Practice right eye dominance

Once you have established your eye dominance as right eye you then need to learn how to swing with the right eye preference motion.    When first learning how to swing primarily using your right eye for vision this can be difficult.  It is only difficult because you have learned to swing like a left eye player and now must unlearn.  There are two easy ways to practice using your right eye swing.

1.  Sunglasses  –  Take your sunglasses and hit a few balls while recording your swing.  After you have recorded a few swings with the camera focused on your head motion you are ready for part two.  Tape up the left lens of your sunglasses and continue to hit balls.  After about 10 shots take a video of your swing.  Continue hitting balls and then capture more video after about five minutes.  What you should notice is that your your head should be rotating towards the target at impact.  At minimum you should have your nose pointing at least in front of the ball and more towards the target.  This is where you actually want to have your head positioned at impact.  Keeping your head behind the ball is not a good place for right eye dominant players..

2.  Head rotation practice – This one you will need a friend to take video of you to confirm what your doing.  When I first started teaching this to intermediate and then to a few tour players I was shocked how different the players feel for head position was versus reality.  Warm up and make a few swings until you feel warmed up.  Take a video of your swing from the face on position for reference.  You are now going to try to exaggerate head rotation in the down swing and follow through.  The idea is to start to rotate your head towards the target at the start of the down swing.  The goal is to “feel” like at impact you are looking at the target.  After a couple of swings when you start to think this is the dumbest drill ever take a video of your swing and look at your head position.  Odd are it is still back and not facing anywhere near the target.  Continue to hit balls and take video until it feels comfortable rotating your head towards the target on the down swing and your nose is pointing in front of the ball at impact.

You can read much more in depth about eye dominance in “Golf for the other 80% on amazon” if you would like further infomation

The goal is to have your head rotate naturally towards the target like it would in tennis, baseball swing and throwing motion.  It may take a little practice but it is well worth going back to a normal, natural motion.  This lack of head rotation in right eye players often causes shoulder deceleration and errent shots under pressure.  Don’t be a bad player under pressure, rotate your head. 

Jim Hartnett, PGA