I speak to average golfers every day – most of them are so frustrated because they simply have no idea what creates a good shot, or what will make them get better at golf.
I speak to advanced golfers every day – most of them have their heads filled with so much “swing stuff” that they have lost sight of what truly matters.
If you can link your good and bad shots to one of the following 3 things, golf becomes a lot less mysterious.
Improve these things (below) and you are guaranteed to get better at golf.
GROUND CONTACT
I’ve written hundreds of articles on this topic. Why? Because it’s so important.
In a well-struck iron shot from the grass, the ball will be struck first, and the ground will be contacted slightly after.
The above image shows the movement of the club (white line) – the ball is struck first, then the ground is struck later (pink).
If you don’t do this correctly, you will;
- hit fats and/or thin/bladed/topped shots
- have shots that will fall woefully short or go screaming over the back of the green
- get lower/inconsistent back-spin
However, if you improve this key, those issues go away.
If your results look more like the right hand (orange) dispersion, you almost certainly have a ground contact issue.
In fact, this is probably the most common issue that the average golfer faces. In my experience, if I want to improve a golfer really quickly, we improve this key.
This is one of the reasons why The Strike Plan has been such a huge success with thousands of amateur golfers around the World.
FACE DIRECTION
If you improve your clubface direction at the point of impact, your shot direction will improve – guaranteed.
A clubface could be presented either too open (to the right) or too closed (to the left).
All else being equal, when the face is presented more to the right, the result will be more to the right (and vice versa) – a pretty simple equation.
But, doesn’t the swing path matter?
Sure – but a good clubface position at impact can make any (reasonable) swing path work – even if it’s not neutral.
In fact, most pros play with a fade or a draw, showing that you don’t need a neutral to play decent golf.
Besides, golfers usually have offline swing paths as a way of trying to compensate for a poor clubface. When the clubface improves, I often find the swing path improves too.
Learning how to improve clubface control is covered in incredible depth in The Accuracy Plan.
FACE STRIKE
Strike the sweet spot – we all know this one, right?
While this is one of the most obvious to many – very few players are actually able to identify what they are doing – until it’s too late.
Shank!
I’ll often spray the face with some Dr Scholls foot-spray and within a few shots, golfers quickly realize why their shots haven’t been feeling so great, and have been lacking that “pop”.
If you don’t strike the sweet spot (or at least a consistent and functional part of the face), you will experience;
- shorter distances
- wild inconsistency with the driver direction
- those embarrassing shanks/toe shots that shoot 90 degrees right
And improving face strike quality is guaranteed to improve (or eliminate – in the case of shanks) the above.
HOW TO IMPROVE THEM
This article is an awareness builder. The goal is to highlight to you 3 vital keys to help you get better at golf.
Sometimes, awareness alone is enough to start to move the needle in the right direction.
However, improvement in these areas can be massively sped up when you use;
- Effective feedback (to allow you to identify what you are doing)
- Skill development exercises
- Technique changes that actually relate to your desired key
- Concepts which develop a deeper understanding of these keys (golf IQ)