Jerry wrote in on the blog and basically made a statement. He got a great response from Steve. I'm going to cover both of them.
Jerry wrote, “Recently I started having trouble with my irons. I had been hitting them very straight and long. The surge tells us that 'the set up determines the motion.' I reviewed the set up and noticed that I was setting up 'too far' from the ball. My hands were stretched too far from my body, rather than just below my chin, and I was hooking and slicing. Today, I played 18 holes and made the adjustment. I shot an 81 for the first time. I started playing golf last August. My iron shots were going very straight and long. This helped my short game a lot and helped lower my score. This also helped me with the driver and the 3 wood. I was getting between 250 and 290 yards with them. Not bad for a soon to be 66 year old. I am learning that the little things make a huge difference. Thanks.”
O.K., with that, Steve Smith answered Jerry by saying, “Very smart of you to learn to play the right way. I wish I had been smarter when I first started. I spent the first two years knowing nothing about a golf swing except to hit the ball as hard as I could. Boy you can build up a lot of bad habits that way that you eventually have to break.”
Another great comment. It's always good to start off with good instruction. It's hard for me to believe how many golfers take up golf and get out there with no help other than maybe their buddy, who probably isn't much better than they are.
Ever heard of anybody take up skiing and not take a skiing lesson? I guess in golf we don't see a lot of injury to that potential to playing golf without instruction. We might not get physically injured right away, but we can certainly get mentally injured by playing really poorly if we set goals and expectations and we can't reach them.
So getting back to Jerry. The setup determines the motion is absolutely correct. You saw what paying attention to details does for you, the details being proper setup. If you're set up properly your muscles are in the proper position to move the correct way. That's the whole key. Your muscles are set up with the proper muscle tone to move in the right way to make good swings. And that's what it's all about. Being lackadaisical or careless with your setup is going to cause you nothing but problems.
Coming back to Steve's comment about learning the right way, let's all make a pledge or oath that when we see new golfers or we're bringing a friend into the game, that we give them good advice to go get some good instruction. We know the right place is peakperformancegolfswing.com. And you want to be a vertical swinger. Unfortunately the predominance of instruction out there in the world today is in the wrong direction. It's this rotational stuff which, as we know, is difficult learn, you hit a lot of bad shots, and is very stressful on the body as compared to the Peak Performance Golf Swing. It's body friendly and it is in harmony with physics. So it's all put together the way God created the world to turn and hit golf balls the correct way, both for better shorts and using your body correctly and not injuring it.
Two great comments here, on how important setup is and how good it is to start correctly.
The last comment I'm going to make is about what Steve said, “Boy you can build up a lot of bad habits that way that you eventually have to break.” Bad habits are easy to break when you start doing the right thing. First it starts with an open mind that you know it's not right and you're going to get correct and you're going to find the best way to do it, which Steve has also done, coming to Peak Performance Golf Swing.
I'm going to close with this thought. Just remember, a lot of people say, “Well I'm older, I'm a senior, I've been doing this for 20 or 30 years or whatever. I can't change. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.”
Folks, the only dog you can't teach a new trick to is a dead dog. As long as you have an open mind and you set the will and desire to retrain yourself and relearn and do it right, you can do it.
The Surge!