Awali Golf Club’s PGA Professional Matt Chalmers is helping GulfWeekly Editor Stan Szecowka get a grip with his game. In the first of a five part series of articles he will try to iron out some of the bad habits he has picked up since disastrously taking up the sport four years ago.

Lesson 1 – Iron Play
You do not have to have the perfect swing to get enjoyment out of golf. However, there are a few ‘non-negotiable’ things that need to happen in order to gain consistency.

These three things are:

  • Consistently starting from the correct position. Anyone can learn to have a perfect grip, an athletic posture and the ability to align themselves correctly through practice.
  • Understanding and applying the counter intuitive nature of correct impact, i.e. in order to get the ball up in the air, you have to hit down on the bottom of the ball. Your instinct will encourage you to lean back and try to ‘help’ the ball into the air. That doesn’t work!

Completing your swing in the correct position, for example, weight fully transferred towards the target in perfect balance.

The positive areas of Stan’s swing

Although the technique is not absolutely perfect, there are a lot of good things about Stan’s backswing.
Firstly, there is a good wrist hinge that is enabled by his neutral grip, see Picture 2. Additionally, Stan’s weight is loading onto his right side which is the first step towards making power, see Picture 1, halfway through the backswing.

Areas for improvement

Stan’s ball flight initially showed a lack of power and a lack of consistency. His good shots were well struck but didn’t go as far as they should have.

The bad shots were poorly stuck and didn’t really get airborne. Both of these issues can be attributed by the lack of weight transfer that is clearly visible in Picture 3.

As you can see, Stan’s right foot is planted on the floor after impact which has reduced his ability to turn his legs and hips through the ball, thus reducing power. This would be like trying to throw a ball as far as possible without using your legs to generate momentum.

Additionally, the fact that very little weight has transferred makes it very difficult for Stan to accurately contact the bottom of the ball each time.

Solution

In order to improve, I asked Stan to work on the feeling that his lower body did not stop turning until his belt buckle was pointing towards the target. If you notice, this has allowed him to turn through onto the tip-toe of his right foot and correctly transfer weight towards the target with great stability. Not only did this minor adjustment result in greater distance in the good shots, Stan began to strike the ball more consistently which also improved the bad shots considerably, see Picture 4.

Evaluation

This session really demonstrated that you do not need to have the perfect technique to hit good quality golf shots. Although we could spend months trying to perfect every element of Stan’s swing, he does not have the time to do so. Therefore, we will try to make sure that the three ‘non-negotiable’ requirements of good golf are in place and work from there.

Stan’s reaction: Get a grip man, that’s all that’s needed. Standing on your toes, keeping that left arm straight and not flicking the wrists can seem like simple instructions but sometimes the body doesn’t want to listen to what the brain tells it.

How come when I took a slight swing with my eyes closed the ball sailed sweetly through the air towards the hole? If I can only master the art with my eyes open, I think I’ll finally crack this game.

Also, forget about whacking it with all your strength. By following Matt’s instructions and striking the ball properly I’m making it travel so much further too. It’s simply a case of applying the science!