Too far from football? Too close? Butch Harmon has a ‘good drill’ to check out

Are you standing too far from the ball? Butch Harmon believes his training will show.

What about getting too close? Likewise.

How about absolutely? Yes.

“It’s a very good football,” he said, “finding your distance in football.

“It works with all clubs.”

The GOLF Top 100 Teacher Hall of Famer and one-time coach of Tiger Woods was speaking in a video recently posted on the Golf Teacher App Instagram page – which you can watch in full here – and the topic is important. The right distance from the ball starts you in hitting the ball correctly. The negative is sending you to higher scores. Tips are welcome.

Remarkably, Harmon’s is simple. Hold the club. Take your position over the ball. Release your right hand (if you are right-handed) and let it dangle.

“It has to be on the other side of where you caught it,” Harmon said in the video. In other words, just let it come this way, hang, move it back, away from the right ball.

If you are too close to the ball, your hand will come back to rest on the club shaft. If you’re too far, your hand will rest on top of your other hand or above the club — and Harmon said he’s seen this setup a lot.

“The most common mistake we see in male golfers is that they tend to stand too far from the ball because it’s a feeling of power,” Harmon said in the video. “Unfortunately, it makes them bend so that when they swing, gravity wants to pull you down, and you end up standing up to them.” [and] usually hitting a weak piece.

If you were to use this drill further away, you can see that your right hand would come back here to your left.

The drill calls the check, and the writer tries again. I found myself standing maybe a fraction too far from the ball. That would explain at least some things.

Let’s keep Harmon’s speech going. A few weeks ago, the author wrote an article titled “‘Fix cancer in your stride’: Butch Harmon’s 10 lessons, according to a top trainer,” and that article can be found by clicking here, or by scrolling quickly below.

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Ryan Mouque seemed to be in nirvana.

Before him, for two days, Butch Harmon was working.

“It was a time of total self-denial,” he said.

Mouque was explaining it on his X social media account, following a recent two-day visit with Harmon, Tiger Woods’ former swing coach and GOLF Magazine’s Top 100 Hall of Famer. Notably, it was a teacher-to-teacher session, as Mouque is a leading Australian-based coach, and, understandably, an educator.

So what did Mouque take?

Ten nuggets, which he also shared over X, and we share below. It is here that we also recommend following Mouque on X, which you can do here, and Instagram, which you can do here.

1. ‘Fix cancer in your golf swing’

“Butch said that golfers should try to work cancer into their golf swing,” Mouque wrote. “What that term means is that if you fix the most dangerous part of your swing that causes the ball to do what it does or the contact to be what it is, you’re probably going to fix a few other things as a result.

“Don’t focus on your intake if it’s not the ‘thing’ that affects you. Fix the most important thing (cancer). If you don’t know what that is, that’s why I’m here to help you.”

Editor’s note: Downside effect. Find the root of the problem.

2. ‘Practice within 100 yards’

“Butch was adamant that golfers don’t practice anywhere near 100 yards,” Mouque wrote. “This includes wedge play, teeing, chipping, bunkering and putting.

“If you were to write down how many hours you practice within 100 yards versus that distance, what would that look like?”

Editor’s note: Good question. How many of us have just driven an hour into the range?

3. ‘What is important when trying to make a change?’

“I watched Butch coach a lot of players in the two days I was with him, and he said the same thing to all the students: Where the ball goes and how far it goes DOESN’T matter if you’re trying to make a change,” Mouque wrote. “You have to learn the movement first, then worry about the ball and how far it goes.

“Of course, if you have directed the movement and are able to do it at a low speed, the ball can be used as feedback on whether you have done well or not. As you get used to the new movement, you can add speed to the swing, and the distance becomes important.

“Butch makes Tiger do hundreds/thousands of stops/slow swings when Tiger changes his swing.”

Editor’s note: Trust the process.

4. ‘Butch will tell you how it is’

“Butch won’t wear anything,” Mouque wrote. He will tell you 100 percent exactly how it is, even if it’s not what you want to hear.

“Of course, he has results for his players when he can stand confidently and say how it is. If the junior coach does that, the student may go the other way. Butch was telling me a few stories about players who were personally fired because of their attitude about what he wanted them to do.

“If you want to work with Butch, you better listen to what he has to say. You don’t disagree with him. He is the authority behind the tour wins and major tournaments – he has helped his players to win. “

Editor’s Note: Some tough love never hurts.

5. ‘Instills confidence in yourself’

“On the smaller side, if you’re one of his students and you’re trying your best, you’ll say things that exude confidence,” Mouque wrote. “If you hit the mark, you will celebrate too. If you don’t, he’ll explain why and get you to do it the right way.

“He will never make you feel like you are not improving. It’s a great skill to be able to get the best out of your players and make them feel like they’ve misunderstood what they’re trying to do.”

Editor’s note: A pat on the back doesn’t hurt.

6. ‘Golf is easy without the ball’

“I heard him say this many times: Golf is easier without the ball,” Mouque wrote. “What he means is that if you work on your swing, many players are able to make the moves they are trying to make when there is no ball in front of them.

“This means you CAN make the move you want but sometimes you need to let go of the result when the ball is in front of you. Don’t always be eager to hit the ball when you’re working on things. Work on your swing without the ball, and as I say to students: ‘Your practice swing is your future swing.’”

Editor’s note: Re-trust the process. “Swing your swing to your future” is noteworthy – why even swing a habit if you’re not going to use it?

7. ‘You need a clear plan’

“Every student I saw teaching didn’t know why they hit it the way they did and they didn’t even know how to fix it,” said Mouque. “They may feel they know the solution, but they don’t.”

“One boy said that the lesson he had that day ended 15 years of frustration. 15 years!!! (You may have exaggerated, but still, my point remains.)

“If you’re a golfer who doesn’t take lessons and you’ve had a problem with your game that hasn’t improved year after year, please seek help from the coach (me). I want you to enjoy this game — having 15 years of frustration is crazy.

“What I saw in that comment as I sat and watched was that this golfer was trying to do everything for himself but he didn’t stop there. He may have gotten worse in his attempt to figure out his problems on his own.”

Editor’s note: Doing the same things over and over and expecting different results can take golf to another game.

8. ‘Swing changes take time’

“Butch told the story of how Tiger wanted to change his swing after 1997,” Mouque wrote. “In 1998, Tiger won only one PGA Tour event, which was because he was working on and changing his swing.

“After a full year of working on his swing and making the changes he wanted, we saw the greatest run golf has ever seen, with Tiger winning seven majors and 20 PGA Tour events between 1999-2002 (I think my math is right). He won five more events in 2003.

“The moral of the story is if GOAT takes a whole year to make a change, what makes you think you can do it in a week or after a few lessons? Be realistic and understand that changes take time. Also, don’t try to isolate your swing – you won’t be able to. Just work on the low hanging fruit and the ‘cancer’ that has caught you.”

Editor’s note: Be patient. Easier said than done, of course, but know that the payoff is coming.

9. ‘External equipment’

“Butch was big on using outside materials to make the necessary changes,” Mouque wrote. “Put something in your way and try to avoid it. Box, steering wheel, etc. You don’t have to constantly think about elbow or wrist angles. It can be as simple as putting something in the way and trying to avoid it to change direction.”

Editor’s note: Training resources are helpful.

10. ‘Wonderful News’

“Butch has about 10,000 stories and never runs out of stories to tell,” Mouque wrote. “He’s played with the likes of President Obama, he plays Augusta a few times a year, obviously he can go anywhere on the golf course and he’s treated like royalty, which he’s earned the right to be.

“There were a lot of stories that I can’t repeat. One time I was filming him as he spoke, and when he looked up, he immediately told me to stop filming. Haha! That wasn’t for the internet. “

Editor’s note: Our loss!

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