My Golf Digest colleagues Chris Powers and Keely Levins have been hard at work over the past few months tuning up their games ahead of a big match against one another (which you can watch here).
First came a club fitting at Golf Galaxy, then some lessons. The best part of both is that they each came back with some lessons the rest of us can learn from.
You can dive deeper in the latest episode of the Golf IQ podcast, but here’s a quick rundown before you embark on your own journey:
1. The swing starts from the ground, not the arms
Chris’s snap hooks traced back to one thing: he wasn’t shifting into his front side fast enough, which made him early-extend and stand the shaft up. Pros move their hips five inches toward the target by impact. Most of our hips are an inch away from the target at impact. It’s what causes a flip through impact, and is a sure sign you’re not using the ground correctly as you swing.
Keely had a similar lightbulb moment. She realized she’d been swinging almost entirely with her upper body, relying on her hands to arrive at the right place at the right time. All our biggest muscles live in your lower body, and Keely’s were relatively unused.
Two parts of the same problem: They weren’t using the ground enough as they swing. Your hands and arms are obviously important in your swing—but so is the ground.
2. Borrow feels from things you already know how to do
Keely has a background in cross-country skiing, and her teacher Sean Lally tapped into that to help get his message across. Skiing requires people to push off one leg and onto the other in nearly the same sequence as a golf swing. When he explained that, Keely said things made more sense. And there’s a lesson there, for students and teachers alike. Take the information, and put it through a prism that you can relate to. The information doesn’t change, but the way you feel it does. It’s specific to you, so find an analogy that works.
3. Being a good student means communicating
Along those lines: Keely and Chris both went in willing to try anything, but so often students don’t communicate with their teachers the things that resonate with them, and the things that don’t.
When something isn’t clicking, don’t worry. Just communicate it to the teacher. Often they’ll have lots of different methods to make the feeling sink in. That’s what coaching is. The one thing they aren’t are mind-readers. So keep the lines of communication open—you’ll be a better student because of it.
Once again, you can listen to the full podcast right here:
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
