100. Many bad shots and spells of poor form experienced by better players is down to nothing more than mental laziness

Early this year a player came to me with the dreaded shanks. It turned out that I was the third Pro he had approached in an effort to rid himself of the disastrous shot. During his warm up at the start of the lesson, the shank showed itself. It was still there and he was waiting for it. He told me how in the previous lessons he had been given certain technical instructions ranging from the position of his right elbow and ball position at the setup to starting the downswing from a different position. He was expecting much of the same because he looked surprised when I told him that I was not interested in his shanking problem.

I simply asked him, what shot do you want to hit? This was a complete shift in approach. After a long pause, he said "A draw shot." I then simply showed him what the club-head had to do to achieve this desired result. Within 3 or 4 shots, he was hitting the draw shot. He began to look noticeably more relaxed after 10 minutes. It must be said that this particular fellow was a decent player and already had knowledge of the shot he wanted. He was not suffering from a Shank, it was more "Learned Helplessness". A condition we can all suffer from caused by a failure to see or act clearly for whatever reason.

Over the years I have found that many bad shots and spells of poor form experienced by better players is down to nothing more than mental laziness. Like all shankers, he was so consumed with fear of the shot that it was all he focused on. You cannot expect positive outcomes if all you focus on is the problem itself? So we set a positive plan of action. In this case, a plan of what he wanted and what was needed to achieve it. There was no cure as such, just a set of more desirable results brought about by a different focus and a positive strategy.

The difference between a good player and a poor player is the poor player is nearly always trying to not hit the shot he doesn't want whilst the better player sees the shot he wants to hit and knows what he has to do to hit it. This unique approach is at the heart of my Coaching Philosophy.