The most important part of your pre-shot routine – Alignment!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Pre-Shot Routine is something I teach constantly. Both on the range and on the course. You want to “practice the way you play” and “play the way you practice.” This means that your pre-shot routine should be exactly the same on the range (yes, with each shot that you hit) as it is on the course. Here, David MacKenzie of Golf State of Mind goes through 5 important points to help you with the alignment part of your pre-shot routine!
Alignment: The Most Important Part of Your Set-up
It’s hard to say that any of the fundamentals are more important than another, as all should be continually perfected, but if there’s one that causes more off-line golf shots, then alignment clearly stands out. Once you’ve learned the correct, grip, posture, ball position and stance, it’s not that hard to maintain them and during most shots they will fall into place. But alignment is one that has a tendency to waiver.
The importance of alignment in golf
Without proper alignment, your body receives mixed signals from your brain, with regards to your body position and your intended target. If your eyes are looking towards the target but your body and clubface are actually aligned to the right or left of it, you’ll need to make adjustments in your swing, which affects its plane and path. This could result in any number of problems. E.g. If your body is aimed to the left of your intended target line, then without intentionally doing so you’ll swing across the proper swing path (out to in) resulting in a pull or slice.
One degree can mean a miss of 15 yards
To put alignment in perspective, if the clubface is even a degree open or closed to the intended ball to target line at impact, it can cause a miss of 10-15 yards or more (which equates to several shots lost per round).
Alignment requires practice just like everything else
It’s important to realize that good alignment takes practice, in the same way you practice your swing. If you get to go to a Professional tournament, you’ll see most of the players working with alignment sticks on the range to make sure it’s spot on. But at any time on the local range, you’ll only see a few doing the same.
So what the best way to make sure your alignment with your intended target?
It’s important to mention here that your body (shoulders, hips, knees and feet) need to be aligned parallel left of the ball to target line, like a train track, with the right rail being the ball to target line and the left rail being the alignment of your body (for the right handed player, like Luke Donald above).
A Great Short Game leads to Strong Mental Toughness!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
David MacKenzie is one of the leading game enhancement teachers globally, with top PGA and LPGA players as clients. But, as David says, you must have a great short game to develop mental toughness. Here David provides 4 terrific short game drills to improve your feel, build your confidence, and gain that mental toughness you’ve only seen on TV!
Victor Dubuisson – Golden Hands (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Try these drills (used by Tour players) to start honing your short game and making more up and downs this season.
1. One club, Two distances
In order to become a genius from 100 yards and in (the scoring zone), you need to develop your feel.
. A great way to practice feel is to hit the same club several distances (you can try this with your long game too). With this drill the aim is to make it instinctive how far the pin is away from you (from within 100 yards), something you’ll need to do to get to low single figures.
Start at 125 yards and hit one ball to the target
Then move to 115 and use the same club to hit to that same target
Continue to move to 105 and change to whatever club you hit from this distance
Then Move to to 95 and hit the same club as you did from 105
Move to 85 and hit whatever club you would from this distance
Finish by hitting your 85 yard club from the 75 yard position.
So…you’ll have played from 6 distances and used your 3 wedges twice each, to 2 different distances.
Some players choke down on the club and change their ball position for distance control and others use swing length and tempo. Experiment with both and see what works for you. You can also repeat this drill and create more distances by using 5 yard increments.
2. Real Short Game Practice
One of the first things I talk to amateurs about when I take on a new student is how they practice. More often than not, a fundamental change is necessary. I try to instill the “practice as you play” philosophy. What this means is that you simulate the golf course as much as you can.
One great short game drill is to take 20 balls and drop them around the practice green from different lies and positions. For each shot, you go through your routine just as you would on the golf course and imagine you are playing in a competition on whatever golf course you normally play (or perhaps where your next competition may be). If the ball comes to rest outside of gimme range (2ft), go through your pre-putt routine, just as you would on the course or in a competition and try to hole the putt.
When you’ve made the up and down, move onto the next ball until you’ve holed all 20. This exercise might take 40-50 minutes to perform, but it makes practice very meaningful.
What this does is:
Practice your routine – getting your process the same and focusing on it should be consistent no matter what the shot or situation
Work on your imagination and visualization
Simulate pressure while you practice
Makes practice fun, playing from different lies and trying different shots
Gives every shot a purpose, instead of being just another practice ball
Learn to play “No Fear Golf” with David MacKenzie!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
David MacKenzie is one of the leading Sports Performance Mental Trainers in the world.
He owns Golf State of Mind, and I have featured him several times in my posts because I believe he is extremely knowledgeable of his craft, and we can all learn from him. Overcoming fear on the course is something that even great players struggle with. Just take a look at the short putt Dustin Johnson missed during the US Open at Chambers Bay last summer. Think the fear of failure caught up with him at the wrong time? Let David help you play no fear golf by managing your fear and thus becoming a better player!
You’ve had butterflies before your first tee shot, you’ve felt it.
And you’ve had trouble sleeping before an important round, you’ve felt it.
If you’ve ever started panicking during your warm-up because you think you’ve lost your swing, you’ve felt it.
Have you’ve ever “choked”, and felt it.
What is it? I’m talking about FEAR. Something that affects nearly every golfer that plays the game.
But what exactly is FEAR and why does it exist?
This article is going to take a look into the origin of fear, what the effects are, and how you can harness it to play your best golf.
Can being aware of your body language improve your golf?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Do you notice that confident people have confident body language?
Look at the quarterback on a football field. He demands attention! Look at Pele or Messi on a football field. They know they are good. And I remember someone saying of Jack Nicklaus, “He knows he can beat you. You know he can beat you. And he knows that you know that he can beat you!” THAT is confidence.
But can you project that confidence even if you don’t have it? Absolutely. Particularly in the animal kingdom, smaller animals will show some sort of bravado in front of a larger animal to hopefully scare that animal away. So the next time you get out of your car at the club, right from that moment, start posing as if you were Jordan Spieth arriving, looking around and saying, “I wonder who’s going to be second today?” Watch the video below with Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy and see just how important this subject is, not only for your golf but for your entire life!
Thanks to David MacKenzie of GolfStateofMind.com for this interesting and game-changing article!
How To Improve Your Golf Game in 2 Mins Per Day
If you watch anyone at the top of their field, whether it be sports, business or politics, you’ll notice they have very strong body language. And it’s probably more intentional than you think…
Can being aware of your body language improve your golf?
Why does body language matter?Amy Cuddy, Social psychologist and researcher at Harvard Business School gave a Ted Talk about “How Body Language Shapes Who You Are” and it’s been the most viewed Ted Talk (over 8 million views) on YouTube. I’ve included a link to it at the end of the article.
Cuddy explains that our body language not only affects how people see us, but it also affects how our mindsperceive us.
Studies (at Harvard) have shown that your posture affects your hormone levels, which can have a direct affect on your mood. When we’re stressed and anxious, we have more of a hormone called Cortisol in our bodies and when we’re feeling confident and assertive, we have higher levels of Testosterone.
What you need to Improve your golf is Deliberate Practice!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I have often heard the saying, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Only perfect practice makes perfect!” David MacKenzie of Golf State of Mind and guest contributor Matthew Cooke take that one step further to “Only Deliberate practice makes perfect!” This “deliberate practice” is being used in several sports with huge success, time for you to try it in your game!
In this book he introduces us to “the 10,000-hour rule”, a concept that is believed to have come from a 1993 research paper written by Dr. Anders Ericsson, Cognitive Faculty Director at Florida State University, called “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”.
Mr Gladwell has created a perception that expert performance is achievable after 10,000 hours of practice, which I believe to be untrue.
The magic 10,000 hour number was never actually mentioned by Dr. K Anders Ericsson. It is Mr Gladwell’s incorrect interpretation of the research paper. The acquisition of expert performance is different for everybody in every domain you could think of. What Dr. Ericsson and his team of researchers did discover, is that expertise and expert performance came to those who had spent more than 10,000 hours engaged in deliberate practice, which usually took around 10 years. Some domains took 9 thousand, some domains took 11 thousand etc.
So what is it, for us folk that don’t eat research papers, journal studies and spend 15 hours a day on Ted Talk’s YouTube channel?
Deliberate practice for golf
“Deliberate practice for golf is the amount of Game-Like repetitions a player gets during practice.” – Matthew Cooke
My reincarnation of Dr. K Anders Ericsson’s pioneering work runs right in line with his original.
Which is:
“Deliberate practice is the engagement with full concentration in a training activity designed to improve a particular aspect of performance with immediate feedback, opportunities for gradual refinement by repetition and problem solving.”
Clear, concise and relatively easy to understand. Let’s go through it step by step. First off we’ll go into how to make it “Game like”.
“Game like” training for golf
It doesn’t matter what level golfer you are. I will categorize three very distinct levels that are hard to argue with (us golf coaches like to do that, argue): beginner, intermediate and advanced. Decipher the numerical value in your own time as it’s all relative. First we mustrecreate, then we must simulate and finally we regulate, which gives us opportunities tochunk. These are the principles to follow. There are differences in the specific design of practice tasks, but all are in bold!
How can a beginner have the same principles that an advanced golfer has? Here is how:
How his Pre-Shot Routine improved Brandt Snedeker’s putting!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
A Pre-Shot routine in golf helps in 3 ways. One, it sets the body into a consistent rhythm just before you hit the shot. Two, it allows you to gather all thoughts relative to the shot at hand, and three, it removes all other distractions so you can execute the shot without any negative thoughts or feelings that might influence the shot. Watch a tennis player before they serve. They bounce the ball a certain number of times, throw the ball overhead, and serve. This bouncing of the ball helps them focus and get into a good rhythm before the serve.
If you watched The Sony Open last week, you will have no doubt seen the quality of Brandt Snedeker’s putting.
For me, as mental game coach, a major factor in the strength of his putting is how deliberate and consistent his pre-putt routine is.
Why is the pre-putt routine so important?
Where you put your focus before a putt (or any shot for that matter) has a big influence on the fluidity of the stroke. If you’re not following a proper sequence, your mind can wander onto things such as the importance of the outcome and the technical aspects of your stroke. Any doubt or hesitation about the line, how good your stroke is, or what making or missing means, makes for a tentative and inconsistent stroke, and inconsistent results.
Putting is about feel and trust; the more you can take conscious thinking out of it and just use your eyes and trust yourself to hit the ball the correct distance, the better. It needs to be “reactive”, not “proactive” when you are over the ball. Clearly your conscious mind is active when making decisions about the line and speed, but once that is decided upon, the best thing you can do is put faith in your process and trust your stroke.
What is Mental Toughness – and How Do You Achieve It?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Tiger Woods has one of the toughest mental games on the PGA Tour.
Mental Toughness has been defined by Wikipedia as “A collection of attributes that allow a person to persevere through difficult circumstances (such as difficult training or difficult competitive situations in games) and emerge without losing confidence. In recent decades, coaches, sports psychologists, sports commentators, and business leaders.”
Reading mental Toughness books can help you understand exactly what you need to do!
Mental Toughness is evident when I see golfers play their very best, no matter what the circumstances or distractions. People like Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Raymond Floyd, Tiger Woods, and Jack Nicklaus come to mind.
The aim of mental coaching.
The aim of mental game coaching is to help players gain better access to the skills they’ve developed in practice, whatever the situation.
That’s what mental toughness is all about.
Getting over the ball and having a quiet, but focused, mind and a feeling of confidence in what is about to happen.
Trusting your swing mechanics so you don’t have to think about them.
It’s all subconscious.
Your swing becomes a reaction to what’s in front of you, not a series of technical thoughts.
That little coach inside your head is no longer needed and has disappeared.
As a mental game coach, if I can get my players into this state of mind over every shot, I’ve done a good job.
But how do you achieve this?
From my experience coaching the mental game of golf, there are 3 phases of improvement:
Learning skills Consciously
Learning to swing Subconsciously
Building a strong Self Image
Learning how to achieve a better mental game is about working on the last 2 areas.
Meditation is part and parcel of getting to the correct mental state!
Taking your game from the range to the course
We’ve all been there. You find something on the range and your swing just clicks. Every ball, arrow straight or with a little draw. You’ve cracked it.
Scratch golf awaits… But on the course, that same swing is nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, the golf course is not like the driving range.
There are consequences. There are other players. There’s pressure. It’s not as easy to access that free flowing swing.
But this is where mental game training comes in.
How you access your best swings is through a good process, a blueprint if you will. Having a plan will give you more confidence right off the bat.
Your “Process” is like building layers, with each one you get closer to the state of mind you need to be in at the moment you take the club away from the ball.
You need the conscious thought in order to access the subconscious control.
3 Important Steps to a daily 10-minute Mental Workout!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
David MacKenzie of Golf State of Mind, is one of the top performance coaches in the industry whom I have featured several times in my posts. His sound advice on improving your mental game has been invaluable to not only some of the top players in the game, but hundreds of amateurs in helping them take their game to another level. Check out this daily mental workout routine that will improve your game!
Your 10 Minute Mental Game Work Out
Try to do this 10 minute mental game workout daily, before you practice or play.
Breathing: One of the most powerful tools in competitive golf (5 mins)
Firstly, I’d like you to spend 5 minutes focusing on nothing else but your breathing. This is great practice for the course. The best way to remain calm and maintain your focus when you’re nervous is using your breathing. This exercise will help you stay in the present and lower your heart rate, so your thinking is not affected when the pressure is on.
Find a comfortable place where you won’t be bothered for 5 minutes.
Either close your eyes or keep them open with soft focus.
Start paying attention to your breathing. It’s not important how many seconds it takes to inhale vs exhale, it’s more important more how rhythmical your breathing is. So if it’s 5 seconds to inhale, hold for 3 and 7 seconds to exhale, repeat that pattern for 5 minutes (don’t worry, the time goes pretty quickly). It’s been proven that it’s the rhythm of the breathing that is most effective in controlling the stress response, not the ratio of inhale to exhale time.
3 Important Steps to a daily 10-minute Mental Workout!
What you’re doing here, is your training your mind to focus – like taking your mind to the gym.
If you find yourself distracted by other thoughts, don’t worry, just bring your focus back to your breathing (it will get easier to focus for longer the more you practice it). On the golf course, this breathing exercise is going to help you remain present and connected to the moment i.e. exactly what you need to do. It will help reduce tension and calm you down. The more you practice this, the easier it becomes to do when you’re on the course.
What do you think is the best swing thought to play better golf?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I’m sure you have already guessed that this is a trick question. There is no “best swing thought” to play better golf. To be devoid of any thought is the true answer to getting to play to your fullest potential. How do you think of nothing?
At the Mel Sole Golf School, we teach our students something we call the “Clear Key,” and as my former mentor on this part of the game, Dr. Cary Mumford once said, “It is a key to clear the hacking in the head!”
David MacKenzie of Golf State of Mind. It has provided some insights into this below, but if you click on the audio file, you will get a full version of this article! Enjoy! If you want some personal instruction from David, go here.
Copy of Audio File from David Mackenzie.
I get asked this all the time, but I think you already have the answer. A lot of mental game development is about repeating the things that you were doing when you were playing well and eliminating the things you were doing when you weren’t playing well.
When you’re playing well, what are you thinking about during your swing? I’m willing to bet it’s nothing at all. You’re seeing the target and making an instinctive swing.
Conversely, when you’re playing badly, what are you thinking about during your swing? I’m sure it’s some technical instruction or you’re consciously working on preventing mistakes that might have occurred earlier in the round.
So there’s your answer. Too many swing thoughts are one of the biggest causes of inconsistency.
But let me explain why this is the case.
So much of what you require in golf is about trust.
Bobby Jones once said:
“The golf swing is too complex a movement to control it consciously”.
US Open winner Graeme McDowell said:
“You turn off your mind. You feel your golf swing without really thinking about it. It’s almost like you you don’t think at all. Maybe you have one little thought, and everything else becomes automatic.”
Do you putt to a spot or do you see a line – Both have merits!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I have used several of David MacKenzie’s articles on mental golf coaching.
Why? Because I think he has some interesting and valuable things to say about improving your mental toughness, course management, and visualization. This article will definitely help you improve your putting whether you putt it to a spot (like me) or someone who sees a line and tries to putt the ball along that line. Check out his website at golfstateofmind.com.
Curves vs Straight Lines
Whenever I discuss pre-putt visualization with a new student, they will always have one of two responses.
There are those that see putts in curves (unless it’s a dead straight putt) and there are those that visualize all putts as straight, no matter how much break there is. Neither method is proven to be more effective than the other, but it’s important to think about how you visualize on the greens and here’s why.
Those players who say they see puts in curves are saying that they imagine a line (or curve) on the green that the ball would have to track to get to the hole (like in the image above).
Left vs Right Brain Dominance in Golf
Players who see shots in curves, use more of their right brain than their left brain in the targeting process. In other words, they are more “right brain dominant”.
The right side of the brain uses imagery, more than it does verbal and technical instruction while performing a task.
People who are right brain dominant are generally more artistic, creative and intuitive and need to see visualize concepts to understand them.
However, the other group of players, those who see all putts as straight, are more “left brain dominant”.
The left half of the brain is more logical, analytical, and uses more verbal instruction to explain things.
For left brain dominant players, it’s much cleaner and easier to see putts as straight lines, than it is curves. It makes it more precise, like a architectural drawing vs an artist’s sketch.
For these players, instead of seeing a curved line the ball will take to the hole, they see a different target, or “spot” (an imaginary hole), which is in a straight line from the ball (as in the image above).
A spot putter would putt as if to get the ball to come to rest at that spot (imagining every putt as flat and straight), but let gravity (the slope of the green) take it towards the hole.
