Crazy game! Swing path

I think I'm slowly starting to understand why golf or the golf swing is so hard. It could have a lot to do with the fact that the types of people that teach the golfswing or would give advice about the golfswing have already engrained so much muscle memory through repetitive movement that what they consider to be a simplistic movement isn't as such for a new player.

All that work up to this point has led to an ability to just take the club back and coil properly to where engrained muscle memory allows your body to uncoil and perform well executed shots. A metaphor for this would be the action of my fingers punching in a numerical password on my keyboard, I can actually forget my password but if I place my fingers on the num-pad they seem to remember the motion for selecting the numbers. It happens on its own but only because I engrained procedural memory that allows it to happen. Now imagine me telling someone that can execute my password if they just get in the starting position.

In my humble opinion, due to the nature of the golfswing, some things become second nature and at that point become impossible to explain to someone who hasn't engrained the same sort of movements. For this reason the only things that can really help someone learn golf besides a great teacher or years of practice is fundamentals and principles. I actually saw a *golf tip* the other day that instructed new players to stop hitting down on the ball because it was to blame for the over the top mover seen in nearly all beginner golfers.

If I could start over from the beginning there are few things I think someone could have told me that would have helped tremendously.

1. If you start golf with the preconceived notion that the speed that you execute your swing is directly correlated with how far you hit the ball then you will rush your backswing and perform the over the top move because this is the shortest possible path from the top of the backswing to contact with the ball and therefor makes sense at first.

2. Although it appears in golf videos that professional golfers are moving their arms as fast as they can from the top of the backswing in actuality their arms are doing almost nothing until halfway down the downswing.

3. This was mentioned by someone else on this site and couldn't be more right. If you try to swing the golf club exclusively with the already well-developed muscles that make it easier at first, ie. Biceps, pecs and forearms you never develop the actual *golf muscles* which are primarily in your abs and lower back. It's so much easier when you start to use all the wrong muscles to accelerate the club that I'm sure most people never stop this bad habit.

4. The concept of kinetic linking and what it really means. The golf swing is like a whip and that really has to be thought about to be understood completely. If you handed a whip to someone who had never seen it used properly and told them to accelerate the tip by any means necassary I doubt many would intuitively realize that this is accomplished by an initial slow or deliberate movement.

5. The idea that in golf two wrongs DO make a right. It's horrible for consistency but every bad habit lends itself to another bad habit that will allow you to hit some great shots that enforce not only one but two bad habits. So when I started I had a severly over the top swing coupled with a extremely closed stance and a really strong grip. I had some really bad shots but I also hit some pins with this setup so I thought I was on the right track when I wasn't. Also at the range I was getting so good at this that I hit the practice greens over and over again even though my swing was garbage.

6. Drawing the ball with woods and especially the driver is a very advanced shot unless you are cheating with say a closed clubface. What I mean by this is that even pro's like Woods and Kim struggle to hit draws. Woods talks about this in his book *How I play golf* and Kim said when he needs to hit a draw, he prays. I played nothing but draws when I started but with that came a lot of bad habits because I was cheating.

7. There are tons of these but this is already to long so I'll end on this one. I found an old clip of Tiger Woods with Butch Harmon talking about the work he was currently doing with his swing. The take home message from Tiger was *What you feel isn't real* he was basically saying that in his mind he felt like he was doing something but when he watched himself on video he wasn't. This is probably true for everyone if it's true for tiger woods.


I wrote a book Disclaimer, I have only been golfing a few years and I have only had one actual lesson. Anyway to the guy that started this post I really think at least one of the things mentioned above will save you some time.

So right!!!! maybe it is simple because they have the path and plane engrained so its easy for them. they say just coil get to the top and swing down, Yea right!!!

So you are saying it feels that way? I guess that could work as a thought but not in actuality.

I've watched V.J. Singh on the range and he likes to practice with a golf club head cover under his right arm while he hits balls. V.J. says it gives him the feeling of his right arm staying connected to his body - I think this is the feeling you're looking for. Keeping your right arm connected to the body during the golf swing has many benefits: