Every golf tournament I watch, it’s inevitable and only a matter of time, before one of the broadcasters, whoever is the “expert’ on the golf swing, will say something about a player’s missed shots or even the positive analysis of a player’s swing, to make me so mad I want to throw my drink at the TV. There are two problems here -one is that damn “Biz-Cam” that does video playback at 1 zillion frames per second. The other is commentators that don’t know much or anything about the golf swing.

The combination of these two things can cause disaster for the average golfer. Breaking down great player’s motions at that speed inevitably leads to over analysis, and to be honest, analysis sometimes I don’t even understand. But that’s easy to do – if you watch something that’s in SUPER slow-motion it’s simple to go “look at this” and “look at that”. Soon they’ll be talking about Tigers right pinky and how it moves in the golf swing – and you should be doing that. To me, the most infuriating thing is when a player misses a shot and they go right to the video playback, then someone offers the reason that the shot was missed. And comments by former tour players (with exception to maybe Nick Faldo) are worse than the swing analysts, because honestly, just because you can play doesn’t mean you know about the golf swing – it just means you can play.

At least the guys that are instructors are fairly knowledgeable, and in their defense, many times I think they need to fill in dead space and constantly offer explanations for why a guy with 130 mile an hour clubhead speed missed a fairway by 15 yards – maybe it was just the clubface was slightly open at impact? At that speed it doesn’t take much to cause the ball to go offline. But that would be boring after awhile, so there’s the need to look at how the hips are rotating and stopping, the shoulders are moving to slow or too open, the hands are not “releasing”, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile anyone who knows about video playback also knows that if you put two swings up on the screen side by side, many times it’s very difficult to see the minute differences between the swing of a good shot and a bad one. But this doesn’t stop them – and maybe it can’t. If they want to keep their jobs, the swing commentators need to offer an analysis to the reasons why – even if those reasons are inaccurate. Now I’m suggesting they are not sincere in the analysis, I’m suggesting they’re pressured to say something and fill in the blanks.

Now if this sounded like a rant…well, it was. And it’s not because I think they know nothing and I know everything, but rather because golfers listen to them, because they are “experts” in the golf swing. They are like talking magazines, or Golf Channel shows, that offer tidbits of information, more times than not unrelated to the listener’s golf swings. This just continues this cycle of passing around bad information and confusion that circulates with golfers, and eventually they come and see me. So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about the swing analysts, I think they might be helping to keep me in business.

Many times golfers come to me complaining that they “can’t put two nines together” – they either play a good front nine and poor back nine, or a bad front nine and a good back nine. Golf is a fickle game, and on any given day that just may happen, but if you start to see a pattern of this occurring, it’s probably something you might want to take a closer look at. My opinion for this is that golfer’s are too focused on their score – a problem for nearly all of us that play this game.

Golfers may start out poorly on the first few holes, get discouraged then play poorly for the rest of the front nine. Then they add up their score for the front nine, realizing that if they shoot the same on the back it will be a poor round.  They then begin to relax and “not really care” and end up playing much better on the back nine. The opposite occurs (good front, bad back) for a different reason. A player gets in the zone on the front and starts really playing well. While making the turn, he or his playing partners add up his score for the front nine and the player realizes how well he is doing.

Then comes the kiss of death – he thinks “if I shoot the same number on the back” I’ll have my best score, or I’ll break 90 or 80, etc. Putting more self-imposed pressure on himself (all pressure in golf is self-imposed); he plays poorly on the back, and “ruins” what could have been a great round.

The moral of the story is, don’t constantly add your score up in your mind. That’s why you always hear tour players, when interviewed about how they feel about tomorrow, with a chance to win the tournament, they respond “I’m going to focus on one shot at time” – they are focusing on staying in the present, not thinking about what happened in the past, or what could happen in the future. It’s an easy thing to say and intellectualize, but a challenge to incorporate into your mental game. But when you do, you’ll be surprised at how well you can play with that mindset.

The primary reason that golfers have the most challenge controlling their driver, versus the other clubs in the bag – is simple physics – the clubhead is traveling faster, there is less loft, and more sidespin. The combination of these factors simply magnifies any curvature with the golf ball’s flight.

But I’d like to offer another possible reason for the erratic drive – the driver has no limits or boundaries. In other words think about a comfortable distance, for an approach shot to the green, that you hit an iron. Let’s say you hit a 7 iron 150 yards. It’s a comfortable distance for you with the iron and all it requires is a smooth swing to make the ball go 150 yards. But now let’s say you’re between a 7 iron and a 6 iron so you try to “jump” on the 7 and hit it as far as you can. More times than not you probably find that the shot does not come off the way you intended, which is why many times you’ll take the longer club and swing smoother.

Now let’s move to the tee shot and let’s say it’s a short hole and you don’t need a driver so you decide to play conservatively, and hit a 5 wood (metal). So you hit a smooth 5 wood because you don’t need the distance, and put it out in the middle of the fairway – your normal 190 yard shot.

Now let’s look at your driver. How far do you hit? Generally when I ask golfers this question they’ll give me the old “range”, for example “220 to 230”. But do you swing the club in that range, whatever that range is? In other words, are you trying to hit the ball, in this example, 220 – 230 yards? Or are you like most golfers trying to hit the ball as far as you can? And when you blast one right up the middle, its fun and can impress your foursome, but more often, erratic shots occur more than the killer one up the middle.

I have to confess that I also suffer from this syndrome. With normal playing conditions, and a comfortable smooth swing, my range is 260-270. That’s it unless I catch one downwind, on a down slope, or very hard fairways. So what I try to think about before I hit my driver is to make a smooth swing and focus on hitting my drive 260 yards – no more than that. When I do this I hit more 260 yard drives in the fairway. When I don’t I find the trees much more frequently or other undesirable spots on the golf course.

Another explanation for this syndrome could be I’m a man and my testosterone levels get in the way.