
But, when you try to sweep, you often hit the ground before you hit the golf ball. Thus, you are slowing down the golf club and losing distance. Plus, I guarantee you have had shots where you hit the ground before the golf ball and the club bounced up causing you to hit the top of the ball.
And although your friends and fellow Golfers will call you crazy when you tell them that you really shouldn’t sweep the ball with your fairway woods … just watch how inconsistent they are when they try to do so.
The best way to remember that you should not try to sweep your fairway woods is to repeat this mantra: “Sweepers are weepers. If you sweep … you weep.”
The Monkey continually hears other Golfers talking about these swing tips and starts to think: “these are the things I probably I should be trying in my game”
The Player has a personal Swing PLAN and Golf Course PLAN … and isn’t going to listen to other frustrated Golfers that try to give them advice
Would you rather be a Monkey or a Player?
Go ahead … be a Player!Regards,Marc Solomon – Your Instructor For Life