Faith is a huge part of a golf swing. On the golf course, you can be your own best friend or your worst enemy. If you don’t commit to your swing, bad or good, then your ball will fly with equal lack of commitment.
Here ’s food for thought: After you’ve done all the tedious work of the setup, aim and alignment, concentration on your form and takeaway, the real fun begins. Swing away! By the time the club reaches the top of the backswing and you start to aggressively come down toward the ball, there is nothing at that point that you can do to change the fate of the flight path of the ball. What’s done is done. All that is left to do is commit and not hold back.
Now let us be clear, committing to your swing or swinging hard is very different than hitting hard or efforting the ball. When we say commit we don’t intend for you to put more effort into your swing. We mean to say that you should give yourself the freedom to fully execute your swing, even if you feel it is flawed. Commitment is not effort, but rather the act of not holding anything back. The sensation in the commitment to your swing should still feel relaxed. Just because you’re swinging a club at 100+ miles an hour doesn’t mean you should feel any tension or muscling of the club. The key is really the slow build of the takeaway, the hip turn and wrist hinge before impact, and a finished following-through that sends the ball where you want to see it go.
So does this mean you commit to a bad swing? Absolutely. Once your downswing begins there is nothing you can do to fix an error. Everything happens so fast that any adjustment at this point is futile. And in fact, thinking about it as you swing will only tense you up and divert your concentration away from your movement and the ball.
Once you have performed your backswing, you need to let the work go. Swing and finish. Once done you can analyze your ending position, your setup and backswing so as to make adjustments for your next swing. Don’t forget to note how high, far and straight your ball has traveled. Where your ball lands is the best assessment of a good or bad swing.