The fundamental skill of golf is to hit the ball purely. That means hitting the ball in the center of the clubface, whether with the driver, irons, wedges or putter. When you hit the ball purely you get the distance you expected, the ball goes where you expected. Learning to do this consistently is what will make you a good golfer.
Start learning this skill with your putter. Small shots will be easier to hit than the long, flowing shots of a full swing.
Find the sweet spot on the putter face and practice doing nothing but hitting the ball at that spot. Take a stack of golf balls and hit them one after the other, listening for that distinctive sound and looking for that distinctive sensation.
Short putts hit from this spot hold your line. Approach putts go the distance you had planned instead of ending up five feet short. Just by making pure contact, you will become a better putter.
Move on to the clubs you use to hit putting green chips. These are bigger hits that add a new contact issue as the trajectory of the hit is now variable. You not only have to hit the ball in the center of the club, viewed from the toe to the heel of the clubface, but also from top to bottom.
This new variable is controlled by where the club hits the ground. With the exception of the putter, and with a few other rare exceptions, all shots with the ball on the ground are struck with a downward stroke, so the club hits the ground in front of the ball, not under it, certainly not behind it. of her, but in front of her
As before, get a bunch of balls and hit tile after tile. Don’t worry about where the ball goes. Work only on centered contact that locks the ball between the stick and the ground. With correct contact, the ball feels as if it has been lifted off the ground and the clubface.
Move into your wedges and hit pitches between 60 and 100 yards. The idea is the same as with the checkers you’ve been hitting: hit the ball in the center of the clubface with a downstroke that makes contact with the ground in front of the ball.
Because the pitch is a larger swing, trajectory control must be more carefully regulated. Too steep and energy is wasted driving the club into the ground instead of the ball. Too shallow, the margin of error for clean contact becomes quite small.
After the releases come, they will go. The principles involved with a full swing are the same as with the pitch. It’s just that the swing is longer. The only thing to keep in mind here is to imagine the swing going through the ball all the way. Do not think about hitting the ball, but about going through it. This way of thinking applies to all the shots you’ve taken before, but especially the full swing.
Finally, the driver. The ball is no longer touching the ground, but that doesn’t mean the swing has changed. Even though the ball is lifted up and several inches ahead of where it is sitting while on the ground, the strike will still be slightly downward, adding backspin that causes the ball to rise into the air.
With this club more than any other, think about swinging through the ball. Trying to hit the ball for power or to direct it down the fairway will cause misses rather than prevent them.