If you continue to read some of my material (or have already read some), you'll see me often refer to the D-Plane and its components, Path and Face. These are two of the main factors that control our golf ball. Well, even though there's a lot going on in a golf swing and things can change, your Club Face aim at address and the Face at impact will correlate highly with each other. Also, your shoulder alignment at setup and your Path at impact are closely intertwined. In a nutshell, these are the reasons that I feel that your Club Face aim and shoulder alignment are two main aspects of your setup that should be constantly checked.
A phrase I find myself repeating on the lesson tee all the time is, "Never blame anything in your swing for a bad shot before you've eliminated the setup as a source of error." For example: a pulled shot can be more easily explained by that ball position being too far forward than "coming over the top," "flipping with the hands," or "lifting my head." I'm always happy to hear students assessing their setup before trying to figure out what went wrong with their swing after a poor shot.
I feel that you need to 1) set up in such a manner that allows you to 2) make a good swing AND 3) get a good result. Setting up with improper alignment or aim does not allow this to happen.
Another example: if you set up to a straight, 10 foot putt with your putter face aimed to the right of the hole, you will have two (or more) options: either make a great stroke and roll the ball to the right of the hole, or make a compensated stroke to get the ball rolling on line. Since a good stroke won't reward you with a holed putt, you're likely to change your stroke in a way that will help you make putts. Perhaps you start to flip the putter head closed or develop a pull stroke from this rightward setup since you'd make more putts doing so.
I also feel very strongly that your setup should strive to be 1) customized to your swing and 2) as consistent as possible. You can't expect to have a consistent swing without a consistent setup. In my opinion, practicing without a target can be harmful for most golfers, since they won't get accurate feedback.
Often, in order to affect change in the stroke or swing, the setup will need to be changed first - not only to allow for the physical differences in the motion, but simply to reward the better swing/stroke with a better result. New behaviours are more likely to be adopted if you get rewarded (with better shots) for doing so.
A little off-topic: The TV commentators that analyze swings in 30 seconds after one quick look do not have an easy task, so I don't mind cutting them some slack (although you do hear some pretty questionable info from time to time). However, I don't understand why a commentator has never suggested, "his alignment looks a little closed," when a poor shot is being replayed and analyzed. Instead of saying something like "he was late with his hands," why not suggest that the same player may have simply been aligned a bit right? If all the Average Joe's out there are listening to the commentators, golfers will always be analyzing their swings, and always neglecting their setups.
Those are my opinions, nothing more.
-Mark
@StrongerGolf
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