Doorman54 Posted a blog question that's very interesting and I think many golfers really struggle with it. Doorman54 says, “My problem is what I call a phantom swing, my practice swing is near perfect but when I swing at the ball I tend to come up, my backside doesn't stay where it should. How do I stop this and stop topping the ball. Many thanks, Paul”
Well, Paul got a response from Jaan. Jaan said, “It would appear that too many things are going on after your practice swings and you address the ball and swing at the ball. So what has changed from the practice swings to the moment of truth to put the ball into play? What does the phrase 'thought precedes the deed' mean? Our body responds to information from our brain. If we are thinking negative thoughts before the moment of truth, we will perform accordingly.”
Well, Jaan is very correct on that point. But let's assume you're not thinking negative thoughts. You're making a pretty good swing so I think your starting to feel pretty confident you're going to hit a good shot. So what's happening?
I think what happens is this. Many people say exactly like you said. “I make great practice swings but I can't hit the ball.” Sometimes I've heard them say, “I must be stupid. I can't transfer from the practice to the reality.” They blame the ball being there. It is not the ball. Ultimately, it is the aiming line.
Many times we can take practice swings and they can feel smooth and flowing and powerful. But you don't care about a target. You're not caring about perfect setup and everything else; you're just swinging in many cases, trying to feel the swing. But the problem is, when you step up to the ball, if your alignment is off, and once you start swinging the brain realizes the alignment is off it has to set the body into compensations and corrections. If you're a right hander to the right and left hander to the left, if you are shut to your target, you have to come back to the aiming line, so that's an out to in swing and coming out to in, pulling the club back down to the ball tends to throw the body backwards. It either hangs it up in the middle of your stance because your forward legs are starting to straighten up, which is holding you there, or pushing you backwards into reverse weight shift which would cause coming up out of the shot and topping it. So you need to really check your alignment.
And last but not least, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times and have probably written it a thousand times in articles, is that many times we make those good practice swings and then we get set up to the ball and we get hung up in mechanics. So the key is, if you make a good practice swing, you're feeling the swing. And I have that statement: feel the swing and then set up to the ball and swing the feel. Forget the mechanics.
So if you make that good practice swing, when you set up, make sure your alignment is correct and you felt the practice swing, then swing the feel. I think both of those things will really give you a hand at getting over this problem.
The Surge!