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I was reading through the late George Knudson’s book, The Natural Golf Swing, and noticed this tip, which I hadn’t before. Knudson was a Canadian who played on the PGA Tour in the 1970s and had one of the best swings the Tour has ever seen. What he wrote might be just the thing you need to begin hitting solid golf shots.
Knudson said that early in his development as a professional he would always hit his driver on the heel of the club, breaking the wood on that side and hitting “these ugly little shots.”
“One day, I decided to try to catch the ball way out on the toe of the driver. I set up the ball on the toe and figured that’s where I would make contact, It wasn’t the sweet spot, but setting the ball up on the sweet spot hadn’t been doing me any good either. So what happens? I hit this thing and it files off the club like a rocket compared to what I’d been doing.
“…suddenly, after setting the ball up on the toe, the ball was coming off the face solidly. I decided that the clubhead must be pulling out, and accepted that…. I didn’t know that I was suddenly catching the ball in the centre of the clubface because of the centrifugal force that was pulling the clubhead out and down.”
What Knudson is getting at is that the centrifugal force of the swing pulls your arms and they straighten out a bit – they get longer. When they carry the club into the ball, longer, the center of the clubface will be lined up with the ball, if you start from the right place.
Remember that 5-iron you hit a few months ago that took off like it was launched and you wondered, “Where did that come from?” What you did was finally hit the ball in the center of the clubface, that’s all.
To do what Knudson suggests, you have to know where the toe of the club is. Look at the grooves on the face of an iron. They run out to a spot about an inch or so from the extreme toe of the club, and then there is smooth, polished metal. Put the center of the ball on that boundary between the grooves and the polished metal.
With a driver, it’s a little harder to find the right spot, because the ball sitting up on a tee introduces a parallax effect. The ball will look farther out toward the toe than it really is. Lining up the far end of the clubface with the center of the ball, as you see it on the tee, is a good place to start. Because driver heads come in different shapes, you will have to do a bit of experimenting to find just the right alignment with the driver you use.
If you want to hit the ball longer and straighter, there are two rules. Rule 1: Hit the ball on the center of the clubface. Rule 2: Hit the ball on the center of the clubface. (Same rule, isn’t it?) Forget swing speed, wrist cock, and all that. Hit the ball flush and you’ll get the distance and accuracy you’ve been wanting. What you have just read is one good way to do it.
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Source by Bob E. Jones
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