style="font-size:15px;"> Now, without changing that shaft and handle alignment, finalize your grip on the club and shuffle your feet into what feels like the best position to enable you hit the ball straight to your target.
‘Stand to the club’ correctly in this manner and you will find that the ball is automatically positioned correctly in relation to your feet with every club in the bag, including even the putter.
Too simple? Well, give it a try. Particularly if you’re one of the many golfers who habitually position their feet before they aim the clubface, you’ll be delighted with the results.
Check your posture
Correct posture promotes a body pivot that swings the club on the proper in-to-in arc and in the proper plane, which is the only way to return the clubface to the ball squarely and at the correct angle of attack while completely releasing the clubhead.
In the perfect posture (centre) your weight is evenly balanced.
Grip the club, aim its face, align your body and position the ball correctly and you will automatically achieve most of the postural requirements of a fine set-up. Just to be sure, though, here are the important areas to check:
To make room for your arms to swing freely past your body, you must lean over to the ball. Do so from your hips, keeping your back as straight as you comfortably can.
Think of ‘head up’ rather than ‘head down’ and achieve it by keeping your chin high.
Let your arms hang easily straight down from your shoulders, keeping your left arm straight but not stiff and your right arm relaxed at the elbow.
Because your right hand is lower on the club than your left, your shoulders will tilt slightly to the right, which will encourage positioning of your head behind the ball. Go with the tendency, but don’t exaggerate it.
Stay well balanced and ‘springy’ by setting your weight equally between the balls of both feet, with your knees slightly flexed.
Short or tall
Your precise posture at address will be influenced by your build. Tall golfers, of necessity, stand relatively close to the ball and thus fairly upright. Short golfers must stand farther away from the ball, and thus lean forward more from the waist. Seek comfort and good balance by avoiding extremes.
A soft right arm
At address, keep your right arm ‘soft’ and let it bend a bit at the elbow, which will point to your right hip.
Jack’s pre-shot routine helps sharpen focus
I think Jack Nicklaus summed up brilliantly the value of a pre-shot routine when he said: ‘Give your imagination free rein when you’re in a position to win and it can be the death of you.’
He is referring to the fact that if you let your mind wander, especially into the future, you’re in big trouble. A pre-shot routine stops this happening. It crystallizes your thoughts and helps you focus the mind on the things that are relevant, to the exclusion of everything else.
My advice to you is develop a consistent pre-shot routine. It doesn’t need to be exactly the same as Jack’s, but I think it should incorporate certain elements from the great man.
Firstly, picture the shot in your mind’s eye, from behind the line of play. This gets you mentally ‘into your shot’, so you’re thinking positively and constructively. Next, aim the clubhead over an intermediate target, a few feet in front of you between the ball and the flag. It’s far easier than aiming at a flag 250 yards away. Also, be very specific about what you aim at. This is relatively easy when the flag is your target. But when you’re driving off the tee, perhaps not so easy. Never aim just anywhere down the middle, because in my view if you aim vaguely you swing vaguely too – and that’s when you’re prone to making stupid mistakes.
Work hard at perfecting your pre-shot routine when you’re at the driving range. This is the place where you develop the good habits that enable you to perform to a higher level in competition. Nobody ever practised as well as Jack did. In my opinion, amateur golfers hit too many shots on the range with too little thought. Try to get into the mindset of hitting fewer balls with more thought. Quality, not quantity – that’s what practising is all about.
The ideal pre-shot routine: Visualise the shot, then aim the clubface, and finally build your stance.
The golf swing’s only purpose
The majority of the world’s 35 million golfers never play the game as well as they could because they have no idea, an incorrect idea, or an incomplete idea of what they are trying to do when they swing a golf club.
The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly.
How that is done is immaterial, so long as the method permits correct impact to be achieved over and over and over again.
Golf’s only secret
The behaviour of the golf ball is determined solely by four impact factors interacting with each other. They are:
1 The direction in which the face of the club looks, or the clubface alignment.
2 The direction in which the clubhead travels, or the path of the swing.
3 The angle of inclination at which the clubhead arrives at the ball, or the angle of attack.
4 The speed of the clubhead.
Everything you do in swinging a golf club should be related to these all-important impact factors. Getting them right is golf’s only secret
Golfs four key impact factors determine the shape and quality of your shots.
The flight of the ball tells all
The behaviour of every golf shot is determined not by how the club is swung – by the form of bodily motions employed – but by how each swing delivers the clubface to the ball. However, everything is moving too fast for the golfer to see what is happening on impact. How, then, can he discover the alignment of the clubface, the path of the swing, the angle of attack, and the speed of the clubhead?
The answer is: the flight of the ball.
The single most important step in becoming a good golfer: knowing what you should be trying to do with the club by learning and accepting the game’s true fundamentals – the correct ‘geometry’ of impact.
The next most important step is acquiring the knowledge that enables you to identify what’s happening at impact from the flight of your shots. Master those two mental disciplines and your eventual playing ability becomes solely a matter of how hard you are willing
