Best way to improve your golf swing - keep it low maintenance (Video) - by Pete Styles
Best way to improve your golf swing - keep it low maintenance (Video) - by Pete Styles

People often say to me, "Does Tiger Woods still take golf lessons?" The answer is normally yes. And they'll say, "Well, if he takes golf lessons, that's good enough for me. I'll take some golf lessons." The difference between the golf lessons is Tiger's golf lessons, he's very rarely learning anything new and the same for most professionals. Most professionals you see on the TV have been their golf for well over 10, 20 years. They know everything there is to know about the game, yet they're still taking golf lessons. But the golf lessons they are taking are maintenance golf lessons, trying to maintain their high level of play. And if you feel like you've got your game to a good position and you've improved nicely and you're working on the right things and the ball is flying better, you then need to make sure that you can maintain those good things and that you don't have a really good couple of months or even a really good season and then everything falls to pieces and you got a lot worse. So when you're watching the golfers on the TV and the coach is standing behind them on the range, very rarely is the coach sort of changing big things, but they keep an eye on maintaining the things they already know how to do.

So next time you're at the range and you're playing well and you're hitting the ball nicely, make sure you know why it's going well and how you can maintain it. A couple of the fundamentals, the key areas that would often start to cause the problems, the erosion of the good things in your swing, the key problems would be a poor grip, poor stance, poor alignment, poor posture, and a poor tempo and rhythm. So when you're setting up to the ball, make sure your fundamentals, ball position, alignment, grip, stance, posture, make sure they are all absolutely bang on. If you're not sure about those, use the search function on this website and go back and find how to build those good positions. But if you play well, chances are you've actually got some really good foundations in your swing. Then we want good posture, so from the down the line, we can see how the hips are nicely pushed back, you've got some good posture. Maintaining the spine angle and posture through the swing to a good impact position. Making sure you're using the big muscles to hit the golf ball, not the little muscles. Making sure you got good solid grip pressure, not overly tight, not too flimsy at the top, about a four or a five on a one to 10 scale for grip pressure.

Then we need to make sure you're doing all of this with good tempo. Sometimes when people are playing well, they get a bit cocky, they get a bit carried away. They start trying to hit the ball too hard and the swing speed quickens up the tempo changes. Then you got to make sure [inaudible][ 00:02:37] good balance. You know I'm going to hit the ball and then run after it, you got to hit the ball, hold your follow through, make sure it lands in the right position. So it's always good fundamentals we need to get right. One nice exercise that you can kind of encompass the tempo, the timing and the balance really well for you is a little exercise of just keeping your feet together. I put the ball up on the tee pad here just to see if you can get a good chance to get a decent contact on the ball. Playing with your feet together would encourage you to keep that balance and stop overhitting it with too fast a tempo and you fall over if you did. So a good setup position, nice little turn back, nice little turn through, just a really good solid pitching exercise, good solid pitching drill where you're not going to try and smash the ball too hard. And if I can hit the ball nice and smooth and balanced like that, then bring that out into a wider stance and a bigger full swing. I should keep maintaining the positive aspects of my golf swing, stopping the old bad habits creeping back in and that's a good way of making sure that you can play that high level of golf like the best players in the world do, by making sure you keep an eye on your own fundamentals, unless you can afford to pay Hank Haney to go onto the practice range and watch you do it.

 2013-01-16

People often say to me, “Does Tiger Woods still take golf lessons?” The answer is normally yes. And they'll say, “Well, if he takes golf lessons, that's good enough for me. I'll take some golf lessons.” The difference between the golf lessons is Tiger's golf lessons, he's very rarely learning anything new and the same for most professionals. Most professionals you see on the TV have been their golf for well over 10, 20 years. They know everything there is to know about the game, yet they're still taking golf lessons. But the golf lessons they are taking are maintenance golf lessons, trying to maintain their high level of play. And if you feel like you've got your game to a good position and you've improved nicely and you're working on the right things and the ball is flying better, you then need to make sure that you can maintain those good things and that you don't have a really good couple of months or even a really good season and then everything falls to pieces and you got a lot worse. So when you're watching the golfers on the TV and the coach is standing behind them on the range, very rarely is the coach sort of changing big things, but they keep an eye on maintaining the things they already know how to do.

So next time you're at the range and you're playing well and you're hitting the ball nicely, make sure you know why it's going well and how you can maintain it. A couple of the fundamentals, the key areas that would often start to cause the problems, the erosion of the good things in your swing, the key problems would be a poor grip, poor stance, poor alignment, poor posture, and a poor tempo and rhythm. So when you're setting up to the ball, make sure your fundamentals, ball position, alignment, grip, stance, posture, make sure they are all absolutely bang on. If you're not sure about those, use the search function on this website and go back and find how to build those good positions. But if you play well, chances are you've actually got some really good foundations in your swing. Then we want good posture, so from the down the line, we can see how the hips are nicely pushed back, you've got some good posture. Maintaining the spine angle and posture through the swing to a good impact position. Making sure you're using the big muscles to hit the golf ball, not the little muscles. Making sure you got good solid grip pressure, not overly tight, not too flimsy at the top, about a four or a five on a one to 10 scale for grip pressure.

Then we need to make sure you're doing all of this with good tempo. Sometimes when people are playing well, they get a bit cocky, they get a bit carried away. They start trying to hit the ball too hard and the swing speed quickens up the tempo changes. Then you got to make sure [inaudible][ 00:02:37] good balance. You know I'm going to hit the ball and then run after it, you got to hit the ball, hold your follow through, make sure it lands in the right position. So it's always good fundamentals we need to get right. One nice exercise that you can kind of encompass the tempo, the timing and the balance really well for you is a little exercise of just keeping your feet together. I put the ball up on the tee pad here just to see if you can get a good chance to get a decent contact on the ball. Playing with your feet together would encourage you to keep that balance and stop overhitting it with too fast a tempo and you fall over if you did. So a good setup position, nice little turn back, nice little turn through, just a really good solid pitching exercise, good solid pitching drill where you're not going to try and smash the ball too hard. And if I can hit the ball nice and smooth and balanced like that, then bring that out into a wider stance and a bigger full swing. I should keep maintaining the positive aspects of my golf swing, stopping the old bad habits creeping back in and that's a good way of making sure that you can play that high level of golf like the best players in the world do, by making sure you keep an eye on your own fundamentals, unless you can afford to pay Hank Haney to go onto the practice range and watch you do it.