For the past year or so I have been trying to get my son into golf which has turned out to be harder than expected. I think the root of the problem is that unlike nearly every other sport, you can’t just go play golf. Nope, you have to learn to hit the ball, chip, and putt before you ever set foot on a real course. Since kids (and Allen Iverson) are not exactly into practice, this can make breaking into the sport even more difficult. So the question becomes: How to make golf fun for kids?

“Sometimes It Has to Get Worse Before It Can Get Better”

The pro that I learned from used to say this a fair amount while working on his own swing, which was not particularly comforting when I too was trying to improve my own game. Worse still is when you feel like you are making progress but then suddenly it all goes to hell in the middle of a round. All too often, many players find themselves in the position where things are not going at all to plan, but are at a loss as to the root of the problem.

For example, today, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn… well, actually, that might have been all I hit (that and a few ponds and creeks). What was more frustrating for me was that just 24 hours earlier I shot in the mid 70’s (my usual handicap). Still, I guess there were warning signs –  for the past few weeks I have been losing power and starting to pull my drives.

The Diagnosis: Not enough shoulder coil and mis-alignment

Two things every golfer must do are 1) coil their lead shoulder behind the ball and 2) be properly aligned to the target. When you do not make a good coil of your body to get your lead shoulder back under your chin, you lose power. Secondly, from an alignment standpoint, most amateurs are too closed at address. I covered this issue in detail in my Golf’s Great Illusion post. It’s very easy to be too closed at address which gives you no choice but to swing across yourself, for the above-mentioned pull, rather than down the target line.

The Remedy

Sometimes you need to step back and attack the issue from a different angle in order to get ‘unstuck.’ Having access to a video of your swing can be an invaluable way to see flaws in your setup and swing. If you are on your own on the range, another way to get “unstuck” is to start with simple half and three quarter shots, to better feel how the club face is behaving through impact. The ball doesn’t lie, and it’s flight can help you discern between what you feel you are doing, and what you are actually doing.  Another exercise is to make half or three-quarter swings, and try to work the ball. The below video is a good illustration of how Jimmy Ballard teaches how to hit a draw.

Fundamentally, the Ballard swing is a swing that produces a very square club face at impact, and that’s what makes hitting straight shots so easy. Key to this is to stand tall and align yourself properly. For me, it was helpful to make a slightly exaggerated swing from the inside, where I let the toe turn over a little through impact, to provide a slight draw. Then I would come back and hit fades, by aligning myself the other way, where I was swinging slightly more steeply and a bit across the line. Finally, I could setup normally, and feel the club travel down the target line, and release properly. While the tendency is to hit full swings, I find it more useful to only hit  half and three-quarter shots to simply focus on where the club face was travelling through impact, and it was very easy from there to start hitting full shots again.

As any golfer knows, rounds don’t always work out as planned, and I am sure my next round will be an adventure but that’s why we play the game, I suppose. So the next time you get in a slump remember: ‘sometimes it has to get worse before it can get better’.

Recently Wade and I have been talking a lot about different swings we see on the PGA tour and how relevant they are to the average golfer. To us, it seems like the modern PGA swing has become increasingly built around pinpoint timing and tremendous power. The power generated is certainly awesome to behold but the timing required to maintain consistency can often cause havok when things go just slightly wrong.

This begs the question “do the pros feel like they need to have a razors edge swing in order to win?”  In other words, is the level of play on any given week so high that pros must play right to the limit of control in order to give themselves a chance to win?

Is this what it takes to win on tour?

Part of the reason I have come to this conclusion is because I just don’t believe PGA Pros would ever snap hook a drive if they only needed to hit the ball 270 down the middle of the fairway. Therefore, my assumption is that due to PGA course set up and the high level of competition, pros feel pressure to drive the ball as far as possible and to take extra chances in an effort to maximize birdie opportunities.

If I am in fact correct, what does this mean for player development? Do pros coming up in the ranks practice to shoot their best round day in and day out or to have the ability to go low just a handful of times each year? Are these goals mutually exclusive? Is there a price to be paid in the quest for the razors edge swing? For example, were Tiger’s knee and body issues a cost for developing a swing focused on creating power that could separate him from the field?

With the pool of young talent at an all-time high I suspect so too is the pressure to create the perfect swing. Perhaps this is a good thing for the PGA Tour but I think us regular golfers need to be wary of taking too much swing advice from our golfing heros. While is is fun to dream of hitting it “Bubba Long”, the fact is he is a virtual Gumby who has more natural coordination than nearly any human alive. Moreover, he is likely playing to a set of goals that are entirely different than ours. Why then should we even want to “hit it like Bubba”?  Except of course that chicks dig the long ball.

All the great ball-strikers have shifted their weight during the golf swing, so I think it makes a lot of sense to follow their lead. Interestingly, amateurs struggle quite a bit with weight shift in golf, even though they don’t in other sports. Why is it that when we throw a ball, swing a baseball bat, or make any other athletic motion we have no problem shifting our weight, but when it comes to golf, we are a mess?

Jimmy Ballard teaches that the golf swing should be much like many other athletic motions. Therefore, by mimicking certain feels from other sports, including a proper weight shift, a lot of good things can happen.

For example, Ben Hogan noted that he felt like the right arm worked in the swing the way a short stop would step and throw the ball underhanded to the second basemen on a double play.

Ballard talks in his videos about the motion of the right hand also feeling like a boxer throwing a right uppercut, and the motion of the left hand feeling like you are trying to strike someone with the back of your left arm and hand-similar to a tennis backhand.

Power comes from the back, shoulder, and hip

My father-in-law, who played on the Tour for years, talked a lot about feeling his weight, at the top of his backswing, as pressure on his right heel. A quick test of weight transfer is to turn to the top of your backswing, and see if you can feel the weight in your right heel, and also easily lift your left heel off the ground. For many, including Nicklaus, the next move, to initiate the downswing, is to replant the left heel and step onto the left foot. If you have made a good move to your left side, you should be able to hold your finish with almost all of your weight being firmly on top of your left foot, and your right toe will be just lightly touching the ground.

Weight from back side to a balance finish

The only exception is with the short irons or scoring clubs like an 8 iron on down through your wedges, where the necessity of crisp contact and a more compact swing for greater accuracy dictates staying with the bulk of your weight on your left side throughout the swing. Ken Venturi was famous for placing a golf ball or two under the outside of his right shoe while hitting balls to not allow his weight to slide right on the takeaway, and to give him leverage off the ground to initiate the downswing.

Since leg interaction with the ground gives us the ability to turn our hips back toward the target and create swing speed in the downswing, make sure you don’t cheat yourself by trying to keep your weight too stationary through the swing.

So when thinking about weight shift, try to keep some of these sports analogies in mind as they can help you to feel the proper motion.

In the March Golf Digest, Jim McLean has a really good article in which he separates golfers into those who would rather practice, and those who only want to play. While the elite players relish both practice and play, many of us choose a side to which Jim McLean offers very good advice.

As for me, I fall squarely in the practice group, as I really enjoy the study of the swing and the opportunity to work on different ideas in a practice frame of mind (which is mostly but not always on the range). The other advantage of being a “practicer” is that you can break sessions into smaller time frames rather than carving out a whole 4 hour block. While there are times when a swing overhaul will dictate that you spend the majority of your time with the same club trying to get a ‘feel’ for a new idea, there are a number of suggestions to help maximize the time you spend practicing. Below are some of Jim’s suggestions, but the over-arching theme is to make  your practice more like playing.

Tips to improve your practice time

1) Try to switch clubs and the type of shot as often as you can.

2) Use a pre-shot routine on the range, and try to ‘play’ different golf holes that you are familiar with in your mind.

3) Try to not hit balls without spending 30 minutes or more chipping and putting.

Practice? Are we talking about practice?

When I’ve been in a playing mode and able to play more than practice, I try to work in some of Jim McLean’s advice as well. One easy way to get a little extra practice in is to simply play a few balls on the same hole (obviously when the course is not crowded). This also goes for putting and chipping where you can take the opportunity to play different types of chip shots and work on some extra putting. You can even go as far as playing two separate balls from the tee and play them as if you were two separate players seeing how you manage the same hole with different strategies.

No matter if you are a practicer or a player, I recommend understanding your nature so that you can make the most out of your time on the course. For another view on this matter, you may be interested in a post Adam wrote called “Embrace the Practice Range”.

Golf Improvement tips from a Touring Pro:

Early in my golfing life, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to play with a number of touring pros as a result of my first marriage. Since then, I often get a lot of questions about how pros think about the game. While there are a number of differences, one surprising fact is that even pros think this game of golf is no easy matter. For example, I can recall a number of dinners when my father in law would scratch his head and exclaim with an absolute straight face, “Man, golf is a really, really hard game”. With that, here are a few nuggets I took from him.

Nugget #1  Don’t Forget that Golf is a Really Hard Game

It is that time of of year when many of us are working to get our golf game together in time for spring. This means swing fixes and outright overhauls are on the horizon. As you may recall from an earlier post about Bob Rotella’s book, amateurs tend to have little patience and expect change to happen, happen fast, and happen painlessly.

My father in law would tell me it took him at least three weeks of playing every day to incorporate one new idea into his swing. For those of you without calculators that’s 21 rounds of golf for a guy who played golf for a living. So if a guy who really knows his swing mechanics, and who has been a true student of the game throughout his career could hold out for 21 rounds before demanding improvement, do you think we can play some rounds and, god forbid, practice a bit before bailing on a swing change?

If you think this is hard, try golf

Nugget #2: Since golf is a really hard game, remember to have fun and make it easy on yourself when you can

You might be surprised to learn that when family was around and he was working on his game at home, my father in law would roll his ball around to get a good lie, even on the pristine fairways that we would play. I think he understood that the mental boost of confidence you get from hitting a good shot from a good lie was worth a lot more than many amateurs seem to undertand. Golf is hard enough without spending all of your time hitting out of bad lies, especially when you’re working on your game. Nicklaus actually recommends hitting off of tees with all of your irons at the driving range when you’re working on any kind of swing change to simply take the ground out of the equation. Of course, I’m not suggesting that my father in law rolled his ball when he was in a tournament, or playing in a more official game; but on his own time or with family and friends, he made it a little easier on himself.  I guess he figured he had to hit out of plenty of bad lies during his countless rounds on tour so why torture himself when he did not have to?

Finally, go easy on scoring snowmen. I can never recall a time he did not roll the ball back to any of us who were playing with him and say “that’s good,” when we were putting for a double bogie.  Perhaps the most valuable piece of advice he gave me was was that golf was supposed to be fun, and he knew that unless you cultivated it, the game could take it from you.

The Role of the Left Arm Part II

In The Role of the Left Arm Part 1, I wrote about Jimmy Ballard’s well-established idea of “connection” in the golf swing. I was recently reviewing an older tape of Jimmy’s teaching, and I got a better grasp of another important left arm concept – Jimmy calls it a “shorter” left arm, or “half a left arm.” This begs the question:

Should your left arm remain stiff throughout the swing?

This is a common mis-conception so lets take a look at one particular case, specifically, Calvin Peete, who led the tour in ball striking for nearly 10 years, and who literally could not straighten his left elbow. You can see Jim McLean describing this here:

Moveover, if you look at setup photos of Nicklaus, Hogan, Sneed and Jones, their arms are ‘soft’ at address, not stiff or straight, forming a triangle where the left hand is shorter, on what Jimmy calls the ‘inner rail’ of the swing, and the right hand is longer on the ‘outer rail.’ This ‘shorter’ left arm allows the shoulders to be more level, the posture to be more square and less dip of the right shoulder at address. Here is a video of Hogan demonstrating the soft arms on the Ed Sullivan show:

In the below pictures, I’ve demonstrated with a broom to make the club face’s position more evident at each position of the swing, how the triangle, formed by your arms and chest, stays intact. You can do this with a traditional grip, or split-grip drill (separate your hands by a few inches to better feel the “shorter” left and “longer” right hand on the grip).

Here are positions that I practice, and you can see what I’m talking about in this address photo:

Both arms are soft at address

At waist high going back, the triangle is intact with the left hand still on the ‘inner rail’ and the right hand on the ‘outer rail.’

;

From this position, as my shoulders finish turning back, or Jimmy would say ‘coiling’ by having my right arm simply fold, and move up to the throwing position in football or baseball.

The downswing is initiated from the ground up, ie, by my pushing off the inside of the right toe. With this initial move, my right hip leads the way and allows me to release my right arm and hand down the target line, and throw as hard as I want with my right hand. Another way to think about it is, the lower body starts the swing and the arms and shoulders follow.

You will notice that I have not included a picture at impact. I have omitted that section of the swing because of the advice I got from Jim Colbert who would constantly remind me to focus simply on swinging through to a correct balanced finish rather than thinking about a specific impact position, or rather to swing the club and ‘let the ball get in the way.’

At waist high past impact you can see where the left arm is still soft and short and the right arm is long and extended down the target line.

You will notice by the postion of the broom or ‘clubface’ during the swing, I have not had to manipulate my hands, or rotate my forearms at all to keep the club head square and in the center of the triangle for the entire swing. If you can do this with a soft and ‘shorter’ left arm, you’ll be amazed how easily you can square the club face and hit the straightest balls of your life.

From there, my left arm folds and I am in my fully-balanced position for the finish.

While there are pros who do keep a straight left arm it can be difficult to manage and there are plenty of big time names who go with a softer feel including Hal Sutton, Annika Sorenstam, Rocco Mediate, Curtis Strange, Jim Colbert, Peter Jacobsen and Jim Dent to name a few. Next time you are at the range try a softer left arm and let me know what you think.

Understanding putter weighting:  To dork-out about putting or not to dork-out about putting? An age-old question for this guy and most likely for many of you fellow hackers out there. One on hand, it’s gotta be the simplest part of the game – take a stick with a flat surface, hit the ball, and stop whining you nancy! On the other hand, every millimeter counts, and as the years go by, our brains have accumulated enough baggage on the greens to make Courtney Love jealous.

“Oh man, just visualize it going in the hole and pull the trigger”

So now what? Well, I recently stumbled into a tip that I think straddles the “nerd” line quite nicely – putter weighting. Did you know that putters are weighted in a way that complements a certain type of putting stroke, and using the wrong putter for your stroke can lead to high blood pressure and chronic panic attacks? If you’re like most of us hackers, you just went blank. We usually just head to the friendliest putting green in town (the store, of course), and try a few flatsticks until one has a look and/or feel that just seems right. Another method is to covet a putter that you’ve seen on TV or in a friend’s bag, gradually concluding that this one putter was crafted with you specifically in mind, and $119.00 later you’re still three-jacking on a regular basis.

Okay, so what’s putter weighting all about? In general terms, there are three types of putters available: classic toe-weighted blades (like the Odyssey #9 that Phil uses), heel-toe weighted putters (like the Anser #2), and mallet putters (like the Odyssey 2-ball). The classic blades have the majority of the weight at the toe, the heel-toe putters have their weight on each end of the blade, and the mallet putters have the weight balanced evenly across the face. The best way to see what category a putter falls into is to simply balance it on your finger and see which direction the putter head comes to rest.

See how the mallet putter faces the sky, the blade points down, and the heel-toe putter is somewhere in the middle? Congratulations! You have the gift of sight and have passed putter weighting 101.

So how does putter weighting apply to the stroke? Simply put, each putter is designed for one of the three basic putting strokes. If you like to take the putter straight back and straight through, the face-balanced mallet is right for you. If your stroke path is inside/square/inside, like a pronounced arc where the clubface opens on takeaway, then the classic blade would be most appropriate. And if you’re somewhere in the middle with a slight arc to your stroke (this applies to most golfers), the heel-toe weighted putter is your goldilocks.

I learned this lesson the hard way – I bought an Odyssey #9 based solely on how cool I thought the putting stroke looked when it was wielded by others. What ensued was a 3 month downward spiral into the Yippon Territory, especially on short putts. Turns out my natural stroke does not have as much arc needed to properly handle the putter, and in general terms I just struggled with hitting the ball where I thought I was aiming. Tiny differences, but enough to shatter all confidence around the cup and trigger constant stroke-tinkering, an unfortunate trademark of my game. Meanwhile, Adam had been wasting his time with mallets for years, trying to force a straight back-and-through stroke simply because it was the only way he could get the giant head to work halfway correctly. Cut to the present day, and with our new proper putters we are both averaging only 18.2 putts per round! The previous statement is wholly inaccurate; however, we now have the right sticks for our natural path and can focus on improving the stroke itself.

So without a moment’s delay(!), go see what type of putter you have. Then see what kind of stroke you naturally lean towards. Or vice-versa, I don’t care! The point is, you might find that you’ve been making the swashbuckling a lot harder than it needs to be.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In most circles it is understood that the blade putter is the least user-friendly of the bunch, intended for players of the highest caliber only. In keeping with all of my posts, there is a chance I am just not good enough to wield the blade, and that’s why it didn’t work for me. Cool? Cool.

Three Guys Golf Blog: If you’ve read my last piece, you know that I’ve been working on standing taller, and not letting myself get too bent over, with my head stuck in my chest.  Part II of my work in this area has been related to spine angle, where I coil or turn into my right leg without dipping my left shoulder, and thus changing my spine angle.

An easy way to feel this is to take your stance facing a wall with your forehead an inch from touching the wall.  As you turn back to the top of your swing, if your forehead bangs against the wall, then you’ve changed your spine angle towards the ball, and forward.  That’s not the feeling we want.  You want to feel yourself turn back without moving towards the ball—or the wall, and then you want to feel your forward move start from the ground, off of your right toe, bumping your hips to your left side to move your weight to your left foot, and then the rotation of your hips that pulls your shoulders in your natural right-handed, underhand throwing motion—picture skipping a rock or throwing from short-stop to the second baseman for the double play. If you haven’t changed your spine angle, this should flow easily, again without pushing your forehead towards the wall.

 Stand tall-no head banging!

 Another great way to feel yourself turning back without changing your spine angle, is to put your left hand on top of your right shoulder at address, and then as you turn back, make sure your right shoulder doesn’t raise UP, but turns BACK away from the wall.  You’ll find yourself swinging much more balanced, with your swing path much more down the line, instead of out and across the line.

Three Guys Golf Blog: How many times have you stood on the 18th tee box and suddenly remembered a key swing thought and then proceeded to rip your first good drive of the day?  This is exactly what happened to me yesterday during a cold and hungover round of golf. Now I could blame the Jameson, the hangover or the 48 degree weather, but I am going to chalk up my 1st 17 miserable holes to forgetting a key swing thought.

How is it possible for us to make this mistake over and over again? My remedy for this problem is to take short notes that can help me when I get in trouble during a round. Unfortunately, my head was pounding that day and I needed another note to remind me to look at my notes.

Kidding aside, I have found keeping notes to be a valuable tool to use both during a round and at the range.  Not only can it help you get back on track, but it ends up chronicling your approach to the game.  For example, I have found it quite interesting to read what I used to think was important so I can then evaluate whether I feel the same way or whether I have made further adjustments.  I know it may sound stupid but I really believe that because golf is such an evolution of thoughts and mechanics, a journal can be one of the most valuable tools in your bag.

Three Guys Golf Blog: For most of the year, I am pretty lucky as I am able to play golf 1 to 2 times a week but for the past three weeks I have not hit a single ball. So, after a Saturday filled with yard work, I decided to take advantage of the 60 degree weather and get in a quick 9 holes. With nary a range ball hit, I was delighted when my tee shot went straight down the fairway.  I was even more pleased that my wedge put me to just outside 4 ft of the pin.  Despite the par, I was stuck with how easy the game seemed.  Maybe golf is like riding a bike? Over the 9 holes, I had 4 pars, 4 bogie’s and 1 double.  While a 42 is not my nine hole record, it is not a horrible score for me even in the heart of the season. 

This got me to thinking: can taking time away from  actually golf improve your game? Does time off help us forget all the bad swing thoughts?  Maybe the relaxation that comes with lowered expectations allows you us to tap into a free and easy swing which can be just as important as focusing on technique?

If this is in fact the case, the lesson is to bring that loosness to your game even when you are in mid-season.  Easier said than done I know, but something to consider and put on your list of swing thoughts.

I’ve been re-working my swing over the past year to help deal with some back issues that I’ve had, and one of the keys for less pressure on my spine that has created more power and accuracy is this simple key.  It’s been something that several announcers have been harping on Tiger for, until this President’s Cup series, where he’s gotten more upright, and less bent over.  If you look back at pictures and video from his best golf, he was always more upright and swinging less around himself when he was hitting the ball consistently.

Since the ball is on the ground, it’s easy to get bent over, with my weight out over my toes, and from there, my head tends to go into my chest, and I tend to swing out and across the ball for the pull or the weak pull-slice.

I really like Jimmy Ballard’s idea that he got from Hogan of standing taller, with your butt more underneath you, so that your shoulders, knees and balls of your feet are more inline if you look at your stance from the side.  Butch Harmon worked on this a good bit with Adam Scott, and he shows it beautifully.

It’s also the heads-up linebacker position in football, so that with your head up, your spine can stay more aligned and steady through the swing, and you can rotate your shoulders with much less effort to get back and through the ball, with a tall finish on your left side.  And I also like the feel of having my body and chest feeling like it’s moving ‘up’ or tall to the finish, while my hand and arms are swinging through the impact zone feeling ‘down’ and through, then up to the finish—ironically, I feel like I move ‘up’ to hit ‘down’ through the ball.

“I putted much better today, I mean I putted well yesterday, they just did not go in”.  This is a close estimation of what Tiger Woods said after his final round at the Presidents Cup and just another example of the PGA players supreme confidence in their flat stick.

Your Daily Affirmation

Tiger’s sometimes unfounded self belief serves as a reminder that confidence is perhaps the most important element in putting.  I think we all know this to be true, but fooling yourself into actually believing you are a better putter than you really are is not an easy task especially when you are going through a bad stretch. We all know the dread of  standing over a 4 foot putt during a round in which it seems nothing will go in. The ability to forget all of your failures and replace them with successes is incredibly hard but perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of not lipping out yet another putt.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how to muster your confidence, but for me it is simply taking a page out of Tiger’s book.  No, not the little black book, but his book of never admitting he is anything other than awesome.  As dumb as it sounds, I try to never take the blame for a bad putt.  Instead I tell myself, it was a good read but a bad break or whatever it takes to not let my brain even consider that I am not a great putter.

So remember, you are good enough, you are smart enough and doggone it, you are a really good putter.

Three Guys Golf Blog:  

Fact: Professional golfers have more money and time than all weekend hackers combined. Fact: Despite the inherent advantage pros have, there are many habits we can copy with little additional time or money.  Fact:  We seldom take advantage of the opportunity to model our game from the pros. Conclusion: we are not very smart.

For example every pro uses alignment sticks on the range at least 75% of the time but we never do. Pros spend at least 50% practicing their short game-we blast a bucket of drivers. Pros play with the best equipment and $50 balls we play with 10 year old drivers and $7 balls.  How about we split the difference, get a decent used club (which can double as alignment stick) and pony up for a dozen $20 balls instead of something called “Raw” or anything that starts with the word “Top”.

Don’t Cheat, but definitely copy

Gimmicks aside, a very effective trait to emulate from the pros is patience.  Watching golf on TV, it is hard to get a sense of how long these guys take to hit a shot. Don’t get me wrong, I would never advocate slow play, but again lets split the difference.  How about we take a couple of practice swings, get a semblance of a pre-shot routine and maybe put down the smoke before we try to drain a 6 footer?

God knows, I am as guilty as the next guy, but I am convinced that if we just copy just a few simple and free habits from the Pros we can improve are game significantly.

Good evening everybody – Matt here, checking in after a few weeks of intense swing scrutiny.  Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve had some glimpses of the promised land after about a year of being basically lost with the full swing (we’ll see how long this lasts).  While most of my golf cranium is still what Bob Rotella might call “an unmitigated disaster the likes of which this world has never seen”, I have learned a few things that might be obvious to most.

 
“I am now dumber for having watched you putt.”

Never one to withhold information, I figured I’d share the most important one for now:

Don’t cherry-pick your lessons. I have been guilty of this crime for about two decades now.  When my swing is on, who needs ’em.  When I start to go off the rails a bit, maybe I’ll pop my head into a pro’s office and see if they feel like making $40, “the haard way“.  So I’ll take one lesson, then return to the lab and try to work on the one thing they taught me, simultaneously reading Golf Digest articles and dreaming up other great fixes as I drive down the road (at least I’m not texting).  OR, every once in a while someone will give me a gift certificate for a lesson . . . perfect!  It’s free, it’s an arms-length transaction, and I can take from it what I want without letting that maniac really mess with my swing.

“I tell ya this over the top stuff is killing me . . . how about twenty bucks if I pay cash?”

Well, and I’m sure you know where this is going . . . over the past few months I’ve had a few sessions with the same teaching pro, one every few weeks or so.  Some were proper 30 minute lessons, others were me just leveraging my prior lesson and essentially guilt-tripping the poor guy into answering a few questions, let me show you what I mean, and boom!, we’re on the range.

I’ll cut to the chase – I’m truly shocked by how valuable this process has been, and can’t believe I’ve blown it for this long.  The giant objectives that I was initially told to work on (bigger shoulder turn, releasing the club all the way to the target instead of chicken-winging it in after impact, etc.) were all whittled down to smaller thoughts, without allowing any new screw-ups to creep in.  In fact, I got so comfortable with the original concepts that my last session was almost like a bonus round . . . instead of working on things that felt CRAZY when I tried to fix them, we started messing around with things that would simply enhance an already well-struck ball.  I guess one could argue that these are still flaws being addressed, but the point is, they were all within a comfort zone that never threatened to derail my progress, it was basically just for kicks.  Of course these are things specific to my swing, but this included tweaks such as aligning the ball at the heel of the club at setup to promote a more inside-out swing (and reduce toe-balls), keeping the shoulders more level in the downswing, and emphasizing leg drive to gain distance.

So I guess that’s it for now . . . stay tuned for my next post, inevitably titled “When Good Things Go Bad: The Tragic Tale of a Man, His Leg Drive, and the Teaching Pro That Fleeced Him”.