TASK 2.0 DRIVER BLUR

Hi Shawn,

I’ve been task-hunting for a while now and have never found one in particular that seems to work long term. I have a bad problem of sub-consciously defaulting to the ball. I recently had some good success with the spinning the tees task and parking my eyes a half inch above the ball where the toe of the club would pass and envisioning the toe of my club spinning a wheel (like a globe) as my club passes. This really helped engage my kinetic chain but I found it was hard to stay target focused for some reason. After watching this video I tried parking my eyes in front of the ball and sending the clippings to target and that seemed to really help me hit the ball first with a nice downward angle of attack and a much more consistent strike with my irons. I applied it to chips and my driver and I think I may have a winner. The last piece seemed to fall in place for me as I was hitting balls on the range and a thought just popped into my head and the realization came that when I get a good strike and full release to the target that it feels like my “trigger” finger (I’m right handed) leads the way. So I am now parking my eyes in front of the ball and focusing on sending the clippings to the target with the irons and wedges and sending the white electrical tape blur to the right of the IP on my driver while really feeling the pressure on my trigger finger in the backswing as I load the club and then “throwing my trigger finger” through to a full release to the target. Just thinking this one task has resulted in the same good kinetic chain engagement, much better lag and a very snappy/powerful anchored release. My left hand seems to yield much easier for a quicker release (I must have been fighting against myself for some reason) and I’m really feeling like I’m getting deeply through compressing the ball. For me that feeling of compressing through my trigger finger (knifing the grip) to target while parking my eyes in front of the ball has finally brought everything together. I’m going to keep honing this task but wanted to share because there may be someone out there like me that may benefit from “throwing the trigger finger through” to the direction you want to start the ball. This realization hit me while hitting my driver and made an instant difference. I applied it to my irons and wedges and it works extremely well there too. After one range session, today I hit 71% of fairways and 8 greens in regulation using this task. A huge improvement as I’d been in a mid-season slump after my gamer driver head cracked and I’ve been using a different driver that I haven’t hit that much.

Another thing that recently clicked with me is that I’ve heard of archers who don’t focus just with their eyes on the bullseye but they feel the connection to the target through their heart and let the eyes and brain complete the solution subconsciously. Basically they just become a witness to the perfect solution the brain is capable of coming up with taking in all the external factors (wind, ground, stance, body awareness etc) to hit the bullseye. I thought that sounded kooky but decided to try it with my putting. I just imagine feeling my heart tied to the hole (my heart’s desire is to make the putt) like creating an invisible pathway connection from the heart to the hole providing a highway for the ball to travel. I read the putt and get a starting IP and then let the brain and eyes figure the solution (I look at the back of the hole when I putt) and just focus on that heart-hole connection I’ve created and putt into my hearts connection if that makes sense. Sounds totally weird but man it sure works more often than not. I’ve holed some long putts using his method. I then started doing the same with all my other shots. I think this is exactly what you are explaining with “swinging into the picture” but I could never conceive that fully until I brought the putting/chipping/swinging with the heart tied to the target feeling into it. Once again I share this because maybe that sequence will gel with someone like me who may struggle with other tasks or pictures and needs a different perspective.

Anyway, thanks again for such awesome content. All the best,

Dave Pike