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Not Looking at the Golf Ball?

CobraX51

CobraX51

F-ck Yeah Baby!
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Messages
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Location
Pinehurst,NC
Handicap
7.4
Alright so 2018 has been a mix of ups and downs, but more so ups, thankfully. Handicap has went from 14 to sub 11.

My problem in the beginning of the year was hitting behind the golf ball and having a lot of misses to the right, high spin misses to the right. My eyes would be focused behind the golf ball or the inside of the golf ball.

So after some lessons and key points to work on my coach told me to look in front of the golf ball, like 3-4 inches in front of the ball. Find my target, set my club, and have my eyes fixated to that piece of grass or whatever in front of the ball to hit down on it.

I even do this with driver which is weird but am used to it. Point being, by me looking ahead of the ball it helps with some forward shaft lean at impact, some divots, and finishing the swing by extending throughout the downswing. Even with chipping I don't look at the ball, I find my spot, and the golf ball simply gets in the way of my intended target.

My divots aren't large by any means, golf ball sized divots, nothing more but sometimes less, even when I hit the ball only it travels well. I'm not making golf club sized divots I see my friends make with the occasional pancake piece of grass being flipped in the air. Some of my friends really compress the ball well and launch it.

Question to Freddie, is this something you have ever taught students? Or case by case basis? Weird concept but it works well for me.
 
To each his own, I guess. If it works for you, then run with it. For me, I was struggling with the skanks all summer and when I wasn't skanking it, I was hitting it fat. One random comment from someone, not an instructor, but someone I'd tend to say probably knew what he was talking about, telling me if I was hitting behind the ball to simply move the ball back in my stance since that's where my swing was bottoming out. I moved the ball back a couple of inches and it helped tremendously. Now, when I hit one fat, I simply remind myself to keep the ball back a bit.
 
I’ve read this someplace prior, and find that it works for me definitely. I can’t say I do it 100% of the time, but on those days where I seem to be hitting everything fat, I’ll adjust to looking at a spot of grass just in front of the ball, and it always seems to move my eyes, and center of gravity a bit forward, moving the bottoming out of my swing a touch forward, and into the back of the ball.
 
I tend to do it putting and it helped a lot with the short ones, also do the speith thing and look at the hole on 5-10' sometimes and some days that helps.

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CobraX51 said:
Alright so 2018 has been a mix of ups and downs, but more so ups, thankfully. Handicap has went from 14 to sub 11.

My problem in the beginning of the year was hitting behind the golf ball and having a lot of misses to the right, high spin misses to the right. My eyes would be focused behind the golf ball or the inside of the golf ball.

So after some lessons and key points to work on my coach told me to look in front of the golf ball, like 3-4 inches in front of the ball. Find my target, set my club, and have my eyes fixated to that piece of grass or whatever in front of the ball to hit down on it.

I even do this with driver which is weird but am used to it. Point being, by me looking ahead of the ball it helps with some forward shaft lean at impact, some divots, and finishing the swing by extending throughout the downswing. Even with chipping I don't look at the ball, I find my spot, and the golf ball simply gets in the way of my intended target.

My divots aren't large by any means, golf ball sized divots, nothing more but sometimes less, even when I hit the ball only it travels well. I'm not making golf club sized divots I see my friends make with the occasional pancake piece of grass being flipped in the air. Some of my friends really compress the ball well and launch it.

Question to Freddie, is this something you have ever taught students? Or case by case basis? Weird concept but it works well for me.
Click to expand...

Obviously not Freddie, but this is something I started to do with my irons a while back to focus on hitting down on the ball. If it works, embrace it man!
 
It is something I have taught or a variation of it. I have students place a tee directly in front of the ball. Just the top of tee is seen and it’s about 1/2” in front of the ball. The goal is to dig the tee out of the ground after the ball is struck.
Having a spot picked out a few inches could cause some casting so be careful.
 
The natural mental obsession of wanting to hit the ball is difficult to overcome - I've always struggled with it. The pros appear to swing effortless through the ball completely free of cognitive interference, and we mere mortals may need to trick the mind to get results. The tee idea sound like a good approach. Of course, different things work for different people. I personally, like to feel that my body rotation is carrying the the club, hands, and arms through the impact area.
 
This may sound nuts but I picture the ball "coming at" my club like I'm hitting a low baseball pitch or tennis shot. The tough part about golf is the ball sits there and the brain wants to end the shot at impact which promotes swinging too early, and hence almost "slowing down" towards the ball. Thinking that the ball is coming at me creates prior thoughts of hitting baseballs or playing tennis with full rotation.
 
Doing this is the only way I can make good contact with a 3 wood. Not sure why it works, but it does.
 
I pretend there is no ball and I'm just having a practice swing. It works sometimes :D
 
Been watching a lot of YouTube videos of good drivers of the ball and a lot of them have mainly backwards lean at address and at impact somewhere between level and backwards depending the player. I know there’s probably no right or wrong way but to suit my eye for clubface to be square I have it quite delofted and forward lean at address- if I try and get backwards shaft lean I need to open source to face massively which makes me feel uncomfortable.

I know it’s all about match ups but just wondering whyou do and implications of either wayay
 
I had a lesson many years ago with Hank Haney. He told me that taking the club back too far to the inside will cause the swing to bottom out before one gets to the ball. Better golfers who really get their weight shifted onto the front foot can get away with it most of the time. He worked with me taking the club back slightly to the outside (perhaps just an exaggeration) to correct that problem.


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Ive heard of this. The theory is that your target is where your eyes are, so if you look ahead of the ball, the shallow point of your swing will be after the ball. I dont do it but if it works for you, great.
 
i tried it the next round after i read this post. There is probably zero correlation but i started to snap hook the ball there after
 
I tend to focus on the very front of the ball to help me hit solid shots. Same principle I suppose. When my back is really hurting, I'll hit a lot of fat shots as I have trouble clearing my hips; next time this happens, I'll try to shift my focus a couple of inches forward to see if it helps!
 
I’ve had some success doing something like this as a short term fix but I could never stick with it. It was too awkward feeling and I bailed on it (although I still keep it in the mid round bag of tricks if things go off the rails)
 
I look at the ball but I am wary of hitting through it. My bad shot is a thin not a fat though so I may need to focus on different things to you
 
When I am hitting my shots fat, I do exactly this and it helps me a lot.
 
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