How Many Swing Thoughts Should You Have?

This is a great topic for discussion and not something that I hear coaches talk frequently about. However, this is a question that I get a lot from players who are working on their swings, making technical changes, or who are struggling on the golf course.

To answer this properly, it is important to understand how much time you have to take a golf swing. With a driver, most players complete their entire swing between somewhere in the 1-1.25 second range on average. This time is calculated from the moment the club starts moving backwards to the time your club makes contact with the ball. With a Pitching Wedge, you will fall in the .75-1.0 second range. In reality, this is not a lot time! To break it down further, if we break down the swing into 4 pieces, 3 of those pieces would be the backswing and one of those would be the downswing. Therefore, it is easier to have a backswing thought than a downswing thought.

What I will tell you is this, having a pre shot routine or an alignment thought is good because this all happens before the club is taken away. Whatever thoughts you need to think about to get into a position to start your swing is fine. However, once you are over the ball, you should have ONE swing thought. This is strictly because you do not have time to process more than one thought in the amount of time to hit the ball.

For players who are taking lessons and working on many different things, this might be difficult. This is also why playing rounds of golf in the middle of swing changes are never as good as the rounds when the swing changes are done. When the feel has become real, your body can free up and have less thoughts, allowing you to play freely and use more of the creative side of your brain to golf. More than one thought and you will struggle. Keep it simple during your rounds and watch your scores drop.