Our Swing Improvement Program has had many names over the years, Swing Improvement, Swing in Motion, Golf in Motion to name a few. I am very biased about this program because it was what helped build the foundation necessary for a consistent golf swing. A number of the dirty dozen did these lessons every Spring when we first learned to golf. It helped us develop smooth consistent golf swings as well as understand what we were doing when things went wrong. Merina was the best at analyzing and breaking it down for us. For me it was the building up and repeating the drills which created muscle memory’s that built my swing, I need to feel the movement vs visualize it.
We resurrected the program a couple of years ago, and this year it was very popular so we ran it during the day and evening and with all the talk about it this season it is sure to be popular next year. It runs south at Carnmoney Golf and Country Club, Tiffany Gordon’s home course. This is how Tiff feels about this program.
Over the course of the years, I have found that our Golf Conditioning and Indoor Winter Programs prove to be very successful due to the fact that we remove the ball and work on conditioning the golf swing. Students start to work on more swing drills, muscle memory, and more importantly start to get an understanding of what happens during the golf swing versus trying to ‘hit’ the ball. We hear more about how they start to understand the how and why of the golf swing and therefore their confidence goes up as well. After the first week we always ask if anyone got out to practice and those that did…notice a difference right away. The winter program also allows us to answer many questions that maybe don’t come up during a regular lesson. Swing condition has proven itself to be very successful and with the stretching and swing drill components, makes for a great session and we find that they all feed off each other to encourage them to be better. These swing drills are used in our every day teaching but repetition of these drills definitely are game changing!
I found that rehearsing the motions without a ball removes my negative feedback helping me practice good technique. For some when you hit the ball you immediately focus on the good, the bad and the ugly. Did I hit it well or poorly? High or low? Left or right? Feedback, generally speaking, is an important part of practicing and playing. It allows golfers to spot what they’re doing right and wrong the moment after they do it. Removing the golf ball from the equation and all the feedback that goes along with it let’s you to focus more intentionally on your technique.