Position Golf (aka Video Camera Follies)

Pardon the interruption for a brief public service announcement.

In no way is what I teach, or what any good golf instructor teaches, "position golf." It's a trap fallen into by a lot of golfers, particularly those teaching themselves, and I hope to explain it away here so that this will not not affect you.

Position golf is defined as "making someone hit a series of positions under the premise that doing so will create a perfect golf swing."

Video cameras have made it easy to record and play back our swings at 200+ frames per second, highlighting every flaw and every little twitch and sway and wobble in our swings. We can say that we're slightly across the line at P4, we can see that we've flipped the club at impact, we can see that our head has risen 1.7 inches on the backswing, etc.

And many of you have heard me say things like "at P5 your left arm is too far out" and such.

Here's the thing... every good golf swing hits certain positions within a (perhaps surprisingly) fairly wide range. No good (right-handed full) golf swing has a flat right wrist at impact, for example. There are lots of other things no good swing has or every good swing has, and while they can be distilled as "positions," I view them merely as checkpoints through which we pass .

You cannot learn to hit positions. It's basically impossible to do and still maintain anything resembling an effective golf swing. Do not get obsessed with the positions you hit in your golf swing.

What matters? The things that create the positions. It's a subtle but important variation.

Someone I know describes The Golfing Machine as "learning feels from mechanics." The book describes the proper mechanics and asks that you, the machine, program yourself with the appropriate feels to recreate the mechanics. Know the checkpoints (and they vary somewhat for everyone), but know how you need to feel in order to achieve them.

I view "position golf" as similar. Say you're having trouble with your transition, from P3 to P5. TGM would tell you what you needed to do and, with a mirror or camera, you could put yourself in those positions, but what you should be doing at those times is paying attention to your body to see what feels it's providing to you. What does it feel like you're doing? That's the important thing.

"Position golf" is trying to connect a series of static positions. A golf swing is a connected series of feelings (many or most of which become ingrained over time - I'm not preaching 27 swing thoughts!) that are unique to you and which dynamically result in checkpoints being passed through during your motion.

Simply put, the golf swing - and any feelings you generate - are dynamic - position golf is static. We "pass through" checkpoints, we don't "hit" positions.