It can be said: “A Golfer that searches for one golf tip will become a Golfer searching for many golf tips!”

Problem: It could be as innocent as hitting a couple of 7 irons behind the golf ball during a round … and someone suggesting that you move the golf ball back in your stance.

After changing your ball position, you start to hit the golf ball first more often. However, you’re now pushing it too far to the right (because your clubface has less time to straighten out before impact). So by innocently “fixing” your ball position … you’re now hitting more shots that are flying offline.

Which now leads you to search for a tip to fix your “new” accuracy problem.

Your next “tip” is to strengthen your grip so your left hand is more on top of the club. Because this will allow you to more easily close the clubface through impact. But, within a few swings of making this adjustment … the golf ball starts hooking low and left.

After more searching, you find a tip to fix “shots going low and left” by keeping your head behind the golf ball at impact. As you start working on this tip … you do start to hit the ball a little straighter – but you’re now frequently topping the golf ball and having it roll, as opposed to flying.

Which now puts you into panic mode because you’re already thinking about too much before each swing with your new ball position, new grip, and head position. How are you going to cram any more things into the 1.5 seconds it takes to swing?

So you breakdown and get a lesson from a local Pro who says the reason you’re topping each shot is that you’re taking the club too far outside on your backswing, as well as starting the downswing too much with your hands. You’re going to need to change your backswing to start the club on the proper swing plane … then learn to lag the club more on the downswing by starting with your shoulders.

Which means, that what initially started as a small problem of slightly hitting behind the golf ball with your 7 iron a couple of times … now has turned into a huge problem of you working on 5 new things in your golf swing!

You went from a Golfer that felt ok about your game – looking for one simple tip … to a Golfer that is totally lost in a sea of golf tips. Each new technique taking you into deeper depths of inconsistency.

So how do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? Or if it has happened to you … what do you do to reverse the trend?

Solution: The key is to not panic … don’t go searching on youtube for golf videos about “how to stop hitting behind the golf ball”. Because you’ll find pages of videos … each proclaiming a different thing you’re doing wrong. Yet these methods often are just more tips that are going to lead you to adding even more adjustments.

The initial solution for the Golfer above could have been to get away from taking full swings on the driving range for a day … and move over to the short game area to hit 15 yard wedge shots. And most likely with the smaller golf swing hitting to a shorter target … you’d start feeling and controlling your movements a little better than you were with your full swing 7 iron.

Then, after starting to regain your feel, move to slightly longer swings by hitting 35 yard shots. Once you start gaining control of the longer swing … increase your Length of Swing for 60 yard shots. And once you gain control of these … move to longer swings.

There is a huge difference in “fixing” your golf swing using the recommended “Results Based Approach” vs. the often used “Theories and Assumptions Approach”. In the Results style of improving, you are learning to feel your golf swing while making natural, almost unconscious corrections that get better and better without much thinking involved.

You’re basically focused on small, rhythmic swings … and improvements pretty much happen without you having to consciously think about making adjustments.

Whereas the Golfer that tries to find a tip for something as innocent as hitting behind the ball – often creates more problems which puts you in a cycle of continually searching for tips that unknowingly create additional problems. Which then makes it necessary to search out even more tips.

The Monkey is dependent on golf tips … the more they search … the more they need

The Player goes back to small swings and discovers the solution needed for the big swings

Go ahead, Be a Player!

Regards,

Marc Solomon – Your Instructor For Life