The Golf Club and the Japanese Sword

For almost 35 years, I have studied and taught the martial art of Aikido with Ki. Part of the advanced training involves a wooden sword called a bokken. We use the sword to learn how to apply the principles of the art while holding an object (although there is lot to be said about what that statement really means).

What applies to the bokken applies to a golf club.

Of the several principles for using the sword is always to move the sword from its tip. Instead of moving the sword from our hands, we think all the way out to the tip, and move that.

The reasons why are too involved to go into here, but that is the principle that I want to talk about in relation to a golf club.

When we move the golf club, we want to move it from the tip as well. Percy Boomer says in his important book, On Learning Golf, “…our strivings to attain a good swing will have been largely in vain unless at the end we have learned to feel our clubhead.”

We can refine that statement by saying not the entire clubhead but the tip of the golf club, which is on the clubhead. That tip is the sole of the clubhead.

A few week ago I posted an essay on how to stop chunking chip shots. The idea was not to think, “Hit the ball,” but, “Brush the grass.” Well, what is it you brush the grass with? The sole of the clubhead. The tip.
Now the tip of a sword is small and pointy. The tip (sole) of a golf club is broad, long, and flat. But it is a tip in its own way.

You always read, correctly, to hit the ball first and the ground second. You hit the ball with the clubface. What do you hit the ground with? Not the leading edge of the sole, as might seem obvious, but the entire sole.

You control the sword by controlling the tip. It’s the same with a golf club. When the sole goes to the right place, the rest of the club will too. After all, they’re attached!

They key to consistent ball striking is to hit the ball on the center of the clubface every time. We control that in large by delivering the sole of the club to the ground in the same way every time.

You might spend some time working with chips, short pitches, longer pitches, and moving up to a full swing with this thought in mind -- swing the sole of the club to a consistent point with each swing. Everything else will fall into place.