Have you ever paid attention to the position of your chin as you prepare to swing your golf club? Most golfers who struggle with their backswing keep their chin too far down. Okay, so why does this matter?

Keeping your chin too far down during your backswing prohibits your shoulders from making the proper shoulder turn. Instead of the back shoulder turning around the body, a golfer who has their chin down swings up because their head is blocking their shoulders from turning.

While it is not impossible to hit the ball this way, I can guarantee that you’ll always struggle with consistency.

3 Step Drill – Keep Your Chin Up

The next time you go out to the range, give this drill a try to see if this is one of the reasons you have been struggling with your ball striking.

1. At address before you hit the ball, pick up you chin 1 or 2 inches.

2. Remember that your back shoulder should turn around your body.

3. Take your normal swing and experiment with your chin position to find the position that works best for you.

Good luck and let me know how it works for you!

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I always had a hunch that I lowered my upper body on the downswing but this is ridiculous.

Comment away. I can take it!

Check out the simple golf swing today!

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This is where I think most eCourses fall short. I’m by no means perfect, but following is a 3 step method that has served me well as I continue to work at my golf game.

Have a different routine that works for you? Don’t be shy. Share your successes and failures so that others can learn from your experiences. In the meantime, I’ll throw out a 3 step plan that has served me well the past few years.

The 3 Stages of an efficient golf practice session

Even with lessons, instructional videos, store-purchased aids or my eCourse, your golf game will continue the way it has been without consistent and efficient practice. Consistent because practice sessions involve exercises that are meant to develop muscle memory. Efficient because pacing your energy to the kinds of exercises you’ll do is important as well.

Simple as this point may sound, it is one that is easily overlooked. Many golfers think that for as long as they spend
enough time on the practice range, their score will improve. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily so. To get a better game, it is important that your practice sessions be as regimented as the way you play the game itself, if not more.

Before you groan about how boring practices are, it might help to think that practices are what build good playing habits when you hit the greens. And if you approach your practice sessions as more than chores and see them as yet another fun aspect to your game of golf, the results can only be a game all the more fun than it already is.

First of all, think of your practice session in three parts consisting of:

1. The warm-up;
2. The fresh stage; and
3. The fatigued stage

In these three stages, you will carry out different sets of exercises that when done in the right stages will make your
practices more effective giving you results you can see on the greens as you play.

Warm-up

Many are deceived into thinking that golf requires no strenuous physical activity as it only involves swinging and walking. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very nature of swinging causes your muscle groups to work in ways not common to everyday routine. Your upper torsos, arms, as well as your lower back muscles are the groups most worked when playing golf which only shows that it is important to warm up with some stretches. Start from the top of your head and work your way down to your feet. Flexibility and getting your muscle’s full range of motion is your goal. If you are unfamiliar with stretches, you may consult a trainer or the instructor in your club for some tips.

Fresh Stage

After your warm-up, start working on exercises that build on a skill you haven’t mastered yet, or on parts of your game that’s been causing you higher strokes. This could be anything from putting, chipping or driving. The idea is that when you work on these problem areas while you’re still fresh and limber from a stretch routine, your body responds more positively to the exercises you’re subjecting it to. The thing about most people’s idea of golf practice is simply spending time on the driving range without even considering whether or not driving is their waterloo. But if you’re aware that your short game is what’s giving you problems, then you’d do best to hit the greens to work on your putts as soon as you finish warming up. (As an aside, it has been observed that more than 60% of a player’s strokes take place on the green. Unfortunately, this fact is overlooked by many players thus resulting in poor practice habits.)

Fatigued stage

Once you start feeling winded from the earlier exercises, move on to work on facets of your game that simply need reinforcement. Since your body already knows this motion, this stage in your practice serves as maintenance to your form. If any correction is necessary, your stressed out body isn’t as pressured to master a difficult form. As in the previous example, only after working on your problematic short game can you then go to the driving range to give positive reinforcement to your drives. Finally, here are some more observations and suggestions in carrying out your practice. 1) To be able to see continuous improvement, a good practice-to-play ratio is about 2:1, which means giving twice as much time to practice as to what you would spend in playing. 2) However, give yourself sufficient time to rest in between exercises and in between stages. While it is a work out, you should not be winded down by the activity. Doing so may actually do more harm than help.

Your game should see improvements as you give your sessions a more defined structure. Be consistent and note the results of your exercises to step up that game one stroke at a time.

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Apart from the fact that good shoes will help you to have more control when you are swinging your clubs, a good fitting pair of shoes will be more comfortable and aid your performance.

Tired feet can cause a lot of fatigue, and that fatigue gets translated into a tired mind and reduced performance on the course.

Hot or wet feet will affect your game, as will feet that are uncomfortably tight in the wrong size shoes.

Golf is a game where all aspects of your performance are related, from the top two inches of your head (your mind control) right down to the comfort of your feet.

You are going to be spending a lot of time on your feet during a round of golf so you really do need to ensure your comfort.

There are many different types and styles of shoes allowing almost anyone to find something suitable.

Before you buy you will need to find out what types of shoes are allowed on the courses that you will be playing at, as many courses don’t allow the cleatespiked golf shoes.

Having cleats or spikes on your shoes can assist in stabilizing your feet during your swing and this can add a lot of power to your stroke.

Having the reassurance of knowing that your feet aren’t going to ‘break loose’ after you have just done a big drive will allow you to push the limits of your ability just a little but more and that can be the difference of winning or losing a game at the end of a round.

Every little benefit helps and chipping away at all these factors will eventually lead to a lower handicap and a happier golfer.

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Observe them next time you see them play and you will see what I mean.  There is one thing that all good golfers do manage to do and that is, they keep their head behind the ball at the point of impact.

They might have some movement on their back swing but they will ensure that their head is behind the ball when they strike it and that is what is most important.

You should certainly try to keep your head as still as possible and the less movement you have the better, however as you drive faster and harder you will naturally get more head movement.

While you need to control your head movement it is not something that you should have to focus on when you are playing.  This action should come naturally and that will happen more easily with practice.

As soon as you start thinking too much when you are about to take your shot you will begin to have trouble.  Your head will naturally move to the back of the swing as it would do with any swinging motion, and the bigger the golf swing the more your head is likely to move.

Once you have hit the ball your head will follow through naturally with the movement of your shoulders.  You can even observe how some golfers actually tilt their head to their trailing arm before their downswing to ensure that it is behind the ball at the point of impact.

This is something that you could try, but at all times your swing should feel comfortable and the movements should feel natural or you will revert to actions that won’t deliver the best results.

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You need to get the right balance on your feet, in the movement of your body, in the swing of the clubs and so on.

Balance goes further than just the body however.  You need a balanced approach to the game with your mind in sync with your body.

You need to only consider the one stroke that you are playing and not let other holes impact on your balance.

When we get golf lessons we’re taught about the distribution of weight on our feet and the weight distribution when we swing to strike the ball.

Many of the techniques seem foreign to the beginner but it is all about training the player to find balance in their game so the actions are effortless and natural. 

Our balance should flow through with the movement of the swing in one fluid action to the striking of the ball and even after the ball has been hit with a balanced follow through.  It is a natural feeling that will become second nature with practice.

It is through finding balance in your mind and body that you will start hitting consistently good shots.  Without this it will be very difficult to find any consistency in your game.

Once you get your upper body correctly positioned behind the ball, you will find that you are naturally placing more weight on the back foot.  Try it next time you have a practice swing. 

Stand balanced on your feet with no more pressure on the front of the foot than the back.
Position yourself behind the ball and gently swing through without making any effort to concentrate on the distribution of the weight on you feet.

You will find that this will come naturally with no effort at all and that is precisely how you should feel when you are striking the ball.

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I have talked to many golfers and there seems to be a consistency with a lot of them relating to their performance on the front nine compared to the way they play on the back nine in most golf rounds.

Not that there is a consistency in their game, but a consistency in the part of the game where they consistently fare worst.

Some people struggle to get their game right for the first nine holes and then improve on the back nine, whilst others start off fine and then fade on the last nine holes.

It is like there is a switch that gets flicked half way through the game and their performance changes in one direction or another.

There is always a reason why this is happening and targeting that reason can result in some excellent improvements to your score.

More often than not the second nine holes result in a poorer performance and this can be due to a number of factors.

Those factors can be fatigue or a lack of hydration.  Hydration in itself will result in fatigue.  These are simple factors that can be easily addressed with regular intake of water and foods containing some carbohydrate content to keep the energy levels up.

Other people find they perform worse on the first nine holes and that can often be from tension where they tend to relax later in the game and start playing better.  Once again, if you are aware that this is happening you can address the problem by making an effort to relax.

Learning relaxation techniques can do more for many people’s game than all the advice in the world and it might be just what you need to take your game to the next level.

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Do you have any suggestions as how one might be able to get him to speed up his game so that the day on the golf course is enjoyable to all?  I don’t want to lose him as a friend, but…..  Has anyone commented on your playing speed?  How did you react?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have long struggled with the speed of my game. To Tom’s first question, I do have some additional thoughts on how to minimize the zen factor. It all goes back to the old adage that you play like you practice.

While I work on alignment and many other key points of my swing on the range, I didn’t spend time on developing a more efficient pre-shot routine. I think most average players miss out on this key point in part because they are trying to correct what they perceive as larger weaknesses in their game, i.e. slices or hooks.  And we work on these problems by spending more time thinking about the fix while hovering over the ball.

As I look back on my practice habits of the past, I was only reinforcing my “zenness” by taking the same amount of time on the range to hit balls.   Today, I add an extra step to my practice sessions which end with focus on my pre-shot routine.  I now use a cadence before each swing which in essence is simply counting to five before I swing. Your might find that 3 seconds works for you; it comes down to personal preference.

To Tom’s second question, I have had more than one playing partner comment on my pace of play.  Most comments are made in good humor although I have been on the receiving end of some not so pleasant comments from players I have been paired up with.

As I mentioned earlier, practice your pre-shot routine on the range not the course. Finding an efficient pre-shot routine that you can repeat on a consistant basis not only helps  pace of play but will also help correct some of your other inconsistancies in your swing.  I hope this helps. 

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