Improve Golf Swing Performance – Slow and Steady Always Wins!

There are no shortcuts to improve golf swing performance. In golf there is neither overnight success nor instant gratification. All golfers must travel a slow and steady path to improve golf swing performance and play.

It is this painfully slow and frustrating learning process which causes some golfers to abandon their efforts to gradually build upon long lasting swing fundamentals. Instead these golfers chase after the false and temporary joy which comes from achieving immediate results. Simply put – this is not a winning strategy to pursue to improve golf swing performance.

In the book, “On Learning Golf”, author Percy Boomer explains the best way for golfers to improve golf swing performance is by exercising “self-control.” He believes focusing on the end result alone causes golfers to slow their progress and lose their confidence.

Boomer writes;

“I suppose everyone would agree that “self-control”…is a priceless quality. But how achieve it? It can only be done by building one’s golf into a closed, self-controlling circle, and then keeping extraneous matters outside that circle.

The reason why the neophyte and the player needing re-education find control so elusive is simply that their golf has not yet been built into such a closed circle. And if they only knew it they make things far worse by trying to learn golf and play golf at the same time. When that happens, pity the poor teacher!

The pupil, let us say, is making good progress. They are beginning to coordinate their game and build up their controls, when they suddenly take themselves off for an afternoon in an entirely different atmosphere—that of competitive golf, in which style means nothing and immediate results everything. Of course their budding style and incipient control go overboard and end-gaining dominates. Everything is subordinate to getting the ball into the hole…It is only an intentionally established set of controls that can resist the temptation to force and guide the ball when much is at stake.

These controls are the tiling! Their creation and development must be the constant aim of both pupil and teacher. Everything helping their development must be encouraged, everything hindering it avoided. Their building up is largely unconscious and unnoticed, indeed even a successful pupil will often feel that little progress is being made—until perhaps quite suddenly they will be surprised to find themselves playing effective, confident golf.

I remember with special pleasure how that happened to a young pupil of mine, Mile Aline de Gunsbourg. She had been in my hands since her childhood and her first experience of a major tournament was when she went over to England for the Ladies’ Open. She actually led the field in the qualifying rounds and was only put out on the last green in the semi-final by Pam Barton, the eventual winner.

On her return she said to me, “I did not know I could play like that! No one was more surprised than I was. I just played—and everything went right.”
I was delighted, but not so surprised. I knew she had the golf in her and that sooner or later the controls we were building would enable her to play it.

But I was delighted, because you would not normally expect a young pupil to play a bit above her best on such a nerve-testing occasion.

So when a golfer says to me, “I must learn to concentrate—concentrate—concentrate!” I counter with: “No, you must build controls—controls—controls!”

To improve golf swing performance golfers must build and practice “control”!

Try following Boomer’s advice when you find yourself tempted to chase after immediate results.

Check back soon for more posts and tips to improve golf swing performance!