What's your biggest "illusion shattering" moments in golf instruction "aha" moments that you wish you knew earlier?

[hafnia]

One thing I often see is instructors being called genius's because they identify a subtle movement intention that many golfers miss because the try and replicate what they see on a screen.  For me these subtle things have been the biggest for my game.

 

The biggest one I recently discovered is the downswing starts by moving the hands away from you - not towards the ball/target! - like many I see the ball as target and think about getting my hands to it as soon and as quickly and as hard as possible.  Marcus Edblad does a great video showing the swing as a continuous clockwise (right hand perspective) motion, this is mind-blowing to me.  When my game is off all I can think is "reduce the amount of distance between my hands and ball - don't move them away"

 

the other one is that the arms move up and down not side to side - 2D perspectives really do make the golf code tough to crack.

 

[getitdaily]

Ground force and earlier lead side pressure 

[Rdailey9108]

One piece takeaway. Wasted probably a year or two doing that stupid s*** and not hinging my wrists. 

[TheDeanAbides]

The arm swing illusion and early release from the top. 

[kiawah]

You're not supposed to think when you're standing over the ball. Crazy but true

[Nickb333]

Eye line. 50 years of golf before I saw Monte’s thread here. Had no idea it was a thing. 

Edited April 26 by Nickb333
Sp

[Hawkeye77]

Ball first not literally meaning trapping it - grew up in the dark ages. Of course, “sweeping those long irons and fairways” only made things worse as well. 

Edited April 26 by Hawkeye77

[RichieHunt]

Drew Cooper explaining the pressure shift and what he calls the 'end of his backswing' which is more like p2 instead of p4.  It essentially explained what instruction had a conflict with for the past 20 years with regards to being centered/stacked vs. 'moving off the ball.'  I don't like the terminology that the pressure shift maxing to your trail side is 'the end of the backswing' because the backswing terminology is such that the backswing stops when you are no longer swinging the club with you arms backwards.  It's not a pressure shift concept.  But the idea that you should reach max pressure shif tot your trail side around p2 to p3 and then the pressure starts to ease off your trail side and moves toward your lead side is very beneficial for a variety of different reasons.

 

 

 

RH

[Righty to Lefty]

Impact... and the difference between hitting and iron straight. 

 

 

And the hitting a ball off a tee straight.  

[virtuoso]

The understanding that many of the "illusion shattering" moments I had earlier turned out to be illusions themselves.

[MonteScheinblum]

About 8-10 years ago when I saw pressure traces of tour players and learned the shift was the last move of the backswing, not the first move of the downswing.

[getitdaily]

55 minutes ago, RichieHunt said:

Drew Cooper explaining the pressure shift and what he calls the 'end of his backswing' which is more like p2 instead of p4.  It essentially explained what instruction had a conflict with for the past 20 years with regards to being centered/stacked vs. 'moving off the ball.'  I don't like the terminology that the pressure shift maxing to your trail side is 'the end of the backswing' because the backswing terminology is such that the backswing stops when you are no longer swinging the club with you arms backwards.  It's not a pressure shift concept.  But the idea that you should reach max pressure shif tot your trail side around p2 to p3 and then the pressure starts to ease off your trail side and moves toward your lead side is very beneficial for a variety of different reasons.

 

 

 

RH

100%. That earlier lead side pressure was literally the catalyst for several other moves that were needed but were impossible because of how much I slid in the downswing. 

[Mike_C]

That you don't rotate around your right leg (which some old guy taught me when I was young), you rotate around a center axis, your spine.  

[Valtiel]

10 hours ago, getitdaily said:

...earlier lead side pressure 

 

2 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

About 8-10 years ago when I saw pressure traces of tour players and learned the shift was the last move of the backswing, not the first move of the downswing.

Definitely this. Pressure traces show you what is actually happening internally that is easily a step or two ahead of what we tend to recognize visually in the swing from the outside. It's one of those big pieces that explains why so many things are "late" in the average player's swing. 

The real "illusion shattering moment" is understanding what this actually feels like to do it right, and the "feel vs. real" demons you normally have to defeat along the way. 

[lumpia]

thread appreciation post - keep 'em coming.

[MonteScheinblum]

52 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

 

Definitely this. Pressure traces show you what is actually happening internally that is easily a step or two ahead of what we tend to recognize visually in the swing from the outside. It's one of those big pieces that explains why so many things are "late" in the average player's swing. 

The real "illusion shattering moment" is understanding what this actually feels like to do it right, and the "feel vs. real" demons you normally have to defeat along the way. 

Every first time lesson.  Without exception……the golfer is struggling because they are aspiring to one or more golf “truths” that have been around for 150 years and the number of elite players that actually do that truth is zero plus or minus 1%.  That 1% are guys that heard the nonsense, did it and made it work anyway and their stardom perpetuates the myth.  
 

Multiple times per day I have people reverse pivoting, casting, flipping, starting with their arms, move club first and hips last in takeaway, having rushed quick tempo going back, coming over the top, etc.

 

Club speed, strike pattern, aesthetic look, pressure trace and wrist graphs all got better. 
 

Proper shift feels like a reverse weight shift to 90% of people over the handicap of zero.  This is why load the right side and push off the right foot persists.  
 

Someone has yet to explain how to get the proper GRF vector pushing off the right side.

[golferdude54]

I want to say golfers learning of and being infatuated with the kinematic sequence and moving their hips too much to start the downswing and their arms too little as a result. That really screwed me over for a while. 

[PedronNiall]

Chasing positions, looks, angles, rainbows, and whatever else people tried to shove in my head as a junior that I wasn't hard headed enough to ignore and just swing the club. Unfortunately continued to get a lot of that for years and years after. That along with things like "letting gravity do the work/start the downswing/do your taxes".

 

Too many, from people hoping to teach friends to actual instructors, trying to instill the game through effect rather than causes or from outright falsehoods is a slow death. It's one thing to help someone feel something they've never experienced, but having players chase positions that first their setup and later their takeaway make difficult to impossible or believe in things that simply don't happen is hell in a hand busket, spelling intended. Super shallow syndrome and hold the lag til the cows come home are just the latest outsized fads in that vein.

 

There's a reason Jack Grout's four basics for Nicklaus and Butch Harmon's simple, focused work with players have had such great results. All of the tech and proper analysis by researchers and instructors coming down the pipeline are going to continue in that direction, distilling what really happens in the swing and tracing the outcomes back to the causes so players can properly work forwards through repeatable steps into a great swing instead of being buried in technique and chasing positions to go backwards because reasons. Too much of some still current golf methodology was much faster to fall away in pretty much all other sports because it's not how most people can or should ingrain proper movement. Just had a round and round in another thread recently because a known instructor continues to teach things that just aren't happening as reality. 

 

I look forward to the day that anyone tossing out non-truths about the swing or trying to explain golf as some arcane, mysterious thing or mystic art that takes a lifetime to be decent enough at to have fun no longer has a leg to stand on. 

 

Monty, Valtiel, and others already said most of this more concisely, I just needed to rant a bit. Mi scusi.

[TheDeanAbides]

11 hours ago, Valtiel said:

 

Definitely this. Pressure traces show you what is actually happening internally that is easily a step or two ahead of what we tend to recognize visually in the swing from the outside. It's one of those big pieces that explains why so many things are "late" in the average player's swing. 

The real "illusion shattering moment" is understanding what this actually feels like to do it right, and the "feel vs. real" demons you normally have to defeat along the way. 

I found that getting people to feel what their pressure is doing when they throw a ball it hugely helpful with this. We haven’t really built up and preconceptions about that action - we just use our pressure effectively. 

[baudi]

Introduction

Do not want to be rude but these phenomena hardly mingle at same time.

All the illusions in the world are like ghosts: they only exist in the head (as far I know 🙂).  

Yeah, you might oppose: Your beliefs could be all wrong, so that's an illusion. And if you have to drop these it will be shattering.   

Sure, that exists. eg. Invest money; believe you will be rich and find out you were being scammed after all. And yet, the hearsay of: 'Well, this pro ruined his or her career for sure' Or worse: 'Golf my way' created a nation of slicers', are possibly the dumbest exclamations I can think of. 👻

 

Catharsis

Dropping thoughts and creating new ones to justify belief is to be considered a positive effect. 

Die Aha Erlebnis (Bühler) is an experience like eureka: it will fit in the network of the beliefs already there to complete the puzzle solving. 

If you're lucky, the composition of mind and body might produce better results. Not always.

 

So which aha experience really sort of shifted the paradigm? That's personal of course. About 30 years ago I was very target oriented with my swing.

The awareness of learning to move the ball more next to me instead of in front of me. The reasoning was concluded after reading Dave Pelz who explained the effect of parallel left. So instead of towards target I initially adjusted my set up, and because of that my swing and the post shot routine.  This was very hard to do in the course in the beginning and I still feel these tendencies as golf courses lure players.        

Edited April 27 by baudi

[moerkb]

Definitely the fact that lag (or the 2d face on look of it) is not created by "float loading" or "holding the lag" but by proper sequencing. To work on transition timing and seeing that "lag angle" to happen by itself is so mind-boggling, I still don't understand it.

 

And I didn't trust it at first, because it contradicts years of indoctrination...

 

Thanks to "Che Monte" for his never ending fight against wrong teaching!

[aenemated]

[phizzy30]

Being told from childhood that I had to hold the angle for as long as possible on the down swing aka lag.  This really screwed me over and caused me to hit all sorts of horrible shots.  It wasn't until my second teaching pro taught me to release the angle earlier that my overall ball striking improved considerably.  My handicap dropped 10 strokes as a result. 

[North Butte]

I can only think of one "illusion" I suffered from for the first good many years of my golfing life.

 

Up until about 20 years ago, all of the chipping and pitching technique I'd been taught was predicated on nipping the ball as cleanly as possible, having the leading edge of the club precisely meet the point where the ball touches the ground. And I was terrible at it. I have pretty mediocre hand-eye coordination, not a lot of natural athletic ability and I also tend to tense up and get quick on those little shots. I had played for a decade or more with chipping the most frustrating part of the game. 

 

Then at a lesson one day, my teacher introduced "use the bounce". We did three or four lessons on "use the bounce" over the next year or so and sure enough it has taken most of the stress and fear out of shots in that (once dreaded) 20-40 yard range. 

 

Honestly, I think up until around Y2K the "nip it clean" chipping illusion was almost universal. I can't recall ever encountering anyone who was talking about using the bounce on those shots until, all of a sudden, everyone seemed to figure it out at once. 

Edited April 27 by North Butte

[Tanner25]

2 hours ago, TheDeanAbides said:

I found that getting people to feel what their pressure is doing when they throw a ball it hugely helpful with this. We haven’t really built up and preconceptions about that action - we just use our pressure effectively. 

 

I had a former co-worker tell me golf is a throwing motion years ago. It hasn't clicked until this has come up a lot lately on the forum. As you said, throwing a ball comes natural to us. How do we automate this early pressure shift on the down swing, without just doing it.

[TheDeanAbides]

15 minutes ago, Tanner25 said:

 

I had a former co-worker tell me golf is a throwing motion years ago. It hasn't clicked until this has come up a lot lately on the forum. As you said, throwing a ball comes natural to us. How do we automate this early pressure shift on the down swing, without just doing it.

Was the last sentence a question? Smarter people here than me might be able to answer better, but afaic the key is a correct pivot and recentering. That alongside simply understanding that pressure is moving forward almost immediately radically changes our swing. 

[Tanner25]

30 minutes ago, TheDeanAbides said:

Was the last sentence a question? Smarter people here than me might be able to answer better, but afaic the key is a correct pivot and recentering. That alongside simply understanding that pressure is moving forward almost immediately radically changes our swing. 

 

Yes, a question. Recentering sounds good. Here's a video talking about falling to lead side. Eric seems to like "stepping" to the lead side.

 

 

[edwelly]

@Tanner25 - thanks for the video. I am in the midst of redoing my swing and this is very helpful. I will try some of these tips out this weekend!

 

-Erik

[Double Mocha Man]

8 hours ago, PedronNiall said:

Chasing positions, looks, angles, rainbows, and whatever else people tried to shove in my head as a junior that I wasn't hard headed enough to ignore and just swing the club. Unfortunately continued to get a lot of that for years and years after. That along with things like "letting gravity do the work/start the downswing/do your taxes".

 

Too many, from people hoping to teach friends to actual instructors, trying to instill the game through effect rather than causes or from outright falsehoods is a slow death. It's one thing to help someone feel something they've never experienced, but having players chase positions that first their setup and later their takeaway make difficult to impossible or believe in things that simply don't happen is hell in a hand busket, spelling intended. Super shallow syndrome and hold the lag til the cows come home are just the latest outsized fads in that vein.

 

There's a reason Jack Grout's four basics for Nicklaus and Butch Harmon's simple, focused work with players have had such great results. All of the tech and proper analysis by researchers and instructors coming down the pipeline are going to continue in that direction, distilling what really happens in the swing and tracing the outcomes back to the causes so players can properly work forwards through repeatable steps into a great swing instead of being buried in technique and chasing positions to go backwards because reasons. Too much of some still current golf methodology was much faster to fall away in pretty much all other sports because it's not how most people can or should ingrain proper movement. Just had a round and round in another thread recently because a known instructor continues to teach things that just aren't happening as reality. 

 

I look forward to the day that anyone tossing out non-truths about the swing or trying to explain golf as some arcane, mysterious thing or mystic art that takes a lifetime to be decent enough at to have fun no longer has a leg to stand on. 

 

Monty, Valtiel, and others already said most of this more concisely, I just needed to rant a bit. Mi scusi.

 

I started playing golf at 12 which was the exact same time my dad assigned me the task of weed whipping the back yard of our summer house. That weed whipping action taught me all I needed to know about the golf swing.

[vernon]

23 minutes ago, Double Mocha Man said:

 

I started playing golf at 12 which was the exact same time my dad assigned me the task of weed whipping the back yard of our summer house. That weed whipping action taught me all I needed to know about the golf swing.

Used to swing one of those until my hands bled!

 

Only sissies would wear gloves......