On "Taking your Practice Swing to the Ball"

[DaveLeeNC]

I went through an interesting experience a year or so back. I just happened to take a close look at my practice swing in video. Low and behold virtually all the swing faults that I had been working on were gone! My instant reaction was "all I have to do is to do that swing in front of a golf ball". I was expecting this to take a week or so of serious work.

3 months later the project was a complete, 100% failure. I ultimately came to the conclusion that my practice swing bears no more relationship to my real swing than does Tiger Woods' practice swing bear any relationship to MY real swing.

But I tried everything I could think of (eyes closed, just try to do it, don't try to do it, try not to try, try to not try, hit whiffle balls and ultimately tennis balls, my "walk-around drill", etc).

Has anyone else out there tried to specifically "take the practice swing that you do without thinking" and hit a golf ball with it? I've adjusted to the fact that I cannot do that, but wonder about any other experiences out there.

Thanks.

dave

ps. The most interesting failure here was my "walk-around drill". This is best done with a hybrid off the mats. You put a golf ball down somewhere and just literally walk around the mat taking easy/continuous practice swings and just let one of them "just happen" to be at the ball. I really expected this approach to work - nope.

[Leek]

Yup. Check out Tour Tempo. It lets you make that swing every time.

[DaveLeeNC]

That is a very interesting thought. Since the differences between the two swings are positions it didn't seem promising. But I did take a look at an old pair of practice and real swings from a long while back.

Basically the two different swings stayed within 1 frame of each other from "hands at the right thigh" at the start of the backswing until near the impact zone (and that is where things are very different and is the issue). I kind of expected that as I've done a fair amount of video comparisions before.

Part of the reason that, my my case, they were so consistent is that I often "swing to a phrase". So while my tempo isn't what the Tour Tempo book would recommend (from my memory of having read it several years ago), it tends to be pretty consistent.

Thanks for the comments.

dave

[hukdizzle]

do you take a divot when you take your practice swings?

[DaveLeeNC]

do you take a divot when you take your practice swings?

Typically no. I have a standard "video club" that I use - 22* hybrid (steel shaft). My normal stroke with that club would be a "light thump" on the ground which I get in both cases (for the most part). I have not done a lot of work with the other clubs, other than a few swings here/there just to verify that this phenomenon doesn't change much across my clubs. dave

[hukdizzle]

what happens when you attempt to hit the golf ball. ball flight/club path? Also one thing that has helped me alot is to get away from the matt and hit every club i can on a turf range. Matts are alot more forgiving that turf is.

[DaveLeeNC]

what happens when you attempt to hit the golf ball. ball flight/club path? Also one thing that has helped me alot is to get away from the matt and hit every club i can on a turf range. Matts are alot more forgiving that turf is.

I am pretty square coming through the ball for the most part (moderately heavy divot with the short irons). I hit more left errors than right errors. Most of this particular exercize was done off the turf.

My interest here is if anyone else has ever specifically noticed that their practice swing is (as viewed on video) better than their real swing and tried to actually hit a ball with their practice swing. Although I have accepted this as being the case (for me), I am still surprised that it is basically impossible for me to do. Or it least it was a year or two ago when I worked hard on it. I assume it is still the case, but verification will require a replacement camcorder than I am expecting to have by Christmas. dave

[hukdizzle]

Your practice swing will be different than your real swing no matter how slight it may be. The fact is when you are doing a practice swing you are loose and not focusing on hitting a static object. When you put a golf ball in front you it changes everything mentally and you're brain will make changes that you won't even know about to make sure you make contact with the ball. The brain is a terrible thing in this instance because it's reaction/instinct and not true concious thought. I ran into this issue learning to play pool and once i overcame my "brain" I was a run out 9 ball player.

[DaveLeeNC]

Your practice swing will be different than your real swing no matter how slight it may be. The fact is when you are doing a practice swing you are loose and not focusing on hitting a static object. When you put a golf ball in front you it changes everything mentally and you're brain will make changes that you won't even know about to make sure you make contact with the ball. The brain is a terrible thing in this instance because it's reaction/instinct and not true concious thought. I ran into this issue learning to play pool and once i overcame my "brain" I was a run out 9 ball player.

The only difference is that it took me 3 months to figure it out

dave

[andre112]

Maybe if you swing with closed eyes without a ball and then have a friend randomly put a ball there. so you don't know when you'll actually hit a ball or not.

[albatroz]

At least you grew wiser now . Thats what matters .

[DaveLeeNC]

Maybe if you swing with closed eyes without a ball and then have a friend randomly put a ball there. so you don't know when you'll actually hit a ball or not.

Have never done that, but certainly thought about it. Ultimately I lost interest in the project.

dave

[jc21539]

Actually, I hope you have not lost interest becaues the point you have brought up is an excellent one.

I and others I have played with have experienced the exact same phenomenon that you are talking about.

I think the key issue here is swing orientation.

When there is a ball in front of you, your swing is oriented to hit the ball.

But when there is no ball, your mind naturally searches for something to orient itself with. The next logical choice after the ball - the target.

The answer you are looking for is not to forget about the ball - it's to think about the target.

I like to think of the golf swing as an underhand pitch, like in softball. I believe that Ben Hogan actually took a photograph once where he was throwing a golf ball underhand to illustrate the motion of a swing.

Of course, to throw a ball and hope for it to go anywhere near a target, we would need to be looking at the target, instead of watching our hand and analyzing the exact moment that we would need to release the ball.

I have even gone as far as to contemplate why we look at the ball at all, and not instead at the target. We are required to have an awareness of the location of both to get the ball to the target. Is it easier to develop a mind's eye for something 3 feet away, or 300 yards away?

[DaveLeeNC]

Actually, I hope you have not lost interest becaues the point you have brought up is an excellent one.

FWIW, I did spend some time hitting balls with my eyes closed. I found it doable, but I was never comfortable with it. Relative to "my quest" I didn't find it useful. But if someone held a gun to my head and gave me 1 week to pull this off, maybe I would go back there. I can imagine this somehow being helpful.

But without a gun to my head, I'm just not inclined to be back down that path (eyes open or shut). dave

[jc21539]

No, I am not by any means implying that you should literally start playing golf without watching the ball, that would just be silly.

It's a radical idea that is more just an exercise in thought than anything else; I'm not banking on it catching on anytime soon.

But the theory behind it is along the lines of what hukdizzle was saying. I would predict that most likely, your practice swing never had the faults that you have been fighting in your real swing.

If you are "stuck" on the ball, it won't matter if you fix your current swing faults, because new ones will develop. The famous golf plane arc that is illustrated in ben hogan's book (where he looks like he is inside a giant hoolahoop) is 100% relative to the target line. Without a sense of target, there would be no reason for that arc to naturally develop.

The best golfer I ever had the opportunity to know on a good-friend basis was a +2 point something handicap. He had a solid, on-plane swing, and it's safe to say that my grandmother knew more about the golf swing than this guy (no offense grandmothers). The lesson I took from him was that there is something fundamentally instinctual about the golf swing that isn't really talked about all that much.

Think about it. Would you go pay a professional golf instruction $50/hr to tell you to hit a ball with a stick at another stick? Don't forget, the modern golf swing was born before computer video analysis was. Golfers were creating these angles and impact positions before anyone even knew they existed.

Just some food for thought.

[DaveLeeNC]

Just one interesting final comment regarding this. I find taking the backswing that I want (in practice - no ball) easy. In front of a ball it is extremely difficult - bordering on impossible for me.

In many ways I find this more surprising than the downswing part (that was actually of more interest).

I did an interesting exercize once. I committed to hitting 2000 golf balls without one SINGLE "wrong" (too flat - below the plane) backswing. These were all on the range or my shag area, and being a practice hound (retired from the workforce) it wasn't a huge commitment. The thinking was that I would get this "too flat backswing" out of my system. I was sure that all swings were "OK" by making all swings be "swings in pieces". I had several versions of this - here is one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WlwyKxjuns

It was marginally helpful in that regard. I admit to stopping after around 1400 balls. I wanted to get back on the course.

dave

ps. The wierd left foot position was caused by a hip issue that I was dealing with at the time.

[tm22721]

Just one interesting final comment regarding this. I find taking the backswing that I want (in practice - no ball) easy. In front of a ball it is extremely difficult - bordering on impossible for me.

As one hacker to another... The exact problem you describe caused me to give up on a full backswing. I now use a 3/4 swing with same power but better accuracy and control. Honestly I don't know why they teach a full backswing to beginners because the long lead-in creates so many unnecessary swing errors. Trainers have to eat too I guess.

[lamebums]

I went through an interesting experience a year or so back. I just happened to take a close look at my practice swing in video. Low and behold virtually all the swing faults that I had been working on were gone! My instant reaction was "all I have to do is to do that swing in front of a golf ball". I was expecting this to take a week or so of serious work.

You should see some of my buddies play - all of them are complete hacks. But when they take a practice shot, I can tell they've made a good swing - and at least one of them complains that he's "just wasted a perfect shot". And then he gets up to the ball and hits a little dribbler. I do the same thing a lot - what I'd found out mostly is that I build up tension in anticipation of hitting the ball, which not only slows me down but throws a lot of stuff off line. I guess the best way to solve this (I haven't managed to either) would just be to imagine you're swinging the club, and the ball is just in the way. Don't "hit the ball" - just swing the club back and through as if the ball wasn't there. Easier said than done, I know.