More Beginner Golf Swing Instruction – The Stance Phase – Don’t Just Stand There Do Something!

In yesterdays post – “Beginner Golf Swing Instruction – Finally Get a Grip on a Better Golf Swing!” – we discussed the grip and its effect upon golf swing control and power.

Today we continue our beginner golf swing instruction and focus upon the next area of swing importance – the golfer’s stance.

Most beginner golfers are right to assume a discussion upon stance to be some direction upon foot placement and swing address posture. In MOST beginner golf swing instruction programs these are the central themes of the course lessons on stance. GREAT beginner golf swing instruction programs, however, will extend their teachings on stance far beyond merely foot positioning and pose.

In the better programs beginner golfers learn to use the stance to help them survey the hole, contemplate the sequencing of their drives and visualize their balls line of flight.

In the book, “The Master Key to Success at Golf”, author Leslie King provides a general checklist for golfers to perform during the stance phase of their swing – helping them to increase their chances of a playing a successful hole.

King explains that;

“After the grip comes the stance. Grip the club correctly and stand properly to the ball in the address and the subsequent actions will be the more easily mastered. So do not rush these very necessary preliminaries.

You must be balanced and poised in the address, neither sloppy nor taut. On the first tee of any golf course any weekend you will see scores of players killing their chance of hitting the ball by the way they take up their stance.

Some crouch over the ball with the set of the shoulders entirely and irretrievably wrong. Others stand stiff-kneed and stiff-armed, and there are those who slump and droop like exhausted recruits awaiting dismissal at the end of a route march.

And you will find the player who, while standing reasonably well, is quite wrongly lined-up. The average golfer has a vague idea of aiming and lining-up the stance in relation to they intended line of flight. Asked how they contemplate their drive from the tee they usually replies that they look down the middle of the fairway and try to hit the ball there.

There is more to it than that. At a two-shot hole, or par four if you prefer it, the good golfer aims to dispatch their ball from point A, which is the tee, to point B which is a selected part of the fairway which they judge to be the best from which to play the second shot, that is the shot to point C, which is the green.

There are many good testing holes, well designed by a thinking architect where the player’s selection of point B will require careful thought because the obviously best spot on which to land the drive will also be the more dangerous with a hazard, or hazards, placed close to it. This leaves the player with the alternative choice of a bold shot which MUST be well struck and well aimed, or a line which is less ambitious, offering more scope for the avoidance of trouble but calling for a more difficult shot to the green.

However you visualize the shot which you seek to play at a particular hole this is the best way to set about taking aim. Stand a yard or two behind the ball after teeing it and survey the situation by taking a line from the teed ball to point B where you want to put it, and then along that same line on to a distant landmark, say a tall tree, a roof-top or a church spire.

Take up your stance parallel to that intended line of flight and check it by reference to that landmark in the distance. In this way you will not have your concentration disturbed by the sight of trouble lurking near your chosen point B, a consideration which you have already weighed up in your preliminary survey from behind the ball. Your concentration will remain on striking the ball in the direction of that particular landmark.

Similarly when you play your second shot, from point B to point C, you will be sizing up the requirements as you walk up to the ball from directly behind. Again pick an object beyond the green and concentrate on hitting the ball on a line towards that object with the club of the strength needed to drop your ball on the green.

I emphasize the need to concentrate on a distant landmark for full shots because of the danger of last moment fears breaking into the concentration. To make more certain of avoiding a bunker close to the spot on the fairway (in the case of the drive) and set into the green (in the case of the second shot) a subconscious alteration in the stance just before commencing the swing is liable to occur, enough in itself to send the ball off-line even if the swing remains undisturbed.

When you have decided on the shot you wish to play this is how you should go about the business of setting yourself up to play that shot.”

The great beginner golf swing instruction programs will certainly teach their students to implement these strategies each time they enter the golf stance phase of their swing.

Armed with this checklist the golfer will have better perspective with which to successfully play the hole.

Get more success out of your golf game by learning to get more out of your stance!

Check back for more beginner golf swing instruction to help improve your game!