Golf for Beginners

I want you to go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. Now come back and read this. How did you do? Was it a good day or did you kind of hit it all over the lot?

Now I am going to give you a brief quiz. Tell me what you were thinking about when you were hitting the ball. Were you concentrating on your back swing? The takeaway? The first move from the top of the back swing? Or was it your grip? Chances are you were trying to focus on a whole lot of things.

Now answer this: where did the ball end up after you hit it? Was it within ten yards of your target line, or fifteen or twenty? How do you even know the answer to that question? There is one thing which is responsible for 90 to 95 % of swing problems - do you know what that is? It is alignment! That's golf for beginners.

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Do you know what is so great about knowing this? It is the one fundamental that can quickly be mastered by a beginner. I am going to tell you what you need to do to align yourself like a touring pro. Stand behind the ball and pick your target in the distance. The line from the ball to the target is your “target line”. You must absolutely set your club face square  (i.e. perpendicular) to this line. How do you do this? You must square up the scoring lines of the face ( if it is an iron) to the target line. For a driver or fairway wood, use the top line of the wood. Remember, the face of a wood is not flat, but curved. A tip: do not use the top line of the iron to line up and avoid using the bottom edge of the iron for alignment because on many irons the bottom of the club may be “offset” or angled into the hosel. The foolproof method is to use the lines on the face of the iron.

If you get this, you are 50% done. The next part is a bit tricky; not hard, just tricky. Here is an image that I find to be helpful. Imagine you are standing on a ceramic tile floor. The ball is sitting in one of the tile lines. You then set your feet so they are on a tile line parallel to the one the ball is on. Now answer this question: would these two lines ever meet way out in front of you (think of this as the horizon). I know you answered correctly: no they couldn’t possibly meet.

Here is where it gets goofy because your eyes try to sort things out for you while you are standing beside the ball ready to swing. When you line up a 100 yard shot, the line your feet are on is likely 6 to 7 yards to the left of the line the ball is on. However, a target 225 to 250 yards away will have you standing on a line almost 20 yards to the left of that target. Here is the Number One problem for both beginners and experienced players: for whatever reason, the player will line up his or her feet, hips, knees and shoulders directly “at” the target as opposed to parallel left.

Often you will see even very accomplished players line up correctly at first and then begin a little dance (the misalignment polka) with happy feet and rearrange themselves so the “two lines” converge or meet out in front of them. Ever wonder why tour caddies stand behind the player as they are setting up? It is not to tell them where the flag or landing spot is. It is to confirm that the player is correctly aligned.

I want you to try this little experiment: go to your driving range and sit (inconspicuously) on a bench behind a couple of players hitting balls. First, are they aiming at a target or simply hitting it down the range? Are they aligned properly? If not, make a mental note, but please do not try to help them. Do the same when your playing partners are teeing off. You will be surprised at how poor most players line up their shots. Master this skill first and you will be on your way to developing a very sound golf swing.

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Remember this, "a great swing with poor alignment will likely produce a great shot to the wrong place".