Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

The second thing that I often think you'll see when you watch the world's best players is that they keep their head relatively stable. Now it's not to say they keep their head still but they keep their head stable. And what we can see with that is that eye control is superb, the way they stare at the golf ball. They keep their head down looking at the golf ball throughout their entire swing is something that the average club golfer can really learn and benefit from. It's very difficult to hit something that you can't see. You know we know this goal ball doesn’t move. No one's ever going to come and take it off or tackle you and move it. But if you close your eyes and try and hit a golf shot it's pretty difficult. It’s pretty difficult to trust it. It’s pretty difficult to make good contact.

So keeping good eye contact with a golf ball is super important. One of the tricks that you might see the tour players often do which helps them with this is they draw something unique on the golf ball. It maybe their little logo, their little mark or just some identification mark. And then maybe using that to really focus eye control so on the tee or on the putting green when you're able to move the ball, so it faces the right side you could have that logo facing upwards so you can see it. Then in the address position you focus on it. During your backswing you want to keep focused on it. Then you’ll see most tour players have enough flexibility to make the longest swing that they like without losing eye contact. Sometimes we see club golfers trying to make such big back swings.

As they come around they actually start to lose eye contact with the ball. The shoulder comes around too far. The head lifts up and they can no longer see the ball. That's a clear indicator that you're swinging back too far. So you should be able to make quite easy and consistent contact – eye contact with the ball the whole time to then come down for the impact position. Now during the swing if we’re in the downswing the impact phase, we still would like to keep eye contact with the ball. There's only a couple of golfers that I’ve ever seen make it to the very highest level. And to be fair they did make it to the highest level Annika Sörenstam and David Duval, both looked away from the ball before they hit it.

Just as they were coming down through impact the head started to turn this way. They weren’t looking at the ball and they hit through the ball. But that's not to say it's something you should share. There's an awful lot more golfers have been very successful by keeping good contact on the ball the whole time with their eyes. So we're going to encourage you to look at the ball at the start position, eye contact at the top is good, steady head position. Now the ball flies. Now the rear shoulder hits the chin. That's what's going to let your head move up. You're going to finish up to a nice tall follow-through position. You haven't kept your head down on the floor. Likewise you haven’t looked up too early. Your shoulder gives you the indication when to break eye contact with the ball, and then you're looking up to a nice high finish position. So good solid eye contact with the ball is another thing that you can learn from the tour pros.