The Art of the Swing by Stan Utley

Author:Stan Utley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

THE BOOK OF FEELS

One of the standard clichés in the golf teaching business is “feel vs. real.” Of course, there’s a reason that clichés become clichés—there’s a lot of truth to them. One of the first things I do when you and I have our first lesson is to watch what you do in your short game or with your putting and then ask you what your intention is. The goal is to get the intention to match the execution.

My goal in any lesson I give—and in this book—is to give you the mechanics and the thought process you need to decide which shot you want to hit, and then to match the shot you’ve visualized to the one you hit. And, just as importantly, to understand how and why you did or didn’t pull it off.

That matching process is where the concept of “feel vs. real” comes in. I can’t walk out onto a golf course and play “blank”—in other words, just mindlessly execute a series of movements to produce a shot. Even if I could do it, I wouldn’t want to. To me, one of the main reasons this game is so engaging is the constant—and constantly changing—series of mental and physical challenges it presents over the course of eighteen holes. Solving the puzzle is what makes it fun.

If you’re determined to play “conscious” golf, where you take in experiences and information and advice and apply it to your game to solve the puzzle, you need to be able to recognize how your body feels and the state of your game from day to day. As I’ve said before, people aren’t machines. The mechanical advice I gave you in a lesson might get you hitting good shots for a week or a month, but for the lesson to really “take,” you have to be able to recognize when things start to get off and to find the swing thought or feel that adjusts the dial and refocuses the picture.

As you work on the things we’ve talked about in this book, you’re going to connect more strongly with some of the concepts and “feels” than others. You might be a visual person who needs to see pictures or video so you can copy some part of the movement to get it down. Many times during a lesson, I’ll reach in and swing the putter or the wedge for the student while they are holding the club. Or maybe you read how I describe one of the feels I have during a swing and the description clicks, and repeating it to yourself during your swing helps you.

I’ve been playing for more than thirty years, and I’m always cycling to the different swing thoughts and feels that I’ve banked over the years. The one or two I pick for a given day click in based on how my body feels, the way I’m swinging the club, and the issues I’m dealing with in my game that day.

I want to emphasize

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