It could be, but it is not for me and maybe not even for most recreational players.
I hit tons of pitches with both of my sand wedges. The better I'm hitting them, the more in the groove I am, the more likely it is for the odd shankopatomus to sneak into my practice session.
The odd thing is that it's been a very long time since I have shanked during a round of golf. I save most of them for the practice tee where it's more fun watching people duck to avoid the incoming.
Anyway, forever and a day I thought they were caused by some evil but random shift in my swing. Maybe my head was moving...swinging outside in...inside out...feel free to chime in with your favorite cause.
But, I always had a funny feeling that something else had happened and that it wasn't something that really had a lot to do with my swing changing from one pitch to another.
When you think about it, why would that even happen? I mean, we all know how hard it is to make a swing change why would it suddenly happen so readily?
Trying to change the mechanics of my swing in mid-practice would be a fatal mistake, especially when moments before I was striking the ball solidly. Suddenly I'm going to try to shallow my path, feel the club head closing or work to keep my head totally still? For me, that practice is to court disaster and golf has enough disasters in it without me adding my own.
Anyway, this got me thinking about root causality. I came across three articles (and videos) out of the hundreds about shanking that attributed the cause to something other than a swing issue. These three pros contended that shanking was better considered as a hand to eye coordination issue rather than a swing issue.
Again, I started to think about my practice sessions. I tend to clank one after I've been hitting really good shots, never when I'm stinking it up. I found that I could actually predict a shank before I hit one. Now, I've found the root of that premonition:
My brain becomes so shaft-and-ball focused that I change the game from golf to stickball. I meld my sense of the club head's path into the path of the shaft.
I can actually feel my brain doing this at address.
That new awareness was liberating. Now, I can make myself have that feeling of an approaching shank but subsequently work to see that the shaft's path must be inside of the club head for the sweetspot to meet up with the ball.
Martin Chuck (of Tourstriker fame and fortune) was the first pro to raise the issue with his Sweetspot Awareness video. The next was Mark Crossfield of the UK with his juggling analogy.
Still, the message didn't completely hit home until I read an article by A.J. Bonar. His article included an illustration that was good but not great. It showed lines going from a player's eyes to the end of the shaft rather than to the sweetspot.
In a way, shanking is hard to do. I'll bet that people with dodgy hand to eye coordination would have a difficult time shanking the ball on command. The hosel's a pretty small tool to reliably bring in contact with the ball especially compared with the size of the club face.
But, if your hand to eye coordination is good (like mine and maybe yours) you can get yourself to fire off a volley of hosel rockets solely by letting your focus shift from the path of the club face to the path of the shaft.
Amazing.
Sure, a toe board or drills where you take a tee that's inside your ball line are fine but for me I find it even more effective to simply consciously refocus on that differential between the path of the shaft and the path of the club face. Again, for me, a lot of practice using clubs I really enjoy hitting can make this focus shift in a way that wouldn't affect me during a round of golf. Being rid of this occasional annoyance has made hitting a lot of wedge shots more fun than ever.
More than anyone, I'd like to thank A.J. Bonar for his wisdom on this subject.
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