Todd Sones is a Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 Instructor. He also serves on the Golf Academy of America’s National Advisory Board and says to make a change, often a player has to feel something exaggerated in order to make that change – no matter what part of his game he’s working on.
As Todd demonstrates in the following video, feel vs. real applies to several different aspects of the golf swing:
* Weight Shift = a good weight shift is where you’re on your lead leg at impact. If a player is making a huge lateral move off the ball, Todd will tell him to feel like he’s coiling more toward his lead leg. If he has a player who stays too much on his lead leg, he may tell him to feel like he’s coiling over his trailing hip. Does he really want him to do these things? No. But what the player is feeling is probably not really what he’s doing.
* Posture = players who set up too bent over will probably feel like they’re standing straight up when they’re really in the proper posture. Players who set up too tall will probably feel like they’re too bent over when they’re really in the proper posture.
* Swing Plane = players who feel like they’re going straight back but who may really be coming too far to the inside, are going to feel like they’re coming way too far outside when they’re actually taking the club back on plane.
Feel and real are often different, which is why Todd says video is so important. It allows him to show people that what they’re doing is really different than what they’re feeling. A lot of times, it takes what feels like an exaggerated change to get better.