Hi friends and golfers. I'm Erik Schjolberg, a PGA Professional with more than 25 years of coaching experience, and this is the Coach Erik Schjolberg Golf blog — Scottsdale's home for science-driven ball striking. I teach in person at McCormick Ranch Golf Club and work with golfers around the world online, and everything published here comes straight off the lesson tee. Not theory, not recycled tips. What you'll read here is the same process I run with a student standing in front of me: measure what the club head and club face are actually doing through impact, identify which piece of the delivery disagrees with the rest, and change the one thing that moves the ball flight fastest. My standard is simple and it never moves — ball first, then turf, with a low point that lives in front of the golf ball instead of behind it.

The articles on this blog go deep on the variables that decide your shot: low point control, forward shaft lean, face-to-path, dynamic loft, strike location on the face, hand path and radius control, shallowing through transition, and the ground reaction forces that let you deliver speed without throwing away your angles. I measure that work with TrackMan 4, HackMotion wrist sensors, a pressure mat, 3D capture through Sportsbox AI, and high-speed video, because opinions about a golf swing are cheap and numbers are not. When I tell you a change works, I'll also tell you exactly how to verify it yourself — face spray, a divot line, a start-line gate, a strike pattern on tape, or a launch monitor number you can read in ten seconds.

Understand my starting position, because it shapes every article here: there are no universal fundamentals. There are only matchups that have to agree with each other. A strong grip that delivers a closed club face demands a completely different release pattern than a weak grip that delivers an open one, and a golfer whose low point sits behind the ball cannot fix his strike by swinging harder or holding his head down. Impact is negotiable, but the negotiation has rules, and my job is to show you which rules you're breaking. I also reject the idea that you have to get worse before you get better. That line is an excuse for coaching that has no feedback loop attached to it. Every drill I publish is built to improve strike quality, curvature control, or contact location the same day you try it — most of it inside fifteen focused minutes.

But let's be clear: golf is not only a mechanics problem. The battle you fight standing on the tee with water right and a number you don't love is often the one that decides whether the swing you built on the range ever shows up on the course. So this blog treats the mental side with the same cause-and-effect rigor I apply to the club face. Frustration after a bad hole, the swing that tightens under pressure, the self-doubt that turns a committed shot into a steered one — these are not character flaws. They are attention and arousal problems with identifiable causes and trainable solutions.

You'll learn how to build a pre-shot routine that functions as a decision process instead of a superstition, how directing your attention externally — to the target, the start line, the strike — produces more repeatable motion than internal body-part thinking, how to regulate breathing and tempo so your speed doesn't spike when the stakes do, and how to structure practice so the skill actually transfers. Blocked repetition builds a feel; randomized, interleaved practice under a scoreboard is what makes it survive on the golf course. That is trainable, it is measurable, and I'll show you how to build it into the same session where you're working on your low point.

Read the deep-dive articles, run the drills exactly as written, and hold yourself to the pass/fail feedback attached to each one. If you want the fastest path in, grab my free drills guide, then come work with me — in person for Scottsdale golf lessons at McCormick Ranch, or from anywhere in the world through online golf coaching. This is The Science of Better Golf, and it starts with your next shot.