Golf by Marlin M. Mackenzie

Author:Marlin M. Mackenzie [MacKenzie, Marlin M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79673-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

The Get-It-Back Process

The day I worked with Billy, I told him to go inside himself and return to a specific time when he was swinging smoothly and hitting the ball well. Billy remembered a specific shot he’d made during a tournament.

I had him put an image of himself making that past, satin-smooth swing on the back of my left hand. I said this was his “criterion” or model I wanted him to reproduce. After Billy went through the process of first watching the movie of his past shot and then watching himself hit the past shot, I had him hit a few balls on the practice tee.

Then I asked him, “Is that what you want?”

“That’s not quite it,” he replied. “It’s a bit too fast at the top and not enough clubhead speed at impact.”

“Well, let’s take one of those at a time,” I said. “Project a movie of what you just did here on the palm of my right hand and compare it to your criterion picture—the way you used to swing—on the back of my left hand. As you study those two pictures or movies, what one, and only one, thing do you want to correct in your last shot that you think will get your swing back to where you want it?”

Billy glanced back and forth between my two hands and said, “The top. I want a slight pause at the top of my backswing before I go into the downswing. ”

“Just go through that movement now, the take-away to the top, without striking a ball,” I said. “And as you do it, let a metaphorical image flash into your mind right at the top of the swing. ”

Billy took the club back several times, smiled, and said, “I see a swinging traffic light. It’s red as it swings in the wind in one direction and then it changes to green as it begins to swing back in the other direction. ”

“Fine. Test that image in your mind as you swing a club here on the tee without a ball. See if it works.”

Billy tested it in his mind and then hit a few balls. Again I asked him, “How’d it go?”

“It’s still not right,” he replied. “The pause at the top is great. The traffic-light image works, but—”

I interrupted him, believing that he was going to reinforce the negative stuff, something I didn’t want him to do. “Make another movie of what you just did with your swing on my right hand and compare it to your criterion on my left. As before, identify one part of your swing that you want to correct that’ll bring it up to snuff, the way it used to be.”

Billy looked at my two hands and said, “I want more clubhead speed down at the ball. ”

“What can you do to get that?” I asked.

“Just think about whipping the club at the bottom of the downswing and pinching the ball between the face of the club and the turf,” he answered.

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