20. From a 10 Handicap Index to a 1 Index in 18 Months with Michael Hutchinson

Tori sits down with Michael Hutchinson, who famously went from a 10 handicap index down to a 1 in 18 months.

Listen in as Michael explains how he was able to accomplish this feat by assessing his golf capabilities and skill gaps.

He breaks down the three areas that made the biggest difference: Understanding what occurs at impact (ground strike, face strike, face direction), optimizing his strategy, and working on his mental game.

Key Takeaways

• (18:22) To stop topping the ball, learn how to accomplish a full swing as short as you possibly can. Work on your low point control, where the club impacts the ball. There is no such thing as the perfect swing, much less a repeatable perfect swing. Every golfer needs to build the skill they uniquely need to coordinate the way their muscles fire, and in which sequence.
• (24:30) Determining what needs work, whether your irons or your skill, is a matter of diagnostics. There are three areas to take note of: what is occurring at impact, strategy, and the mental game. Impact in particular is influenced by ground strike, face strike, and face direction. Once you can distill those impact variables to determine why your balls end up where they land, the better you can improve.
• (32:01) Face direction accounts for roughly 75% of where the ball starts. When you hit a shot that starts to the left, your path wasn’t necessarily to the left, but the face was closed on impact. Learn the ball flight laws to understand why the ball curves as it does. Only two things cause a hook: the face of the club being closed to the path through impact, and gear effect.
• (39:51) Strategy is all about applying knowledge of your own patterns, or the dispersion of your golf shot, to the course layout and design. The two biggest mistakes players make is aiming too close to the center of the fairway and the pins. Going into a round with a game plan is always helpful. Most importantly, know your exact target off the tee and know where to miss.
• (49:36) Your mental game will evolve the most out of these factors. Mindfulness practices tend to change over time, and finding the best ways to put yourself into a state of flow is a daily process of discovery.

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