FEEL VS REALÂ
UNDERSTANDING WHY MY GOLF SWING DOES NOT FEEL LIKE IT LOOKS.
During my initiation into golf, I have been lucky enough to be introduced to
people with a high level of knowledge about the sport. At first it can be
intimidating to think about everything you have to learn, but what I found
helpful was taking onboard the small tips and tricks that would help me at
my level of golf. I have been told about what equipment is recommended for
starting, where to go for lessons, what type of information to read up on.
But I think the biggest thing I have learn't from my own practice sessions is
the difference between “FEEL” and “REAL”.
I must admit, at first, I didn’t quite understand what this meant. I felt
like I was doing exactly what I was told to do with my swing, hinge, moving
my hips but not getting any better. Then I was told to really look back at
my session clips and see how my body moves compared to how I thought it was, and
that is when I saw the big difference.
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So, for my next session I went at it slightly differently. I warmed up with
a few balls then looked back at my footage before to see how I was hitting
the ball and how my swing looked. My main points straight away were how
stiff I looked, my right leg was too straight, and I kept lifting my left
heel off the floor in my backswing. All of these were causing far too much
movement of my head but also blocking myself from hitting the ball with
speed.
My first aim was to relax as I hit the ball. With me being new to the sport
and having this fountain of information straight away I could feel myself
being too much in my head rather than just thinking of “hitting the ball”.
With me being relaxed it meant that my posture was better, my backswing was
a lot smoother, and I didn’t straighten my right knee too much allowing my
hips to have more movement. It allowed me to focus on moving my big muscles
and not getting all stiff in my grip and allowing movement in my shoulders
and chest.
Another thing I noticed was my setup with how too close or too far away I
was standing to the ball. I found that a lot of the time my ball was going
right, or I was just hitting the top of the golf ball with the club meaning
it wasn’t getting any flight. I kept moving and altering my swing and
focusing really hard on where the ball was so it could aim at it. But then
I realised I was spending too much time focusing on getting the club to
where the ball was rather than just allowing the club to swing where it
wants to and being in the correct position.
Having a tripod has been an absolute life safer when I go to practice as I am able to take videos of my swing without interrupting anyone on the range. Especially when I practice on my own I am able to make my sessions count as I can review my swings.
So, to conclude, I would say that starting out at golf, this is one of the
biggest lessons to learn and take onboard to propel your skills. While
working on creating muscle memory it can be difficult to understand how
your body is actually moving when doing something for the first time. If I
had just left it to how I thought I was hitting the ball and where I
thought I was positioned I couldn’t imagine the amount of hours I would
have wasted just getting frustrated. Whereas when I’ve then really looked
into what I was doing when my practice wasn’t going too smoothly it has
allowed me to quickly alter and find additional ways for me to improve
within the same session.
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Why don’t you follow along with my journey on TikTok on @megdavie5 and with
my blog posts on TournamentTracker.co.uk!
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