All motion originates in the mind, yet golfers rarely analyse the quality of their swing by the quality of the gap (the moment of non-action) before the swing begins.
When you review a game you’ve recently played or you listen to commentary on television about a tournament, it’s mostly a reflection on or analysis about swing technique or the putting stroke.
However, certain clues exist to let us know how important it is that things feel right in the gap before the motion, for instance, a commentator remarking that a player “didn’t look comfortable” over her putt.
Further exploration of the gap or pause before motion, helps us understand how a player – you, for example – can be technically excellent and have a flawless swing on the driving range, and yet when it comes to recreating that swing under the pressure of contention, things don’t always go to plan.
On the surface, it might seem as if your swing technique has broken down, i.e. that the moving parts of your body have come out of sequence because your head moved, you haven’t rotated properly or fully, shortened your back-swing and so forth.
However, if you look deeper, you’ll be aware that the mental processes that occurred before the pure shot and again before the clumsy shot were markedly different.
