John Norsworthy: Two weeks gone by finding the ball nicely is about 80% of your shots going quite well, you are finding it with that right-hander's I wanted you to. Only criticism is, of course direction, not as good as it should have been. It left a bit right and so on. That's not too bad but today we are going to show you how to hit the ball straighted.
Ramey: Okay John what is the relationship between Golf and Darts?
John Norsworthy: While I wave this in front of you hoping one of you would ask this question. Look Darts, Bowling, Throwing, Tennis, Cricket, you name it, Football even, all these sports have a relation to Golf. For the simple reason that you are trying to propel a ball or some other objective in a certain direction, in certain times.
Okay now Ruth-- just - let's just to see what you can do with this Dart, take it and throw it naturally to the Dart Board. That's pretty good, try again. That's very good, and one more time.
Ruth: Oh gosh!
John Norsworthy: Okay, well - oh gosh you said. There you probably slice the ball or hook the ball. Now what's the relationship between these Darts and a Golf shot, let me show you.
I want to throw this dart to the target, Watch this Ramey. Stand here like this and the first thing that comes to my mind is the Dart Board. So I will look at the Dart Board, I now make my preparation quite unconsciously but the most important thing to me now is the object that I am looking at. So here we go, I look and I throw.
Now you can see I am English can you, because I spent a lot of time in Pubs playing Darts. Okay there we go, one, two, three, and each time that I throw could be the same if I were Bowling, say we were 10 pins down that's what would I do? Take the ball here and I go like this and my hand would go towards the object.
Now, I do the same thing in Golf, I prepare by looking up, I am here, I look up once, I check and I swing to my target. I swing to my target; the only difference is that I have prepared myself before looking down at by ball. Okay, Ruth, Ramey this is why we are going to put the Dart throwing into practice. But before we start hitting the ball, I would like to explain one thing, it's almost a word of caution really Ruth and Ramey.
In the first two lessons I let you and Ruth, have your hit a little bit. And you practiced these shots, practice finding the ball, and the swing got a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. As you are confidence got better, so you started to let it all hangout.
This time if we are to have straight shots, you have got to control yourself just a little bit for me. Right, so watch very carefully what I am going to do. We have two lines to think about, two lines of directions to work on. First of all, our direction is 50 meters. There is a golf ball and there is the 50 meter marker. I want you to imagine what we call a target line. The target line is the line between the ball and the final object, which is 50 meters. That's there, and then we have the line of our feet, which is parallel to this line here. Now if I want my golf ball to go straight, I have got to, when I am swinging, swing the club exactly to my target at that particular moment. This is called swinging on the target line, here we go, there, like that.
A game is the hands and arms that they are directing the shot, and always the right hand in control. So one more time, there is my line of direction with the ball Number one, and this is the line that I take with my feet, I am parallel to it. Is that clear? Sure?
If you are not sure you must stop me and ask me. Okay good. Now we put the club down and the club will be completely perpendicular to the line of flight. Set myself up nice and comfortably, and all I think about now is my little half swing, the swing that we've been practicing, here and through to here, and my club head is going to try-and-go to the target. Remember no long swing, okay Ramey? not up here.
Ramey: Sorry John, but is it necessary to look at the target before I hit the ball?
John Norsworthy: It's a good question, what we do is this. I am placed here ready to go now I take a look, like this I look along. I don't move my body; I don't list up like this. I am here and I move my head, and I check out my target mentally, remember those illustrations with the Darts, etcetera. This time mentally I checked before I go. Now I have got that objective firmly in my mind. And I am to go and try and swing to it. We will give you the try, watch carefully and that's a pretty straight shot, that for me, one meter left or right of my objective of 50 meters is good.
Okay Ruth, so you are going to give it a try for me. Yeah a little bit higher if you want to, it's good, fine. So let's work first of all on your target line, there it is. Let's check you here, that's good, right. Now I am going to take the ball away first, and you are going to make a little practice swing, which will be like this, like this. And you are going to stop when you have the club absolutely in line with 50 meters, no more than that. Do a practice swing, let me see what it looks like, off you go, stop, very nice and again, stop, little bit too high, one more time, and relax a little bit, like you did in the first couple of lessons.
Ruth: It's easier without the ball.
John: Yeah you are right, it's much easier without the ball, I am champion of the world without the ball. Now, what did you do, you ended up, up here; you got carried away with yourself again. Alright, one more; now not too big, that's, up you go. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful, that's good.
One more time, that was terrific, same thing, beautiful, that's exactly what you want. Now you are able to direct the ball to the target, by thinking of clubhead and target relationship, alright.
Ramey, please change places, your turn. But practice swing first. Now, remember what I told you about your great big finish which you don't want, right. Now practice swing without the ball, you start here, okay, fine, clubhead to the target. Where is the target? There it is, okay, and again. Remember clubhead has got to go to the target. Okay, again very fine, okay good, off you go, jolly good. Be careful. Where did the club go? Is that straight?
Ramey: No.
John Norsworthy: Exactly that's straight. So, don't forget, you are not worried about hitting the ball now. You are worried about direction, off you go. Try and get that club to the target. Okay, there, there it was not a very good shot, coordination wasn't too good, try again. So we got to two things together now, getting into that little more difficult. Then you got to get coordination, and direction.
Ramey: Yes.
John Norsworthy: Okay, don't worry about it, it will come, a plenty of time, that's good. superb now that's a much better line, you see it's a tiny bit to the left, but its good, that's acceptable. Okay try again please. Oh right on!, right down the target line, and you didn't go too far this time, you see, because next week we are going to be going to be going into this, okay.
Ramey: Yes, yes.
John Norsworthy: But for the moment that's where we stop, good there we are. Careful, concentration, down the target line, absolutely beautiful golf shot. superb, carry on practicing.
So you see how important it is to have this relationship between the ball, the clubhead and the target. It's so important if you don't want to loose too many balls and keep the ball straight.
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