Every Golfer Is Unique (Video) - by Pete Styles
Every Golfer Is Unique (Video) - by Pete Styles

Now, golf would be really easy if we could just provide an instruction manual. PGA pros around the world could get together, write an instruction manual and just say, “There you go. Follow those instructions and you’ll shoot level par.” And if one of those instructions said, “Stand two feet away from the golf ball,” every time we would be on to a winner.

But we can’t because we’ve got so many different golf clubs that we can’t tell you exactly how far away from the ball to stand. We’ve also got thousands of different types of golfers. Every single person is an individual with different height but also different leg length, different arm length, different physical capabilities in terms of how far forwards and backwards you can bend. But also different preferences in terms of how people want to swing the club. So it really isn’t as simple as just saying, “Stand like this and you’ll be fine.” We have to bring in a little bit of feel. So a golfer might feel like they want to be closer to the ball or further away. And you only have to look at the world’s best players on the PGA tour to realize that some golfers stand in a different position to others. You know, Tiger was always one with his drive where you like to get quite a long way from his driver, have his hands and arms reaching out a little bit, creating a little bit more space here so then he could turn his hips very quickly, create the power and the speed but he always had quite a lot of space. So if you look at a golfer like Jim Furyk, not quite as successful as Tiger but not many people were, but a very successful golfer in his own right. Jim Furyk, very, very close to the ball almost to the point where his hands disappear between his knees, his hands sit right down here and then he makes a lot of compensation for that during his swing. So clearly, you couldn’t get two golfers like Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods, and ask them to stand in exactly the same position over the golf ball, that’s not going to work, and it doesn’t work for the amateur golfer as well. So just be careful that when you are setting up to the golf ball, you do employ a little bit of feel into the way you like to set up, so you might feel like you want to be close to the ball player, you might feel like you want to be a little bit further back from the ball. And as a golf coach, I have to respect that, I have to work with the golfer. The one thing I always do try and do is put a couple of sort of guidelines, a couple of boundaries, you know, you want to see somebody really stretching out for the ball too much because I can be aware that that’s going to cause some other problems in their swing, likewise, we don’t want to see somebody too close. But the one thing we always try and stress is be consistent. So when you’ve worked at how far away you need to stand from the ball for that particular club, you must be consistent or you always stay in the same place. So when you feel a certain way, you want to try and recreate that feeling every time you step up to the ball. You don’t want to feel close on one hole and then further away in the next hole and then back to close again. We want the consistency because we want the golf ball to be consistent as well. 2016-09-27

Now, golf would be really easy if we could just provide an instruction manual. PGA pros around the world could get together, write an instruction manual and just say, “There you go. Follow those instructions and you’ll shoot level par.” And if one of those instructions said, “Stand two feet away from the golf ball,” every time we would be on to a winner.

But we can’t because we’ve got so many different golf clubs that we can’t tell you exactly how far away from the ball to stand. We’ve also got thousands of different types of golfers. Every single person is an individual with different height but also different leg length, different arm length, different physical capabilities in terms of how far forwards and backwards you can bend. But also different preferences in terms of how people want to swing the club.

So it really isn’t as simple as just saying, “Stand like this and you’ll be fine.” We have to bring in a little bit of feel. So a golfer might feel like they want to be closer to the ball or further away. And you only have to look at the world’s best players on the PGA tour to realize that some golfers stand in a different position to others.

You know, Tiger was always one with his drive where you like to get quite a long way from his driver, have his hands and arms reaching out a little bit, creating a little bit more space here so then he could turn his hips very quickly, create the power and the speed but he always had quite a lot of space.

So if you look at a golfer like Jim Furyk, not quite as successful as Tiger but not many people were, but a very successful golfer in his own right. Jim Furyk, very, very close to the ball almost to the point where his hands disappear between his knees, his hands sit right down here and then he makes a lot of compensation for that during his swing. So clearly, you couldn’t get two golfers like Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods, and ask them to stand in exactly the same position over the golf ball, that’s not going to work, and it doesn’t work for the amateur golfer as well.

So just be careful that when you are setting up to the golf ball, you do employ a little bit of feel into the way you like to set up, so you might feel like you want to be close to the ball player, you might feel like you want to be a little bit further back from the ball. And as a golf coach, I have to respect that, I have to work with the golfer.

The one thing I always do try and do is put a couple of sort of guidelines, a couple of boundaries, you know, you want to see somebody really stretching out for the ball too much because I can be aware that that’s going to cause some other problems in their swing, likewise, we don’t want to see somebody too close. But the one thing we always try and stress is be consistent. So when you’ve worked at how far away you need to stand from the ball for that particular club, you must be consistent or you always stay in the same place.

So when you feel a certain way, you want to try and recreate that feeling every time you step up to the ball. You don’t want to feel close on one hole and then further away in the next hole and then back to close again. We want the consistency because we want the golf ball to be consistent as well.