Practicing without a plan or without feedback is basically like closing your eyes and throwing a dart at the wall to see if you’ve hit anything.
If you’ve ever said “I can’t seem to take my game from the range to the course! What am I doing wrong?”
Lack of feedback might be the reason!
A few years ago I was helping a college player with her swing. She wasn’t drawing the ball in competition like she wanted too. Now, there are two things you need to hit a draw; 1) Club face closed to the club path and 2) (generally speaking) a path in to out. This player had the face pretty close to the right position but lacked the path. So, using a launch monitor I said;
“Show me how big you could make the number swinging in to out. How many degrees from the inside could you swing?”
She swung as saw 1 degree in to out. I said “Lets make it a bigger number!”
She didn’t believe that having a more inside path was important and said that was as far as she could do it. So I grabbed the driver and swung the club 13 degrees in to out and watched the ball start right and hook back. Is that functional? No. That’s a lot! HOWEVER!!! If you can feel something that extreme, how easy would it be to swing 2 or 3 degrees in to out knowing you need to swing that way to hit the shot you’re looking to hit?
I got a little off track with my story.
Here’s the bottom line; without that feedback of the launch monitor data we would have had a pretty hard time knowing if she was changing here path and knowing what an “extreme” was. We would have been guessing based on a look or a feel in the swing which isn’t efficient….it’s guessing! So on the range if you don’t have feedback, you’re just guessing. Doesn’t seem like a good practice plan does it?
Using technology can help you focus on the feel you’re trying to achieve. Most of us swing too far from out to in to see the desired shot shape we want. Using technology get a base line of your swing path, then see how far in the opposite direction you could make it. It’s that simple sometimes! It’s feedback! Use the feedback to train your athletic movement.
There are a lot of numbers that you can look at on the screen and sometimes you can get analysis paralysis! Focus on one. If it’s a path issue, ONLY look at the Path number. If it’s a face issue (Hint, it’s usually a face issue!), ONLY look at the face data. Keep it simple and use the feedback!
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