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My golf swing

You can learn faster by understanding - or at least trying to understand - what you are doing. For me this means a building a mental image of my golf swing. (And also learning routines to automate some actions.)

I like to learn to use my right side of the brain to control my swing, but use my left side - the rational side - for evaluating the situation before and after my shot. To be able to evaluate I need a model to compare with. Model is my understanding of a golf swing.

I have looked at many video analysis of top players and I think I get the picture on what a swing looks like. Now it is time to get some inner understanding to the way I control my own swing.

1. Balance tells me an overall message. If balance is okay in address, backswing and end position, it's good news - a good sign.
2. Clubhead is what I am focus on - I will try to imaging how hard should I hit with the cluphead so that the ball flies where I want it to fly. The path should come natural due to body movement.
3. My body movement consist of three "individual elements":

a) hip-leg action
b) shoulder-arm action
c) wrist action


Different shots have a different amount of these elements - like putting has almost no wrist action and hip-leg action. An accurate approach with an iron from 50 - 60 meters has no wrists, but has some amount of legs and about 50% of shoulder-arm action.

Important is that I can build all my shots by variation of these elements. These are fundamental parts in evaluation of my shot. Evaluation goes like this:
1) Was the balance okay?
2) Was the movement, postures okay, did I make a good contact to the ball?
3) What happened with a-b-c?

I can use the ball flight path, divot and my feeling of the shot to evaluate what happened. So feedback is the key for improving my shots and practice is how you get feedback. Problem is that we have a long winter and hitting a ball is expensive in winter time.

One way to practice would be to isolate different elements like:
a) just hit the ball ( or push it) by using your hips and legs. (No movement anywhere else.
b) only shoulders - chipping?
c) only wrists... A hinge and a flat wrist exercise. (Preferably in a correct impact posture?


Why only three elements???
That is the only amount I can handle. And even these one at a time. To get some progress I need to focus on simple elements.

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10 000 swings before spring

Just realized that if I do 100 swings a day, I can make 10 000 swings before the greens will open in Jyvaskyla, Finland. I can do the 10 000 swings, but probably I can hit only about 1000 golf balls. I visit the range only once a week. But if I use my shots carefully concentrate on each ball, I think that is enough to learn a solid, basic swing. I am sure that I know most of the basics. Now I just need to get the right touch and feel to the swing. Just a feeling about golf as a social game - it might be so that people are together, but still just concentrating on them self? We all have our own goals and play an individual game. So golf might resemble our society a lot more than I first realized. This must be why the game appeals to middle aged males like me. Also someone said that one should talk too much during a round - so that's easy/natural for Finns, too.

Have some cake - it's my birthday!

Today is my 48. birthday. For my birthday I just finished 11 email lessons of golf with Lawrie Montague at Golf Academy. http://www.golf-school-australia.com Get the lessons! I'll add a quotation from Lawrie's email: "Thankyou for your comments on my lesson series and you're right the lessons are simple and for good reason, golf instruction tends to be ambiguous and complicated, and really it's not that difficult to learn how to hit better, more consistent golf shots and ultimately lower your scores. Hannu as long as you truly develop an understanding about what you are trying to do and then follow-up with consistent thoughtful action golf becomes less of a mystery. Good luck to you and your adventures in golf and please let me know how you're travelling down the track." Consider this a "slice" of my birthday cake to you:-) Hannu - learning and living (Modified from McLuhan's "learning a living)