If you can use the feedback that a divot gives you to start to understand that there might be an issue within your swing, within the mechanics that are creating that divot, we can then start to work that back and start to find out what’s going wrong with the swing. So if your divot is too big, too aggressive, too deep below the golf ball and sometimes too far back behind the golf ball, we need to know what’s happening in the swings creating that. But it’s actually quite a difficult thing to work out because there is not a great deal that you can look at and watch in your swing that’s going to be causing the problem. So this is where our old best friend the video camera comes back in and if you don’t have a video camera, you can use the mirror.

The issue with the mirror is you just have to use your practice swings because it’s very difficult to look in a mirror and hit a ball at the same time. So often we will see using a mirror, we make our practice swings and see what’s going on. With the video again we have the benefit, we can actually focus on hitting the ball a couple of times then go back and review the tape from the other side and actually see what the swing looks like. So the major issue is that you are going to see that are creating the divots in the wrong place, it’s going to be twofold from the front one we are going to be looking for bodyweight transfer and sliding bodyweight transfer particularly.

So as I'm looking into the camera from the front on there, I can see if I'm swaying too far back this way or particularly for the deep divot leaning too far left and then staying too far left getting too steep. I can also use the video camera to check my shoulder rotation. So if I'm setting up to the ball nicely and I'm not rotating my shoulders you know, that could be causing me to create a steep downswing, the video camera will pick that out from the front arm.

Now changing the angle for the video camera, so we now have it from down the line, we can actually see a little bit more about what goes on in the lower body so what I like to see from this angle is a good setup square to target and square to the video camera and then, nicely up to the top. And then just watch what happens in the downswing particularly noticing how my lower body is working and if I can see a bit of my left leg from the video camera view here, I get a sense that I’ve turned my hit nicely into the downswing.

If I make a swing and I can’t see my left leg, my left leg is hidden behind my right leg. I get the sense at this point that I didn’t release and open up my legs well enough and turn through well enough but I stood and hit too much without the lower body working. So utilizing the video camera from down the line is a great way of checking those three areas of your swing from those two different angles to see how you are making those divots and if you’re making them too deep, hopefully you can make those corrections once you know your current golf swing mechanics look like.