Alignment Won't Go Away
Last week's re-visitation of alignment issues aroused a couple more doubters from the woodwork and led to some very interesting discussions and investigations. The result was the same though - in order to properly alining one's self to the target the clubface must be square to the target line, and the feet and body parallel to the target line. A vocal minority are still of the mindset that even if your clubface is aimed at a bunker right of the green, your ball will drop two feet right of the flag as long as your feet are lined up. Them's some magic shoes! Nice in theory but unfortunately that theory will lead to a lot of missed greens, hit bunkers, and damaged golf swings.
We actually found that on a 150 yard shot, using an 8-iron, lining one's feet up to the flag will lead to a 20 degree (+/- 2 degrees) alteration right of the target. Despite this, three readers still insisted they would only miss the flag by two feet (the distance they are standing away from the ball) on a properly hit shot. As they were not convinced by my evidence, I turned to friend and colleague Ken Tannar of "Probable Golf Instruction". Ken is a great golfer, runs an extremely interesting site (www.probablegolf.com), and is a physics teacher to boot. In fact, Ken is often called upon as an expert witness in court cases involving golf courses and ranges where statistics on ball trajectory and fence heights etc. are required. I asked him how he would answer the persistent theory that as long as your feet are lined up to the flag you are only 2 feet off target, and he provided further excellent evidence and in fact dedicated his newsletter to the issue this week. To see his answer on this issue just click: http://www.probablegolfinstruction.com/mail/link.php?id=13414c6Newsletter.
My thanks to Ken for his assistance, and to all of you who wrote in on the subject.
Video Tip - More Alignment
One of the unexpected pleasures associated with Hit Down Dammit! has been the receipt of many wonderful letters. What is nice in my job as opposed to others is that the letters are rarely negative. Last week I received several letters simply thanking me for explaining alignment. But, I also received one letter saying my explanation was, well, here, you read it:
Clive:
I've heard this tip several times before . . . I thought it was dumb then, and it's dumb now. If all a golfer has to worry about is being aligned a foot or two right of the target, you shouldn't need ANY advice.
LW
Okay then. Obviously our reader didn't understand what was being said, this time or the several times before. And he wouldn't be the first - I once had an engineer try to convince me that if you aim your body at the flag rather than the ball/clubface at the flag, you should only miss your target by a couple of feet. And he was an engineer.
Who knows, there may be many of you out there thinking the same thing, so, this week's video tip will endeavour to explain that misalignment is about "degrees" and not "feet".
You may well ask why go to so much trouble to explain the importance of alignment and the answer is because misalignment does not just make you miss the target, but it sabotages your swing as your body makes repeated compensations to try to swing to the target you want to go to, as opposed to the target you are actually aligned to. Proper alignment is hugely important in developing a good golf swing.
Video Tip - Alignment
To me, analogies are useful in teaching golf because so much of the game is not normal, not logical, and often - certainly in the case of hitting down - downright counterintuitive. When it comes to alignment the analogy I use most often compares golf with rifle shooting. When shooting a rifle if you are misaligned you simply miss the target. The rifle isn't going to make a compensation in order to try to get your shot on target. In golf, however, when you are misaligned you a) don't realize you are misaligned but b) do know where the target is. The tendency is to try to find a way to direct or steer the ball to the target despite the misalignment, and this can do tremendous damage to your swing. If you are consistently aimed too far right (the overwhelming tendency in golf) and constantly trying to swing "around" to the target many flaws can creep into your golf swing in repeated so doing. Now, one of the reasons many (most) golfers aim too far right is because of the misconception that you must aim your body at the target when hitting a golf ball. The trouble is, if your body is aimed at the target, where is the clubface aimed? Watch this video for more on the basics of alignment... knowing how to align properly can mean hitting more targets and saving your golf swing. To watch this video tip click here.
Chipping Tip
I alluded (in The Rules are the Rules) to the fact that a ball that is low and rolling is more likely to go in the hole. Many players make their mistakes in chipping by trying to hit chip shots high when they truly don't need to be. Below is a direct link to an excerpt from Hit Down Dammit! on chipping. Read it, try it, and report back to me. Let me know how you do. You'll be pleasantly surprised. To read chapter 8.1, "Chips Shots Do Not Have To Go High", from Hit Down Dammit! click here.
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