By John Furgurson
I was doing a drill the other day that my instructor, Andy Heinly, recommended. It’s a simple little, three-o’clock/9 o’clock drill. Just turn back and turn through. No problem.
Under Andy’s watchful eye I was executing it perfectly… Just a pretty little half swing, effortless and pure. But on my own, I just couldn’t recapture the magic. Something was completely out of sync, and I didn’t know what. It was very frustrating.
Sound familiar?
The first rule of drills: If it’s causing you frustration, Forget-About-It! Don’t keep grinding, just move on to something else. Put the drill on the back shelf until you have help from someone who can tell if you’re doing the drill properly. Because if you’re not, it can do more harm than good.
Drills are useful for ingraining new habits and instilling certain feelings that you’re missing in your golf swing. For instance, that three-o’clock/9 o’clock is designed to improve your position on the take-away, and the follow-through. It’s also good for your timing, if that’s an issue.
But there’s the rub. How are you supposed to know what the real, underlying issue really is? It’s almost impossible to self-diagnose your swing. Why do you think tour pros have coaches to keep an eye on things… because it’s hard to see and/or believe what you’re really doing wrong. Even with the help of video.
“The pros go back to drills all the time”, Andy Heinly says. “But they know which ones are important for them. Some drills simply don’t apply. If you start practicing a drill that has no relevance to your real swing problem you could just introduce a bigger variety of bad results.”
Golf Digest published a golf book with nothing but drills in it. There’s the anti-wayward-cut clock drill. The anti-sweep hook swing left drill. The anti-heel shot whiff drill. And 117 others. One reviewer on Amazon.com said it quite well:
“The chief problem is that a person who buys this book at random looking to shave a stroke or two off his score is liable to end up with his weekends stopped up with him doing drill after drill for problems he has absolutely no need of fixing. Worse yet, as with drills even your pro teaches if you do one or two things wrong you can even ingrain new faults into your swing. -T. Enst
Here’s something else to consider: A lot of drills are designed to dis-assemble the golf swing, break it down, and isolate certain pieces. But keep in mind, the golf swing is a swing. All the pieces have to come together on the golf course, so doing a deconstruction drill before a round is probably not the best strategy. Save the drills for practice sessions, not pre-round warm-ups.
Bottom line: Doing a good drill is way better than randomly pounding balls . But don’t get carried away. And don’t start using one just because you “think” it might help you. Get some professional help instead. And make sure it’s the right drill for the problem.
Tags: golf books, golf instruction, Golf swing, golf swing drills, improve your golf swing, play better golf
