What Is Your Golf Divot Trying To Tell You (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Is Your Golf Divot Trying To Tell You (Video) - by Pete Styles

This is quite an interesting tip for me to do here, because we’re talking now about the divot and how the divot can maybe show you something that actually happens during your swing. You know we’re out on the practice ground here and you can see that there’s divots all over the floor, we might even be able to look at some of those divots and deduce the type of shot the golfer hit, particularly if we knew where the ball was located. So I think when you’ve been practicing or when you’ve been playing on the golf course, you could use the divot as a little bit of a diagnostic tool. Now again I’ve got put a little caveat with this that sometimes we need to appreciate that divot happens after you’ve struck the ball. So what you do before impact doesn’t always correlate to what you did after impact. Because we’re on an arcing swing, so as the club comes in towards the ball, it could be travelling in a perfectly straight line as it hits the ball and then it could deviate slightly left after you’ve hit the ball. So you might look down and you might see a divot that’s pointing slightly left of your intended target. And you think you’ve come out to win, but actually the ball flight might have a little baby draw to it because you were inside the line coming in and then took the club left after.

So the ball flight is by far and away your biggest diagnostic tool, but sometimes the divot might give you a little clue to your swing path. But I would say only read your divots if they’re quite aggressive and quite exaggerated. If you can see that this is your intended swing path line, and you’ve got divots that point way left of that swing path line. You might be able to look down and suggest okay, maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe I was aligned incorrectly, maybe I was aligned way left, and therefore I’ve torn a piece of grass that’s pointing way left of my target. Maybe I was swinging over the top so I was aligned correctly, but then I had a big over the top swing and pulled down the left hand side. That would send the ball down the left – that would cut the ball from left to right with an out to in swing path. But like I suggested only read that divot if it’s quite aggressively 10-15 degrees off target line. Now a divot to the right of target, you would expect to see a divot to the right of target and think, well I’ve come from the inside out, but generally speaking, a divot that points right of target particularly if it’s aggressively right of target, is probably a bit of a fault. You probably come too much from the inside line there, because again this club is coming in from the inside, then hitting the ball then squaring up. A ball flight that starts right of target doesn’t have to be accompanied by a divot that points right of target. If a divot is aggressively right of target you probably way too much on the inside line. So utilizing a divot on the practice ground maybe gives you a bit of a clue to how your ball is flying. The ball is the biggest diagnostic tool and if you really want to see about swing direction and swing path, track man flight has got this sorts of launch monitors, that’s the proper data, the divot is a very rough example, a very rough guide of how that ball can fly. But be careful if you – be careful of misinterpretation of what the divot looks like. 2015-10-14

This is quite an interesting tip for me to do here, because we’re talking now about the divot and how the divot can maybe show you something that actually happens during your swing. You know we’re out on the practice ground here and you can see that there’s divots all over the floor, we might even be able to look at some of those divots and deduce the type of shot the golfer hit, particularly if we knew where the ball was located. So I think when you’ve been practicing or when you’ve been playing on the golf course, you could use the divot as a little bit of a diagnostic tool. Now again I’ve got put a little caveat with this that sometimes we need to appreciate that divot happens after you’ve struck the ball. So what you do before impact doesn’t always correlate to what you did after impact. Because we’re on an arcing swing, so as the club comes in towards the ball, it could be travelling in a perfectly straight line as it hits the ball and then it could deviate slightly left after you’ve hit the ball. So you might look down and you might see a divot that’s pointing slightly left of your intended target. And you think you’ve come out to win, but actually the ball flight might have a little baby draw to it because you were inside the line coming in and then took the club left after.

So the ball flight is by far and away your biggest diagnostic tool, but sometimes the divot might give you a little clue to your swing path. But I would say only read your divots if they’re quite aggressive and quite exaggerated. If you can see that this is your intended swing path line, and you’ve got divots that point way left of that swing path line. You might be able to look down and suggest okay, maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe I was aligned incorrectly, maybe I was aligned way left, and therefore I’ve torn a piece of grass that’s pointing way left of my target. Maybe I was swinging over the top so I was aligned correctly, but then I had a big over the top swing and pulled down the left hand side. That would send the ball down the left – that would cut the ball from left to right with an out to in swing path. But like I suggested only read that divot if it’s quite aggressively 10-15 degrees off target line. Now a divot to the right of target, you would expect to see a divot to the right of target and think, well I’ve come from the inside out, but generally speaking, a divot that points right of target particularly if it’s aggressively right of target, is probably a bit of a fault.

You probably come too much from the inside line there, because again this club is coming in from the inside, then hitting the ball then squaring up. A ball flight that starts right of target doesn’t have to be accompanied by a divot that points right of target. If a divot is aggressively right of target you probably way too much on the inside line. So utilizing a divot on the practice ground maybe gives you a bit of a clue to how your ball is flying. The ball is the biggest diagnostic tool and if you really want to see about swing direction and swing path, track man flight has got this sorts of launch monitors, that’s the proper data, the divot is a very rough example, a very rough guide of how that ball can fly. But be careful if you – be careful of misinterpretation of what the divot looks like.