50 Years of Golfing Wisdom

A soft right arm

At address, keep your right arm ‘soft’ and let it bend a bit at the elbow, which will point to your right hip.

Jack’s pre-shot routine helps sharpen focus

I think Jack Nicklaus summed up brilliantly the value of a pre-shot routine when he said: ‘Give your imagination free rein when you’re in a position to win and it can be the death of you.’

He is referring to the fact that if you let your mind wander, especially into the future, you’re in big trouble. A pre-shot routine stops this happening. It crystallizes your thoughts and helps you focus the mind on the things that are relevant, to the exclusion of everything else.

My advice to you is develop a consistent pre-shot routine. It doesn’t need to be exactly the same as Jack’s, but I think it should incorporate certain elements from the great man.

Firstly, picture the shot in your mind’s eye, from behind the line of play. This gets you mentally ‘into your shot’, so you’re thinking positively and constructively. Next, aim the clubhead over an intermediate target, a few feet in front of you between the ball and the flag. It’s far easier than aiming at a flag 250 yards away. Also, be very specific about what you aim at. This is relatively easy when the flag is your target. But when you’re driving off the tee, perhaps not so easy. Never aim just anywhere down the middle, because in my view if you aim vaguely you swing vaguely too – and that’s when you’re prone to making stupid mistakes.

Work hard at perfecting your pre-shot routine when you’re at the driving range. This is the place where you develop the good habits that enable you to perform to a higher level in competition. Nobody ever practised as well as Jack did. In my opinion, amateur golfers hit too many shots on the range with too little thought. Try to get into the mindset of hitting fewer balls with more thought. Quality, not quantity – that’s what practising is all about.

The ideal pre-shot routine: Visualise the shot, then aim the clubface, and finally build your stance.

The golf swing’s only purpose

The majority of the world’s 35 million golfers never play the game as well as they could because they have no idea, an incorrect idea, or an incomplete idea of what they are trying to do when they swing a golf club.

The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly.

How that is done is immaterial, so long as the method permits correct impact to be achieved over and over and over again.

Golf’s only secret

The behaviour of the golf ball is determined solely by four impact factors interacting with each other. They are:

1 The direction in which the face of the club looks, or the clubface alignment.

2 The direction in which the clubhead travels, or the path of the swing.

3 The angle of inclination at which the clubhead arrives at the ball, or the angle of attack.

4 The speed of the clubhead.

Everything you do in swinging a golf club should be related to these all-important impact factors. Getting them right is golf’s only secret

Golfs four key impact factors determine the shape and quality of your shots.

The flight of the ball tells all

The behaviour of every golf shot is determined not by how the club is swung – by the form of bodily motions employed – but by how each swing delivers the clubface to the ball. However, everything is moving too fast for the golfer to see what is happening on impact. How, then, can he discover the alignment of the clubface, the path of the swing, the angle of attack, and the speed of the clubhead?

The answer is: the flight of the ball.

The single most important step in becoming a good golfer: knowing what you should be trying to do with the club by learning and accepting the game’s true fundamentals – the correct ‘geometry’ of impact.

The next most important step is acquiring the knowledge that enables you to identify what’s happening at impact from the flight of your shots. Master those two mental disciplines and your eventual playing ability becomes solely a matter of how hard you are willing and able to work at golf. The ‘geometry’ of golf is set out in the following pages as clearly as I know how. If you gain nothing else from this book, learn it well and use it wisely.

When the clubhead swings from out to in

THE SLICE: ball starts left of target line then curves right.

The swing path is from out to in across the target line.

The clubface looks to the right of, or is open to, the swing path, resulting in an oblique or ‘cutting’ impact with the ball that creates clockwise sidespin.

The flight of the ball reveals everything about your swing.

As the ball’s forward momentum decreases, the clockwise sidespin curves the ball more and more to the right.

The more open the clubface and/or the more out to in the swing path, the stronger the sidespin and the more pronounced the slice.

Also, the more out to in the clubhead path, the steeper the angle of attack, thus the more oblique the impact in a perpendicular as well as horizontal plane.

The combination of clockwise sidespin and additional backspin produced by the open clubface and/or the steep angle of attack makes this the weakest shot in golf, flying excessively high if the ball is contacted at the bottom of the arc, or excessively low if the bottom of the arc is sufficiently forward for the ball to be thinned or topped.

THE PULL: ball flies straight but left of target.

The swing path is from out-to-in across the target line.

The clubface is square to the swing path, but closed to the target line.

Because the clubhead path and clubface alignment ‘match’, the impact is flush rather than oblique. Thus good distance is obtained.

THE PULLED HOOK: ball starts left of target line and then curves more left.

The swing path is from out-to-in across the target line.

The clubface looks to the left of, or is closed to, the swing path resulting in oblique impact with the ball that curves it even more in its starting direction, i.e., to the left.

At its worst, this shot is literally ‘smothered’ to the extent that the ball fails to rise sufficiently off the ground to go any appreciable distance.

When the clubhead swings from in to out

THE PUSH: ball flies straight but right of target.

The swing path is from in-to-out across the target line.

The clubface is square to the swing path, but open to the target line.

Because the clubhead path and clubface alignment match, the impact is flush rather than oblique and good distance is obtained.

THE HOOK: ball starts right of target then curves left

The swing path is from in-to-out across the target line.