'On the Golf Swing' (Random Thought Series) "Address & Setup"~ (Article III)
(Are They the Same Thing? If Not: What’s the Difference? And How I Finally Solved This Lifelong Riddle Once and for All)
This article has been nearly as difficult to write as it was to solve the Address & Setup dilemma. However, it’s a must I feel, especially since all my previous articles were filled with the two of them without ever giving an explanation to what each were exactly. The article is more as closure and for my peace of mind than it is anything else. I’ll share it because I really do believe separating Address from Setup is important and a significant hurdle few ever deal with. Separate the two any way you want, or not at all in error like I did for most of life. Ignoring them won’t work because they are completely responsible for any swing any golfer will ever make.
Golf is the eternal game of opposites; especially when it comes to figuring out the best way to move a golf club. The solutions I’ve found to things seem obvious only once you truly understand the whole of everything else. The problem lies with having to learn everything in parts first in order to figure out the whole. This is due to the sequential nature of putting all the pieces together individually, which is required in order for things to repeat. And then only after you understand the whole do the parts you worked on individually make sense. The Address & Setup riddle is a perfect example.
This question I have contemplated, and tried to resolve all my life. The two of them have been ever present, even when I was making a conscious effort to ignore them both. I’ve perhaps made it as long as fifteen minutes the past 40 years without them entering my thought process, invited or not. Over the years I had become so disenchanted with the both of them, I began thinking of them as one. I had failed repeatedly for too long to define them separately or differentiate one from the other with any clarity. I’d had enough of it, and said that’s it. Both of you are one and the same thing from this day forward. I thought to myself I’ve finally beaten them once and for all. It sounded simple enough? Not hardly. I came to find out doing it in this way caused many problems.
All this did was make each of them angrier than usual. They immediately went back to jockeying for position. There was no escaping them, and they both knew it all too well. They were letting me know if I really believed they were in fact one, and the same thing, like I was trying in every way to convince myself of, why was the ‘tug of war’ between them even more present, and worse than ever before? They were back to saying louder than usual “this is Address you’re working on”, and the other would say, “no! this is Setup you’re working on.” Back and forth trying to impose their dominance over each other, and more importantly me for top billing in the Swing & Turn building process. My decision to make them one, and ignore them the best I could, had only made their constant presence more in my face.
Not too long ago I resolved to separate them once and for all. Doing so immediately brought about improvement, and allowed me to eliminate a few lingering issues, and a couple things I was still unhappy and uncertain about, with how I understood and performed the entire movement. I began thinking of them in terms of what each was responsible for, and what they weren’t. The decision to finally define each of them came back to the one thought of “Everything Matters”, which I’ve believed for many years now.
In my old way of thinking, where I looked at them as basically the same thing, it did a great disservice to the Address portion. It relegated it to being expendable, and not important as long as I Setup around the ball in the correct way. In short, I could approach the ball in Address in any manner I wanted as long as Setup was right. Doing it this way was a monumental misjudgment. After I finally figured out to separate the two, where one ends and the other begins, I quickly realized the most important portion was not Setup but in Address. The reason being Address always comes first and Setup is totally dependent on the what you do during Address or the Setup won’t work as it should. Address is not dependent on Setup, it is only dependent on itself. Correct Setup is in the hands of the decisions made in the Address segment of things, which came first.
Address is the preparation for Setting-Up correctly and Setup is the continuation of Address which prepares the player for performing the correct Swing & Turn.
So what are the key elements of the first portion Address which ultimately make setting up to the ball in the best way possible?
Selecting a club after you’ve chosen a target and having it in the right dominant hand alone is Step 1 on all shots. (I’ve already discussed this at length in a previous article.)
How and where to approach the ball from in order to best set up the Out-Front Diagonal View and Point the Chin required for aiming and having an idea of what the entire Swing & Turn should look like in your mind as best possible. This step is determined by whether you chose to play a Draw (Right to Left) or Fade (Left to Right). This must be decided upon for every shot in Golf, due to arc, loft, Outside-Sq-Outside Swingpath, etc…. and in short not being able to play directly down the ball target line. The club cannot be released correctly directly down the ball target line.
The correct address and setup procedure cannot be accomplished in the proper fashion unless you choose one or the other beforehand right after you chose a club and have it alone in the right hand. Even on the shortest shots where there is no visible ball movement in either direction, the decision of Draw or Fade has to be chosen in order to Address and Setup one way or the other. The Address and Setup procedures are different from each other and are not interchangeable, especially when you are at the ball. It’s too late to choose one or the other then.
I will go into detail in another article why you have to choose one or the other Draw or Fade for every shot in Golf; chips & putts included. That is far more detailed than the scope of this article. I’ll just say it matters and is a decision and a requirement on every shot you play before Address & Setup can be done correctly.
The final step of Address is finds its conclusion with the aiming of the clubhead on the ground with the Toe of the club in control. It’s the toe of the club which addresses the ball off it’s center not the center of the clubface. It is what controls the entire movement due to it being the part of the club responsible for describing the most outward arc on every shot, not the center of the clubface. The Toe is the most noticeable part of the entire movement when you see rare film footage of a player playing from the only camera angle which works, the Out-Front Diagonal View. Finding footage of this angle or even still photos is quite challenging, but it’s the only camera angle of any use whatsoever. The only use any of the other camera angles have is their uncanny ability to all ruin you equally well, and in multiple ways.
I’ve discussed the importance of the Out-Front Diagonal View Camera Angle and Pointing the Chin as the Hub of the action repeatedly in previous articles. They are of the greatest importance for putting it all together.
The 12-15 inches where Outside-Square-Outside can be found and occurs has to be accounted for as the final step of Address aiming the toe on the ground. The Outside-Square-Outside 12-15 inches that is located around the front of the instep of the flared out lead foot covers the exact amount of wrist cock being released through the ball when done correctly. The ball itself is in the middle of the 12-15 inch strip of real estate. The 5-6 inches behind the ball is the outward backswing amount and the equal amount in front of the ball is the through outward Swing. These numbers are just rough estimates. It appears so quickly and can vanish in an instant, I haven’t had time to get down on the ground and measure it’s exact length with a tape measure before it does so.
The aiming of the toe of the club off the center of the ball to account for the Outside-Square-Outside swingpath is the final step in Address. At least it is for me. I picked this dividing line for a couple important reasons.
1. To tell me when no longer resting the club on the ground completely would be advantageous.
2. As an indicator I could began waggling without worry of being in the bucket trying to look down the line of play.
The right foot being dropped back, and second hand of the hold added at about waist height horizontally in harmony and at the same time is the first step of Setup and an end to the Address portion. This is where I divide them. You choose wherever you like or not at all.
Now I’m officially in the Setup. Address has ended. I can make minor adjustment with the stance. It has be shoulder width between the heels for all full shots, where a Turn is required. (The Turn won’t work properly if it’s any wider or any narrower.) The left foot being flared out doesn’t count in this determination only the heels.
The stance of Chips & Putts should be half the distance of shoulder width between the heels, do to them not requiring a Turn, or even a full swing. I hesitate to use the word pivot, but seeing chips and putts are indeed minus not only a Turn but also the full backswing, I really have no other way of describing it. The Turn is what gets us back to the ball on full shots where a shoulder width between the heels stance is required. Chips & Putts have no Turn or even a full swing to get us back to the ball, so playing either of those from the stance you use for full shots, will make the hands and arms have to find a way back to the ball on their own, in all sorts of unusual hitting maneuvers.
So the Setup portion consists simply of adding the second hand at about waist height horizontally, dropping the right foot back and widening the stance to shoulder width between the heels for all full shots and half for chips and putts. If you choose to use a Waggle, which is a good idea but difficult to do correctly; it can begin only after the completed stance is taken. You can Waggle and make minor adjustments in this portion. You can actually aim in any direction around the ball in a 360 degree fashion without starting the routine over once the stance is taken, when you do it correctly. But there are quite a few things which have to be done during Address to do it correctly. Things I won’t be sharing right now.
Taking the Waggle with intent to strike the ball before the completed stance is done, will put you in the bucket looking down the line and all is ruined.
That’s Address & Setup in a nutshell. I could go in depth explaining stuff I’ve already stated in previous articles. All I will ever talk about is dependent alone on Address & Setup. How you deal with those two is paramount to success or failure each and every shot any golfer has taken, or will ever take. The first priority I feel is finding a way to separate the two of them with some clarity. Each serves their own purposes, and has their own special functions and requirements. Thinking of Address as unimportant and not vital to the process was a major error I made for too long.
The primary reason I couldn’t separate them in any meaningful way was brought about almost entirely with the tension and great strain I always felt whenever I tried to aim the center of the clubface on the ground behind the center of the ball. The one click open all important Square Clubface position I explained in one of my first articles could not be brought about on the ground as the last step of Address like I always wanted. I couldn’t find a way to eliminate the tension in any other way, than by doing everything above the ball during Address & Setup which I had categorized as one thing because of this approach I felt forced to use.
The great strain and tension I was acquiring when trying to aim the face with it resting on the ground I learned was not caused by the ball or ground itself. As it turned out it was all being caused by me addressing the center of the ball with the center of the clubface instead of the Toe, which controls the entire movement and most outward Arc. With the center of the clubface addressing the center of the ball instead of the Toe, tension was setting in immediately as a response. It was letting me know and telling me it couldn’t swing Out correctly back and through from the center of clubface off center of ball position. Using the Toe in address off the center of the ball, in an instant, eliminated all the tension I had always felt . The only swingpath of Outside-Square-Outside allowable came into view like never before.
What a relief it was to finally have the needed reach I wanted and could not find while Addressing and Setting-Up completely from above the ball and lowering it. Not having the reach was the major flaw of this approach. I was still lowering the center of the face behind the center of the ball anyway, and the tension was arriving as always, and it was doing so at the worse time, right when the backswing needed to begin. Any smoothness and rhythm became an impossibility and at best it began with a coordinated jerk in one degree or the other. Caused solely by me using the Center of the Clubface off Center of the ball approach to perform the movement instead of correctly using the Toe.
What a relief to be able to use the ground to aim the Toe as the Final Step of Address, and a dividing line to begin the Setup. Not grounding the club is still extremely advisable once it is picked up off the ground, where it was initially as the last step of Address. Clumping Address & Setup into one thing and never grounding the club throughout causes many problems, but most noticeably in the “reach” needed, only using the ground can solve. It also allows clicking into the Square Clubface position to be exact, and placing the second hand to complete the Hold exact as well. Very important.
I’ll finish by saying I believe Greg Norman’s approach to the Address & Setup problem is as good as I’ve seen. When he had his routine working really well he would even rest his left hand on the left hip as a stabilizer and for balance purposes while he was aiming the face. His problems stemmed from using the hideous Vardon Grip primarily, and also when he decided to interrupt his beautiful Address & Setup routine by taking a Practice Swing.
Practice Swings are of no use whatsoever in Address & Setting-Up the correct Swing & Turn. A two handed approach occurs the moment you take one. The proper left side - right side action we want becomes inaccessible now. Practice Swings are all absent a Turn and here lies the major drawback of taking one during the Address & Setup sequential order of things. A Practice Swing at once breaks the sequential order of things for repeating to make not only the correct backswing, but more noticeably the Turn portion.
It makes no difference whether you took a Practice Swing, and went straight away back to the right hand alone to aim the clubface on the ground, like you would without a Practice Swing. The damage has already been done in feel, and thought, and ultimately execution by what the Practice Swing initiated originally without you knowing. The only option to eliminate what it initiated is to put the club back in the bag and start Address & Setup completely over at Step 1, and this time eliminate and do away with the Practice Swing. It has no value whatsoever in trying to put together or perform the correct Swing & Turn. It wrecks any chances of doing so to the best of your ability in an instant. I’ll try and write an article on Practice Swings in the near future, which addresses the many drawbacks of taking one.
Upcoming Articles in the ‘On the Golf Swing’ (Random Thoughts Series) :
Upcoming Articles in the (‘On the Golf Swing’ - Random Thoughts Series) . . .
Practice Swings: Taking one at any time during your routine (Address & Setup) to play any shot makes performing the best movement of ‘Swing and Turn impossible. Here are the reasons why.
Draw or Fade? (Something which should be decided upon before every shot in Golf is made ~ Chips and Putts Included)
Previous Articles:
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