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Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

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Playing Golf As A Feel Golfer

The feel golfer plays well, when they have a clear sense of one part of their body.

  • Hips back - are your bending from your hips?
  • relax knees
  • arms hang
  • grip (location and strength)

The feel player’s wiring is located in the brainstem cerebellum. This is an instinctual player who is naturally comfortable with executing the golf movement. This player sees the target and feels the shot in relevant parts of the body.

  • Uses body part awareness
  • Stillness, being set creates motion
  • Fluid effortless jock walk/swing
  • Feels Aids: Weighted aids, feel gadgets
  • Comfort oriented, feel dress
  • Clubs selected on feel
  • Learns by “hands on” non-verbal
  • Speech:I feel
  • Comfortable with body
  • Concentration = focus on stillness/tension
  • Swing programmed by body awareness
  • Mantra: “Don’t swing until you’re ready”
  • Stress: Being rushed/tension
  • Stay in present by finding inner quiet place
  • Hurry = bad shots
  • Eyes on ball at address
  • Key: Quietness of body awareness, intensity/relaxation
  • Create body awareness, specific body part to target
  • Stop: Visualizing/tempo
  • Start the quiet/feel
  • Continue: The silence/feel
  • Bad play = rushing, bad positions
  • Low voice. Slow talk.
  • Art, mechanics, nonacademic, entrepreneurial doers
  • Lazy Boys, Rock and Roll, Country

    • Images for Feel Players

    • Sense your joints feeling oily, like a three-in-one oil had lubricated your arms and shoulders.
    • Sense your feet feeling like you were bare-footed in warm mud.
    • Make your shoulder turn feel like an ICE SKATER in a spin move.
    • Make your club feel light as a feather or heavy as a sledge hammer.
    • Sense your hips as the motor of your golf engine.
    • Be able to feel the back of the left hand move toward the target.

    Tips for Feel Players

    Use your awareness of your body to create shots. If your key trigger point is your left hand, then create shots with your awareness of your left hand when you swing toward your target. Once you get your target (a simple quick procedure for you), take your time getting comfortable, building your nest, settle in, get quiet and then hit it!

    Wear comfortable clothes. Buy ultra comfortable shoes. Buy your clubs on how they feel. Comfort and body awareness is your deal.

    When practicing, work on your mechanics without a target. Isolate a body part, get that part in the correct position and see what happens. Don’t be afraid of changing your awareness to another body part to experiment. For feel players, hooking the ball means your upper body is going faster than your lower body. Slicing comes from the lower body out-racing the upper half. So, you might want to focus on your right knee to shape shots. Go slower for draws and faster for fades.

    The key for good play for you is getting set before you take the club back. Don’t try to visualize or work on your tempo! Use feel to play and to correct your swing errors.

    Find a feel player as your instructor. Watch Fred Couples, Ernie Els.

    The key to all of this is the answer to the question: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO TAKE THE CLUB BACK?

    The feel golfer will answer, “when I feel a stillness, quietness, a peace that tells me to go.”

    For more details on this system, check out Dr. Bill Campbell's program "Hard Wired for Golf"http://hardwiredforgolf.com/

Tags: Mental Game

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This video is playing golf as a field golfer.

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So as a field golfer there's a couple things that you're going to try to focus on.

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But the basic rules are you need to figure out what your trigger is for swinging the club.

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Whether it's a trigger for taking the club away.

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I've had golfers to focus on exactly what part of their body controls the takeaway.

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Whether it's pushing into the ground, the hands, the body, the shoulder, etc.

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Or when the downswing starts because that's when all the explosive movements that a lot of

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field players identify with.

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So I've had some field players who are very good.

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If I do the right transition, if I focus on kind of one key movement, all the other parts

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of the swing unfold.

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That's great for a playing thought.

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Now when you're practicing and you're going through different drills, you can use tempos

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and you can use rhythms and you can put shafts on the ground or clubs in your way in order

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to kind of get these images of where the club's going to swing.

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But ultimately all that you really care about is developing this field.

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So you want to be careful with getting two caught up in focusing on tempo, two caught up

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in trying to get the perfect imagery when you're on the course.

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You want to build a pre-sharp routine where you're allowed to stay over the ball until

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you feel very, very calm and you feel like I've got this intention to swing.

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I'm a field golfer so I can only describe it as you feel this urge to swing almost like

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an urge to sneeze.

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Like my body has to swing right now or I'm going to get in trouble.

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And what you'll find is that you will get in trouble if you ignore that urge.

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So if I swing when I don't have one of those urges, it's typically when I'm going to hit my

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workshops.

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Now that's kind of the nuts and bolts of how to use this pre-sharp routine as a field player.

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Basically I've already done my thought process.

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I'm going to kind of find a way to get into a calm state, something like urnials or

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Fred couples.

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You'll see there can be movement over the ball, absolutely.

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But then when I feel like I'm almost ready, I get

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calm and I wait for that urge.

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Now it is very possible to store stress as a field golfer in a field sense.

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And what that would mean is that if you get over the ball and you feel kind of like Kevin

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nodded a while back where I just can't pull the trigger, I don't feel comfortable.

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I don't feel right.

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That basically means that you need to use some of your pre-sharp routine or use some

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of your training time on the range to work on your pre-sharp routine so that you can

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practice getting into this calm state.

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It's not something that happens just automatically, it's something that you actually have

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to train.

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So as a field golfer, pay attention to specifics, specific part of your body that's controlling

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the swing.

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And I'll give you a quick little exercise that I've done with a lot of field golfer.

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So you're going to stand up if you're sitting there watching this in front of your computer

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or on your phone.

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You're going to stand up and you're going to close your eyes and just listen to my voice.

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I want you to try to feel the tip of your nose.

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So you're not going to touch it with your hands unless you have to.

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But try to put all your feel, all your attention right there.

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Feel exactly what's happening to the tip of your nose.

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Now go down and feel your right big toe.

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If you need to, you can wiggle it around but you're going to feel your right big toe.

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Now go back to your nose.

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Now go back to your toe.

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Now try to do both.

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Now give you a couple of seconds there to try to do both and what most golfers in fact, every

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golfer I've ever done this with will say that it's impossible to feel both.

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I learned this little exercise from Dr. Bill Campbell.

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I think it's brilliant.

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But basically what it shows is that you can't focus on exactly what two parts of your body

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are doing at once.

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So when you're playing golf you need to have either a feel that happens in a sequence.

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So you could have a feel like, okay my backswing feel is there, my transition feels there

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and my release feels there and I blend those into one feeling to play with.

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Or you could figure out, well if I just do the transition everything falls in line.

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So you can either have a sequence of feels or you can have one feel but you can't have

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two feels at once.

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You can't be focusing on what the arms are doing in transition and the body.

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So what you end up having to do is you have to use your practice time to figure out exactly

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which one of those controls your swing.

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Once you know that it'll be that much easier for you to take it to the course and this

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is the thought process you have to have if you're going to build your pre-shot routine

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as a field golfer.
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