Why a Golf Student was a Fidgeter
Why a Golf Student was a Fidgeter
by Dr. T. J. Tomasi
Keiser University College of Golf Senior Faculty and Director of Research
Brian was a professional golf player who could not get comfortable at address. In six lessons with me, his swing had improved, and so had his ball-striking; but, he was still having trouble pulling the trigger. After further analysis, I concluded that his visual system was working too well – it was too dominant. “Sometimes, especially on the golf course, I can’t line up to my target correctly – I can’t get comfortable” he said. As I often do when a student reaches a sticking point, I asked him to talk me through his entire routine, step by step, thought-for-thought – and I listened.
Brian had read my book “The 30Second Golf Swing,” so his routine was flawless until he arrived at the point where he grounded the club behind the ball – that’s when the fidgets started. He’d look at the target, then back to the ball, adjust his shoulders, then look back to the target, then adjust his clubface, then his feet, etc. He explained that it just ‘didn’t feel right.’ Note that he said ‘feel right,’ not ‘look right.’ He said that when he felt that he aimed correctly, he felt solidness in the arches of his feet at address.
The world floods in through our senses, the most dominant of which is the visual system, a source of data so potent that under stress it can overwhelm the other four senses. When this happens, the brain stops processing information from the other senses, creating a state of visual hyper-focus a feel- the player can’t afford. Players like Brian interpret their body’s orientation in the world primarily in terms of feel, and this was exactly what was happening as he positioned his club to the ball. Brian’s visual system overwhelmed the information from his feel sense, and he couldn’t “find” his own body in relation to the target – a problem that manifested in a definitive fidget. The fix included my advice to Brian as follows: Stand behind the ball and prepare for the shot as always, then, without looking at the target, address the ball and close both eyes. Adjust until comfortable, and then open your eyes to see how well you are aimed. We started with putting and the process of recapturing feel sensitization by laying down a string for alignment and using a shaft so Brian could develop the feel of the putting motion as he slid the putter back and forth (see photo below).
Dr. Tomasi setting up Brian with string training station
Square for Brian in putting is railroad tracks, where the outside rail is the target line and the inside rail is his shoulders, hips and feet. The two rails are parallel like a railroad track. I asked him to line up using the aids to guide his geometry and then close his eyes and stroke the putt. Then I asked him to go through taking his set up and putting with his eyes closed. Once he got his feel back to preeminence where it belonged in the hierarchy of senses, we moved to the full swing. After about 10 repetitions of the task in the full swing, he stopped fidgeting. When he opened his eyes he found that his feel system, free of dominating visual data, had made the necessary adjustments.
This routine was successful not because of an absence of visual information — the visual input was gathered while behind the ball. It was successful because of the absence of competition between the senses at address. Visual information is necessary to find the target; but for Brian, it was not sufficient to find himself in relation to the target.
Brian is now feeling the shot at address by closing his eyes. This way his sense of feel becomes an integral part of solving the point-A to point-B problem he is faced with on every shot. Point-B is the target and point-A is the player, while the swing motion is the vehicle that provides the energy to move the ball from point-A to point-B. Overcome as he was by a flood of visual information, Brain’s point-A fell off his radar.
Takeaway: Feel players must be very careful not to allow the sense of vision to overwhelm their sense of feel.
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