Post-Shot Tip for Juniors |
Points for Growth
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| by Jeff Troesch |
 For most junior players, the time immediately
after hitting a ball poorly is mostly spent
in frustration or anger while thinking about
how badly the ball was hit. The rest of the
time is typically wasted trying to figure out
what was wrong with the previous swing or
putt. Conversely, when young players hit a
shot well, they rarely pay attention to much-
other than the result of where the ball ended
up. I strongly encourage for young players
that they develop better habits at an early
age. Here are a couple of important points
for you as you grow as a player:
Take time to mentally reinforce the feel
and sight of the good shots that you hit.
As an example, you have 150 yards to the pin
and you select the 7-iron (or whatever club
works for you) that will give you the best
chance to get it close. If you hit that 7-
iron well, I would want you to watch the full
flight of the ball, reinforce within yourself
how that felt and replay the trajectory of
the shot in your mind. This will help you
improve your ability to visualize this type
of shot next time you’re in a similar
situation.
On the other hand, take time to rehearse
the same shot if you’ve hit it poorly. In
the same situation as above, if you don’t hit
the ball well and chunk the ball 80 yards,
rather than immediately going into a
checklist of what you must have done wrong
and why your swing didn’t work well, re-swing
the club at full tempo until you get a good
feel. Your body and mind have a tendency to
remember the last thing that you’ve done, and
if you can put the 7-iron back in your bag
after having swung it well, you’re much more
apt to feel good about that club when you
subsequently choose to use it later in the
round. This way with every club in your bag,
the last swing that you executed with it was
one that you liked and felt confident
about.
I want to make sure and differentiate between
re-swinging the club while thinking about a
correction, versus swinging the club for a
good feel. The golf course is not the place
to attempt to analyze your swing. This
analysis is best saved for the practice area,
and ideally would be done with a teaching
professional’s input. The truth is that most
young players are terrible at diagnosing
their misses and are guessing when it comes
to figuring out what went wrong with a shot.
Regularly young players make a poor guess at
what went wrong, and try to fix something in
their swing that wasn’t broken in the first
place! Now instead of one swing flaw, you’ve
created a second. Continue down this line of
thinking and you’ll understand why you see
some players’ swings deteriorate as their
round progresses. The key here is to re-
swing thinking about a good shot, rather than
thinking about correcting an error. You’ll
be much more likely to swing the club fluidly
and will get your head out of the way and let
your body do what you’ve been training it to
do on the practice range!
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