Figure out how to square the club face at impact!
Then figure out how to make the club face do what you want it to do at impact.
This has a direct relationship to what your golf shots will look like.
Practice your swing in slow motion. Feel and understand in your muscles what works best for you.
Hit balls! Practice! There are no magic cures or swing aids.
“Dig it out of the dirt”
Core Golf
Definition of “Core”: The central or most important part of something. When I think of the word “Core” as it relates to the golf swing, a huge amount of information floods my brain, recalled from both memory and experience. Like the floodgates open and the dam overflows.
A core golf swing is the pathway, the connection to successful easier to repeat golf swing fundamentals.
Core golf is not just swinging with your core muscles. If you think about it for a second or two, the fundamentals of any golf swing are the core values that drive the swing to begin with. Coupled with the action of the physical act of swinging the club with your core muscles, you then gain a new perspective on the golf swing as a whole.
I have been teaching a Ladies Golf Academy for the better part of 30 years, and have believed and still believe that teaching the fundamentals of the golf swing first and foremost is the best way to start with anyone new to the game. As a matter of fact, fundamentals are a great way enter any lesson.
This year, 2017 on May 3 I decided to take a new tactical approach to my ladies instruction. I decided to jump right into the explanation of how to use the core muscles while swinging a golf club; for the first time in 30 years.
The results were astoundingly positive.
Just the one simple point of trying to get them to keep the golf club and their arms in front of them throughout their swing gave them a radically different starting point on their journey toward becoming accomplished golfers. I talked fleetingly about the grip and setup, and promised them we would fine tune their basic move as the weeks progressed.
But the key point was to keep a functioning core muscle golf swing in the forefront of our lesson plan.
I was able to illustrate before their actual practice session by hitting 4 perfect driver shots long and straight. My driver had been in the bag for the better part of three weeks. I pulled it out and let it fly, using the very explanation and information that I just revealed to my lady golfer/students.
I could not hit a bad shot. I tried to show them what happens when the arms get away from the body but I kept catching up and hitting it with the same trajectory in the same direction. Even better than hitting it bad I guess.
The girls did great. Raw beginners were swinging like they had been playing for years. the basic premise was a success.
It can work for anybody!
“Line Up The Parts”
You can never get it back, except in golf!
One thing to remember is that your basic swing does not change. What changes is your physical and mental response to your golf swing as you attempt to hit shots and to shoot scores. By giving yourself a place to go, to get to, your physical response can be productive and consistent. No matter what kind of shape you are in, if you learn to line a a few key body parts, you can hit good golf shots over a long period of time.
To hit good shots you have to get your body and golf club in a good position. What I have learned over the years is to start at the finish so to speak.
There are many ways to swing a golf club effectively and to hit functional golf shots that allow you to score better. As a matter of fact, it has always been my intention to learn to swing a golf club, and to hit good to great golf shots, in a consistent manner that does not get too involved in the shot process. This good intention has become a life-long journey.
Due to the passing of time and to changing physical conditions as regards my body and muscles, I have had to learn to swing the golf club in many different ways. It is a matter of necessity. If you want to play good golf, better golf, and do it consistently as the years go by, you have to learn to adjust solid fundamental golf swing technique to your own changing muscle and body requirements. You cannot do things now that you were able to do just a few years ago.
Being a PGA professional, I have also had to learn to play golf on a moments notice without warm-up, or without having played in many days. It is a tough proposition. When I was playing everyday it was easy. I always shot between 67 and 74, without fail. Whether I hit 16 greens or 3 greens in regulation my scores were always the same. I practiced a lot and played even more.
As job requirements as a club professional changed over the years, I began to play less and less, and was able to play less than that. To be honest, my game suffered greatly for many years. Kind of like when a well trained professional athlete retires and loses that edge that kept them in the pros.
Golf truly is the game of a lifetime. As the years went by I had to learn to play and play effectively again. Many years and many injuries later I have come to realize that there are certain moves that are common to all good great golf swings. There are certain ways to line up your body body parts and let them move in a sequence that allows great golfers to hit great golf shots over long periods of time, over a lifetime. While solid pre-golf swing fundamentals never go out of style, there are simple in-swing keys, ways of getting our body parts in the correct position, that can allow you go hit consistently good shots.
With good shots come good scores.
One of the greatest players and ball strikers I have ever encountered once told me to learn to do simple things and learn to repeat them every day. While adjustment is the life-blood of every golfer and golf game, you still have to get yourself, your body parts, and the golf club, in the right place to make solid contact with the golf ball.
As a golf teacher and PGA pro, I try to get my students to understand the importance of executing consistent and solid fundamentals within the confines of their own unique golf swing requirements. Our goal is to get the club face on the golf ball, to hit the ball out there a way, and to make the ball go reasonably straight. As a golf teacher and instructor, and player, I have had to learn to intertwine all these aspects of golf, and to learn to incorporate them as a player and to communicate these simple swing ideas on the lesson tee. You have to be able to make a useful move at the ball and get a useful result to get someone to buy in to what you are telling them. You have to see the results and see the results now in order for an idea to take hold.
The move or moves I am offering here are just as common to Ben Hogan and Sam Snead as they were to Old Tom Morris and are to Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
By: John Lombardo PGA Of America
I seem to have come full circle. In a nutshell, I am now swinging the golf club with a true release and squaring of the club face at impact, at the bottom of the swing.
Like all true meaningful discoveries, this one kind of happened by accident.
To re-trace a bit, I have spent the last five or six years learning to swing the golf club with my core muscles, learning to keep the club in front of me throughout the entire swing. Keeping in tune with the huge growth of big strong Tour players, I have tried with great success to follow their example of swinging with the large muscles. Much of my views and teaching approach is described on www.golfteacher.com.
Last week after work I wanted to hit a few balls on the range so I grabbed an old six iron that we had lying around in the bag room. It turned out to be an ancient Powerbilt iron with a stiff shaft. I hit a few good shots then went into a funk trying to swing this club with the modern method. So I just decided for some reason to grip the club extremely lightly with my fingers, and just let it swing using gravity and golf club design as my guiding light.
The results improved dramatically as my shots started to fly high and straight with very little effort. It seems I actually tapped in to a distant memory of how I used to swing a baseball bat. While my body played a huge role, the ultimate power came from a strong free release of the bat head through the hitting zone. This could only be accomplished with a very light grip, letting the wood do the work so to speak.
So I decided the next time I played golf I would grip the club so lightly that the grip actually moved around in my hands as I moved into my back swing. This has become my only swing thought: a grip so light the club feels like it is moving around in my fingers. My body seems to coil so much easier into a compact, full turn with the club fully loaded and ready to swing.
But when it comes time to change direction, my coil uncoils and I just, to put it simply, “throw” the club head at the ball, letting gravity and the design of the club square the face at and through impact. Yes, throw the club head at the ball. The results have been astounding. I am hitting my 9 iron 145-150 regularly and my ball striking and accuracy have improved.
What is more important is that this swing feels totally natural, spontaneous, and un-rehearsed. It is a free and tension free approach to swinging a golf club, that works in all kinds of weather, and repeats itself of its own volition and free will. My only swing thought is to grip so lightly that the grip moves in my hands. My body gets involved naturally without me thinking about it, I take straight deeper divots again, and am able to get my full body involved without thinking about it.
I finally came to the conclusion that I am not a Tour player, and while the modern approach to swinging, large muscle ultra contolling motion, woks for the big strong and well conditioned it is not going to work for me over the long haul.
It feels so good to actually “know” what I am doing with a golf club without actually controlling or knowing what it is I am doing.
Letting gravity, force and my nature swing the club is what will carry me through. I do not have the physical prowess of the big strong swingers, but have gained distance, and control of my trajectory and shot shape. All my previous hard work is not in vain. There is so much more going on that I could not have accomplished without my previous training. But the thought and process has become a matter of simplicity, trust, and talent.
It is a winning proposition.
After not having swung a golf club for over two months because of some surgery and complications, I was able to finally hit some balls. Naturally I over did it and was really hurting after a couple range sessions.
I went on to the golf course and just tried to hit the ball on the club face, but my body hurt bad and my successes were negligible.
It finally dawned on me that my usual swing was not going to work anymore. My golf muscles were weak and untrained and would not fire in the proper sequence. I could not bend my shafts and could not get a full swing going.
So I decided to follow the path of least resistance. A simple move ensued. I moved my weight on to my right side by moving my left knee toward my right knee so that the knees almost touch. At the same time, I start the club back into the back swing and start the shoulder turn. The resulting waggle to get started involves the right knee toward the left and the club shaft set parallel to the ground at the beginning of the shoulder turn in a simultaneous motion.
A freedom of movement started to follow. My shots started to get better and I could bend my shafts again resulting in the required distance for each golf shot. the entire swing sequence made sense to me. Plus, the resulting golf swing is 180 degrees different from anything I have ever done before.
I have not done any video yet, and do not even know if I want to. Once I practice the waggle a few times I then go ahead and swing. It becomes an instinctive move with no thought after the pre-swing routine waggle sequence.
