The Swing Doctor

May 25, 2017

How many of you love to play golf? It is a game I love and hope to keep playing for many years to come, but let’s face it, I am not as young, as strong or in as in shape as I once was. How I used to approach improving my golf swing in the past was to try a fix it myself strategy; reading golf articles, buying new clubs, watching good players and trying to replicate their swing, etc., well that just isn’t working for me anymore. Honestly it has left me feeling pretty discouraged. The way I look at it, I can take two approaches here, one, hunker down in my stubbornness and refuse accept that I may need help while my golf game suffers and more importantly my love for the game diminishes. Or two, reach out, ask for help, and refuse to go quietly into the dark night. I’m going with two, always option two. This old dog needs a new trick.

Enter the swing doctor. Recently I had my first session for just about an hour with an expert to take a fresh look at my swing, with the sole purpose to help me find a solution/ nugget to improve my game. Truthfully, it wasn’t revolutionary what advice he shared, but it was just enough of a tweak to help me see what I was doing and it has made a huge difference. While I had several issues going on in my swing, his simple approach to get me to focus on one small change has paid dividends already.

“Swing thoughts” are what he called them. There are several individual steps (parts if you will) to your swing and in my case, perhaps several ways I was going wrong. By changing my “swing thoughts” into smaller parts and focusing on fixing one piece of my swing, perhaps I could change it all or at least a big part of it. Instead of thinking about the position of my hands at impact, taking a smaller backswing, or just hitting the ball harder, etc., he asked me to focus on one singular thought. When I bring the club back (take the club away) the club face should be facing the ball and the ground. This allowed me to have a flatter back swing, the club to naturally be square at impact and engaged my lower body to become part of the swing, again which put 20 yards of distance back in my game. Now I am not anxious / frustrated swinging the club anymore. He advised me to continue working with my current swing strengths but keep focused on this new swing thought until it feels natural. Sounds simple… so simple, we drew a “smiley face” on my club face of to make it visual. The results were instant.

When the swing doctor was able to break my swing down into those smaller parts, the overwhelming feeling of trying to fix so many issues both physically and mentally left me. It seemed so attainable to make this simple fix to my game. I got comfortable with this new swing and everything else fell in line.

In business, as in golf, sometimes you need a swing doctor. You need someone looking at your business with fresh eyes, someone who is dedicated to improving your game. Someone to give you a small nugget of advice or visual thought to focus on just getting the swing started. With today’s rapidly changing world there are so many new challenges you face and you might not have the time or patience to break a larger issue into smaller parts to try and solve it. You just want it done, I get that. But if you can develop/visualize a new swing thought, have a focus; everything else can fall in line. It is amazing how much fun can come back into your world.

For some, the swing problem could be building an eCommerce strategy, for others it could be how to hire and retain top talent. When you are an AD member you have lots of swing doctors at your fingertips from the AD Executives, to our service program leads such as our VP of HR or our VP of eCommerce Solutions, to your own member Network group. They can help you get that swing thought/focus on a simple solution. How can we help you love the game again?