What's wrong with your golf swing?

Do you really think your swing's good enough?

Why on earth would you? Look at all the bad shots you've hit, those tops, slices and duck hooks you can't seem to eradicate? The times the divot flew further than your ball?

OK, so there's one or two good shots there from time to time. But that doesn't mean you can play; the ball rarely flies exactly as you envision. Doesn't that define a bad shot, even if you manage to scramble some kind of result?

Do you believe your poor shots result from your poor swing which in turn means you're a poor golfer?

Your shots are bad which means your swing's bad which means you're bad.

No wonder you're frustrated. 

You need a nice big dollop of swing change, a slice of mechanical practice washed down with  video analysis. 

Don't you?

I look at things a little differently. 

I think we've got this back to front.

After all, there are occasions where you've hit the ball beautifully.

You've experienced that odd little frisson when you return to your senses after an effortless swing to see the ball fly as you intended.

You've hit chips and pitches that have left your fellow competitors slack-jawed with astonishment.

You've done this with your current swing. 

So why change? What will you gain from a painful and difficult overhaul of  your swing? Do you really think that swing change will lead to you playing better shots than the ones I've described?

Why then do you feel a need to "fix" your swing? Could a "broken" swing really have given you the moments of pleasure described above?

I think not. Here, instead, is Dr Geek's Swing Critique.

• Are you frustrated because your best swings aren't good enough? 

• Or does your frustration arise because your best swings happen so infrequently?

• Do you really need to fix your swing?

• Or should you be focusing on making your best swings more often?

Starting in competitive golf as a 28 handicapper, I was astonished to find little difference between my best swings and those of 10-15 handicappers. 

The difference in our skill level was obvious from our poor swings, rather than our good ones.

There were obvious differences in both skills and scores. The lower the handicap, the fewer the mistakes. Their misses were less severe and less often and even when then found themselves in real trouble they extricated themselves with minimal damage to their scorecard.

Crucially, their misses were much more predictable. This allowed them to plan their shots taking into account the likely reward and risk scenarios.

Most of us are time-poor. We have jobs, families and commitments which mean we don't have as much time as we would like to devote to our obsession. 

As I've stated above, major swing changes can take a lot of time and dedication to complete. Very few of us have that time to spare. Although we try to convince ourselves otherwise, it's quite  likely life will prevent us following through with it. 

So what happens if we fall off the "Swing Change wagon" ?

Let's see if you recognise this scenario...

Disillusioned and desperate, you head to see a new Pro. He might video your swing; he'll certainly point out all you're doing wrong before starting to set it right. By the end of the session your weak slice has become a draw and you're excited. You make time for the range every night for the next week; although work's busy you're fired up with enthusiasm.

You've got another lesson 2 weeks later. You're at the range twice a week by this stage, which you tell yourself is a manageable minimum...and then life gets in the way. Work's busy; family and friends need your time. You're out of the habit; you spend your spare time  resting and suddenly it's three weeks since you've been to the range...

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not calling your commitment into question.

It's just what happens to us all. Even golf has to take a back seat sometimes. But what happens to our swings?

If we're lucky...nothing. We regress back to our standard swing and forget what we've been taught...if we're lucky.

What's more likely is that we remember bits and pieces of the information we've been given, but we've lost the teacher's framework, the context. We remember our description of the how the swing felt, not realising we may well have distorted this over time. Effect is mistaken for cause. 


In short, we're a mess.

Time lost and financial cost with significant risk of getting worse. Surely there's a better way?

Perhaps we should concentrate on the swings we have rather than the swings we want? 

Maybe we should work towards making our best swings...more often?

If I were to play my best shots 10% more often I'd be delighted.

That figure might seem terribly low to you. But 10% more perfect shots means 10% fewer imperfect ones. And that's not even the main benefit. It'd be impossible to hit the ball beautifully 10% more often without significantly improving control of the club face through impact. This  means  misses would become less severe and more predictable.

You might not need to fix your swing. Scrape away all of the things you've added over the years in an attempt to "improve"  and you might just find it's a whole lot better than you realised. It's all too easy to  focus solely on your  swing and neglect everything else.

Before embarking on a major swing change ask yourself this:

"am I squeezing every last drop of performance from my current ability?"

If the answer's yes, then by all means go ahead and overhaul your swing. But if not, please consider correcting this before taking on a major change.

But you don't have to take my word for it. If you're at all unsure, please feel free to make that change. Particularly if you'll be playing in my club championship. I quite fancy a run at the matchplay stages and would be delighted to see my competition tie themselves in knots.

Seriously though, if you do go ahead and make that change, stay in touch. Drop by halfway through the season and let us know how it's working out for you. I'm always happy to re-examine my ideas in the light of new evidence.

But until then, I know what I'll be doing. I'll be here,working to make what I already have the very best it can be.


Shall we see who gets the most from their efforts?

As ever, I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts should you agree or disagree. Leave a comment down below and  let's start a conversation. 

Tweet me up @The_Golf_Geek at any time for golf related chat. 

Can bad shots really lead to good golf?

How I'd rock the range at the Ryder Cup.

It's tragic.

I've devised a range drill I'd love to use at the Ryder Cup. It would astound, amaze and astonish onlookers. This routine would ensure everyone was talking about me.

I'd lure opponents towards the rocky shores of complacency whilst quietly topping up my confidence.

I'd be able to hide a bad session - because my poor shots would often look like good ones.

The only problem? I might not get the opportunity to use it.

I'm all for positive thinking, but at the tender age of 36 it's a bit of a stretch to see me playing in Samuel Ryder's tournament. I shall share it with you instead.

Here's a brief precis: I'd hit "poor" shots. On purpose. Sound good?

It doesn't?

Please allow me to explain a little further.

The unique selling point of this approach is it opens the door to a wide gamut of shots.

Shots opponents, commentators and spectators wouldn't believe anyone would deliberately attempt.

I'd get to stride off the range brimming with quiet confidence yet no-one would be able to understand why. People might start to whisper I'd cracked under pressure. I'd have lowered others' expectations, whilst stealthily becoming more confident.

As I'd be the only person who knew what shot I was planning to create, I'd be the only person who knew if a shot had failed or succeeded. What might in reality be a poor outcome could look like a good shot to the uniformed observer, making any difficulties less obvious.

How on Earth would I achieve this?

I'd devise a way of picking shots at random. I already use a dice rolling application on my phone on the chipping green to ensure I don't only give myself easy shots from good lies. A successful up & down from an impossible position is incredibly satisfying, and my short game and scores have significantly improved as a result.

With this drill I'd develop the concept, using a number of dice to define each shot in great detail. I'd include all sorts of factors in addition to the selection of club, ball flight and target. There would be a "wild-card" which if activated would require a speciality shot (a flop shot, for example, is always fun with a 5 iron) as well as factoring in pushes, pulls and "punched" shots.

Why go to all this trouble?

It's easy to see how this might have the desired effect at a high profile event like the Ryder Cup or The Open Championship. Television in particular is hungry for news to fill the gaps between shots, and commentators would be all over something like this. There's a reasonable crowd around the range at most professional events, so this might even work there.

But is it really relevant to the club golfer?

The benefits given above do not justify such an elaborate regime; indeed, their focus on factors outwith my control is less than ideal. But they're really only fringe benefits, pleasant side effects of a most worthwhile exercise.

My method leads to mastery by cultivating control, creativity and confidence.

I'm aiming to push myself to the very limit of my ability to control the club, instead of booming ego-boosters with my "Big Dog". It's all too easy to fall into the bad habit of "scrape & hit" hitting shot after shot in the same general direction, scraping ball after ball over with your club until your balls are spent. It might be fun, but it's an inefficient way to improve.

With this drill the shots are selected at random. I'll never know what shot I'll be asked to hit next. Much like golf on an unfamiliar course, there is no chance of slipping into a comfort zone.

To succeed, I'll need to divorce myself from outcome and focus on process, just as I have to do on the course. Anyone who's played knows golf can throw up any number of tricky situations. The experience of creating specific shots to order in a pressured environment undoubtedly increases my chance of escaping unscathed.

In short, it simulates golf but adds pressure and a demands a higher degree of technical proficiency - a powerful tool for improvement.

I'll be to spending some time developing this before adding it to my range routine. If you're interested, let me know; I'd be delighted to share.

As ever, I'd love to hear your feedback, positive or otherwise. Is there anything I might be able to help you with? If so, please feel free to leave a comment below, or catch me on Twitter (@The_Golf_Geek). I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Golf tips and drills won't bring you skills...

..but games should do it nicely.

We can't really have fun as we improve...can we?

Let me see if this sounds familiar...

How to fix your swing?

After another frustrating round, you start looking for answers.

The quest begins; you scour golf magazines, search the internet and take advice from anyone who offers. There are long sessions at the range scraping over ball after ball, enduring the pitying gaze of other golfers. Doubt floods in and you start to worry you'll never get it.

And then.

Something clicks. You find the "magic" tip. Suddenly you start to enjoy things again. Confidence returns. Golf is fun once more. You're so delighted you share your discovery with anyone who'll listen. You really feel that you've got it.

Haven't you?

Sadly, you don't. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when things start to slip, but they do. Not to worry, all you have to do is to reapply the magic tip...isn't it? But, much like a sitcom in its fourth season, the magic has gone. An unpalatable truth lies before you.

Your improvement occurred in spite of the tip, not because of it.

It's the boom & bust of tips and drills. The bogus focus on the golf swing as the sum total of golf improvement. A cycle that can repeat in perpetuity, or at least until you throw your clubs into the darkest recesses of your garage.

Frustration is the only guarantee of this approach. I know because I've been there.

This obviously isn't the case when we see a PGA pro. At least then the advice is individualised and fitted to your swing...isn't it?

Not necessarily. Some professionals are married to teaching a system, rather than focusing what an individual might already have. I'm not a golf instructor, so I'm loathe to criticise. However, I'm dubious a complete swing rebuild is what most amateur golfers want or need. Might the frustrations arising from this contribute to the number of golfers leaving the sport each year? It's certainly not a route that I'll be going down.

Or your professional may be keen on video analysis. Again, this is something I'm not sure is as helpful as they may believe. I'm not alone in this; Michael Hebron at Neuro Learning Golf, the Instinctive Golf team and Marc Solomon of Golf Made Simple are prominent doubters.

I started dabbling with golf during an illness enforced absence from work. Progress was slow, but addiction came quickly. I started following the course I've outlined above, peppered with the occasional half hour range lesson. As a return to work loomed I fretted that my hard won skills would dissipate.

But they didn't.

In fact they started developing faster than I'd dared to dream.

Some of this was a matter of reaching the threshold where the ball flew as intended that crucial bit more often...and some was due to sitting down and committing to fitting golf around work and family life.

Some of my development was down to these factors. Some, but certainly not most.

I changed how I practised.

I'd already invested quite some time listening to the Golf Smarter podcast. I'd been very impressed by a number of coaches who appeared to be advocating a paradigm shift in instruction. They wanted to move away from golf's prevalent culture and its limitations. One of their main ideas was to stop the golfer playing "golf swing" and instead get that golfer playing golf. To achieve this, they suggested that golfers start to "practice like they play". This made a lot of sense.

Why should we practice like we play?

Not long before Mrs Geek & I got married, we completed an Advanced Life Support course. This was a very busy course, covering everything from how to press on the chest through passing a tube into the larynx up to delivering the patient to Intensive Care, all over a period of 3 days. It was a mixed group of participants with differing knowledge bases, so the course had a lot of ground to cover.

What's interesting is how this was done. There was a course handbook to be read before we started, then a few lectures and a quick recap of the basics on the first day. But most of the course was running through carefully crafted scenarios designed to cover all of the relevant information.

Repeated simulation of real situations formed the basis of instruction.

The scenarios started off basic, but by the end they were getting more and more complex. The instructors were all excellent at creating and maintaining the correct atmosphere, to the point where you'd feel a genuine pang of sadness any time the dummy "died". As I'm a robust soul and had made no secret of my desire to be an instructor, my scenarios were most complex of all by the end of the course; they even had me trying to manage a situation where a pregnant woman had collapsed into a swimming pool after taking illegal drugs! It was a relief to discover the final test was a bit more straightforward, whilst still covering all of the necessary areas.

It's very different to how golf is traditionally taught.

If we'd been teaching these skills as golf is traditionally taught, we'd probably still be there. We'd be looking at slow motion replays comparing a candidate's chest compressions to an instructors, or flicking through magazines to see how to get the angle of the laryngoscope perfect.

Instead we ran through the algorhythms so often I could recite them in my sleep, and did so in situations far more complex than we would typically see. This led to a much greater understanding of what to do and how to do it. And it worked for everyone, not just those with the greatest knowledge base and experience. One of the best things was how egalitarian it was, putting nurses, doctors and paramedics on an equal footing.

Most of all, it was a lot of fun.

It's pretty obvious it's different from the traditional paradigm of golf instruction. There's good reason for this. It's an internationally recognised qualification which is paid for by the taxpayer. Almost all of the participants were government employees undertaking paid study time. It's also, as you can imagine, an important thing to get right. The course therefore has a huge responsibility to educate participants fully and in the most efficient way. It's essential the education is both efficient and sufficient. I've never heard anyone who's been on one of these courses dismiss it as worthless.

How does this relate to golf?

If repeated simulation of real life scenarios is an effective way to teach health professionals vital skills, then surely it's an effective way to learn golf? It's certainly improved my game and revolutionised my practice. Instead of aimlessly thwacking balls out into the range before scraping over another ball to hit it in the same general direction with the same club, I'm using special shot challenges which challenge me to hit specific shots to order. This is learning how to control the club, which in time will lead to mastery. Done properly, it makes the range a lot closer to the course. This makes it easier to take your "range game" to the course- a frequent lament of golfers. Quite apart from all of that, it makes practice a lot more fun, which is great for those of us who can't always find the time to play 18 but can squeeze in 40 minutes of practice.

Choose your coaches wisely.

A good coach is wonderful to watch in action. I spent a long time looking for my current coaching team, and I couldn't be happier. Their group sessions are very similar to that life support course. There's a brief discussion of the theory behind the desired actions, a run through the basics and thence to repeated simulation of "in-game" scenarios. This often progresses to harder than usual situations, or the deliberate inclusion of pressure (e.g. make x consecutive shots from y feet). Add in a bit of friendly competition and you have an excellent environment for sporting growth that's fair, fun and fit for purpose.

Increased fun, decreased frustration and the confidence that time spent practising will lead to on course improvement. What's not to love?

Let me know your thoughts. You can catch me on Twitter, but did you know that people who comment on blog posts have a 42% greater chance of being thought attractive by the opposite sex?*

*sadly, this isn't true. But it should be. And I really like what you've done with your hair today.