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Guys

I am a 10 handicapper and have been playing off and on for a few years, more regularly for the last year or so. Now on a good day, I am playing 80, on most of the other days, its more like a 100. Nothing really helped for almost a year in which I took coaching, consulted videos, books, every thing else on the planet, so I decided to video tape myself. And to my surprise, I found a number of problems that no pro could tell me. So I got rid of most of them except for my head.

Now a few days ago someone gave me a tip, he goes, there is no such thing as head down, which is actually head down and chin up to allow your left shoulder space on the back swing. He said the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro would keep his head absolutely still, eyes focussed on the ball, throughout the entire swing. This will not allow your other body parts to move except for your arms and shoulders. Well I tried it yesterday with amazing results, I could hit with a wonderful divot and a great sound with my eyes closed. All other things that I tried to avoid all the time were meaningless, with this one thing, I forgot about the other stuff and was still hitting great shots. Having said that, however, it is rather hard to keep your head still like this, I guess it needs a lot more practice than a day.

For all golfers of my type, please try this at home and lemme know, Mr. Nick Faldo would be happy to know if I successfully passed his tip on to other amateurs.

Would appreciate your comments as well. YOu can have a detailes slow mo look at what I am talking about if you download the swing analysis of ernie els from bbcworld.com website under golf.

The best drill for me to keep my head still is to put a pencil stub in my mouth and keep it pointing at the ball. If my head moves I know it instantly. It also works to keep from picking your head up too early.

Gocubs,thanks for this tip.I will try it and let you know if it works for me

i dont move my head, but when i start my backswing, my eyes drift to the right(looking at the club almost), wondering if i should keep my eyes on the ball at all times to.

Check Harvey's lil red book...a bad habit to get into is watching the takeaway...

I think you are playing with fire here. It might work as something to keep your mind almost at rest for a while. But to keep your head perfectly still would lead to a reverse pivot for most. And doing it past impact is something even worse.

Why did you mention Faldo?

i generally try to keep my head centered, but not try to keep it perfectly still. normally, where your head is positioned at impact, is where the club will bottom out.

Many pros move their heads notably Curtis Strange moved his head a few inches back when he swing back. However, no pros move their head ahead of the address position. This is the key. Even David Duval and Annika who look up with forward swing do not move their head ahead of the address position. This is not only to keeping the spinal position steady but also keeping your upperbody steady. Bubba Watson and JB Holmes might be hitting 400+ yds with a violent lowerbody swing but upper body needs to be steady.

I thought Ernie's head was the best to watch. However, if you have a chance, watch Camilo Villegas' swing video. I was so surprised to see his swing because I thought he swings hard. His head was like a still picture. Only reason that I knew it was a video was everything else was moving..

Highly recommended. Don't worry about reverse pivot. They move their head all over the place mainly forward in the beginning of the swing. If you keep it still, you'll have a better chance of repeating your swing. IMO, if all golfers can keep their head still, 90% of teaching pros won't have much to do.. Oh BTW, this also is a very important key to a good Putting & Chipping as well.

Fire away as hard as you can as long as you can keep your head still ( Not Down ).

Thanks a lot gocubs, I think this is a good one, pencil or a cigar should do the purpose (until its not lit of course), and scratch obviously has some nice advice and info, hey lemme see the mouth piece thing at the range today and will definitely look for the Camilo video, any chance to know the web address where it can be downloaded, i have a number of ernie els slo mos on my computer, really good looking swing. Someone asked why I mentioned Faldo, I am a big fan of his since he was No. 1 for 86 weeks on a trot a few years ago, and am also one of the lucky fellas who have received an email directly from him, giving me this head still tip.

Man, can you believe it, NICKY sending emails to his fans, go to info@nickfaldo.com and let him know how much you love his game.

I will check it out. I am the biggest Faldo fan!