Swing Fault Assessment

One of the great mysteries of golf is how you can be hitting perfect one day and missing everything the next. In response, you may change one thing and three others change. Furthermore, what works one day may not be the fix the next day. This is why it may take so long to get a feel of what the real root cause is. It is also the reason why many get trapped into the endless-tuning mindset.

There are two flavors of swing fault assessment: play and practice. On the course, there’s an ideal balance between constant swing tinkering and accepting what you have for the day.

In play, as addressed in Golf Shot Routines, a good shot is reinforced (internal celebration, let the feel of the swing sink in) and other shots are observed without judgement. If a poor result has a minor, known fix–something you have practiced–it may be worth a shot if the fault occurs a second time. Otherwise, notice what happened and let it go. You don’t want to assume a pattern based on one or two shots–not even one or two rounds. And, you want to focus on the current shot, not what’s done.

In practice, remain objective and take action on recent observations. Use practice to see if you can repeat the fault consistently and figure out how to remedy it. To that end, you may use the following framework during practice sessions.

Swing Fault Framework

Baseline

You need to understand what the starting point is. Record your swing. Ideally from two angles (face-on and down the line). Remember that feel isn’t real so the more that you can use reality to inform your feel the better.

Flight shows what happened at impact. Thoroughly understanding the relationship between target line, swing path, and club face are critical to assessing ballflight. Starting direction is most related to the orientation of the clubface at impact. The curve, or second half of the shot, is your swing path in relation to your target line.

If you know your default shape and your default miss, you should have a good idea of your swing path bias.

Experiment

Start with a few normal swings. Make certain that the issue you are troubleshooting is manifesting. Set an intention of what you are going to fix.

When attempting to address a fault, change one thing at a time–aka, controlled or isolated-variable testing. When you have an idea of what works, test your fix using variable practice and try adding stressors to help with transference and see if the fix works under pressure.

Record

Throughout the experiment log per-shot data to measure the impact of the change. Even without a launch monitor, you can log characteristics of the shot. Was it your normal shot? How accurate was the result to your target. If doing this manually, keep it simple: accuracy of shot by logging hit or the size of the miss (hit, miss, big miss), and if a miss, which side of the target.

By recording, you are also slowing down your practice a little. Good deliberate shots are important to effective practice and learning; don’t rush through the bucket.

Assessment

After completing practice, or our experiment, review the data and determine findings. Whether or not you have empirical data (e.g., launch monitor, recordings), it is a good idea to write down what the experiment was. What swing fault was addressed, fixes tried, and what fix worked best. Down the line, this data can be used to determine propensities and remedies that are most effective. This is also something that can be used by AI to summarize and answer questions (such as, what works for fixing my hook?).

Summary

This approach doesn’t need to be overly formal and it shouldn’t be greatly time-consuming. Keep it simple yet structured. Don’t get distracted from the short term goal of fixing a swing fault or two during a practice session. This will also help you develop feel and the ability to better troubleshoot your swing. Both of these things are slow to develop. By paying attention to them as dedicated tasks, it at least reduces some of the hours needed. Additionally, a great coach will help you learn to self-coach.