Hit the golf ball further and further your career
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Many people believe that learning how to golf can help advance their career. Over the next few weeks our Word Up segment will feature golf lessons and tips from Canadian PGA teaching professional Bari Gourley. This episode features some golf swing tips on how to hit the ball further.
Shelley Ridgewell: Hello and welcome to the mini show Word Up where we offer a slightly different perspective on the insurance industry. Just recently I read that one quarter of employees surveyed in twenty-four countries around the world, indicate that being able to golf is a stepping stone to getting ahead in management and one in seven say that they use golf as a means to mingle with people and get ahead in their career. So the employees most likely to indicate that being able to golf is a stepping stone are from China, at 47 percent; and with Canada, Great Britain, and the United States at 22 percent. Least likely to believe that the ability of golf to help to get them ahead in management was France, at 95 percent. So approximately one quarter of those people surveyed in Canada and the US believe that golf can get you ahead in your career. But where does this leave the rest of us who aren’t so confident or able in the game? Today I’m here with Bari Gourley, Canadian PGA teaching professional at Kingswood Golf Course in Fredericton, New Brunswick, so I too can use golfing tips as stepping stone to future management.
Bari Gourley: Hi. My name’s Bari Gourley and I am a Canadian PGA teaching professional here at Kingswood in warm and sunny Fredericton, New Brunswick. I’ve played golf pretty much all my life. I was lucky that I had a family that introduced me to it, and I’ve been teaching the game for about 24 years. The great thing about golf is that it is one of the few sports that you can start at any age. For example, my youngest student that I gave formal lessons to was three. My oldest, just starting golf, was 93. You can’t say that about very many sports.
Golf is two things: It’s about hitting the ball where we hope is straight and hitting it far. Distance and direction. Now if I go ask a normal person what is more important to you, distance or direction, they all lie to me and say direction. That should be the proper answer, but no, most people want to hit the ball far. There’s nothing better than hitting the golf ball far, but it is much better to hit it straight. I’ll teach you how to do both, but I will teach you how to hit the golf ball a little further today, and this goes for everyone.
When we set up in our golf swing our weight is evenly balanced fifty/fifty on each foot. It’s the two weight transfers we are going to do that makes the ball go farther. The better the weight transfers the farther the ball will go. If I just swing the club with my arms I’m not going to hit it very far. But if I use my body in my swing, I’m going to hit the ball much farther. There’s a lot of moving parts in golf and that’s why it’s harder than it really looks.
This is what I want you to think of: When you set up for the swing, your weight should be fifty/fifty on each foot,with the weight on the balls of your feet. When you take the golf club back, what you want to do is turn your hip and shoulder out of the way and try to get 80% of your weight on your back foot. You do that by just turning back. We turn so our head can stay in one position. If you go back by moving your head out of the way your head is off the ball and you are going to miss that golf ball. You do it by turning and you should feel about 80% of your weight on the inside of your back foot. That’s step 1.
Now I’m going to jump ahead to step 3, believe it or not, and talk about the finish. After you’ve loaded the swing you need to unload it. What you want to do is take your front hip, shoulder and knee and start to turn it and get the weight going towards your target, because that’s where we want the ball to go. You go back to 80% and you want to swing through all the way to 100% (weight transfer) So when you are done your swing 100% of your weight in on your front foot, your back foot is right upon the toe, you’re facing your target and your hands are up by your head. You should be able to put your club in your belly and it should be facing down the fairway.
I did the beginning and the end, which are important, but it’s the part in the middle which is most important. If I swing starting at fifty/fifty weight on each foot and go back at fifty/fifty, and finish at fifty/fifty and make contact with the ball, physics tells us ti will go some where. But, I need a little more momentum. I want to go back to 80% and through to 100%. We already covered that. Now the important part is–do you deserve the important part? Of course you do! After we’ve gone back to 80%, at impact, the more weight you can have on your lead foot, your front foot, is where we get our power. If I can get 70% of my weight on my front foot at impact, that’s where my power is. Then I automatically go through to the finish. Most golfers at impact are back to fifty/fifty or their weight’s actually back here. You never throw a ball from you back foot; you throw a ball from your front foot. Same thing in golf. So if you want to hit the ball farther, at impact, you have to have more weight forward, and then finish through to your nice finish (pose) because it looks good.
Check out episode 1 of Word Up: Why are young people not attracted to the insurance industry
