If you are looking for ways to help your game, welcome to the club. As a life-long student of the game (sometimes an A student and other times a D) I continually look for easy ways to improve my golf game. With advent of the internet, the knowledge of how to lower my golf scores is at the touch of my fingers. Or is it?
The sheer volume of information available in seconds is amazing. There is no area of our game where we cannot find someone offering advice on how to improve our skills. This voluminous data is both good and bad. Trying to sift through what is great advice compared to what is so-so is no small feat. It is a challenge at best to find the right information to fit our game. Regardless of your score and skill level, there are fundamentals of golf that seem to be reoccurring in every article I read and video I watch. It all boils down to basically one tome of data.
Before going further with my above train of thought there is something I wanted to quickly present to you the reader. The concept is called circular reporting. Basically, circular reporting where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. (Wikipedia) The challenge the internet offers is that one idea can be espoused by many different sources making it look like the information is relevant. That is why I try (at the Grateful Golfer) to offer information that I have looked into before posting. Sometimes the information is backed up by my experience and other times I consider the source. For some reason, I thought it was important to talk about this topic today.
Now, back to my article about golf.
The primary source, in my opinion, where most golf lessons and advice is rooted is from in many different sources. If you look at what Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Harvey Penick, or Bobby Jones said in their instructional literature, you will find basically the same information. It is not unusual that the legends of old and new rely on the same fundamental data to teach the sport to which they excelled. What they have done to make it their own is adjust it to their game. They slightly modify the grip, stance, backswing, downswing and follow through to match their abilities and physical capabilities. And there dear readers is the rub.
When finding our game, we need to work our way through the information, develop the knowledge and then apply it to OUR game. There is no fast track or short cut to this process; at least none that I have found. So if you are wanting to improve your golf game, you will need to put in the time understanding the fundamentals of what you want to change and then follow the path to making it unique to your game. If you think about it, this applies to many aspects of our lives, but that is a different conversation.
Over the years I have tried to follow the process of gathering information, turning it to knowledge, and then applying it to my game. My greatest successes occurred when I avoid any shortcuts. I realize this is not necessarily the answer you are looking for, however in the golf world this is the process I found that works best. I am all ears if you have another solution.
I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!