One needs to put in the work on their golf swing at the practice range if they want improved scoring. You may be working on multiple concepts on the range, fitting all the pieces together to improve both your ball striking and ball flight.
I’ve always thought you should play your round with the swing you have that day and not attempt to incorporate changes while on the course. That is what the practice range is for, to give you the time and place to work on changes.
The hard part for many of us is taking our improved swing mechanics to the golf course. Many high handicap golfers become overwhelmed with everything, and begin thinking way too mechanically while on the course. You need to focus on course management while on the course, visualizing your shots and selecting the right club for each shot. For the most part, your swing should just take care of itself, with one exception, the swing thought.
A swing thought is a one single element that you are thinking about when hitting a golf shot. I’ve always thought it near impossible to be thinking and acting on a swing thought during the swing. For me, I think about my swing thought right before starting my takeaway.
The key word in the definition we stated in the previous paragraph is single. You want to have a single thought about some aspect of your swing that helps you execute the swing the way you want. Trying to have multiple swing thoughts during a single swing doesn’t work and ends up hurting your efforts a lot more than it helps.
I have a one swing thought for my driver and woods and another one for my irons and wedge. Develop your swing thoughts on the practice range, experimenting with different ones until you find one that works for you. A swing thought could be reminding you do perform a specific action and many times it is a feeling that helps you do that.
Here are a few of my swing thoughts to give you a few examples. Keep in mind these most likely will not work for you. Everyone’s situation is different, and it’s important you find your own that work for you.
I, like many high handicap and beginner golfers, had a slice that I eradicated from my driver a few years ago. My ball flight now is a high draw and my big miss with the driver, a pull hook, is a common one for a drawing ball flight. I feel one of the contributing factors to my pull hooks is bringing the driver back too far to the inside to start my back swing. My swing thought with my driver and woods is to bring the clubhead straight back on my take away.
My biggest miss with my short irons and wedges is, believe it or not, a shank. It used to creep into my rounds periodically, would take me several shots to correct, and would destroy my round. Through work on the range, I found that if I line up my clubface with the ball a bit farther out towards the toe, and have the swing thought of hitting the toe on the clubface on toe side of the middle, I get much more pure ball striking and do not shank.
Developing a simple, single swing thought we help you take your swing improvements from the range to the course.