Coaching Philosophy

Your swing, just better!

We all have that member at our club with an ugly swing who hits every fairway and green, while we stand in front of the mirror trying to perfect our posture and swing plane and wonder why ‘Mr Ugly-swing’ outplays us in the monthly medal.

Having a swing that you can repeat is key and when I’m teaching a golfer, that’s my aim. No model swing, no textbook and absolutely no prejudice as to how your swing looks – so long as it repeats!

I see every golf swing as a mixture of elements that, if they balance, will produce at least a correct or repetitive impact, or both.  These elements are simply termed as ‘Steep’ or Shallow’ and if you are a golfer with an incorrect impact and a non-repetitive motion, you are either too steep or too shallow, period.  Too steep would be a motion, move or position from address through to impact that would cause the club to crash into the ground at a too vertical angle.  Too shallow would be the opposite, a motion, move or position from address through to impact that would cause the club to miss the ground at a too horizontal angle. My job therefore is to neutralise the golf swing so it’s neither too steep nor too shallow.

The first thing I will look at with a student is their ball flight.  This tells me whether the golfer’s impact is too steep or too shallow. The sound of impact also gives me information, there is a distinctly different sound between a steep and shallow shot.  There is also a pattern when I watch a golfer hit balls.  Sometimes to the golfer it can seem like they are hitting every ball flight under the sun, swinging it differently each time and that there is no consistency.  That, in fact is not the case. There are many ball flights connected to a steep or shallow impact and although they may look different to the golfer, I can tell what bracket they fall in to.  For example a steep golfer will slice, pull, chunk, sky (a tee’d ball) or hit from the toe of the club – all different shots but all steep.  A shallow golfer will hit hooks and pushes, fat or thin and tend to hit from the heel – all different shots but all shallow.

Once I know what bracket the golfer falls in to I can begin to make changes to neutralise impact and make the ball flight less steep or shallow. Because I have no prejudice of what the swing looks like, I can choose from a host of areas to make the change to get the desired result.  I always go the area where I feel the biggest improvement can be made from the smallest change.  If that doesn’t have the desired effect than I target a different area – there is more than one way to hit it better!