You CAN Achieve Golf Swing Excellence

I love to read and hear stories about the pros working on improving their golf swings. Even when their swings are great, they are still striving to make them better. Here are some thoughts from hall-of-famer Nick Price that put that "lifelong refinement" into perspective. These appear in the excellent book, Fearless Golf, by Dr. Gio Valiante.

Part of the reason I have been able to compete for so long is because every year I have refined my golf swing...I have worked diligently to improve my swing that little fraction more because the fact is, it is imperfectible. To me the swing is like a square block of wood, and your goal is to shape that block into the most perfect circle you can. You can get it to a circle pretty quickly, but after you get the general shape right, then you have to refine constantly and perpetually, and go from a hammer and a chisel, to a 50 grit sandpaper, to 100 grit sandpaper, to 1000 grit sandpaper, to steel wool, to polish. And every year you refine, regardless of how good your previous year was, you try to get better. And that is what I have tried to do. Better and better every year regardless of where I am. Excellence, it's like a process, you know? No matter where you are, you just keep trying to refine.

I like that comment, "No matter where you are, you just keep trying to refine." That applies to recreational players as well as the pros. This is the kind of thinking that inspires me to pick a Positive Golf Improvement Project each year (see previous post). I have been playing golf for more than 40 years , and I am still practicing that "golf swing refinement," both with inner mental golf ideas and physical game techniques. In fact, I just released a new e-book that addresses one of the ideas that has helped me enormously in my golf swing improvement, and that is the "swing versus hit" idea. In my GOODBYE HIT, HELLO SWING e-book, I cover six steps to an effortless golf swing motion, including ideas and techniques to switch from being a "hitter" (someone who hits AT the ball) to a "swinger." This "hitter" tendency is so common that Michael McTeigue said this in his book THE KEYS TO THE EFFORTLESS GOLF SWING: "My teaching experience indicates that the hit impulse - the automatic tendency to strike at the ball - is the foremost reason why so few golfers break 80 in their lifetimes." I know this tendency was a hindrance to my golf swing improvement, and now I am passing along pointers that helped me to successfully change my ideas and techniques and develop the effortless golf swing motion that I was striving for in my "lifelong refinement." Watch for my video golf swing tip coming soon to YouTube to illustrate these ideas in action!

Here's to great golf ideas and great golf swing "refinement" in 2008!

Rick Semple
Positive Golfer
Co-Founder, TheHeartofGolf.com
http://www.TheHeartofGolf.com