The hand and arm action supplies power to the shot by working as a swinging unit and with both forces, good leg action is essential for rhythm and balance during the swing, but perhaps it is not such an important source of power as some have argued. Try hitting a few balls with a 6-iron with your feet together, knees touching. Seve Ballesteros can hit a ball well over 200 yards on his knees.
So what every golfer should be aiming for, whether he has a classic or modern swing, is a balanced combination of hand and arm action and body action which results in the club face hitting squarely through the ball with maximum speed directly towards the target. It is in trying to get this balance, this timing, right that the club golfer can go disastrously wrong.
Too much body action is the major factor that wrecks the timing of many golfers. Often swinging back too far with their hips, with no resistance from knee or feet, they think about using their lower body action too much on the downswing and consequently don’t swing their arms freely enough.
A SWING CHANGE TAKES A LOT OF PRACTICE.
CUTTING EXCESSIVE BODY ACTION, WITH KNEES TOGETHER.
One reason for this may stem from TV programmes and videos that analyse the swings of top players in slow motion. The couch golfer watching Couples or Woosnam, say, may note that their lower bodies move towards the ball before their arms seem to start the downswing. Not appreciating the natural fast hand and arm action of the top pros, the golfer copies the body action alone. Worse still, he may copy bits of the swings of different pros, dovetailing some of Couples’ technique with parts of Woosnam. In that case he should realise that if Couples tried to copy Woosnam’s swing and vice versa, they would probably both have handicaps in double figures.
Copying the top pros without understanding what they are really doing has befuddled golfers since the earliest days of the game. There’s an inevitability about this search for ‘the secret’, shown in P G Wodehouse’s writings on Sandy MacBean and his book How to Become a Scratch Man in Your First Season by Studying Photographs. But today golfers often pick up some very bad habits from trying to copy their favourites – like taking too much time over their shots. They see the Tour professionals preparing to drive, discussing club selection with their caddies, teeing up, putting on their glove and then stepping up to the ball. Then just when you think they’re getting ready to strike, they stop and walk behind and check the line again, throw some grass in the air to check the wind and study the tops of the trees before finally taking up their stance. And then, sometimes, lo and behold, they have a few more practice swings just in case. It’s even more protracted on the greens, some professionals stalking the line of their putts clockwise, counter clockwise tapping down pitchmarks, plumb-bob lining up the hole. Several practice putts, another look here, another look there, all adds ten, fifteen, twenty seconds per shot to the round of golf. It’s no wonder there are so many five-hour rounds played today.
SET A PERSONAL TIME LIMIT FROM THE START OF ADDRESS.
One of the worst problems today is that people think that if they take a long time, they must be concentrating. That is not the case. This is especially true on the tee, where the club golfer is usually afraid of fooling (something the pro can hardly conceive of). Setting up, the longer he takes, the more likely doubting thoughts can pervade the concentration and wreck the swing. The best advice is to aim for a personal time limit: take twenty seconds say from the moment it’s ‘your turn’ to the moment you pull the trigger. It will clear the mind of random doubts and your probably find you will play a lot better.
Club golfers also copy the way many pros tee the ball low. The pros do this to promote a powerful fade and a low tee is definitely not for the player who slices. Nor is a ball position that is off the left heel for all clubs. This is fine for the Tour pro with his strong leg driven modern swing, but with the average golfer it only leads to excessive body action and problems.
If the golfer is to copy anything from his favourite pro, aside from enjoying his play hopefully, it should be his free arm swing. This is the unbalanced motive force in the majority of golfers’ swings, especially those who slice. Yet most fit people can swing the clubhead fast enough with their hands and arms to play reasonable golf.
This does not imply that club golfers should adopt a classic swing technique, hitting against a firm left side. Nor is there any suggestion that if you have been playing for quite a few years and have a middling handicap, you should try to change your swing radically. However, it may be beneficial to consider a sound swing technique that would suit the average golfer. If you adopt some of its elements into the golf swing you already have, you could see some very positive results. It ought to be said that all golf swings are like finger prints, every one is different. You can mentally feel that you’re copying somebody’s swing: the tempo’s the same, your walk, your every mannerism, is a carbon copy of your hero. But in reality it’s not like that at all, you’re born with your own rhythm of life and that is carried through into the game of golf.
To start with, every golfer must have a pre-shot routine, where he takes a grip on the chosen club and sets up to the ball. If you have a grip that’s right for your swing and a comfortably correct set-up, you are 90 per cent on the way to hitting a good golf shot. But if your grip and set-up are faulty you are virtually guaranteeing a bad one.
Pros can tell at a glance if a golfer has a low, a middle or a high handicap just from his address routine. The low handicapper, having taken an easy practice swing and checked the line of the shot, moves positively to the ball. He aims the club face, aligns his body and settles comfortably for the shot. The high handicapper, in contrast, usually looks tense over the ball. He fiddles with his grip, aligns his body and aims the club, peering down the fairway several times. He may then even take a practice swing or two before shuffling his feet again and tensing up for the shot. Above all, he has no consistent pre-shot routine.
To give yourself a chance of getting it all right and to develop a sound routine, you could use a simple aide memoire, the word GASP. G is for grip, A for aim, S for stance and P for position. In routine, you take your Grip, Aim the club face and align your body in a comfortable Stance with the ball Positioned correctly. Let’s look at these essentials in more detail.
First the Grip. Now you seldom see a low handicap golfer (not to mention a pro) with a bad grip. He seems to hold the club firmly, naturally in his hands. But a ‘natural’ hold for him could seem very uncomfortable and unnatural for you. For there are many ways to hold a club and at least one of them is correct for you, within certain parameters. You must find it and apply it, because if you have been a high handicapper for a number of years and show little sign of improvement, there’s a five-to-one chance that your grip is causing your problems and holding you back.
THINK ‘GASP’ FOR EVERY SHOT.
However, while millions of words have been written by golf instructors on the grip, most of which is good advice, it can be a little confusing for the club golfer. He or she is advised to place the club diagonally across the left palm and keep both palms facing each other, with the ‘Vs’ of thumbs and forefingers pointing to a spot half way between the nose and the right shoulder – for a neutral grip. The problem is that most golfers do not look at where the ‘Vs’ point and probably couldn’t judge where they were pointing anyway.
For
