The Enforcer
BY Paul Smith
Golf courses are full of players who struggle to either know they have an Over the Top motion, or even if they know they have one how to cure it. There can be all sorts of root causes which bring about this great flailing action, the biggest of which is a lack of knowledge as to where the clubhead should really be going path wise through the impact zone.
I would encourage anyone who has reached this far in the article to take a trip back down memory lane to Fix Your Swing Parts 1 and 2 in the Golf School. There you will find the geometry of the golf swing explained with our old friend Freddy the Down and Out. This short article uses that geometry to set up a work station to encourage your swing to follow a better path.
The Enforcer is a very useful and cheap tool designed to work as a barrier to an OTT golf swing. In the photo below (Fig 1) I have used a golf box which is set up parallel to the swing plane, approximately an inch away from the golf ball. This gives plenty of room for the toe of the clubhead to pass through the impact zone without bashing the box. Instead of using a box I would suggest finding a 2*4 piece of pine wood which will last you many more sessions. A clubhead hitting pine will not do you or your clubhead any damage. A piece about half a meter long will be fine. Shorter bits can, by very errant golfers, be hit right at the end of the wood on the away from target side, hence longer is safer.
In this photo example have a wedge for the drill. The two dowels on the ground are laid out parallel to my shoulder line, which sets up the plane line that I wish to play down. The inside dowel represents the Visual Angle of Approach that my clubhead will cover on the way down plane. Yes it does look very Inside-Out but those of you who have also read in the Golf School the Flashlight drills within the Plane Series will grasp that the light beam of a flashlight has infinite length, but a golf club is a fixed length so visually although we are pointing at the base of the plane, the clubhead covers a slight inside line.
Remembering that the ball is not set up at the Low Point of the Arc of the Swing, the clubhead travels inside out from the all through that point. This is why the green tee is situated ahead and outside the ball in the photo. This is also why when using an enforcer that the ball should be positioned at the target side end of the box/wood as the clubhead toe will get closer to it after hitting the ball and we do not wish to kill the box with a good swing action.
A player who has an Over The Top action is going to hit the box/wood on the way to the ball. Negative reinforcement will quickly built towards a more inside out route to the ball.
The idea is simply “Don’t Hit the Box”. Juniors in particular find their brain working out how to miss the barrier quickly.
One great use of this set up is that if you know you are not coming OTT into the impact zone, then ball flight actions cannot be a path issue because it has been ruled out. All that is left now is learning what your hands are doing coming into the ball. This is a great way to gain awareness of your hands. Snap hooks could be over active rolling of the hands. Slices hands opening though impact. You have narrowed down how to approach learning to deal with a small part of the puzzle.
The best way to get the most of this simple set up is to use it first chipping, then pitching, punching and into full shots. Building the length of the shots up focuses your learning in bite sized parts that you can first see where and what the clubhead is doing.
