Golf Digest Best in State Teacher Adam Young is a pioneer in something that's very important, that not enough golfers know about.
Micro-mechanics.
These are the things in your golf swing that are so small they're almost impossible to spot with the naked eye—or even on camera. The tiny adjustments golfers make at high speed before, during and after the moment of impact.
We all make them, whether we realize it or not. And as Adam explains, they're hugely important.
"When that person hits a hot hook left and it goes 45 yards left, the face has probably only been three, four degrees more closed than normal," Young says. "You're not actually that far away from what a pro is doing. It's half a degree in clubface angle."
The margins between good and bad are slim, but the good news is you can practice them, Young says...
1. Practice trying to hit it a groove low, then a groove high
Pick a groove, try to hit the ball exactly on that groove, then pick a different one and do the same. Start with small swings and gradually work up.
It's not easy, but that's the point. Simply trying to do this will make you better, as Young explains...
"I might say to someone, 'Okay, hit 10 shots where you're trying to hit the second groove...now hit 10 shots trying to hit the sixth groove.' What you're looking for there is, again, not perfection, but you're just looking for the sixth groove attempts to be higher than the second groove attempts."
Why does this matter?
"Every groove higher equates to about an inch ground contact difference… You hit the fourth groove, it's ball first turf. You hit the sixth groove, you're laying the sod over it."
2. Spray your clubface and read the mark
You may have heard this one, but you spray or cover the clubface in something visible—like foot spray, or powder—then hit a shot. Where on the clubface did the ball make contact? Now you're giving yourself feedback on arguably the most important thing in golf: strike quality.
"We use foot spray. You hit a shot, you look at the middle of the mark and you say, right, where's the middle of the mark? Which groove is that on? How often do people do that? Never. In my lessons, we do it all the time."
3. Hit it off the toe, then off the heel
Adam says techniques like this are called "differential practice," a motor learning principle which helps your brain calibrate. Think about it like driving: Understanding where the left and right sides of the road are helps you stay in the lane.
Adam uses the same idea in golf:
"Hit shots where you are trying to hit the toe of the club and video it, and then hit shots where you're trying to heel it, even shank it, and then video it… for 90 percent, maybe even more, they won't even be able to see a difference between those swings, and those are two opposite ends of the spectrum."
He continues:
"If you don't want to practice the extremes, if I say, 'Can you hit it five millimeters off the toe, five millimeters off the heel?' It's barely anything, but it's still training the skill and it shows whether it's there or not for you."
4. Try to hit shots with an open and closed clubface
The exact same concept as before, just used a different way. Instead of trying to contact the ball in different spots, you're trying to intentionally hit it left and right.
"Can you present the face two degrees open, then four degrees open, then six degrees open, and then do the same left? Now when we ask them, okay, let's get back to square… they have all these reference points physically for feel-wise...The first time my students try and hit it six degrees right or left, they can't do it. But after a week or a month of doing that, they're like, 'I can lock this in.' And then their straight shots get better as a result."
5. Hover the club, or set it six inches behind the ball
No ball required on this one. Just pick a spot on the ground, alter the starting position of your clubhead, and try to hit that same spot over and over again.
"Trying to hit the ground in the right place, maybe the fourth groove, but doing it with different starting locations. So start by hovering the club, start by placing it maybe six inches behind the ball and then figure out how to do it. You're basically giving your brain a problem to solve and unique different ways of solving that problem."
6. Never hit two of the same shots in a row
Adam says there's a simple way of applying the same principles: Never hit two of the same shots in a row.
"Random practice has a lot of evidence behind it… switching clubs, switching targets, maybe adding some pressure to it as well, like making a game, how many in a row can you get?... Wedge, driver, seven, nine, different target each time, play game, how many in a row can you hit successfully? It's really good at bridging the gap."
7. Hit one putt, then move
And Adam says you can apply these same methods on the putting green...
"If you're putting, instead of standing there with two or three golf balls, blocking it to the same hole, hit one, assess it, move to a different scenario and go through your full routine again. If you're blocking it, once you've hit the first one, you know how much it breaks. Hitting another hundred from there, it's not going through the skill of prediction. And that's what good break readers are. They're good predictors."
8. Try landing your ball in a different spot.
And with your wedges, too...
"If it's a speed control issue, I might set little hoops on the ground and say, 'Can you land at this one, this one, this one?' If it's a judgment of outcomes, then we got to put them in different scenarios each time."
A closing thought
All of this is aimed to improve one thing: strike quality and consistency. That's Adam's lasting takeaway:
"Focus on strike. That's the Pareto principle of golf. If you can get the middle of the mark to be on the fourth groove and reasonably close to the center of the face, that will take care of 80, 90% of your problems. If you add on face direction control to that, that's the other 20% pretty much. It's golf in a nutshell."