Continuing from my last post, feedback is a great way to escalate your learning curve. Without feedback in some form or other you are just bashing balls in a wild search for a magic feeling. While repetition and reps on the range are valuable and will make you a better player, introducing feedback into your practice will accelerate your development. Here are a few of my favorite.

White Board Marker

This is my all time favorite for finding out where you are striking the ball on the face. I got this tip from Adam Young golf and it’s one of two free tips he give you when signing up to his newsletter which is full of good information.

Using the white board marker is easy. You simply place a dot on the ball and line it up with your target and where you club will contact the ball. The whiteboard marker then leaves an imprint on the club face giving you feedback of your strike tendencies. Knowing where you strike the club face is vital for understanding your shot patterns as toe strikes tend to go right and heal strikes tend to go left. In addition the loss of power from missing the middle is significant, so working on tightening your strike patterns can help the golfer see huge improvements.

Alignment Sticks

These are a must have for all golfers and I’m surprised by how few of the golfers I meet have them. They have multiple uses that could fill a blog post on its own but here are some basic uses.

Body alignment and face alignment. To set this up run one stick straight through the ball to the target. Then line another club parallel to this between the ball and your feet. Then move the stick that runs through the ball to the outside of the ball and replace the ball. Use the outside stick to align your club-face and the inside stick to line up your body.

Ball position. Place one stick on the line of your feet and the other crossing that stick pointing at the ball. This will show you your ball position. This is good to keep a check on as its easy for the ball to drift to far forward or back without us knowing it.