FEEL THE HEEL

 

A good golf grip activates the muscles you want to use in the golf swing while an incorrect grip encourages use of the wrong muscles.

 

By placing the grip under the heel pad, you free your wrists to hinge properly throughout the golf swing. To encourage the correct thumb length, take your grip with your arms fully extended in front of your chest and close your left hand [opposite for lefties] around the club handle. You should find that your left thumb falls slightly to the right of the top of the handle.  This places your wrist square to the clubface, which is important because when centrifugal force straightens your arms through impact, your wrist joint, elbow joint, and shoulder joint seek alignment.  Therefore the clubface must be set at address to prepare for the inevitable alignment of those joints.  (Note: Ignore the markings on the grip - they are not meant as guides for your hands).  

 Your target thumb [the thumb of the highest hand on your grip] plays a major role in the rotation of the clubface through impact. In addition to its anchoring capabilities, the position of your top thumb on the club handle determines the direction in which force is applied to the shaft during your release and therefore how much the face of your clubface will rotate through the impact. When your thumb is on the top of the shaft at address, the pressure exerts down the middle of the club shaft reducing clubface rotation through impact -- and unless there is compensation, you'll hit a fade or a slice. With your target thumb down the back of the shaft the direction of the force causes your clubface to rotate aggressively through impact imparting the characteristic spin of the draw shot.

         I use the medium thumb because it best fits the swing length I want.

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WEEK SEVEN

Below is the seventh week of your ‘When to do What” improvement calendar. You should spend this week thinking about your past golf shots – not simple reminiscing but something far more powerful – creating a bin of best shots that you’ll use to improve every swing you make in the future.

Greg Norman describes his Catalogue of Best Shots: "You want to file the good ones away for future reference. That way you'll be able to bring them back as part of another reinforcement technique--visualization. You envision the ideal shot, in detail. Then you recall successful similar shots from your past and draw confidence from those earlier successes. I can think of favorite shots for every situation I face and I call them forth each time I play."

You should compile a Catalogue of the Best Shots you have ever hit, just as Norman does.  Write down one for each club -- the best driver, the best wedge, where, when, how did it feel?   Further enhance your catalogue by listing best shots in challenging situations -- in a tight match, against a heavy cross-wind, over trees...  Then when your plan calls for a high five-iron, you can mentally reference your Catalogue of Best Shots and relive it as you retrace it. Science tells us that the central nervous system can’t tell the difference between a perfectly imagined/recalled experience and a real one so if you learn to recall the image of the most perfect five iron you ever hit with full imagery and then, with the feeling fresh in your imagination, let your body execute the current five iron free of any verbal conversation or instructions.

Vivid imagery is a skill a player can learn and I will cover this as part of next week’s colander.  In this regard choose your representatives carefully.  The most effective images are multi-sensorial -- shots that make you recall the rhythm of the swing, the sound of contact, the sight of the ball in flight, or any other feature that’s makes the memory vivid.  Whenever you play, be on the lookout for better shots with sharper images that are better than those currently in your catalogue.  Replay your best shots in your mind until you burn them into your memory.

  When your catalogue is complete, and your recollection vivid, you’ll have a brain stocked with the images necessary for you to play your best golf.  All you have to do is step out of the way.

Best drive

Best putt

Best sand shot

Best trouble shot

Best long iron

Best middle iron

Best short iron

Best chip

Best pitch

And so on

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