As I was going through George Knudson’s book The Natural Golf Swing I came across this tip that I had never seen before. Knudson, a Canadian player on the PGA Tour during the 1970s, had one of most impressive swings ever recorded. This is what he might have written to help you start hitting good golf shots.
Knudson stated that he used to hit his driver with the heel of his club early on in his professional career, breaking the wood and hitting. “these ugly little shots.”
“One day, I decided to try to catch the ball way out on the toe of the driver. I set up the ball on the toe and figured that’s where I would make contact, It wasn’t the sweet spot, but setting the ball up on the sweet spot hadn’t been doing me any good either. So what happens? I hit this thing and it files off the club like a rocket compared to what I’d been doing.
“The ball began to come off my face immediately after I had set it up on the foot. It was obvious that the clubhead had pulled out and I agreed that …. It was unexpected that the centrifugal force pushing the clubhead downwards was making me catch the ball in the middle of the clubface.”
What Knudson is getting at is that the centrifugal force of the swing pulls your arms and they straighten out a bit – they get longer. When they carry the club into the ball, longer, the center of the clubface will be lined up with the ball, if you start from the right place.
Remember that 5-iron you hit a few months ago that took off like it was launched and you wondered, “What is the secret to that? That was all you had to do, hit the ball into the center of your clubface.
Knudson’s suggestion is to be able to identify the location of the toe on the club. Take a look at the grooves in an iron’s face. These grooves run about one inch away from the club’s extremity toe. Then there is smooth and polished metal. The boundary of polished metal and grooves should be the centre of your ball.
It’s more difficult to locate the spot with a driver because it sits up on the tee, which creates parallax effects. It will appear farther away from the toe than what it is. It is best to align the ball’s far side with the middle of the clubface, just as it appears on the tee. You will need to experiment with different driver shapes to get the alignment you want.
There are two ways to make the ball go straighter and longer. Rule 1: Place the ball in the middle of the clubface. Rule 2: Place the ball in the middle of the clubface. (Same rule, isn’t it?) Don’t worry about swing speed or wrist cock. If you strike the ball flush, you will get the distance and accuracy that you want. This is just one way you can do it.