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This was one of the more impressive swing transformations I’ve ever seen.
It’s a friend of mine, who struggled with a severe over-the-top move and hit wicked slices because of it.
Let’s call my friend Jake. Here’s what Jake’s golf swing looked like before.
And after one, one-hour lesson, here’s what it looked like after.
I was impressed and intrigued, so I called up Matt Wilson, a Golf Digest Best In State teacher who is the Director of Instruction at Baltusrol Golf Club. He’s the coach who helped my friend make this change.
What was this sorcery? And how can golfers learn from it?
Here’s what he said…
Visual cues: A golf swing improvement cheat code
When it comes to working on your swing, there are two main methods that most people use: You can use a training aid (Example: Tommy Fleetwood swinging through sticks), or you can use a swing thought or feel (Example: ‘Keep your left arm straight!’)
But there’s a third way, and it’s so effective many coaches consider it a kind of golf swing improvement cheat code.
It’s called a visual cue. Think of it like a visual swing thought. Instead of focusing on a body part, you’re thinking about something outside your body.
As Wilson explains:
“A visual cue allows golfers to recruit more freedom in their body to swing the way they want to. With a narrow internal focus, golfers’ movement can get very restricted; visual cueing allows golfers to be way more reactive and positive, without restricting their movements.”
Matt, like a lot of top coaches, says he uses visual cues a lot with his students, and it’s how he helped my friend.
When you look at Jake’s new swing from a different camera angle, you’ll notice that Matt put an alignment rod on the ground, about a foot outside his trail foot. His instruction to Jake was clear: See that stick? Try to point the butt end of your grip, outside the stick.
From a technical perspective, this pulled Jake’s trail shoulder so it was more externally rotated, and gave him more side bend, which shallowed him out and fixed his over-the-top move. But of course, Jake didn’t know any of them. He was just trying to point the butt end of his grip outside the stick.
“It keeps their attention more on a task, instead of trying to desperately control a movement,” Wilson says.
4 tips on using visual cues
As for some general takeaways, according to Matt…
3 visual cues you can use
There are tons of visual cues you can use. Here’s a couple Matt says he uses:
Or, of course, the over-the-top fix which worked so well for Jake. But whatever it is, keep your swing thoughts visual, and you’ll start seeing your golf swing land in some magical places/
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com