Starting Small To Find Square In The Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
Starting Small To Find Square In The Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

The theory of getting the club faced square is all well and good in theory, but the practical application is where a lot of golfers will fall down. It’s obvious to say, well we got to aim our club at a target, we’ve got to try and hit the ball to the target. But golfers have probably been trying to do that for years, so now we’re going to give you a little exercise that helps you understand whether you truly are delivering that club face in an exact square position.

So the first thing I’ve done here is I’ve taken my pitching wedge, I’ve just teed the ball up, so I don’t have to worry about strike or good quality contact here. And I’ve got a little target out in front me, a little red sign. I’m going to aim my golf club exactly at the red sign lining my feet up as well. There is a little bit of wind but I’m not going to take account of the wind on this occasion, I’m just going to line everything with that square, and I’m going to make a little pitching action trying to keep that club face as square as possible to the intended target the whole way through the swing. And you can see that just landed about a foot to the left of the red sign. So I would suggest that my club face was pretty square, I’d take a foot away over about a forty or fifty yard distance. Now let me try the same thing again, but this time I’m going to deliberately make my mistake, I’m going to set up to my intended target but I’m going to open the face slightly and I’ll make the same swing. And this time I’ve hit it and the ball finished around about probably fifteen or twenty feet to the right of the target. Now if that’s just a very short pitching action and I’ve already finished 20 feet to the right of target. You can imagine what would happen to that same result, to that same shot if I had a bigger club, particularly as I go through my bag and take my driver. If I’m missing the target by that degree on a short pitch, imagine how far that would be off with my bigger clubs, because not only would the ball start offline it would also curve and spin quite a long way offline as well. So this is an exercise I would encourage you to do maybe at the start of every practice session, when you’re working on your club face control. Start off very short, 20, 30, 40, 50 yards away, with a wedge with the ball teed up, focus on the club face being dead square and pointing exactly at target, and then just back and through with a little pitch. The feeling should be that the club doesn’t really have much chance to go offline, it’s more about delivering the club as it was on setup. And clearly, if you’ve made a mistake at setup and the ball misses the target by a decent distance, then you know there is a mistake in your setup or in your swing somewhere. So start small if you want to get the club face square to target even when you get to your bigger clubs. 2016-08-19

The theory of getting the club faced square is all well and good in theory, but the practical application is where a lot of golfers will fall down. It’s obvious to say, well we got to aim our club at a target, we’ve got to try and hit the ball to the target. But golfers have probably been trying to do that for years, so now we’re going to give you a little exercise that helps you understand whether you truly are delivering that club face in an exact square position.

So the first thing I’ve done here is I’ve taken my pitching wedge, I’ve just teed the ball up, so I don’t have to worry about strike or good quality contact here. And I’ve got a little target out in front me, a little red sign. I’m going to aim my golf club exactly at the red sign lining my feet up as well. There is a little bit of wind but I’m not going to take account of the wind on this occasion, I’m just going to line everything with that square, and I’m going to make a little pitching action trying to keep that club face as square as possible to the intended target the whole way through the swing. And you can see that just landed about a foot to the left of the red sign. So I would suggest that my club face was pretty square, I’d take a foot away over about a forty or fifty yard distance.

Now let me try the same thing again, but this time I’m going to deliberately make my mistake, I’m going to set up to my intended target but I’m going to open the face slightly and I’ll make the same swing. And this time I’ve hit it and the ball finished around about probably fifteen or twenty feet to the right of the target. Now if that’s just a very short pitching action and I’ve already finished 20 feet to the right of target. You can imagine what would happen to that same result, to that same shot if I had a bigger club, particularly as I go through my bag and take my driver. If I’m missing the target by that degree on a short pitch, imagine how far that would be off with my bigger clubs, because not only would the ball start offline it would also curve and spin quite a long way offline as well.

So this is an exercise I would encourage you to do maybe at the start of every practice session, when you’re working on your club face control. Start off very short, 20, 30, 40, 50 yards away, with a wedge with the ball teed up, focus on the club face being dead square and pointing exactly at target, and then just back and through with a little pitch. The feeling should be that the club doesn’t really have much chance to go offline, it’s more about delivering the club as it was on setup. And clearly, if you’ve made a mistake at setup and the ball misses the target by a decent distance, then you know there is a mistake in your setup or in your swing somewhere. So start small if you want to get the club face square to target even when you get to your bigger clubs.