Craig Snyder Golf

Here's another article to help improve your game.

The Most Important Thing You Can Learn

What is the one thing a golfer can learn to do that will make the biggest impact on their scores? Learn to make the ball curve. If you go to the practice range and figure out how to hit shots that curve right to left and left to right, you'll be doing more for the future of your golf game than hitting 100 buckets of balls with no intention to your practice. The benefits of learning how to curve or “work” the ball go well beyond just being able to hit a shot around a tree and will positively affect almost every aspect of your game. When you create an understanding of the actions and feelings that cause different ball flights, and take control of those movements to make the ball do what you’ve envisioned, you’ll be able to truly PLAY golf.

Often when I ask my students if they tend to hit a draw or a fade they will answer me with, “I try to hit it straight” and while that is admirable, it’s highly unlikely and not the best strategy. Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time said, “The ball is going to move right or left every time you hit it, so you had better make it go one way or the other.” The point he is making is rooted in the intrinsic difficulty of golf, but more so, it’s about feel and visualization. It’s of the utmost importance that before you hit any shot, you must be able to see that shot, so have a picture in your mind that you are trying to duplicate.

If you don’t know what makes the ball curve, understand these facts. The ball will come off the clubface at basically a 90-degree angle. For a right-handed golfer, the ball will curve right to left if the clubface is closed to the path of the clubhead through impact and the ball will curve left to right if the clubface is open to the path of the clubhead through impact. Being able to control the path that the club is swinging on and simultaneously knowing what your clubface is doing is your goal.

The next time you go to the practice range try the following drill; with a 7-iron, choose a target that is approximately 2/3 the distance you would hit a full 7-iron, set-up with everything square to that target (feet, body, clubface) and hit shots that curve both right to left and left to right, to that target. These shots should be punch shots, less than full swings that have an abbreviated follow-through, and fly lower than a standard 7-iron. Sounds simple enough, but it’s possible that you may struggle with successful ex*****on. That’s the point! You learn best when you are attempting things just outside your skill set, and that learning is accelerated when you are figuring out how to accomplish the task. Don’t feel as though you have to hit these shots all the way to your target, just like any new movements, you’ll want to hit these shots as short as necessary and with a motion that’s as slow as necessary to be successful. You are learning; you can always do things bigger and faster once you have the feel.

Playing golf is an artistic endeavor that is as much mental as it is physical, but not in the sports psychologist, controlling your emotions and thoughts way, but in the way that challenges your imagination and creativity. Just as an artist creates a beautiful painting, your works of art are your shots. Visualizing the ball flight, experiencing the feelings to come, then bringing it to fruition, that’s your masterpiece, but you’ll need the tools, knowledge and experience first, so learn how to curve the ball.

Please enjoy an article I recently wrote.

How to Practice:
Making a Change

We all work on our golf swings, watching videos, taking lessons and spending time and money at the practice range, but very rarely do we see the desired results. This lack of change is rarely the consequence of bad information and is most likely a byproduct of the way in which you have tried to adopt it. You probably do not have hours every day to commit to improving your golf technique, so it becomes your responsibility to figure out how to get the absolute maximum out of the time you do have. The adage, it’s quality not quantity, holds true in this situation and the following information will help you greatly in improving that ratio.

When you’re attempting to change the way you perform a movement, whether it’s typing, shooting a basketball or hitting a golf ball, what you are really trying to do is change your brain and in turn change your habits. This is an important idea and hopefully one that makes you realize what you’re up against. The way that you’ve always done something, say hinged your wrists during your backswing, every time you’ve done that action you have increased the efficiency of the neural pathway that is responsible for that movement, conversely your new wrist hinge movement only has the few rehearsals and swings you've done since your lesson to try to supersede that pathway. It’s not a fair fight, not even close. So we must understand how our brain works and learns to have a chance of making a positive, lasting change and making it quickly.

The first step in creating a new movement is to understand the why and how while being able to visualize the change in your mind. The second phase is feeling the difference between what you used to do and what you want to do, but mainly feeling every aspect of the new action. Now you know what you are trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, knowing isn’t enough, you must do the movement repeatedly and most important you must do it correctly. It has been my experience on the lesson tee that many people know what they need to do but lack either the patience or understanding of how to accomplish it. I see it time and time again; a student learns a new movement and then immediately attempts to hit full shots with just a vague understanding of what it should feel like. This is the point where students diverge into the ones that will make great strides and the ones that will remain perplexed by their lack of results.

There’s a widely sighted study by two Australian psychologists, Gary McPherson and James Renwick, in which a clarinet playing 13-year-old girl packed about a month of practice into five minutes. What was the difference? Normally the girl would play a song from beginning to end without any regard for mistakes, then repeat that process again and again. This time, however, she began playing the song and with the first mistake she stopped, recognized the error, understood and executed the proper correction and then started the song again, repeating this process with every subsequent mistake. By training in this way she was able to recognize mistakes, focus deeply on the corrections, repeat the proper notes and slowly connect all those improvements together. As a student, it’s imperative to understand how practicing like this is more productive and efficient and how much faster she was able to sear this new learning into her brain then she would have been using her old method. This kind of practice, deep practice, should be your ambition anytime you’re trying to improve.

To make a lasting change in the shortest possible time you must execute the new movement as abbreviated or as slowly as necessary making sure to do it correctly. That’s it. It’s not easy, it takes a tremendous amount of perseverance and concentration, but changing your brain shouldn’t be easy.

The following would be a possible series of actions that would fit with this theory of change. Starting with a good understanding of what needs to be done differently, let’s say changing your wrist hinge, you would isolate the movement by doing it while not moving any other part of your body. You’ll move the club half way into your backswing and hold that position while you properly hinge your wrists again and again, concentrating on the feeling and correcting any mistakes. Next, you would start from an address position and move as slowly as possible to the desired backswing position, and repeat this action several times. If you’ve never moved in slow motion before you’ll be astounded at how much you can feel and correct, and how tiring it is to move like this. From here, you’ll begin hitting shots but with very small and or slow swings focusing on the change and still performing multiple rehearsals between each shot. Finally, you’ll begin hitting fuller and fuller shots always prepared to back down the size and speed of your swing if you’re not getting the desired results. Once you have successfully begun changing a part of your action it is yet another thing entirely to integrate that into what you do on the golf course and in competition, but that is topic for another time.

When making a change, follow the steps in this article, understand that knowing isn’t enough, that you’re trying to change your brain and that it takes concentration and dedication on your part to reap the rewards.

On my way to Pebble Beach next week for the first of 8 weeks of Nike Jr. Golf Camps.

Craig Snyder Golf is on Facebook with a new business page.