By Paul Myers
With so much attention paid to increasing swing speed, it is easy to forget about a basic element to improve your golf swing that can help you gain distance and accuracy perhaps more significantly than anything else – hitting the ball in the center of the club face. When the ball is struck on the center of the club face, the energy from the swing is transferred as efficiently as possible into the ball and it can achieve maximum distance. Off-center hits can rob you of the swing speed you worked so hard to create.
Determining Your Ball Striking Consistency
It isn’t always easy to tell how well you are doing with trying to strike the center of the club face – especially when you are hitting a driver. Sure, you might be able to feel when you hit one way out on the toe or in on the heel, but subtle differences are harder to detect. To know for sure how you are doing, and then be able to make corrections accordingly, it helps to see evidence of where the ball is hitting the face of the club on each shot.
This is where foot powder comes in handy. By spraying a layer of foot powder on the face of your club, you will be able to see a ball mark where you hit each shot. Doing this on the driving range and then hitting a series of shots will reveal a pattern on the clubface that might tell you something about your swing. You don’t need to perform this test every time you practice, but doing it once in a while is well worth your time.
How Consistent Are You?
If you are seeing most of the ball marks on the club face clustered around the center, then you don’t have anything to worry about. You must be making consistent swings and getting the club to the ball accurately, so you can cross this off your list of things to work on.
However, if you are seeing a big dispersion in your ball striking, you will need to figure out why. One place to look is your balance. If you aren’t on balance throughout your swing, it is hard to make a repeatable motion that finds the center of the face time after time. Work on staying balanced between your feet and keeping your lower body more stable during the backswing and see if that helps to tighten your dispersion, which will improve your golf swing in general.
If not, consider trying clubs with a high swing weight than the ones you use currently. Higher swing weight can help to give you more feel of the club, and you might find you have an easier time centering the ball on the face. This could cost you club head speed in exchange, so try to find the right balance of a club you can feel yet still swing fast enough to maximize your distance.
You might not think that foot powder would have anything to do with good golf, but this tip is a great way to put it to work for you and learn more about your swing. This trick is easy to use, inexpensive, and can be completed in just a few minutes. The information you learn from checking on your impact locations can say a lot about your swing and will hopefully set you on a path toward better golf.
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