Golfers will often start a round badly and then give up, not knowing how to get their games back on track. In the video below, PGA Professional Jack Backhouse explains what he and other scratch golfers and professionals do to start hitting better shots again and reset your golf swing to not have a catastrophic score.
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Figure Out What Is Going Wrong
The first step to making any change is first understanding where you are now and what is going wrong. When you start a round poorly, there are 2 options as to what is causing you to hit bad shots:
- Strike
- Club Face
Yes, you might have a slicer’s golf swing and other swing faults that need addressing, but on the golf course, you generally have what you have, and we can’t make wholesale swing changes out there.
You need to understand and make a decision as to whether it is hitting fat and thin shots that are costing you shots or whether you are hitting it out to the right or left.
Corrections For Bad Strikes
When you are hitting shots heavy or too clean, the issue is that your low point is in the wrong place. This could be too far back, or too deep into the ground.
The first thing I will do to gain some control over my low point is simply start swinging the golf club shorter. I try to make more swings where my hand do not go much above my shoulders in the backswing or downswing.
This straight away helps me make more solid contact with the golf ball, mainly because there is just less to go wrong, and I have more control.
If my issue doesn’t get fixed by making shorter golf swings, I then make some set up adjustments.
I will move the ball back in my stance and also try to feel like my weight is further forwards on my lead foot. Both of these actions will help steepen my angle of attack, and move the low point forwards, helping me strike the ball before the ground and make good contact every time.
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Fix A Slice Or A Hook
If you are hitting the ball consistently to the left or to the right, be that a hook, slice, push or pull, your issue is that you are not getting the club face into a functional position.
The first step for this player when you are going to reset your golf swing is to think, can I just aim differently? If your shots are finishing 10-20 yards right every time, then there is nothing wrong with just aiming 10-20 yards left every time to counteract it. This is not how you want to play your golf as a whole, but is a good quick fix when out on the golf course.
The next thing to try is changing your club face alignments in your takeaway. Taking the club face away, more open or more closed, might just help get the club face aligned 2 degrees differently, which can be the difference when it comes to hitting or missing the target.
These are all quick fixes that can be implemented on the golf course.
Drills
It is not a bad idea at all to practice making these changes on the driving range in a range session, to see which swing thoughts affect your direction and strike the most. Moving the ball position up or down your stance, shortening or lengthening your full swing and adjusting your clubface open and closed is great practice to make yourself more adaptable and creative on the golf course.
The best golfers are the quickest to realise they need to make adjustments, and then best at implementing them. Learn how to do this and watch your high scores move much closer to your good ones.
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Give these tips a try and let us know how you get on! If you want to keep up to date with Jack’s instruction you can subscribe to his YouTube Channel here, or keep watching our instruction page!
If you want to watch some more of Jack’s driving instruction videos, you can get to his YouTube Technique Tips playlist by clicking here. Please check out our other instruction articles if you liked this how to reset your golf swing video!
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