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Impact Golf- 4 Factors
By William Kipp, Teaching
Professional
Colorado Golf Schools at
Estes Park
Golf swings are as
individualized as people. With this in mind, we must
realize that two golfers will never swing exactly the
same. The key to better golf is not to try and swing like
someone else, but to achieve a more correct and consistent
flight pattern with your golf ball. In this and future
columns I hope to help you play better golf through
understanding and improving the impact of your golf club
and golf ball. Impact Golf…
Your golf ball is your best
instructor, and learning to play your best golf involves
understanding what your golf ball is telling you. The
flight (or non-flight) of your ball will tell you, on
every shot, exactly what your clubhead was doing at
impact. The flight of your ball reflects no set ideas
about swing theory; it doesn’t know how you grip the club,
whether your head remains still, or left arm stays
straight…all that matters to the ball is what your
clubhead is doing as it strikes the ball. So much of golf
instruction today fails to mention what the club does when
it hits the ball and how the golf ball then behaves. Yet
the behavior of the ball is, or should be, every golfer’s
number one concern.
There are basically four
conditions which describe how your clubhead strikes the
ball. These impact factors are clubface
alignment, clubhead path, angle of approach, and clubhead
speed. These four factors determine your golf ball’s
initial direction, the degree and direction of its
sideways curve, its trajectory and the distance it
travels. Once you become able to recognize which of these
impact factors was incorrect by observing your ball’s
behavior, and how to properly adjust your grip, aim,
stance, and posture to improve your impact (instead of
simply reacting by instinct) you will have a lot of fun
playing golf. You will begin to control your golf ball
instead of letting it control you!
Your impact factors
are primarily controlled by the way you grip and aim the
club, align your body and posture before you swing, and
the path you swing the clubhead on through impact. One of
the reasons golf is such a difficult game is that one (or
more than one) bad shot often leads the player to react in
instinctive ways which only make the mistakes worse.
Changing the way you grip the club and set up to hit the
ball will feel uncomfortable at first, because you have
become comfortable in your bad habits…so stick with the
changes and soon they will become both productive and
comfortable!
In future Impact Golf
articles I will more fully explain each of these impact
factors, and how each of them is influenced by your
grip, aim, stance, and posture – the “address positions”
every player assumes before he or she swings the club!
So keep reading over the next several weeks as I share
some of what I know about playing your best golf.
William Kipp has played
on several regional professional golf tours, and was a
collegiate player at Kansas University. He is an employee
of the Estes Park Golf Courses, and is the Teaching
Professional for Colorado Golf Schools at Estes Park
www.coloradogolfschoolatestespark.com |
