Swing Thoughts

Illustrated Guides

Let Swing Thoughts Steer your Golf Game

This section provides a wide variety of helpful swing thoughts – or swing keys – to fill your golfing head with. They are fully illustrated and a detailed description along with tips are provided to make sure they are correctly incorporated into your game or practice sessions.

Categories:

What are swing thoughts?

A swing thought highlights a very specific element of the swing that a golfer tries to focus on when hitting a golf shot. They often take the form of metaphors that lead your brain (and muscles) into executing specific actions.

Why are they useful?

They are best used whenever you are trying to correct something in particular or whenever you need to bring your golf swing back to the basics, or to one of its core elements. Over the course of a long enough stretch of time a golf swing will gradually and incrementally change and it will do so often without the golfer realizing it. In trying to hit better shots golfers will incorporate minor adjustments which when combined will result in a dramatically different golf swing. Focusing on key swing thoughts will allow a golfer to bring his swing back to where it was, or to where it needs to be.

Alternatively, focusing on an entirely new swing key can help any golfer who is struggling with a particular aspect of his game fix that problematic area.

How many should I have in my head at one time?

While very useful individually, filling one’s head with too many thoughts can be disorienting and will lead to a lack of focus, which negates the key objective being pursued.

Golfers that play at their best will usually carry no swing thoughts at all during a round and instead will swing instinctively at the ball. Indeed, a study found 75 of PGA Professionals have no swing thoughts at all. At most, a typical golfer should refrain from having more than one swing thought at a time when playing a round of golf. However, whenever practicing and trying to groove a swing it can be helpful to experiment with various swing thoughts. Still, it is important to remember that swing keys steer your brain into focusing on a specific aspect of your swing. And filling one’s head with too many at a time will negatively crowd your brain and will not allow it to focus properly.