Instruction
Instruction: What is the ball doing?
John Jacobs, the great British instructor and one of the greatest teachers of all time, was one of the first to ask the question: “What is the ball doing”?
It seems a simple enough question to me. What does the ball do when you hit it? There are a finite, not infinite, number of possibilities.
The golf ball has initial trajectory, starting direction, spin and curvature. That’s it. All four of those characteristics are progammed at impact — the 0.ooo4 seconds the golf ball is on the face of the club. And to break it down even a bit further, the golf ball gets its marching orders half way through the impact interval!
Side note: From the start of 2013 to the time the average tour player gets to Augusta for the Masters, he has had the golf ball on the face of the club about a second in tournament time. By the time of the U.S. Open, about two seconds, and maybe 4 seconds for the entire Tour season. Impact is a very short period of time! But in golf, impact is all that matters.
As Jacobs often said, “Golf is what the ball does.” Or even better: “The purpose of the golf swing is to apply the club correctly to the ball. The method employed is of no consequence as long as it can be repeated.”
This was, believe it or not, grounbreaking stuff back in the 60s. Before Jacobs, the golf community was largely concerned with “shoulds.” The club should be here, the body should be there, etc. He suggested there are no “shoulds” beyond impact. The elbows don’t hit the ball, the hands, legs, hips or arms don’t hit the ball. The body moves the golf club; the golf club moves the ball. So I learned to teach by asking three simple questions:
- What is the ball doing?
- What did the club do that made the ball do what it did?
- What did the player do that made the club do what it did?
To suggest any other way is mere folly.
I was fortunate enough to learn from Jacobs and a few of his disciples, and I can assure you that I would never have succeeded in golf instruction over these last oh so many years, had I bought into the conventional wisdom of the time — teaching the prototypical positions we are all supposed to be in to play good golf.
My take on this is pretty simple, apparently radical in its simplicity: If a player spins around three times and hits the ball with one hand, and hit fairways and greens, they have a great swing. Period. They have balanced their equation, they have matched their components.
The danger of the internet age, particularly the burgeoning golf blogosphere, is reversing this trend. When someone asks me to “look at my video” the FIRST question I always ask is: What is the ball doing? What is your general shape, trajectory, spin, distance, etc?
How can anyone look at swing and start critiquing it without knowing how that person hits the golf ball? The video of Alan Doyle’s swing below is a prime example of what I mean.
[youtube id=”CC4hgHucPY4″ width=”620″ height=”360″]
His swing, without knowing what it accomplished — 11 Champions Tour wins including four majors — would be picked apart mercilessly on the cyber school of golf. And most everybody would be dead wrong about them. Nobody can actually see impact. Even TrackMan and Flightscope estimate variables based on other information that the GOLF BALL is supplying.
For every position it is suggested someone should be in, I can find some Hall of Famer NOT in that position. From Jack Nicklaus’ flying elbow to Lee Trevino’s”caddyshack” move, it does not matter if they get the club to the ball as these great players do. And the same goes for the average golfer.
Let me give you an example — suppose you have a noticeable sway off the ball in your backswing, and an upright backswing that is quite narrow. Let’s say the ball flight problem is sculled, half topped shots and late slices. Someone sees a video and suggests that you take care of that sway and be sure and stay more over the ball. Why? Because the prototypical swing should not have a sway — it looks bad, it’s not textbook and it MUST have something to do with your problem. Well, you have added a narrowing element, your pivot, to another narrowing element, your backswing. Now you can’t hit it all. You just moved the bottom of a too forward arc even farther forward!
Another example: Your backswing is very flat. And you have a reverse pivot (weight going to left side in takeaway). Suppose impact is a very shallow, drop kicking some drivers and shallow topping irons. Someone looks at your video and says, look at that reverse pivot. Let’s fix that because well, because great players just don’t reverse pivot. So you learn to turn “properly” in the backswing, and now you are so flat you can’t hit a ball teed up 6 inches! The correction here for me would be simple: Learn to swing your arms and club in the air and LEAVE the reverse pivot alone until you start to get just the opposite impact, which in this case is quite steep.
I could go on and on with these scenarios but I think you get my point. If your impact is not solid, something is wrong. That something has to be corrected, NOT everything. And if you need two things corrected (the most I ever correct is two) the order in which they are corrected is vitally important if you don’t want to hit it worse. It’s all about balancing the equation and finding compatible variations for your own swing. So if you post a video and you want it analyzed, it needs be complete with a full description of ball flight and all its characteristics. And even then there is just no substitute for being there.
I can HEAR a slice, a top, a toe, and I can tell then from a mile away; but it’s a feeling an instructor gets that just won’t ever come from video analysis only. A lot of players have gone down dark roads trying to make their swing prettier. The hall of fame is filled with “ugly” moves. Let impact be you guide and fix only what needs fixing.
As always, feel free to send a swing video to my Facebook page and I will do my best to give you my feedback.
There may be no more painful affliction in golf than the “yips” – those uncontrollable and maddening little nervous twitches that prevent you from making a decent stroke on short putts. If you’ve never had them, consider yourself very fortunate (or possibly just very young). But I can assure you that when your most treacherous and feared golf shot is not the 195 yard approach over water with a quartering headwind…not the extra tight fairway with water left and sand right…not the soft bunker shot to a downhill pin with water on the other side…No, when your most feared shot is the remaining 2- 4-foot putt after hitting a great approach, recovery or lag putt, it makes the game almost painful.
And I’ve been fighting the yips (again) for a while now. It’s a recurring nightmare that has haunted me most of my adult life. I even had the yips when I was in my 20s, but I’ve beat them into submission off and on most of my adult life. But just recently, that nasty virus came to life once again. My lag putting has been very good, but when I get over one of those “you should make this” length putts, the entire nervous system seems to go haywire. I make great practice strokes, and then the most pitiful short-stroke or jab at the ball you can imagine. Sheesh.
But I’m a traditionalist, and do not look toward the long putter, belly putter, cross-hand, claw or other variation as the solution. My approach is to beat those damn yips into submission some other way. Here’s what I’m doing that is working pretty well, and I offer it to all of you who might have a similar affliction on the greens.
When you are over a short putt, forget the practice strokes…you want your natural eye-hand coordination to be unhindered by mechanics. Address your putt and take a good look at the hole, and back to the putter to ensure good alignment. Lighten your right hand grip on the putter and make sure that only the fingertips are in contact with the grip, to prevent you from getting to tight.
Then, take a long, long look at the hole to fill your entire mind and senses with the target. When you bring your head/eyes back to the ball, try to make a smooth, immediate move right into your backstroke — not even a second pause — and then let your hands and putter track right back together right back to where you were looking — the HOLE! Seeing the putter make contact with the ball, preferably even the forward edge of the ball – the side near the hole.
For me, this is working, but I am asking all of you to chime in with your own “home remedies” for the most aggravating and senseless of all golf maladies. It never hurts to have more to fall back on!
Over the last couple of decades, golf has become much more science-based. We measure swing speed, smash factor, angle of attack, strokes gained, and many other metrics that can really help golfers improve. But I often wonder if the advancement of golf’s “hard” sciences comes at the expense of the “soft” sciences.
Take, for example, golf instruction. Good golf instruction requires understanding swing mechanics and ball flight. But let’s take that as a given for PGA instructors. The other factors that make an instructor effective can be evaluated by social science, rather than launch monitors.
If you are a recreational golfer looking for a golf instructor, here are my top three points to consider.
1. Cultural mindset
What is “cultural mindset? To social scientists, it means whether a culture of genius or a culture of learning exists. In a golf instruction context, that may mean whether the teacher communicates a message that golf ability is something innate (you either have it or you don’t), or whether golf ability is something that can be learned. You want the latter!
It may sound obvious to suggest that you find a golf instructor who thinks you can improve, but my research suggests that it isn’t a given. In a large sample study of golf instructors, I found that when it came to recreational golfers, there was a wide range of belief systems. Some instructors strongly believed recreational golfers could improve through lessons. while others strongly believed they could not. And those beliefs manifested in the instructor’s feedback given to a student and the culture created for players.
2. Coping and self-modeling can beat role-modeling
Swing analysis technology is often preloaded with swings of PGA and LPGA Tour players. The swings of elite players are intended to be used for comparative purposes with golfers taking lessons. What social science tells us is that for novice and non-expert golfers, comparing swings to tour professionals can have the opposite effect of that intended. If you fit into the novice or non-expert category of golfer, you will learn more and be more motivated to change if you see yourself making a ‘better’ swing (self-modeling) or seeing your swing compared to a similar other (a coping model). Stay away from instructors who want to compare your swing with that of a tour player.
3. Learning theory basics
It is not a sexy selling point, but learning is a process, and that process is incremental – particularly for recreational adult players. Social science helps us understand this element of golf instruction. A good instructor will take learning slowly. He or she will give you just about enough information that challenges you, but is still manageable. The artful instructor will take time to decide what that one or two learning points are before jumping in to make full-scale swing changes. If the instructor moves too fast, you will probably leave the lesson with an arm’s length of swing thoughts and not really know which to focus on.
As an instructor, I develop a priority list of changes I want to make in a player’s technique. We then patiently and gradually work through that list. Beware of instructors who give you more than you can chew.
So if you are in the market for golf instruction, I encourage you to look beyond the X’s and O’s to find the right match!
Most pros take months, even years, to win their first tournament. Lottie Woad needed exactly four days.
The 21-year-old from Surrey shot 21-under 267 at Dundonald Links to win the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open by three shots — in her very first event as a professional. She’s only the third player in LPGA history to accomplish this feat, joining Rose Zhang (2023) and Beverly Hanson (1951).
But here’s what caught my attention as a coach: Woad didn’t win through miraculous putting or bombing 300-yard drives. She won through relentless precision and unshakeable composure. After watching her performance unfold, I’m convinced every golfer — from weekend warriors to scratch players — can steal pages from her playbook.
Precision Beats Power (And It’s Not Even Close)
Forget the driving contests. Woad proved that finding greens matters more than finding distance.
What Woad did:
• Hit it straight, hit it solid, give yourself chances
• Aimed for the fat parts of greens instead of chasing pins
• Let her putting do the talking after hitting safe targets
• As she said, “Everyone was chasing me today, and managed to maintain the lead and played really nicely down the stretch and hit a lot of good shots”
Why most golfers mess this up:
• They see a pin tucked behind a bunker and grab one more club to “go right at it”
• Distance becomes more important than accuracy
• They try to be heroic instead of smart
ACTION ITEM: For your next 10 rounds, aim for the center of every green regardless of pin position. Track your greens in regulation and watch your scores drop before your swing changes.
The Putter That Stayed Cool Under Fire
Woad started the final round two shots clear and immediately applied pressure with birdies at the 2nd and 3rd holes. When South Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim mounted a charge and reached 20-under with a birdie at the 14th, Woad didn’t panic.
How she responded to pressure:
• Fired back with consecutive birdies at the 13th and 14th
• Watched Kim stumble with back-to-back bogeys
• Capped it with her fifth birdie of the day at the par-5 18th
• Stayed patient when others pressed, pressed when others cracked
What amateurs do wrong:
• Get conservative when they should be aggressive
• Try to force magic when steady play would win
• Panic when someone else makes a move
ACTION ITEM: Practice your 3-6 foot putts for 15 minutes after every range session. Woad’s putting wasn’t spectacular—it was reliable. Make the putts you should make.
Course Management 101: Play Your Game, Not the Course’s Game
Woad admitted she couldn’t see many scoreboards during the final round, but it didn’t matter. She stuck to her game plan regardless of what others were doing.
Her mental approach:
• Focused on her process, not the competition
• Drew on past pressure situations (Augusta National Women’s Amateur win)
• As she said, “That was the biggest tournament I played in at the time and was kind of my big win. So definitely felt the pressure of it more there, and I felt like all those experiences helped me with this”
Her physical execution:
• 270-yard drives (nothing flashy)
• Methodical iron play
• Steady putting
• Everything effective, nothing spectacular
ACTION ITEM: Create a yardage book for your home course. Know your distances to every pin, every hazard, every landing area. Stick to your plan no matter what your playing partners are doing.
Mental Toughness Isn’t Born, It’s Built
The most impressive part of Woad’s win? She genuinely didn’t expect it: “I definitely wasn’t expecting to win my first event as a pro, but I knew I was playing well, and I was hoping to contend.”
Her winning mindset:
• Didn’t put winning pressure on herself
• Focused on playing well and contending
• Made winning a byproduct of a good process
• Built confidence through recent experiences:
- Won the Women’s Irish Open as an amateur
- Missed a playoff by one shot at the Evian Championship
- Each experience prepared her for the next
What this means for you:
• Stop trying to shoot career rounds every time you tee up
• Focus on executing your pre-shot routine
• Commit to every shot
• Stay present in the moment
ACTION ITEM: Before each round, set process goals instead of score goals. Example: “I will take three practice swings before every shot” or “I will pick a specific target for every shot.” Let your score be the result, not the focus.
The Real Lesson
Woad collected $300,000 for her first professional victory, but the real prize was proving that fundamentals still work at golf’s highest level. She didn’t reinvent the game — she simply executed the basics better than everyone else that week.
The fundamentals that won:
• Hit more fairways
• Find more greens
• Make the putts you should make
• Stay patient under pressure
That’s something every golfer can do, regardless of handicap. Lottie Woad just showed us it’s still the winning formula.
FINAL ACTION ITEM: Pick one of the four action items above and commit to it for the next month. Master one fundamental before moving to the next. That’s how champions are built.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “The Starter” on RG.org each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more Tips!
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joro
Mar 13, 2013 at 11:02 am
This is a great article. It also reflects the teaching method of Butch Harmon and most of us old teachers. The days when we corrected what is wrong and based it on what the ball is doing. Today is all “science”, machines, and teachers who don’t have a clue. They try to make everyone have “the perfect” swing, and that is impossible. THe perfect swing is what works for you.
As a teacher for over 50 yrs. I will say that today Teaching is one of the biggest scams going, along with more distance is what it is all about. A good teacher is a teacher that teaches the basics to non gifted players, and corrects a problem in better players. And then of course, believe it or not there are some people who just do not have what skills they need to get better and will forever be stuck with what they have, teach them to have fun and enjoy the game.
Bottom line is that Golf today is so over taught and over hyped it is ridiculous. More games are ruined than helped by all the theories and lessons are ruined by turning them into a video game. Equipment is better than ever but unfortunately the “fitters” have no idea what they are doing, nor do they know anything about the product they push. Good luck to todays student and club buyer.
inall
Mar 12, 2013 at 5:35 pm
I often come across a guy on the course who hits a big banana slice but hits it pretty far. He just aims way left and the ball lands in the fairway. Does the same for approaching the greens. Plays to a low handicap.
Gary Lewis
Mar 12, 2013 at 1:10 pm
I like what you have to say and I am a BIG John Jacobs fan. Based on my misses it seems my issue has been too much in to out for quite awhile now, main problem has been push fades, straight pushes, some draws. Since trying to switch to a Sean Foley type swing (Stack and Tilt Lite as Jeff Mann calls it) things are improving. What other kinds of misses will you see if you are swinging down too much inside to out?
Doug
Mar 12, 2013 at 12:04 am
Spot-on article. I took a series of 5 lessons at the end of last years golf season from a pro to try and shave a few strokes off my 3.9 index. The pro hooked me up to motion monitors and used video analysis to compare my swing to tour pro swings and by the end of the series, my swing was disjointed wreck. I’ve spent the winter doing nothing golf related in the hopes of flushing away his lessons from memory.
Walt
Mar 2, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Another thing I disagree with is using someone like Trevino or Doyle as examples. For that matter any tour player with a non cookie cutter swing. Why? Because they constantly hit balls with their funky swings.
The majority of golfers might hit balls once a week if even that much. If you have an oddball swing and just try to hit balls that infrequently you aren’t ever going to get anywhere with your swing.
But if you have a mechanically simple swing that doesn’t require as much maintenance to keep it solid then you can get away with less practice time.
For this impact concept to work you must be repeating something in your swing. And the less complicated your swing is the easier it will be to repeat.
Dennis Clark
Mar 2, 2013 at 3:36 pm
Oddball is a catch phrase that connotes less-than-conventional. Once a swing gets into a groove, it repeats, conventional or not. You have to trust it. Like Bruce Lietzke. I saw him start a ball out over the middle of the water on #9 at Doral. He TRUSTED the fact that the ball was cutting back. Every time. I played with a guy who won a state open once who played a 30 yard hook on every hole. His path was probably 7-8 degrees inside out!
Walt
Mar 2, 2013 at 8:34 pm
Right. You are missing what I am writing. An unorthodox swing needs more maintenance from everything I have seen in my golfing life. You can do something odd and if you repeat it be my guest but you need to really work on the timing and mechanics of your unique swing.
Lietzke did what he did but he hit lots of balls to groove that feeling.
What do you do with the golfer with the bad swing that doesn’t hit at least two bags a day?
If he can’t come back once a week and repeat his flaw that works he is lost.
Walt
Mar 2, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Let me state this another way.
Golf is a repetitive game. It really helps if the golfer can do the exact thing he is doing over and over every time he swings the club. In fact great success can come from it. A strange swing can be great. This I fully agree with.
But…the worse of a golfer you are the less you stick to doing the same thing over and over. You fiddle with your grip, you fiddle with your takeaway. You fiddle with…yeah every single part of your swing.
You are only looking at this impact from they aspect of pro golfers with funky swings make em work. Yes they do, I see it too, but I know they don’t just walk out there and swing funky. They work really hard at it.
So what does the 20 handicapper who isn’t even sure how to hold the club supposed to do? They can’t read the ball flight when the ball doesn’t fly the same way each time.
I know what you are saying though, I have read Jacobs books and I agree with the concept.
I am just saying its much easier to tell one of the collegiate golfers at my range how to turn his baby fade into a straight ball or a tight little draw.
But the older gentleman I talk to with the issues I wrote about above fights something different every time I see him out there. Fat shots, bladed irons, shanks, then a good shot, then a hook. I mean literally anything can happen when he takes the club back.
You can’t just say its all about the ball flight when the ball isn’t consistently flying out of there.
Dennis Clark
Mar 3, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Walt,
Im not talking about Jacobs book here. I relating my 30 years, 35,000 lesson experience. Again, everybody’s swing repeats if they have been playing even for a little while. And the ball flight is what identifies what is incompatible in the swing. I finished a weekend school today and all the students have a better understanding of what they need to change based on the shots (or lack of them) they hit. IF the ball did this (rolled, shanked, topped, sliced whatever) THEN you did this. Lack of consistency in ball flight does not equate to lack of consistency in PATTERN. The degree of it perhaps, but the general pattern is very repeating. These things fall into a pattern when you do this every day for as long as I have. Thx for reading and replying
Andrew Cooper
Mar 5, 2013 at 5:18 am
Walt, I think the idea that unorthodox swings require more maintenance is a myth. I’d actually suggest they need less work- they are that player’s move, he’s not TRYING to do anything, he’s not TRYING to swing like somebody else, he’s just making HIS swing. I think the old one about technically “perfect” swings holding up under pressure is similarly not true for the same reason. I’d also say in terms of career longevity, the guys who find their swing early, stick with and learn to score tend to do ok.
Leitzke rarely practiced, yet he topped or was near the top of GIR for years on the PGA Tour. In Europe, we had Colin Montgomerie, who also rarely practiced, had very much his own swing, and obviously was as consistently good as anyone tee to green in Europe for a 10, 15 year spell.
I remember Trevino saying he felt his swing would always hold up BECAUSE of the seemingly unorthodox move-it was his move. That’s an inner confidence that players who’re constantly trying to perfect a move, or correct their “faults”, swing into positions, trying to swing like their favourite tour player that week e.t.c. will never find.
Walt
Mar 2, 2013 at 1:15 pm
I agree with this and with John Jacobs.
But one thing has me question how to apply this method. The “bad impact” then fix it with one or two things has to be based on the fact that the golfer is repeating that bad impact, right?
What do you do when the golfer hits it low one time, high another, hooks it and slices it swing to swing?
There is just this type of golfer at my range. He has a terrible reverse pivot, takes the club back insanely flat, comes over the top and hits with all his weight on his back foot.
The ball goes everywhere. So where do you start when the player is unable to repeat bad impact?
Dennis Clark
Mar 2, 2013 at 3:14 pm
First of all golfers swings fall into patterns. Out to in is out to in. Period. NOBODY goes from that path to in to out on the next swing. My job would be infinitely harder if they did. But here is what youre missing…An out to in path can produce slices, pulls, tops, toes…But the PATH is still the problem and THAT does NOT vary or change until it changes.
Adrian
Feb 28, 2013 at 9:30 am
Absolutely fantastic article and I will be passing this information on because I love how you put it. I have been working with a couple friends trying get them to understand the ball flight laws and how to get the shots to fly the way they want them to, and after getting one of my friends to execute draws and fades on command in just a few minutes he then asked me “how did his swing look?” I told I didn’t really care how his swing looks and wasn’t even paying attention to the positional aspects of his swing I was simply trying to “talk him into executing the shot shape and that was it.” The shot shape obviously told me everything that I needed to know. He also thought I was crazy when I told him that I was listening to his impact because I told him that solid impact makes a distinct noise that I call ” cracking eggs” because it sounds like a raw egg being dropped on the kitchen floor to me. Great Great article….I have been lurking around this forum for over a year but I will definately be joinging now!
Steve
Feb 28, 2013 at 5:26 am
This really IS a great article – Way too much is made over picture-perfect video swings and virtual lessons. I actually forced myself to use a ‘putting guru’ template and struggled for a season before going back to my not-so-good, Nicklaus-style-putts, with far better results.
Like Harvey Penick Said: “Use the Swing God has Blessed You With, and Go Play Golf.”
3Puttnomore
Feb 27, 2013 at 11:35 pm
As the old saying goes, ‘Golf is a game that can be taught… It can’t be learned, but it CAN be taught’… I think what this means is that we all have in ourselves an innate ability to hit the ball correctly. We just have to find it.
Turn & Release
Feb 27, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Dennis
Another great piece. You have a way of explaining things that other instructors (at every level) seem to talk around so far; that i find myself back at the beginning and with more questions then when I started. I balanced equation makes perfect sense! However, I assume that you are talking about players that have been playing and repeat their mistake over and over again. I’m sure many new golfers see balls flying in multiple directions. In the case of junior or new player would you not point them in the direction of “text book” swing? Just for a better chance of making contact.
I have to say; I read all these articles, and most of them are noted by 200-300 people on other websites. I love your writing and look forward to reading what you have to say because it always makes sense and gives me fresh thought for several days.
Big Fan!!