One of the best training aids I ever saw was myself swinging a golf club. You just never truly know what you’re body is doing in key portions of the swing until you can see it on video. What feels like a good move may actually be out of kilter. But if you don’t see it, you’re likely to keep doing it and making other adjustments that only exacerbate the problem.

I learned this one the hard way the first time I saw my swing. I was pulling up just after impact, probably in a late effort to avoid fat shots, which I have always been prone to. We tall golfers (I’m 6′4″) have the tendency to hit fat shots because our downswing paths are naturally steeper. The result was hitting weaker shots that tended to balloon and fade. Once I saw myself swinging, I realized that the solution was simply to round out my swing by taking the club on a bit more of an outside path on the backswing. This makes the backswing steeper, but causes a slight re-route on the downswing into the ’slot’ position that’s more rounded and less steep.

It sounds much more complicated than it really was. Essentially, I just tried to keep my hands out in front of my body longer at the start of the backswing. Eveything else fell into place naturally, with no real effort on my part to change anything. Proof is always in the pudding in golf, and sure enough, my swing flattened out a bit and I was able to stay down and through into the correct post-impact position longer. My shots then had lower trajectories and a slight draw emerged, producing more overall distance. All from seeing myself swing the club. You really need to have a friend or playing buddy videotape you swinging at the range. Get some footage from the rear, front, and both sides. Then watch it many times. You will definitely pick up some things you didn’t know you were doing wrong.