I thought we might go back to the full swing now.

I covered the basics in earlier articles so will go into the swing in a bit more detail.

The number one thing when swinging a golf club is to accept the club follows an unnerving, somewhat illogical route on its ideal journey back and through the golf ball. 

Any intelligent person will tend to look for a more logical route and will almost always interfere with the natural path that a golf club takes. 

This leads to tension and over controlling the club-head which in turn results in the two most irritating issues for golfers - lack of distance and inconsistency.

Most right handed golfers have a propensity to pull their irons left and slice their longer, less lofted clubs, especially the driver.

This is brought about by the logical desire to get a golf club onto a straight line and keep it there.

Just a reminder of three key things - these aren't easy to sign on to but are critical if you are to avoid underachieving at golf.

* A golf club must swing on an arc if you want the ball to go straight and far.

* You must swing a golf club downwards if you want the ball to go up.

* The less effort you put in the more consistent, you will be and the further your ball will go.

Have I lost you yet? 

Read those three things a couple more times and think about the implications. 

These things are easy to discuss and to a certain extent most golfers 'know' them already - they just don't allow themselves to do all/ any of them when it matters. 

Why would that be?

The reason is that they are all counter-intuitive - what makes more 'sense' is to steer the club straight (the ball will slice), help the ball into the air by lifting (you will top the ball and the ball will go along the ground) and bust blood vessels trying to get the ball to go far (tension will jam your wrists and forearms and the club-head can't swing freely enough to go fast).

I said last week that if you can stay with me for the next few weeks we will turn some lights on - there should be flashing lights going off about now as you remember the "white knuckle ride" that was your first tee shot last Saturday and the ball turning away to the right.

There is a reason why some very talented sports people find golf a mystery - it's because it doesn't reward a logical approach or a well researched intelligent approach - you will "bark up the wrong tree" for sure if you take that approach.

There are two possible reasons why you struggle with golf - you are hopeless at any bat amd ball sport  and have no hand/eye coordination (unlikely as golf is not a reaction sport and can be learned bit by bit as we are not hitting a moving ball), or you have just not grasped that the game is a bit odd (highly likely).

More next week - have a good one.

Golf lessons are available as gift vouchers - a great Christmas present.

Click here to read last week's article.

* Tony White is the golf operations manager at Gibraltar Country Club, Bowral. 

 He can be contacted on 4862 8615 or you can visit www.gibraltarbowral.com.au