Hal Sutton on Not Hitting Hundreds of Balls at the Range

[nevets88]

I’ll just let the tweet speak for itself. There’s more follow-up, drill down into the thread!

 

[iacas]

He also played a lot more golf than you do, @nevets88. 😉

Anyway, that tweet was good. His follow-up about the mental game, not so much.

[ColonelCamp]

I recently watched a YouTube video where an instructor teaches his students to not look at the ball during the swing, but to just focus on the finish, but only when you're practicing.  He himself doesn't do this when he plays. The point he was making was that when we take our practice swing away from the ball, it's usually a good one with good tempo, etc., but as soon as we get over the ball, the urgency to make contact with the ball kicks in and all the flaws that come from that feeling, kick in to produce our bad shots. By not looking at the ball, he says he's engraining the feeling he has when he takes his good practice swing. I say you still know the ball is there and if you even make contact, your swing flaws will come through no matter.  Anyway, this might be what Sutton was getting at with that tweet.  Maybe?

Edited December 9, 2021 by ColonelCamp

[billchao]

1 hour ago, ColonelCamp said:

I recently watched a YouTube video where an instructor teaches his students to not look at the ball during the swing, but to just focus on the finish, but only when you're practicing.  He himself doesn't do this when he plays. The point he was making was that when we take our practice swing away from the ball, it's usually a good one with good tempo, etc., but as soon as we get over the ball, the urgency to make contact with the ball kicks in and all the flaws that come from that feeling, kick in to produce our bad shots. By not looking at the ball, he says he's engraining the feeling he has when he takes his good practice swing. I say you still know the ball is there and if you even make contact, your swing flaws will come through no matter.  Anyway, this might be what Sutton was getting at with that tweet.  Maybe?

I don’t think that’s what he means with the tweet. I think it’s that practicing by hitting a lot of golf balls isn’t as effective because you focus on the resulting ball flight rather than the process of changing your swing.

[iacas]

3 hours ago, ColonelCamp said:

I recently watched a YouTube video where an instructor teaches his students to not look at the ball during the swing, but to just focus on the finish, but only when you're practicing.  He himself doesn't do this when he plays. The point he was making was that when we take our practice swing away from the ball, it's usually a good one with good tempo, etc., but as soon as we get over the ball, the urgency to make contact with the ball kicks in and all the flaws that come from that feeling, kick in to produce our bad shots. By not looking at the ball, he says he's engraining the feeling he has when he takes his good practice swing. I say you still know the ball is there and if you even make contact, your swing flaws will come through no matter.  Anyway, this might be what Sutton was getting at with that tweet.  Maybe?

I agree with @billchao.

Also, when you make a practice swing, you don't have to be precise with where you hit the ground, you don't have to swing fast enough to hit the ball all the way to your target, and you don't have to square up the clubface to the intended place, too.

Quite often someone making a practice swing leaves the face wide open, doesn't hit the ground, and swings slower. The last one is the one that they might do least often - sometimes they'll actually swing a bit faster from better sequencing.