WHY FIXING YOUR SWING ISN'T FIXING YOUR GOLF:
- Aug 30
- 3 min read
A Systems Thinking Approach to Better Practice
One of the traps in golf practice is continually searching for the next fix.
We hit a few poor shots, identify something in the technique, change it and things improve. Then another problem appears, so we find another fix.
Before long we've accumulated a collection of swing thoughts and drills that have all worked at some point, without necessarily becoming a better golfer.
This is where I think Systems Thinking provides an interesting way of looking at golf practice.
A golf swing isn't a collection of independent movements. Posture, balance, body movement, arms, wrists and club are all interacting. Change one part and something else will usually change with it.
So rather than asking whether an individual position looks correct, perhaps the more useful question is: Is this actually limiting the player's ability to perform the skill?
That's an important distinction.
A player can have unconventional posture or an unusual takeaway and still control the golf ball extremely well. Another player can look technically excellent and struggle with contact. Changing something simply because it looks wrong doesn't guarantee we've improved the whole system.
Golf doesn't give us the same problem twice
Think about a simple pitch shot. Different distances, lies, slopes, trajectories, green speeds and amounts of green to work with create almost unlimited possibilities.
We can't practise them all.
So perhaps the goal isn't to teach a golfer a technique to remember for every situation. It's to develop a golfer capable of adapting their technique to the situation in front of them.
That doesn't mean we stop fixing technique.
If contact is poor, work on contact. Simplify the problem and improve the feedback. Draw a line on the ground or hit pitch shots from smooth sand where you can clearly see where the club entered, how deep it travelled and where it exited.
Give the golfer an opportunity to recognise and stabilise better contact.
But then move on.
Narrow repair. Broad development. Random test.
I think this provides a simple framework for practice.
Narrow repair: Spend a short period working specifically on the problem. Simplify the environment, use repetition and increase the amount of useful feedback.
Broad development: Start changing distance, club, trajectory, target and lie. Keep the underlying skill but continually change the problem the golfer has to solve.
Random test: One ball, one target, one opportunity. Remove the drill, change shots every time, keep score or go onto the golf course.
In other words:
Fix a little. Train the range. Then test it like the game.
The important part is not allowing today's problem to hijack the entire practice session.
If a particular shot might occur once every few rounds, spending two hours perfecting it doesn't necessarily make sense simply because it's currently frustrating us. Practice time should reflect the demands of the game, not the size of our current frustration.
Spend enough time repairing something to begin stabilising it, then find out whether it survives variability.
If it doesn't, that's useful feedback. Return to it later rather than immediately adding another swing thought.
Golf has too many variables for us to prepare for every possible situation. What we can develop is a golfer with enough stability in the important parts of their technique to adapt when the situation changes.
That's ultimately what we're practising.
Not a collection of perfect solutions, but the ability to continually find one.
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