By: Luke Kerr-Dineen January 7, 2022

Tinker as much as you want, but if the ball stops flying straight, start tinkering with something else.

Foresight

Welcome to Play Smart, a game-improvement column that drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday fromGame Improvement Editor Luke Kerr-Dineento help raise your golf IQ and play smarter, better golf.

When it comes to golf, Im a classic tinkerer. When something gets off in my game, my first instinct is to change it. When things are working well, its hard for me to leave it alone. I want to know why its working, and I want to make it ever better. Its hard for me to chalk off disappointing days as well, thats golf. Bad rounds demand enquiry.

Periodically throughout my life Ive been told I need to get out of my own way, but that advice never resonates or, frankly, seems to work whenever Ive tried it. When Im on the golf course, it feels like Im flying airplane. It requires constant steering, monitoring, adjusting. Theres no such thing as a pilot getting out of the way when the airplane is in mid-air, unless, of course, you want the airplane to crash.

Recently, at the GOLF Top 100 Teachers Summit, Collin Morikawas coach Rick Sessinghaus said something that did resonate: That every golfer, no matter how good or bad, has a different trigger, he said, something abstract that helps you focus at your best, in golf or life. Scrolling down the list of common triggers, there were a few that I thought could fit, and one that I was certain did: Immediate feedback.

Every golfer is different, which one is your trigger?

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Everybodys different, but for me, realizing how important feedback was for me started making everything make sense. Its why my best practice sessions involve some kind of ball-tracking device, and why I tend towards video cameras, or using the line on my golf ball to see if my ball is rolling end over end. Getting good feedback, leads to me perfecting; having no feedback leaves me feeling lost and aimlessly searching.

Which is why in 2022, Im not going to try to suppress my urge to tinker with my game. Instead, Im going to embrace it, and channel it in a more productive way. Heres how.

Left untouched, golfers fundamentals tend to move around. When I overlook my own setup, my ball position tends to creep forward, my feet start pointing out to the right, my posture gets sloppy, and my shoulders start pointing left to counteract.

The only way to prevent this from happening is by constantly making small adjustments to my setup to make sure it stays in a good spot.

To help with this, Ive resolved to use a mirror more when I practice, and two alignment sticks the way you see Ian Poulter using below: One pointing at the ball, and the other down his footline. Those will give me all the feedback I need to, and wont leave me guessing.

When I get to the range, and especially whenever Im using a launch monitor, Im going to take extra care to aim at a specific target. I know it sounds like a small thing, but slamming golf balls out into the distance is a really bad habit. If you dont know exactlywhere youre aiming, you have no reference point for what the golf ball is doing. If you know that youre aiming at a specific spot, and the ball is ending to the right of it, as least you know whats happening, and you can start tinkering your way back to straight.

Positions and moves in the golf swing are important, but the one golden rule in golf remains: The ball flight never lies. If Im tinkering and the ball isnt flying straight, thats a cue to start tinkering with something else. Tinkering for tinkerings sake isnt the goal. Ill tinker as much as I want as long as the ball goes straight.

Along those, well, lines, I invested in a few of these white-black golf balls, and those are what Im practicing my putting with. Similar to the full swing, my goal is to simply make sure the ball is rolling end-over-end. If I notice myself pulling putts (my common miss) my goal becomes tinkering with ways of how to keep the face more open.

It all goes back to feedback. If I give myself good feedback, I can channel my instinct to tinker in a productive way. At least in theory.

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Director of Service Journalism at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brands game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLFs multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South CarolinaBeaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University and in 2017 was named News Media Alliances Rising Star. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

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Why Im going to embrace golf swing tinkering in 2022 - Golf.com