JACKSON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — The grip is right. The stance is right. The setup is right. But, despite all that, Kelan McDonagh knows what’s coming from a player undergoing a swing change who happens to misfire.
Three words.
“Oh, that’s awful.”
And the adjustment may get re-adjusted, or flushed away altogether. Folks can be visual learners, and McDonagh is understanding of that. But the GOLF Top 100 Teacher to Watch also believes if items such as grip, stance and setup are correct, you’re close to success, and errors will come simply because changes take time or mistakes will occur, no matter the player.
So what’s a player to do, then, should they be stuck on needing to see to believe? Where’s a player to go?
Maybe indoors, McDonagh said.
Really? To those coping with winter temps and shorter sunlight this time of year, that’s a welcome thought. But the director of instruction at Metedeconk National Golf Club said there are benefits to hitting into a simulator or net, especially for those tweaking their game.
“Generally what I can see from a day-to-day basis, when we hit a bad golf shot with the correct setup, we’ve already got 80 percent of the way to hitting a good golf shot,” McDonagh said. “So there’s something small that happened in the swing that caused the ball to do what it did. But the human brain and the human body believe that everything is wrong, so we’re going to change this and change that and try and fix it, when I think we need to give ourselves a little bit more patience and understanding. ‘OK, this is where my grip needs to be for the face to be square. This is what I want to feel in the backswing.’
“That’s where the benefit of indoor golf can make us excel, without even seeing the ball flight. Creating specific feels, relating that back to your golf coach. Understanding, OK, this is where I want to see the ball, this is where I want to see the club. The grip and the setup are really everything.”
Indoor golf, McDonagh said then, should be looked at positively.
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“I think the main benefit of indoor golf, apart from it being pretty social — you can go with some friends and have a bit of fun playing a golf course you’ve never had a chance to ever play or you might never play,” he said.
“But if you’re going on your own to practice, you can really just forget about where the golf ball is going and just free your body with just how fast can I actually swing. And record it and write it down. ‘OK, Tuesday, the seventh of December, 96 mph.’”
Interested in more thoughts on the topic? GOLF Top 100 Teacher Kevin Sprecher recently shared on social media a couple videos on indoor work, and you can find them here and here.
