From Field Hockey to Golf

Over at the Advanced Ball Striking forum there is this great topic, started by bomgolf222. It has all kinds of pictures from other sports that have similar movements (or positions) to golf. It’s also about how, in order to find the most efficient motion possible, we should learn what we can from other sports.

The golf swing is generally thought of as a very unnatural motion but I think that looking at the similarities in different sports can aid our understanding significantly.

Here are a few examples:


   

Hockey

I had been playing field hockey as a kid before taking up golf recently. Field hockey is the 10th most popular sport where I live and obviously there are many players that make the transition to golf later on in life.

If a former hockey player starts taking lessons from a local teaching pro, the pro will typically shake his head in disbelief when he sees the player hit a ball. You can almost hear him thinking: ‘Oh no, another hockey player! It’s going to take lots of lessons to turn this hitter into a swinger…’ The average pro sees the hit as something bad, probably because they themselves have been taught a pure swinging protocol.

Consider the two pictures below; the golfer being Ben Hogan and the Hockeyer is Theun de Nooijer. They are both considered to be the best players of their generations and as you can see there are lots of similarities in their movements. Hogan is a classic hitter with a very flat, pivot driven swing. Hockeyers typically swing very flat as well.



I think it would be far better for the player to embrace his hitting instincts and use them to his advantage. Hogan has clearly shown us that a hit with the hands (not arms) that is properly supported by the body can be a very effective move through the ball.

It's a shame that pro’s don’t recognize this because they could be having much better results with these players.