Long ago, when someone required to make a penitence, they would wear a hair shirt under their clothing. The rough fibres of Goat’s hair rubbed and irritated with every movement leavingtheir flesh red raw. Now we try to play golf instead!
How often have you arranged a tee time and waited eagerly with anticipation to a great day, playing a round with your work mates in ideal conditions, only to tramp off the 18th green with a scorecard to forget? We’ve all done it, often more often than we would care to admit. Yet we still squander massive amounts of dough on the latest clubs, shoes, etc, and not to forget untold baskets of balls at the driving range. All in the hopeless attempt to attain a golf swing that will keep our ball out of the rough!
In more recent years, the local professional and vast library of “Teach Yourself” literature has been supplemented by new types of instruction (or should that be therapy?) such as video swing analyzers, Youtube movies and a multitude of straps and braces to truss your torso with and keep your golf swing right. I regularly think it would be much more prudent to forget all that and as an alternative invest in a course of hypnotherapy because the most stubborn obstacle for most golfers, to improving their golf, is inside their head.
Most golfers fall into the trap of over analyzing the golf swing. How difficult can it be to swing a three iron through the air and strike a golf ball? I am not talking about playing to a level to star on the PGA circuit here. That is beyond all but a minuscule percentage of golfers. I am not even talking about playing at a level to de-throne your local club champion either. I’m merely suggesting that swinging a golf club to strike the ball in the direction you want it to travel and to a distance that your club is supposed to hit to, shouldn’t require more than a simple set of instructions and basic actions, followed by the obligatory amount of practice.
The ideal golf swing for you is more likely to be an action that is specific to you. Your height, weight, bone structure and muscle mass (middle-age spread) are probably different to most other golfers. Two golfers of the same height and weight probably have different arm and leg lengths, so the arc of their golf swing and angle of their stances could differ significantly.
The challenge to the typical golfer is to get frequent enough time to practise their golf swing. If you work and have children, you are blessed if you can grab a few of hours a week at the driving range. Unlike the pro’s, you will never get the time to work on the minutiae of every nuance of the golf swing. So keep it simple.
