Let us use this off-season to improve our bad habits and replace them with new good habits supported by good concepts. Here we are going to look at what makes an efficient golf swing.
An efficient swing understands the important relationships between these concepts:
EFFORT: Percent of maximum energy expended
RELIABILTY: Percent of center of the clubface contact consistency
DISTANCE: Percent of distance relative to all things happening perfectly
DIRECTION: Percent of directional consistency
There are all kinds of relationships between these concepts and here are but a few: If our desire to create distance is inconsiderate of our need for reliability and direction, our percentage of mistakes goes way up. There is a high correlation between excessive effort and a high number of mistakes. Conversely, the shorter we hit the ball, the less we can afford mistakes.
Highly efficient players understand the following table.
EXAMPLES:
100 % effort = 50 % reliability = 90 % distance = 50 % direction
80 % effort = 80 % reliability = 90 % distance = 80 % direction
60 % effort = 90 % reliability = 80 % distance = 90 % direction
Try to find the BEST combination of effort, reliability, distance and direction for your game. For most players, this means putting a higher value on reliability and direction and less on effort and distance.
Increasing our potential for distance will be attained by a chain reaction involving the right amount of speed, from the right place, at the right time. This is not attained by moving everything as fast as we can. We will discuss speed, as well as other vital attributes of efficient golf, further in future articles. If our level of effort can be reduced, it is easier to attain balance, rhythm, timing, and clubface awareness. Speed will become easier to create once we possess these vital attributes. These attributes are most often learned and maintained by practicing at much less than full effort. If we cannot control our level of effort, it will be almost impossible to attain efficiency.
