“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Do you want to develop a more reliable, consistent and confident golf swing technique? I don’t think there is a golfer alive that doesn’t want to become more consistent and confident when playing golf. So what does it mean to be consistent at golf? Is it even possible to develop a consistent golf game?

These are the big questions of golf, and in this article I’m going to share with you a simple pathway to a more dependable, confident and consistent golf swing, which will give you more self-belief and certainty over the golf shots that you hit.

Developing a reliable golf swing begins with a definition of what golf consistency means. For many amateur golfers it means to develop more positive and predictable results in their short-game and long-game. For others it’s about achieving more consistency in their golf scores, which means reducing the distance between their lowest scores and their highest scores.

Either way, acquiring more consistency and confidence in your game necessitates a change in your approach to how you go about producing results in your golf swing and score. When you think about consistency, what we’re really talking about is any routine or ritual that is as regular as clockwork.

Now this routine could easily be a routine that influences your thoughts, or your golf swing or a part of it, a putt, a chip or pitch, or in-fact any skill or part thereof that has a significant influence over your golf performances.

The Golf Swing Consistency Formula

Building consistency into your golf game will be easier by understanding and applying the following simple formula.

‘golf swing consistency = deliberate pre-swing routine x deliberate practice strategy’

This formula explains the two key components you need to develop to build positive, steady and dependable consistency into your game. The two critical consistency components are:

1. A deliberate, well thought out pre-swing routine that incorporates precise club and body alignments prior to swinging the golf club.
2. A deliberate practice routine that focuses on incorporating the key aspects of your pre-swing routine into every practice shot.

A Deliberate Pre-Swing Routine

What one undeniable factor sets pro’s apart from amateurs? The answer apart from the obvious is a premeditated and precise pre-swing routine. A pre-swing routine is a well planned and precise process where a golfer goes through a carefully choreographed sequence of movements prior to hitting his golf shot that ideally incorporates the following six factors;

• A mental strategy that describes exactly how you want your golf ball to behave prior to hitting it
• Careful placement and pressure of your hands on the golf club
• Careful aiming of the club-face to the target-line before you establish your body alignment and posture
• Establishment of the correct postural angle and knee flex
• Careful alignment of the stance, hips and shoulders to the target-line
• The final balancing of your body prior to initiating the backswing phase

When these steps are carefully and thoughtfully incorporated into your pre-swing routine you will be giving yourself the best chance of executing your golf shots confidently, successfully and consistently.

A Deliberate Practice Routine

Practicing your new pre-swing routine over and over again will take your pre-swing routine from a set of rehearsed conscious actions to an automatic mental-physical shift that guarantees that your golf shots will become more consistent as will your golf scores.

When you practice hitting golf shots, carefully coordinate your routine so that it incorporates a clear decision as to exactly how you want your golf ball to behave as it travels to the target, followed by careful placement of your hands on the grip. Then aim the club-face before you aim your body, establish your stance line and upper body alignment.

Once you have arrived at this division of your pre-swing routine you can simply swing away.

This very precise sequence of events carefully thought out and assembled is the formula for achieving positive, steady and dependable consistency in your golf swing which will greatly increase your golf confidence, lower your golf scores and give you the consistency your have been searching for.

To your golfing success.

Lawrie Montague

P.S Please take a moment and vote in my poll (right hand side under video). I want to find out what interests you in golf instruction content so I can write articles that are highly relevant to your needs.

“In a golf swing certain things are caused to happen, and others are allowed to happen. Faults arise, when what should be allowed, is caused to happen.” - Denise McCluggage

When Australian and international golfers arrive at my golfing school one of the first things I explain to them is that there are just three principles they need to fully understand and learn to help them develop a powerful and repeating golfing swing. I’m sure that as you read this you might be a little skeptical because let’s face it, there is a lot of conflicting and ambiguous advice surrounding the best golfing swing method to learn.

It can be quite mysterious, and with all the advice on offer the question that might be running through your mind right now is “why should you listen to me?” Good question. Like you, I’ve read lots of golf instruction books, golf magazine articles and I’ve been to countless golf websites looking at the systems, methods and techniques on offer.

The difference is that I have spent more than twenty thousand hours on the golf range helping golfers like you to improve their game. So I’m not confused about what you need to do to develop a consistent and reliable golfing swing. I’ve tried and tested many approaches in my search to find a straightforward, rational and well-organized way to improve the golfing techniques of my students.

The answer I discovered is that you begin your quest for improvement by defining the ground rules of the game. Since golf is a stick, ball and target game the place to start would be to understand how the stick (golf club) influences the ball to fly towards your chosen target. You see, learning how to build a consistent golfing swing need not be confusing or difficult because every single golfer from a novice player to a PGA tour professional has to do just three things.

Since the ball is on the ground and to the side of you, you can appreciate why the golf club when rested upon the ground behind the golf ball is built on an inclined plane angle. From driver to putter the shaft of the golf club is on an angle of inclination. Think about a house for a moment and you can imagine a floor which is a horizontal plane; next add some walls which is a vertical plane; and finally add a roof which is an inclined plane.

This inclined plane guides the direction of your golfing swing as it goes backwards and forwards. Every golf club in your bag follows this plane. In fact because the golf club is built this way it becomes a law unto itself.

So the first principle is to control the direction of the golf club as it swings backwards and forwards in relation to your target by keeping your golf club on or as close to this plane as you can. You can do this by placing a flat piece of cardboard (or similar) the width of your seven iron shaft from the bottom of the club head to the base of the grip on the same angle the seven iron is built on. Prop it on its angle against something so that it will stay there as you practice swinging your golf club backwards and forwards along it slowly.

The second principle relates to the club heads relationship to the golf shaft that it’s attached to, and its ability to rotate on the end of the golf shaft as it travels backwards and forwards. When your golf club travels backwards to the top of your golf swing it turns a little bit like a door turns on hinges. When it swings forwards towards the golf ball it rolls back to its original position, which should be timed precisely as the ball departs from the club face.

Mind you, you only need enough rotation (turn and roll) around the shaft to achieve this straight clubface post-impact position. Any more or less and you’re in big trouble. You can achieve this by making sure that your left hand (for a right hand golfer) is positioned in such a way that you can roll the head more than you can turn it. If you held your golf club in front of you in a horizontal position and you turn it, the clubface would turn towards 2 o’clock. When you roll it, it will roll to nearly 9 o’clock. In other words, you want your club face to close more on the follow through than you can open it on the back swing.

The majority of golfers I’ve worked with at my golfing school over the years tend to open the club face more than they should in the back swing and as such they find it difficult to close it enough in the forward swing. This leads to shots that travel off to the right of the target.

The third principle relates to delivering sufficient force at the correct time in the down swing so you can hit your golf ball a satisfying distance. This principle relates to developing sufficient speed of the club head as close to impact as possible. When you watch a PGA tour golfer on television, if you look carefully you will notice how the left arm and golf club work in unison with one another during the back swing and forward swing phases.

In the address position they are almost in line with one another, but as they travel backwards the left wrist starts to hinge and the golf club moves out of line with the left arm. Ultimately an acute angle is formed between them at the top of the back swing. This angle has stored up the potential energy of the golf swing and is waiting briefly before it transfers it into kinetic energy in the down swing.

The key is to maintain this acute angle for longer so that the energy that’s being released into the down swing is released slowly like a slow release fertilizer for your lawn. If the energy releases too early you move into the deceleration phase too early which will lead to shorter-less powerful drives and irons.

You can store this acute angle for longer by following this advice. Since a force can be defined simply as a push or pull, you need to decide how your hands (which are in front of your golf club at the top of the back swing) move down the plane (see principle # 1) towards your golf ball. Some golfers at the top of the swing will push on their golf club more with their right hand to accelerate the golf club into the down swing, whilst others will pull more with their left hand to accelerate the golf club.

So which is right? Well, imagine for a moment a line that extends vertically upwards from your golf ball at address; we’ll call this the impact line and it’s a point of reference for us to determine which is the best hand to use to maintain the angle between the left arm and club shaft. At the top of your swing how far would you say your hands are from the impact line? Try it now and find out. You will discover that they’re anywhere from three to five feet.

If you pull the golf club past this impact line the golf club and its energy will be released later than if you push on it with your right hand. In other words, hands first-club head second. You do not want your club head to catch up to your hands before you strike the ball. The best way to do this is to keep the club head following your right elbow in the down swing for as long as you can. The further that your right elbow travels across the front of your body the more likely that the golf club will strike the golf ball at the correct time. Also, you’ll find that by positioning your hands just above your waist at about 9 o’clock that it’s easier to get your hands to pass the impact line well before your golf club can strike the ball.

So there you have it, three principles that will help you to develop a consistent and repeatable golfing swing. Put them into practice today and reaps the rewards of your efforts tomorrow.

Until next time.

Lawrie Montague