Like Archibald Mealing, the hapless golf-loving protagonist in one of PG Wodehouse?s delightful short stories, the club golfer is one in whom ?desire greatly outruns performance?. And yet, the golf course is full of people who seem to know all the answers! Surprisingly, none of them seems to be able to apply all that to his/her own game.
The golf swing spawns wonderful and complicated theories: Right from the age-old ?keep your head down?, to the myth of the ?late-hit?, and the importance of ?driving your hips??there?s a trove of half-baked knowledge that the hapless weekend golfer laps up hungrily, all in the vain hope that one of those ?secrets? will help him ?figure out? the golf swing once and for all.
The trouble is that the golf swing is counter-intuitive. To hit it far, you can?t hit it hard; to curve the ball in either direction, the club has to go in the opposite direction after impact; and it?s a game in which power and precision are equally important, with a slight bias towards the latter. The answers in golf, to say the least, are not obvious.
It?s amazing how many golfers after years and years of striving, still continue to try and ?figure it out? on their own, not realising that it takes a trained eye to spot issues in a golf swing. And also that their actual golf swing, and the swing they make in their mind?s eye, are, in fact, very different-looking. I remember the ugliness that was replayed back to me the first time a coach recorded my swing in a greenside bunker. Again to quote Wodehouse, I looked more like a man ?killing snakes in the bunker?. It wasn?t pretty. And that?s usually the mirror most golfers need to see?the turning point, so to say, when faced with serious chinks, you decide to get new armour. Don?t tell me you enjoy golf ?for the walk? or for a spot of sunshine. Everyone who plays this game wants to get better, and that needs more than devotion and commitment: You need a structured roadmap for how you?re going to do it. And here are a few pointers:
Get a lesson
Understand that by going to a coach you?re not going to go the Tiger Woods way to ?building a new golf swing?. You?re not going to be able to create a brand-new golf swing if you?ve been playing for a few years. To do that requires the kind of time and effort you?re unlikely to be able to put in. What getting a lesson will achieve is that your basics?grip, address, stance and swing fundamentals?will get checked and corrected by someone who knows what errors to look out for. Most swing faults originate from a faulty grip or stance, and it?s almost impossible to spot and correct them yourself. Commit to the changes the coach advises, and put in a few hours every weekend at the range before your fourball tees it up.
Replace your golf clubs
With the astonishing advancements in golf club technology, if you?re playing with clubs older than four years, you?re already robbing yourself of consistency and adding a few shots to your score. Modern cavity-back irons are designed to forgive off-centre hits and minimise sidespin. If you?re really struggling, consider getting game-improvement irons. You can?t slice a ball with these if you tried! Put a rescue club in your bag if you haven?t already?these can be hit from bad lies and the rough, and still give you the same distance as a mid- to a long-iron. Needless to say, unless you?re a low handicapper, a long iron has no place in your bag.
Get fitted
Your swing is unique to you and trying to play with stock clubs bought off the shelves is akin to buying a ready-made suit?it might work, but it will never fit you like a glove. You get the suit tailored. The same goes for golf clubs. Whether you?re buying new clubs or persisting with your old ones, it?s imperative that you get them properly ?fitted?. Even a minor change in the set-up of your clubs can go a long way in improving consistency, and help you realise your golfing potential.
One of the most common misconceptions that amateur golfers believe in is that club-fitting is the exclusive domain of the professional or low-handicapper. Nothing could be further than the truth: In fact, good players will often be able to adjust their swing to a club, which doesn?t suit their swing, but club golfers in the same scenario will struggle to adapt. In any case, clubs need to be tailored for your swing, not the other way round. Right from grip thickness, to the flex, length, and weight of the clubshaft, to the way the clubhead sits on the ground and the amount of offset it has?everything can be tampered with to suit your golf swing.
Deliberate practice
You can hit thousands of golf balls and not improve. Practice helps when you have a clear picture of what you?re trying to achieve, and know how to go about it, which brings us back to the absolute necessity of having a coach look over your swing from time to time. Changes in the golf swing are difficult to integrate feel-wise. And when you?ve been making a wrong move for a while, it?s going to feel natural. Any change to that, is not.
Persist with the changes, make a lot of videos of your swing at the range and don?t revert to your old swing habits when you go out on the course. Especially if that means going ape on the ball. Golf rarely rewards the player who smashes the ball with all their strength with every club in the bag. Stop playing long drive, and start playing golf.
A golfer, Meraj Shah also writes about the game