The Swing's the Thing

There’s a chapter by Lou Riccio in Johnny Miller’s book, Breaking 90, that talks about the importance of good play up to the green. Riccio says:

“If Phil Mickelson did your putting for you, you’d probably break 90 only a handful more times per year. On the other hand, if you putted his ball, he’d still score in the 70s.”

Hale Irwin said, in an article in the January 2010 Golf Digest magazine, “The shortest route to improvement is to get on the green in fewer strokes.”

If you want to become a good golfer it is imperative to have a good swing.

A good swing is one you can rely on to hit the ball straight. With a driver in your hand, you expect to hit the fairway. With an iron in your hand from, say, 150 yards out, you expect to hit the green. Maybe from 160.

What happens if you don’t have a good swing is that you don’t get the ball on the green or close to it in the regulation number of strokes. It’s likely that your next shot is from too far away to get the ball close enough to the hole for one putt. It could be that just getting the ball on the green is an issue.

The solution is not to learn how to hit those demanding short shots better. The solution is to get a better swing so you don’t have to hit them so often.

Now the golf swing is a very complicated act, and there’s a lot of instruction out there in print and video meant to guide you around the curves.

Lessons? By all means take lessons. Most lessons, though, are meant to patch up your swing. To get a better swing you really have to start over and build it from the ground up. That’s a huge commitment most recreational golfers do not have the time to make.

What to do? It’s me to the rescue.

My latest publication, Six Fundamentals of the Recreational Golf Swing, identifies six key features of the golf swing that lead to straight shots, in the air, time after time. That good swing I defined earlier? Here’s how to get it.

I took long-standing swing principles, added a few twists of my own, and came up with an organized way to get the clubhead to the ball with a square clubface and traveling toward the target. And if that doesn’t happen (nobody’s perfect), you’ll know why and you can correct yourself before the next swing.

Six Fundamentals is FREE, and there’s a version fully adapted for left-handed golfers. I’ll let you know in next Monday’s post how to get your copy.