Relax!

One bit of advice that I've found hard to implement is to "relax" as I set up to play a shot. I can recall my first golf teacher back in 2000 telling me to address the ball as though I'd been playing golf for fifty years. Great advice; just mighty hard for a beginner to do.

Recently I've discovered that body posture has a good deal to do with how relaxed or otherwise I am when I address the ball. If I try too hard to get the correct spinal angle, straight back, and bent knees - not to mention getting the buttocks thrust backward for balance - I invariably tense up. What is more, I find it nearly impossible to have that "nice, easy, smooth and relaxed swing" that is so much commended from such a position.

Recently I've been studying The Ernest Jones Method of playing golf and have been struck by Jones's insistence on a more upright stance. It was his opinion that most golfers bend over too much. He advised an easy, minimal adjustment of the body angle when swinging the club.

I've tried it this past week and certainly found it easier to stand to the ball in a relaxed manner. That in turn has helped me swing the club in a more relaxed way. The initial results are mighty encouraging - a score of 39 for a nine hole practice round this past Monday (my previous best was 45). The test will come when I've next got a full competition round. I'm eager to see what happens.  

Finding Our Tempo

The best tempo for us to swing the club at is apparently something very personal. It relates to our temperament, state of mind and health, and to our physical capabilities. Just as one person habitually walks slower than another, so that same person is likely to have a slower golf swing tempo than the other.

How, then, do we discover our unique and natural tempo? Once again The Swing Factory has something to help. It suggests the following exercise:

• Assume the correct address position
• Extend both arms horizontally in front of you with palms facing each other. The distance between your hands should be the same as the width of your shoulders
• Move both arms upwards together to just above head height and bring them down again.
• Repeat this motion several times, first without a club in your hands, and then with one
• be sure that the motions is smooth and easy, without any undue (or forced) effort being required
• Be sure the motion is a genuine swing of the hands and the arms from the shoulders

THE SPEED YOU MOVE YOUR ARMS IN THIS EXERCISE IS THE SPEED AT WHICH YOU SHOULD SWING YOUR HANDS AND ARMS IN THE GOLF SWING ITSELF. (p. 204)

Transferring this tempo - rate of action - to your natural golf swing is something that requires disciplined effort. It's an exercise we need to repeat over and over, and then deliberately apply it to our swing.

Much Too Fast!!

The Swing Factory makes the comment that most golfers swing much too fast. You've probably heard that before - I know that I have. Here's the full quote from the book:

"Most golfers swing much too fast to retain control over the delivery, so the point of their release and the shape of their swing is subject to constant variation." (p. 202)

That makes sense. The point at which we release power in the swing is important. And so too is the shape of the swing - something that apparently is closely related to power release and tempo as well. "Tempo and swing shape are indivisible" the book says (p. 202). So if we are swinging too fast, we are going to lose the control necessary to be able to release power through the wrists and hands at the right place, and our swing shape is going to vary from one swing to another. Instead, power going to be unleashed in a mighty heave too soon, and our swing shape is going to change constantly. And that's not what we want.

"You cannot standardise the shape of your swing and the point of delivery until you have a constant tempo." (p. 202). Hmmm! That DOES make good sense to me.

It's That Mind Thing!!!

Experienced golfers constantly tell us that the mind really matters in golf. In fact, most of our problems in trying to play the game consistently, they say, spring from problems with our mind.

Take this problem of releasing power too early in the downswing. This happens because we allow the thought of power - rather than swinging the club - dominate our minds.

I find this to be the case especially when I get into the rough. Seeing the ball nestled in the long-ish grass instinctively makes me feel that I have to hit it harder to get it out. What's happened? My mind has focused on the matter of power, not swinging the club. And the result? Almost always the tendency to "whack" the ball instead of swinging naturally through it.

Or to put it another way, I tend to focus on getting power out of the swing instead of the sequence of actions necessary for a smooth, effortless swing.

Yep! the mind sure does matter.

Looking Up Too Soon

I've been dogged with the problem of looking up from the ball too soon - or, as it is sometimes said, "lifting my head too quickly." I came across a most interesting explanation for this in The Swing Factory relating it to problems of tempo and rhythm.

Lifting the head, the book says, is a reflex reaction that happens after you have released power in your shot. You sense that you have discharged the force you want to apply to the ball, and you look up to see the result.

Lifting the head too early, according to this theory, is the result of releasing power too early. "Hit early and you will look early; hit late, and you will look late," the saying goes.

This comes back to tempo. An even tempo allows us to release power at the right time - in the hitting zone between the feet. If we do that, we will find that we are lifting our head at the correct time as well - after impact, not before.

More on Tempo

This matter of tempo is so important - and so difficult to implement - that I want to write more on it. Even if I'm the only one that benefits, that's okay.
Back to the book, The Swing Factory, that I mentioned in my last posting. The big thing about tempo, it insists, is that it allows you to develop power in the right place. The place for that power is in the impact zone - basically, between the feet. The tendency for beginners like myself is to release power too early - to "hit from the top" in other words. That's because we tend to think in terms of "hitting the ball" rather than executing a smooth swing. In our nervousness, we hurry the down swing (or through swing) and release power too soon. As a consequence, we fail to time the shot - and much worse as well.

If we can think of tempo rather than power - that is, of the pace of a smooth, even swing rather than force imparted to the ball - it enables us to build a swing that naturally imparts the power at the right place. In a true swing of the club, the maximum acceleration and speed will occur exactly where it should, at the point of impact. That will result in perfect timing and maximum distance.

So the key thing is to think of swinging the club, and doing so in an even, repeatable way. And the key to that  is developing a smooth, even tempo. Try to hit it too fast and you will almost certainly impart power too early and your shots will be erratic. Develop a steady, even tempo and you will be focusing on swinging the club and not hitting the ball.

The Big Three

After I'd finished my first golf lesson back in January 2000, the golf professional who had been teaching me wrote three words in capital letters on the lesson record he gave me. They were TIMING, RHYTHM AND TEMPO. These three things, he said, are "the big three" of good golf.

To this day there's something elusive about all three of them. Try to get someone to define "rhythm", and you'll most likely get a vague and woolly answer. Much the same is true with the other two "biggies" as well. I'm a scientist at heart, and love clear definitions. Knowing exactly what a word means helps me. And that's the case with these three.

When I started playing golf in earnest a year or so ago (I had merely dabbled on and off before that), I began to read books on the sport from our nearby library. One of them, The Swing Factory has the best discussion of "tempo" that I've come across. Let me distill some of the things I found helpful.

I can't recall that the book actually defined the term, but I had enough know-how to realise it had something to do with speed. I've a dictionary before me as I write, and it defines the term as "a characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; pace." In golf that relates to the pace at which we swing the club.

On this The Swing Factory has many good things to say. The first is that tempo is the key to a consistent golf swing. It describes it as "the master regulator of the entire system." That is to say, the overall cohesion, smoothness and effectiveness of a swing is governed by the rate at which we swing the club.

How does that work? Like this, the book goes on to say. "The right tempo enables the sequence of the swing to occur in the correct order with perfect timing." If the tempo is too rushed, you don't have time to move your arms, hips, shoulders etc., in the way they need to. Alternatively, if the tempo is too slow, the swing becomes disjointed and loses its smoothness. Movements which should flow easily from one to the other become frozen, or broken, and the stroke as a whole loses cohesion. The result is almost inevitably a loss of timing, and certainly, of consistent repeatability. The most repeatable actions are those that flow smoothly and naturally. Jerky, disjointed ones are likely to wobble all over the place.

That's enough for now on the importance of tempo. More next time.

What's This All About?

I'm a relative newcomer to golf - at least, to serious golf. I first held a club in my hands over twenty years ago when my younger brother, Richard (Dick), a gifted golfer, encouraged me to have a swing with an 8 iron in the back paddock of our parents life-style block in Fairlie. Always a lover of ball games, I immediately enjoyed the challenge of trying to hit that tiny white ball where I wanted it to go. However, I didn't pursue the game as such till nearly 15 years later.

Since shifting to Wyndham in 2008 I've joined the local golf club and have really fallen in love with the game. I love the exercise it provides, the technical challenge it presents, and the fraternity of people that it creates. I'm still a high handicapper at this point, and am not phased about that. But I do want to get better.

I've had some lessons from a golf professional in Invercargill, our nearest city, and also milked the brains of the seniors at our club. They've been helpful, and I continue to try to apply what I've learned from them as best as I can.

But what I like doing most of all is reading good books on golf, gleaning from them the wisdom of great teachers of the sport and masters at the game. That fits with a lifetime of study, research and teaching - I  guess I'm a born student and enjoy nothing more than reading, thinking, writing and teaching.

The last of these - teaching - is what has led to the creation of this blog site. In all the work that I've done over the years in soil science, pastoral ministry and theology, I've always wanted to share with others what I've been able to glean from my studies. I don't claim to be an expert practitioner of all that I've found helpful - if that were the case I'd be a single figure handicap player. But I do love to share with others what has been genuinely helpful to me. It seems selfish and wasteful to keep the gathered gold all for myself. I want to scatter it around.

That's what I plan to do in this blog site - share with others the lessons I've learned both from personal experience "on the links", and more importantly, what I've learned from others that is truly helpful "for the links." Most of these lessons are of a technical nature - that is, they relate to the actual playing of golf. But some of them are personal and practical. Some of them are even "spiritual". I'm a pastor by calling, and see golf as very part part of my life in Christ. There's a great deal I learn from practice and playing that relates to the deeper issues of life, and from time to time I will share these lessons as well.

I hope you find this site both helpful and interesting. As I say, my purpose in writing is simply to share insights I've gained along the way to becoming a better golfer. If you've got anything to add to what I write, feel free to do so. I'm still very much in the infancy stages of learning and welcome any help people have to give.

Blessings,

Andrew Young