35. As a beginner at golf, we strive to create a swing to give us a shot, with the accomplished player however, his choice of shot creates the swing. There comes a point when in order to improve, you must tackle this transition

There is a well known principle in the world of successful big business I once read about that says “If a problem is encountered, make sure you focus at least 80 % of your time and attention on what you need to do to put it right and not on the problem itself.”                                    

The principle is called the 80 / 20 rule and I soon realised that this rule has great potential to help golfers with their game. There are so many players at club level who have great knowledge of  their swing problems and are able to tell just what it is they are doing wrong. Unfortunately, they only succeed in identifying what is wrong because they mistakenly think that is all they  need to know .

The consequences of only seeing the problems results in too much practice time devoted to trying to take the bad movements out of  the swing. This will not succeed though because you cannot take something out of a swing and leave a vacuum, you must replace it with a positive alternative but if most of your time has been focusing on the fault, you will have little idea of what it is that you need take its place. If you cannot replace it with an alternative, then when it comes to making the swing the old muscle memory will re-assert itself  because there is nothing else to do the job. This ineffective approach results in legions of golfers on the course everyday, desperately “trying to not hit the shot they don’t want". 

Here is an alternative way to tackle the situation. I start by turning the above statement around and ask the player to identify the shot they would like to hit? ( bearing in mind a straight shot is not an option). When they state a preference of shot, I then tell to ask themselves, what has the club-face got to do to achieve this desired shot? You will notice that I am asking questions that require positive answers. It puts you in a more positive state to create something you want rather than trying to get away from something you don't. When we identify what the club-face has to do (remember this is where it matters) two remarkable things tend to happen. First, the undesirable swing begins to lose its influence, as secondly, the better action that begins to replace it is instinctively prompted in response to our understanding of what the club-face must do. (Just as a tennis player or batsman’s action is automatically prompted in response to the shot they want to hit.) 

You could say that all our swing answers are held in the club-head. All we need to do to find them is understand what the club-head does when it hits the shots we want. As a beginner at golf, we strive to create a swing to give us a shot, with the accomplished player however, his choice of shot creates the swing. There comes a point when in order to improve, you must tackle this transition