If you're struggling with your game, you may be mistaking the ball for the target
Also in the Up & Down Newsletter: Tom Watson's ol' time training device, revisiting the 'unfair' divot rule, and the golf pro crisis
It’s been an amazing week: I gave my first golf clinic where I demonstrated hitting balls—phew, I hit most of them solid—and I was interviewed by Karl Morris for his terrific Brain Booster podcast. It will go live next week.
Last week, Howard and I welcomed back Dr. Raymond Prior to our Swing Thoughts podcast to talk about how the brain works for and against us, and how to overcome your default behaviours to play better. It’s so jammed with great stuff, you’ll want to listen twice.
Here’s this week’s newsletter …
I gave a golf clinic last weekend and game of catch broke out.
It was fun, but there was some serious learning that I believe allowed golfers to understand and experience the role of the target in golf.
During the clinic at The Golf House, I asked one of the participants to stand in one place and toss me a golf ball underhanded to my outstretched hand while I walked around.
Without fail, Steve threw the ball accurately to my hand every time. I asked how he did it. “I have no idea,” he said.
Well, here’s why: My hand was the target. Steve’s intention was to throw the ball to the target. It’s that simple. His body just acted on that intention.
The point is that golf is a target game. In golf, we use a club to hit a ball to a target. The objective of golf is to send the ball to the target, whether it’s an area of the fairway, a green, or the hole.
One of the key reasons that people struggle with golf is that they mistakenly perceive that the ball is the target. You may stand over a ball with hopes to hit it to a flag 100 yards away, but at the top of the backswing, suddenly the mind focuses on the ball, as if to say, ‘hit that!’
For many novice golfers, and golfers who’ve lost their confidence, it’s more like, ‘Dear God, please let me hit it!’
After they get to the top of the backswing, instead of swinging through the ball to send it to the target, the body does everything possible to ensure the club hits the ball—the perceived target. Their weight moves back instead of forward, the body stalls, and the club is thrown from the top.
The golfer’s club will either hit the ground behind the ball, or hit the middle or top of the ball with little power. The shot looks and feels terribly unsatisfying.
The ironic thing is that you met your objective to hit the target, which was the ball. As Fred Shoemaker says, “The body never does a stupid thing.”
If you’re still struggling with making solid contact, consider whether you’re swinging to a target. Yes, the ball is, of course, involved, but the game changes when you feel that you are swinging to a target. It’s like the ball just gets caught up as the club swings through.
When you swing to a target, the golf swing feels more instinctive, as if you were throwing a club or swinging a baseball bat. I learned from Shoemaker that simulating throwing a club—swing it but don’t let go—releases your energy toward the target, causing all kinds of good things to happen naturally: your weight transfers, your hips turn, and you release the club through the ball. Try it.
You can also develop a better connection to the target by putting or chipping while looking at the hole. Then with longer clubs, try to keep an image of the target in your mind’s eye as you swing.
The same goes for indoor golf. Swing to a target—even if it’s a simulated target.
If you’re interest in learning more about the role of the target during a complimentary 30-minute coaching session, send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.
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I love this. In a high-gloss golf instruction world teeming with high-production videos and digital devices comes a reminder that simple and cheap can be amazing.
Take a gander at this wonderful bit of vintage Tom Watson that a friend sent me this week. The video nicely jives with my image of Watson as no-nonsense, down-to-earth guy.
In the video, ol’ Tom shows how you can fashion a coat hanger into a training device. Yes, a measly wire coat hanger.
It’s great to listen to the Huck Finn of golf talk and demonstrate how a mangled piece of wire can help you hit the ball better.
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It happens to every golfer, eventually.
You hit a great drive only to find it ends up in a fairway divot. But not just a bacon-strip or sand-filled divot. No, it’s a deep gouge shaped like a canoe that’s aimed at the Forbidden Forest where Lord Voldemort lives.
If you’re playing according to The Rules of Golf, that’s too bad. You can’t move it. You must play it as it lies.
Yes, it seems grossly unfair. Once again, you were minding your own business and the universe—or a golfer with an astonishingly steep slicer’s swing—messes with your desire to have the world behave exactly as you want.
Well, sorry. That’s my reaction to the complaint that the fairway divot rule must be changed, as I read in SCOREGolf’s Rise & 9 newsletter this week. “This madness cannot continue,” the writer protested. (There’s no link. I get it via email.)
As much as I feel his pain, I disagree. Who says that your ball must always find a perfect lie? That’s part of the beauty of golf—adapting to whatever the course presents you, whether it’s a perfect launching pad lie for your three-wood, or an oversized pine cone that lies directly in front of your ball in the bluegrass.
Never mind the philosophical argument, but it’s also practical. As the grass grows back in a divot, when can it be determined absolutely that the divot is no longer a divot?
Spare me that we’re only talking about changing the rule around divots filled with seed mix or sand.
Here’s my take on it—just like most of the chaos we face in the world: deal with it.
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The profession of being a club golf professional is in a crisis. It’s causing great people to leave the business and talented people who envisioned working in the game they love to go elsewhere.
“It's absolutely unsustainable, and there's a crisis brewing for facilities that don't get in front of it,” says Seth Waugh, CEO of the PGA of America, in a sad but important article in Golf Digest.
In providing career coaching to club golf professionals, it’s become more apparent to me every year that many talented and skilled golf professionals are finding that the job of their dreams has turned into a nightmare—of long hours, poor job satisfaction, exhaustion, tension at home from the lack of balance in their lives, and they have fallen out of love with the game.
As the article explains, the current way that most golf professionals are compensated, the expectations for the hours they put in, and the many hats they are expected to wear, has lead to burnout and frustration.
Many young people who want to work in the business but also be supportive partners and attentive parents have determined that it’s an impossible dream.
One of the best club professionals I ever met left the business years ago to operate heavy equipment for a municipality. He works about 40 hours a week and he gets to spend most weekends and evenings with his wife and children. He misses golf, but it’s a trade-off he’s proud to have made.
I’m pleased that a consumer golf publication like Golf Digest has put its considerable resources into documenting this important issue, and that it may lead to needed changes.