Thinking about the swing......

[RWHJR3]

Many say that when you swing, imagine swinging through the ball, with the ball being in your way instead of striking at the ball. As a police officer, when shooting, you shoot worse when anticipating the trigger pull, instead of pulling the trigger and letting it surprise you when it fires. Same concept?

Lets say you practice your swing with no ball on the ground/tee, then let's say someone puts the ball in front of you when you swing, do you think you'll strike the ball better? Obviously you have a specific aim point down when swinging, so you're on target.

Point I'm trying to get is, if you imagine just swinging away instead of worrying about the strike, will you make better contact?

[$2 Nassau]

I've always heard that as well. Sounds good, but it sure is hard to forget about that little white ball. I do, however, pick a spot in the grass in front of the ball and try to swing through to that spot. But again, that spot is all relative to the ball - so it's not like I am ignoring the ball completely.

[ks8829]

when I take my practice swing before I hit the ball, I am only focusing on making a good swing for the ball direction and flight I want to achieve.

do you have a pre-shot routine that you can repeat everytime you are ready to hit your shot or putt?

work on the short game for the fastest way to lower your scores

[Golf'nBiker]

Trigger squeeze and trigger YANK/PULL are similar, I think, to swinging THRU the ball, that hitting AT the ball in a purely analitical perspective, but very different. Meaning, you can't take a practice squeeze and get a feel for the result, as you can w/a 5 iron. If your practice swing is fat or a whif, you can make the adjustment, and take another swing. Another thought about hitting THRU the ball is exactly what those who are vision impaired do when they play golf...and many hit the ball supurbly.

[O.B. Right]

I saw a training aid on the golf channel recently that allowed you to hit balls with your practice swing. I want to say it was on the Haney Project w/Charles Barkley - can't be sure.

Basically . . you set up on a hitting mat with no ball and take your practice swing. At the exact right moment, a ball pops up from a hole in the mat - just in time for you to hit it.

There must be something to the concept for them to go through the trouble to build this machine.

[Gerardv]

I'm a shooting instructor and find I shoot well in the same frame of mind as when I golf well. The feeling of just "letting it go," whether it's the club head or the shot, is what I'm always going for. In training the thought is being in the "zone" where the physical motion is taking place without any thought.

Sometimes it is referred to as "unconscious competence." Meaning your body is so well trained it just reacts without conscious thought. It’s the reason a pre-shot routine is so important. Basically, once the routine starts the body knows what to do next and takes over.

The same thing takes place in shooting. A person I know was in a shoot-out and said he honestly didn’t remember drawing the gun and pulling the trigger after seeing his adversary pull a gun. He said, quite candidly, that he remembers seeing the gun in the bad guy’s hands and then started seeing holes in the bad guy’s chest ,and his reactions to being shot.
It wasn’t until the bad guy was incapacitated that the guy I knew realized he was the cause of the bad guy’s lead poisoning. He was so well trained that when the balloon went up he reacted.

My feeling is when people tell you to swing without thinking of the ball being there it’s the same thing. That you’re so well trained that the swing just happens.

The best rounds of my life took place when I was not thinking about golf or my swing at all. Which isn’t specific to me, of course. I also found I got much more consistent when I set up a pre-shot routine and used it all the time. When the routine starts, it completes without any conscious effort on my part leading to the ball being incidental to everything.

The same is true when I shoot. Once my body goes into the mode where I will draw and fire, no thought takes place, it’s just unfettered motion.

I guess if we could actually get that well trained in golf we would be Tiger Woods!