The Artful Golfer: No Routine in Artful Golf

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

No Routine in Artful Golf

I recently listened to a Podcast at TeeTour.com where the host interviewed Fred Shoemaker about his books, Extraordinary Golf and Extraordinary Putting.

Autumn Redux by Linda's Manymuses at flickr.com

During the interview, Shoemaker shared that he doesn't recommend that golfers use swing thoughts or pre-shot routines. He believes that both of these common practices in golf actually remove you from the present moment. The act of having to remember or think about a swing though or routine takes your mind from the present and puts it in the past. The golfer is only capable of creating shots when he remains in the present moment.

Hearing this was music to my ears since I've resisted incorporating swing thoughts and pre-shot routines into my own game. I've found that you can't be creative in visualizing and executing a shot if you just go through the same routine on every shot. Perhaps you can find a level of consistency from routine, but consistency can be boring and limiting.

Breaking out of a routine opens the door to creativity and artful golf.

Labels: Books, Disciplines, Fred Shoemaker, Routine, TeeTour

2 Comments:

Nolan Matthias said...

Interesting thoughts. Do you believe then that there is a need to have a reference point in order to know a good swing from a bad one, or why you performed well on one shot and poorly on the next?

Nolan M

The Artful Golfer said...

I would imagine that Fred Shoemaker would consider the "reference point" to be the club face and that the golfer needs to learn to become aware of where the club face is at all times during the swing. His approach to learning centers on awareness. Instead of depending on others to recognize and fix our swing, he suggests we learn to coach ourselves which requires and ever-increasing awareness of our own body and swing.