Aiming at something with your practice swing

‘At last, I’ve got it,” I said to myself as the last few balls of my practice flew off like heat seeking missiles to their target.

The swing felt great and everything was in the grove together with perfect timing.

Next morning it felt like I was swinging the garden rake and the feedback from the clubhead, hands, arms and brain was minuscule. So what happened to that fantastic confident feeling of just a few hours earlier? Overnight, or over a relatively short period of time our muscles contract and those swing memories that were stored within them during those hours of practice have dispersed — gone, history, vanished!

The problem is that it might not be too long to get the muscular feeling back if you are young — but if you are older, it’s not so easy to find the secret quickly again.

So, it’s a question of starting up the process of practice again — and it’s exactly this point that makes our game so uniquely difficult because of the range of different ‘feels’ we must grasp and fully comprehend.

We yearn to still wish to play well when we next tee it up and that gauging, to perfection, a long drive, a deft, soft-landing seveniron or a fast-downhill putt is the beauty of the game we love.

How many times have you seen a player make two or three beautiful practice swings that don’t touch anything but air?

These swings are useful for loosening up but they are no good when it comes to hitting the ball.

From now on, when you take a practice swing, make it a point to aim at something.

Hit a leaf or blade of grass — because aiming at something with your practice swing will help you learn to square up the clubface.

Try not to take another practice swing without aiming at something and don’t take too many practice swings as it will bore the pants off your playing partners and add up to a slow round.

Out of Bounds: Obviously a golfer with a sense of humour had written this on his tombstone: “All things considered; I’d rather be at St Andrews”.