I was fortunate to attend GOLF’s annual Top 100 Teachers Summit at Cabot Citrus Farms earlier this month, and what a treat it was to pick the brains of some of the game’s best instruction minds for two days.
In addition to the numerous presentations being delivered onsite, my colleagues and I had the chance to pull some teachers aside during quiet moments and pose some of our most burning instruction related-questions. One query I had for Top 100 Teacher Mike Malizia: What’s the one thing that many of your students tend to struggle with the most? His answer was immediate: alignment.
This piqued my interest because I feel as though I’m never aligned where I think I am. And according to Malizia, I’m not alone. But laying down alignment sticks during a practice session on the range isn’t the cure you’d think it would be.
“You can’t practice alignment on the driving range because the driving range is a square box,” Malizia told me. “Out on the golf course you have shapes, you have tees aimed one way, fairways aimed another. Greens are angled certain ways. So alignment is probably one of the most important things in golf, and one of the things that people never ever practice. Alignment is huge.”
If you really want to nail down your alignment, Malizia says, you need to practice your technique during a round — not before or after one.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Malizia said. “Go out and play nine holes by yourself late in the day. I want you to use an alignment stick on every shot.”
According to Malizia, the students who try this advice are often surprised by how quickly it helps them.
“[Afterward] they go, ‘Yeah, I shot 38 today, unreal!'” Malizia said. “And I go, yeah, because your misses now are not that far off.”
“Alignment is one of the most important things,” he continued. “But it’s also one of the most overlooked, and not practiced.”
If you’re looking for a simple tip to get your game in shape for 2025, nailing down your alignment is an surefire way to start generating lower scores. Give Malizia’s tip a try, and start your next golf year off on the right foot.
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