Remember my Surgism: '90 to 95 % of all swing problems arise out of alignment.' The best swing, ball contact, and ball flight, exactly as you planned and executed it, will not hit the ball to the target if your alignment is incorrect. That is, the ball will not go to your intended target if your mental alignment, what you see in your mind's eye and planned, does not match your physical alignment, your actual stance and setup alignment. The ball will instead go straight to your physical alignment setup position.
The best way to help assure that your physical alignment will match your mental intended aim is to learn, and religiously and meticulously practice, a good pre-swing setup routine. A good routine takes concentration and attention to details, but is necessary if you want to tremendously increase your odds of aiming correctly when you setup to the ball. And, a good pre-swing routine always starts with finding and zeroing in on an intermediate spot or target in front of your ball on your aiming line.
You start this routine standing directly behind the ball, looking straight down and at your target where you are seeing a straight line. The key here is to find a spot on the ground directly in line with your target, around 1 foot at the most, in front of your ball. This 1 foot is important as the farther out your spot is from the ball, the greater the chances of the spot being off line and/or, you setup off line. I have had students tell me that they choose a spot five to ten feet in front of the ball. The most commonly mentioned distance in instruction is 3 feet out for your spot.
The issue here is that if your intermediate spot is off 1 inch at 3 feet in front of the ball, the aiming line will fan out an average of 10 yards off for every hundred yards. That means as much as 25 yards off line for a 250 yard drive for a lousy 1 inch mistake on your intermediate spot. And that is for 3 feet. Just imagine what county you will be aimed at if your spot is 10 feet out in front of your ball.
A final and really important issue is to double check the accuracy of your spot being on your aiming line by pluming the spot to the target, using the shaft of your club. This is important because in standing behind the ball and looking down at the ground, it is real easy to pick a spot that is NOT on your aiming line. You may say right now, 'That is ridiculous. I am standing right behind the ball, how can I pick a spot that is not on the line?' Well, it happens all the time, even when being careful.
Yesterday, I was giving a lesson to Steve, a 3 handicap player who drove in from Dallas to see me. To check his alignment when practicing, he brought and used his homemade 4 foot sticks to place on the ground for making his parallel lines. The right. or outside one. was aiming at his target, and his inside or toe line one was parallel left of his target line. Well, I start him working on his walk in routine and hitting balls. I am standing in front of him face on as we are working on his ball position, and I am also watching his left arm as relates to the PPGS limited turn being over the toe line at the top of the backswing. Steve makes 3 real good swings and hits 3 real good shots around 10 yards right of his target. He is thinking and asking me if he moved slightly ahead of the ball before impact and blocked (a swing error) those shots. I say all 3 swings looked good and then move to standing behind him to watch his takeaway in the event he was swinging a little too much inside to out (one of his problems we worked on), which would hit the ball right.
But what do you think I see as soon as I get behind his aiming line and look at his stick pointing at the target. It is not pointing at the target but exactly at the spot his last 3 shots landed, which is around 10 yards right. So I ask Steve to show me his spot and check out his line. He comes back behind the aiming line stick, points to the spot, and says the stick is right at the spot and target. I ask him to look closely and see if the stick is aimed at the target. He says yes! I say, I don't think so! He defends his alignment. I finally say, I know you are not blind, and I guarantee you that your target line is off at least 10 yards right. He assures me it is not.
So, I drop the challenge bomb on him, telling him to plumb the line and spot to the target with his club shaft. He gives me the 'Holy Cow' yelp, and says he can't believe he was that far off. I counter with you better believe it now and for the future. It will happen more because just plain looking leaves a big margin of error. The way to narrow that margin of error and even eliminate it is plumbing every spot with your club shaft. It is the only way to make sure you are 'spot on.' If you go to a PGA Tour event, you will see many of the players standing behind their ball pluming their aiming spot.
The key is that alignment is important and plumbing the spot to the target greatly increases it being 'spot on' and thus your odds of having 'Terrific Towards.'
The Surge!