Golfing with my sister today, I was also teaching her how to swing the club a little better, because she desires improvement. We went over some basic fundamentals and basically worked on getting her to swing the club in more of a circle around her body.

She is athletic and coordinated, so she picked up on the lesson fairly quickly and her practice swings looked as sound fundamentally as anyone could hope for. Then, she would address the ball and revert back to her old, bad swing.

She couldn’t believe it when I told her what she was doing, so I told her to focus on the swing and not on hitting the ball. When focused on hitting the ball, her brain automatically switched back to her old, ingrained swing. I told her I would rather see her whiff the ball completely, but make a good swing. Eventually, when the swing becomes ingrained, she can go back to focusing on hitting the ball.

Later in the round, she did whiff a couple shots and miss-hit nearly ever shot, but her swing was looking better even when she addressed the ball. Time will tell if it will all come together in the form of a golf game, but it was interesting to watch today, the struggles between brain and body.