This article was machine-translated from the Korean original. Read the Korean original
Hello, this is Choi Jong-hwan. Today, I’m going to share a secret to good alignment. Surprisingly, there is something you need to look at before eye training. It is the angle of your face.
If your face is tilted too high while looking at the club at address, causing you to look down at the ball, it creates an optical illusion where the target line appears refracted when you turn your head to look. This inevitably makes alignment difficult.
01How to see lines without optical illusions
You must maintain a straight angle of your face when looking at the ball, as if you were reading a book, rather than looking up. More importantly, when you turn your head to look from that position, you must imagine a skewer is stuck right in your head and twist your head accordingly to have a vision free of optical illusions.
Even if you have lowered your head properly, if you lift your face again to look at the line, the same optical illusion occurs, making it difficult to line up. The trick is to match the pace, lower your head, rotate in that position to check the line, and then align your body with that line.
02Aiming is not about the eyes, it is about experience.
Let me tell you one more really important point here. Aiming is about matching the pace with your eyes, but ultimately, it is a movement that comes from experience.
A golfer who has consistently missed to the left in the past naturally comes to feel that aiming slightly to the right is "well-aimed." Conversely, a golfer who has experienced misses to the right feels that aiming off to the left is "standing straight." Therefore, even if someone watching from the side tells them that it is "wrong," they only become confused.
Therefore, to aim well, the proper order is to first practice stroke techniques that maintain the address position while hitting, rather than trying to force the line straight right now. You can only acquire a true sense of aiming once that experience accumulates.
03Curved Golfer vs. Straight Golfer
There are broadly two ways golfers visualize the shot. One is the curved type, which involves tracing the curved path the ball will actually roll into, and the other is the linear type, which involves setting a straight target and aiming at it. The order of aiming also differs slightly depending on which type is used.
Golfers who trace a curved path and look for the feeling of "I need to stand like this to enter this curve" benefit from viewing from the side. It is a method of visualizing the curve from the side and aligning the clubface with that image.
Conversely, golfers who aim at a straight target produce better results by accurately observing the target from behind, precisely marking the target they need to see, and then coming in to aim the clubface. Try both methods on the practice green today and find the one that feels more comfortable for you.
