1 small thing to notice in your practice swing that can improve the actual swing

Don't beat yourself up, says Jeff Ritter. Instead, take a swing at exercise.

But actually practice. Imagine a school play.

“The whole point of training is to make sure you don't suck,” Ritter said. “So if everybody knows all their lines and we go, hey, it looks like it's going to be a good show, let's put on a show.”

It also applies to golf, said the senior coach.

He was speaking in a video he recently posted on his Instagram account, and you can watch it in full here, or more. The takeaway is not to swing for the sake of swinging before the shot. Make it count. Practice.

And try to notice where your club is down – and adjust, if necessary.

“So in golf,” Ritter said in the video, “when you're standing next to the ball and you're practicing, and you see the low back here. [at a spot behind the ball], it won't be a good shot. So on the golf course, you want to stand next to your ball and just brush the grass a few times with your weight forward and your arms straight and once you see some evidence, that's going to be a good show. You just make a bigger turn and go.”

In the video, Ritter also gave a tip on how to create a better contact. In the caption of his Instagram post, he referred to it as a tip on how to predictably hit a shot.

In short, you want to brush the grass on the “target side of the ball,” or just pass the ball. And you do that?

The weight is forward.

“So, okay, what helps control where the club lands?” Ritter said in the video. “Well, for us, it will be our weight forward when we hit, right? So if my weight is more 50/50 when I pass, I might end up back here [at a spot behind the ball]. So when I go over, I feel like my weight is on my front foot … and my arms stretch out in my direction, and then we'll see the brush up here. [at a spot just past the ball].”

Notably, the author of this article has used the advice repeatedly over the past few years. It came about after watching a GOLF.com video where six-time winner Lee Trevino talked about how the arms in the golf game work like limbs of a tree, and that the feet must adapt to adapt to the ground – and the author began to use. thought in practice is changing.

In Ritter's video, he sums things up this way:

“So the most important thing,” he said, “is to hit the ground in the right place with a reasonable angle of attack, which means we hit the ground slowly.” If our weight is back, the low point will go back. So the weight is forward, the arms are straight, the practice is varied with the variation of the exercise. “

Editor's note: If you're interested, you can read Trevino's advice at by clicking here, or by scrolling down. The article is titled “Why your ball position is hurting your golf swing, according to Lee Trevino.”

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What does legendary golfer Lee Trevino, who doubles as the best golfer of all time, ask when the opportunity arises? With the seemingly endless amount of golf wisdom he possesses, I decided to keep it simple:

“What advice do you have for golfers who are struggling to hit the ball hard?”

For a moment, I was worried the question was too broad, but Trevino, speaking at the 2021 Berenberg Invitational, didn't miss a beat.

“Your arms are too long,” he says. “You must understand that your arms are like limbs attached to the trunk of a tree. My body is the trunk, and my arms are the limbs. They toss it back and forth.”

The analogy is useful because it describes something that many professionals think about: the “range” of their golf game. Your arms will be parallel as you swing, Trevino says, which means you need to monitor the actual space between you and the golf ball you're trying to hit.

And in that, nothing is more important than your football position.

Let's go back to Lee's analogy of the tree branch. Your arms – limbs – swing back and forth along the trunk of the tree. As your arms do this, there is a point where they start to move up and around your body, away from the golf ball. That's why, Trevino says, a common mistake occurs when golfers play the ball too far forward in their stance: Their arms start to rise, which brings the club along with them, leading to low shots, whiffs and other mishits.

“They come before they hit the golf ball,” Trevino said. “The ball goes down, it goes to the left, and you catch a little ball.”

That's why Trevino tells golfers to play the ball and get back into shape more than they think. It will help them to make a compressed strike on the golf ball and send the ball straight.

You can watch Trevino in his own words below.

Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Editor

Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for planning, writing and promoting news on the golf course. And when he's not writing about how to hit the golf ball forward and straight, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash down his scores. You can contact him about any of these topics – his news, his game or his beer – at [email protected].