“You gotta dance with who you brung” – Sam Snead
Post written by Ian Hardie
Even though most golfers on the planet
Know that they aren’t going to hit the golf ball
Dead straight every time
Most golfers are able to hit shots that are fairly accurate and consistent
However, nearly all golfers have experienced the sudden arrival
Of unwelcome hooks or slices on the golf course
You can be playing along having a perfectly normal game
Then all of a sudden you hit a shot that uncontrollably
Curves away like a banana
For most golfers their first tendency is to panic a little
Then follow it up with an incredibly quick ‘brain and body scan’
Done while you are still standing there watching the ball curve away from your intended target
Hoping you can figure out what has gone wrong
Which generally doesn’t help that much
Most often your next shot does the same thing
As does the next
And the next
Until all of a sudden the golfer has a brainwave
‘To get rid of these hooks – if I adjust my technique and try to hold the face of the club open’
‘Then I will be able to hit the ball relatively straight again’
Or on the other side of it
‘I can stop this slicing if I adjust things to try and make sure the face of the club is closing over as I hit the ball’
‘Then I will be able to hit the ball relatively straight again’
These are both logical thoughts but I’m sure most of you know
What actually happens
Is that any skill or confidence that you had left with your golf shots
Disappears for the rest of the day
Mainly due to the reasons that I wrote about in the post “Does your mechanic fix your car while you’re driving on the highway?”
Which if you haven’t read it yet – you can read here
To quickly summarize it, it said
At no point in time while you are playing a game of golf
Should you try adjusting things with your technique
When you are playing golf – you play
If the ball is not going where you want it to go
Allow for the curve and play with it
When you are finished your round
In the isolated surrounds of the practice area
That is when you adjust technique
And sort things out
So what should you do if you start hooking or slicing during your golf game?
Exactly what one of the world’s greatest golfers used to do
Which was the quote at the start of this post
“You gotta dance with who you brung”
Sam Snead used to say if he was having trouble hooking the ball during his round of golf
He would play the for the hook on the course
Then afterwards he would go to the practice range to work out what was going wrong
Which means of course he would aim sufficiently sideways
To allow the hook to happen and still get his ball to the target
Similarly, if he was having trouble slicing the ball
He would do the same thing
Accepting and playing with the slice on the golf course
Then go to the practice range after the round and sort it all out
Considering that Snead won a record 82 PGA Tour events, including Seven Majors
This thinking was obviously very effective
If you want the technical reason behind his logic
The causes of a hook are generally the absolute opposite to the causes of the slice
When the golfer starts trying to manipulate one or more things during the golf action
Without adjusting all the other contributing factors
It just creates a bigger problem on the course
Not to mention giving the brain a heap of work to do while you are in the middle of hitting your shot
Which is not what you want at all
It’s why in general, most golfers’ games simply collapse
If they start messing around with technique while playing
So next time the hooks or slices suddenly turn up during your round
“Dance with who you brung”
By adjusting your aiming and playing with the curve or shot that you have going on
Then afterwards or the next day
Sort it out on the practice area
Or go see a PGA Professional Golf Teacher – like this guy and get them to help you
Play Well
