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At times, golfers can lose target focus and become hung-up on technical or "internal" swing thoughts. When playing well, most elite golfers will state that they are "hitting their lines"; or in other words, the ball is starting at their intended target. If this effortless and "flowing" state is hard to come by, this is a great visual drill for re-focusing and once again establishing a "performance" mindset; this "picket fence" drill not only trains the skill of defining an exact target, but it will also provide feedback as to whether your misses are more "mental" or swing related. Ultimately, this should make it easier to bring your "range game" to the course and hopefully, shoot lower scores.
Tags: Not Straight Enough, Practice Strategies, Mental Game, Drill, Intermediate
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This drill is picket fence start line training.
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So many golfers struggle on the course partly because they're not picking a really good
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target or a really clear target.
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So oftentimes from conversations I've had with elite level golfers and my playing
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myself, when things are going really well, we're able to control where the ball is starting.
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So one of the ways that I kind of do this in a lazy way is all use one of these two
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different objects to help refine my start line.
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So from the down line you should be able to see I've got alternating white and wooden
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teas kind of forming a little bit of a picket fence there.
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Alternatively I have a ruler with just some colored tape.
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You could you can you can you sharpies you could use whatever.
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It's just to give you lines that are about a half inch apart.
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And then what I'm going to do is for each shot I'm going to pick a different, a slightly
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different target and I'm going to try to use my alignment to control the start line.
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Now when I do this typically I would adjust my alignment stick on the ground just to help
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me calibrate roughly where that target is in my 3D space.
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So on this first one I'm going to try and hit a draw at this right flag so I'm going to
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try and get this to start over the brown tea or the red stripe.
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So now I'm pretty set up to that.
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Hopefully I'll take my swing and we'll be able to see that was probably fairly close
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to my start line.
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So then now the reason I use this station is I don't have to I don't want to keep aiming
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at the exact same target every time that I'm swinging.
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So this allows me to move my target a good 20 degrees or so.
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So now I'm going to go at the red and white pole in the center of the range which puts
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me pretty close to that white flag or that white tea.
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And one way if you're not sure is you can hold the club up in line with your dominant
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eye just like this and put it in line with the target here and your golf ball there.
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And that'll help you pick an intermediate target or one of the spots there.
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You want these intermediate targets to be about 12 to 18 inches in front of you.
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You don't want to have an intermediate target way down there.
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And the reason is I want to be able to pick this up with my peripheral vision so that I'm
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not turning my head or changing my eye line in order to see it.
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When I do that that's typically going to give me a false awareness of where the target
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actually is.
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So I want to be able to get set up without having to turn my head.
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So now if I pick that we'll come back here again.
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So if I pick that second white one from the left we'll adjust the stick just slightly.
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I feel like my alignment's pretty decent there.
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We'll be able to tell from down the line how good I actually do.
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We'll ball pretty much ended up at my target.
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We'll be able to see from the down line how close I was to my start line.
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But this is a great way to be able to add some randomness, choosing different targets,
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choosing different flights.
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But still work on a complementary skill like start line.
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I set this up for a lot of students.
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You can go as wide as you want so that you can hit from the same spot.
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But choose different targets.
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It's a good thing to do when a you're either getting ready for an important tournament.
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Or B, if you have a mechanical thought that's working really well, but it's kind of
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tenuous.
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Like you wouldn't be able to add anything to it without it breaking down.
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It takes a lot of thought.
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This is something that you can do in complement while you're putting in reps and refining
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a specific mechanical skill.
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So use the pick at fence in order to refine your start line to help you take your range
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game to the course.
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All right.
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So we did the demo.
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We'll do a little bit more of a fun one.
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We'll try to get it to start over that white, even though I'm going to hit a big recovery
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pull hook.
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So kind of sweeping draw.
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I feel like I missed my start line just a little bit to the right, but not terrible.
