Mental game · Focus

What to practise first after a swing analysis

The problem with a good swing analysis is that it gives you five things at once. Early extension, a cupped lead wrist, a takeaway too far inside, weight hanging back, a finish you cannot hold. All true, all worth fixing, and working on all five is the reliable way to fix none of them.

Analysis is not the hard part any more. Deciding what to do on Tuesday evening with a small bucket of balls is the hard part.

1Find the earliest fault in the sequence, not the ugliest

Faults cascade. A takeaway that rolls inside at Backswing Parallel forces a re-route at the Top, which forces an over-the-top downswing, which shows up as the slice you actually noticed. Fixing the slice directly means fighting three compensations at once. Order the findings by where they occur in the swing and start with the first one — it is often not the one that looks worst.

2Pick exactly one, and write down why

One focus area per block of sessions. Writing down why you chose it matters more than it sounds, because in three weeks you will not remember whether the change helped, and without the reason recorded you cannot tell a real improvement from a good day. This is the step almost everyone skips.

3Convert the fault into a feel, not a position

An analysis describes positions; bodies respond to feels. "Keep your trail hip back" is a position. "Feel like your belt buckle stays pointing away from the target a beat longer" is a feel you can actually execute at speed. Expect the feel that produces the correct position to be exaggerated — if it feels like a small adjustment, it usually produces no change at all.

4Give it two sessions before you judge it

A change that produces immediate good contact is often just a different compensation that happens to work today. A change that feels awful for two sessions and then settles is more likely to be real. Judge on the third session, not the first, and judge on ball flight rather than on how the swing felt.

5Re-record at the same phase to check it held

Film the same club from the same angle and compare at the same swing phase, not the same timestamp. This is the only honest way to tell whether the change survived, because feel drifts and memory is unreliable. If the position changed and the ball flight improved, keep it. If the position changed and nothing else did, you fixed something that was not the problem.

Common questions

How long should I work on one fault before moving on?

Two to four sessions for a feel or a grip change; considerably longer for a movement-pattern change like swing path or sequencing. If four sessions produce no change in ball flight at all, the problem is usually that you picked a downstream fault rather than the one causing it.

Should I work on the swing or the short game first?

If you are scoring-focused, the short game returns more strokes per hour of practice for most amateurs. If you are specifically trying to change your full swing, the honest answer is that split practice slows both down — pick a period for one and come back to the other.

What if the analysis and my coach disagree?

Go with your coach. They have seen you move, know your history and can watch you hit the next ball. Analysis is most useful between lessons — keeping a consistent record of what you practised and what it did, so the next lesson starts from evidence rather than from what you happen to remember.

How do I know a change actually worked?

Two things have to move together: the position on video and the ball flight. Position alone means you rehearsed something without changing the strike. Ball flight alone is often a lucky session. Both, holding across three sessions, is a real change.

Keep reading

The six phases of the golf swing

Address, Backswing Parallel, Top, Downswing Parallel, Impact and Finish — what each phase tells you, and why comparing swings at the same phase matters.

Read

Why a season of notes beats a perfect swing video

A single swing video is a photograph of a moving thing. What actually changes your golf is the record spanning months, and there is decent science for why.

Read

Sources

Every claim about evidence on this page traces to one of these. Follow them and check.

Chua, L.-K., Jimenez-Diaz, J., Lewthwaite, R., Kim, T., & Wulf, G. (2021). Superiority of external attentional focus for motor performance and learning: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 147(6), 618-645.
Across 73 performance studies and 40 learning studies, focusing on the intended movement effect outperformed focusing on body parts - the basis for converting a position into a feel.

Last updated August 18, 2026