What You Can Learn From Rickie Fowler’s Players Championship Victory

May 2, 2018 10:16 am

Your Golf Improvement Guide

Rickie Fowler, “The Players Champion”, in 2015.

The 2018 Players Championship is just a week away. Spring is finally here. If you haven’t already, now is the time to execute your golf plan. In 2014, Rickie Fowler began working with Butch Harmon, committing to a “long-term” approach to strengthen his game. The result? A 2015 Players Championship. When it comes to reaching your goals as a player, it is important to understand which approach is best for you.  

Two Roads To Improvement: When golfers come for swing instruction, they are often not aware that there are two roads one can take on the road to improvement. One road is known as the “quick fix” approach, which is also known as a “band-aid” approach. The other is a “long-term” approach, which builds a swing based upon fundamentals and the least amount of compensations in one’s swing. Due to the fact that many golfers are unaware of what approach they are taking, it can be very difficult to become the kind of player they would like to be.

What To Know About The “Band-Aid” Approach: Positive aspects of a “band-aid” fix typically include a minimal amount of work invested to create a quick improvement in your ball flight. The downside of a “band-aid” is that when you implement a quick fix, which often isn’t fundamental, real progress is transitory and other issues will tend to show up in your golf game with time. For example, let’s say you are taking too much ground behind the ball when you are trying to hit your irons. A quick fix would be to move the ball further back in your stance. As a result, you will hit the ball more solid, but over time you may develop a shot that pushes off to the right (for the right-handed player). This will tempt you to start aiming more left and typically a slice will start to creep in. You now have new problems to address. This is a typical scenario that tends to make it difficult to make big strides in one’s improvement.

What To Know About The “Long-Term” Approach: This method of improvement takes more of a commitment and often challenges golfers to work through a period of struggle before they start to see a real payoff. Instead of having a swing that changes year to year, this type of approach starts with the fundamentals and trains the golfer to create a swing that is as simple and repetitious as possible. We work through the setup, takeaway, backswing, downswing, impact, and follow through. The idea is to create the same motion, and train over and over again, making these swing patterns an unconscious habit. As this process develops, golfers will tend to become more and more self-reliant, understanding exactly how to self correct when they play.

What Should You Choose? Each golfer’s goals are different. There is no right or wrong way to approach your game. However, understanding the difference between these two approaches will help you to plan and set appropriate expectations, which will help you to enjoy the game the way YOU would like to.