You may remember as a child building snowmen and snowballs with friends and family, and how the more snow you packed on to the ball, the bigger and bigger it became! This analogy is commonly referred to as the snowball effect, which can be applied to almost any life situation, either personally or professionally. For example, one white lie can turn into another, which ultimately can snowball into a bigger lie than initially intended. Or, one small bad decision can often snowball into a situation you did not want to find yourself in. The snowball effect happens all the time to many people, but how does it relate to the game of golf?
In golf, one small move often leads to another move, which ultimately becomes your game play. In order to be a successful golfer, you must perfect one major move: your golf swing. There are many different ways to work on your golf swing, and many small steps that it takes in order to get the perfect move down. A successful golf swing includes focus, posture and alignment and a strong grip. Each of these important fundamentals are vital to nail down in order to ensure that you are swinging correctly.
For example, if you begin thinking of what you will be serving for dinner right as you are about to swing, chances are your swing will not be clean cut, because you are not focused. This, unfortunately, will snowball into the rest of your game, causing your mind to be elsewhere. If your posture and alignment are not upright and correct, your flexibility and your ability to rotate will be affected. When you are unable to rotate, your speed will dramatically slow down. And, if you do not have a strong grip, your flexibility will lessen.
Each of these fundamentals are small pieces of your golfing puzzle. You must work on each individually so that when the time comes for you to swing, your moves are affecting each other in a positive way.