Narrowing It Down

Taking regular lessons with my swing coach, JJ, starting in July, 2008, I spent the rest of the summer just practicing. I decided that there was no point in going out on the course to play with my flawed swing. The boundary of my golf world became my backyard. Like Voltaire’s picaresque traveler, Candide, I had learned to tend my own garden and felt no compulsion to go any further.

On a small patio, I set up my practice tee, with a hitting mat, a couple of deck chairs, and two galvanized garbage cans. I set one deck chair inside another so that I could feel the top edge against my hip as I practiced my turn. I stacked the garbage cans one on top of the other about two strides out in front of the hitting mat. Then I practiced hitting practice balls just past the garbage cans on the right side. I wanted something wide and high enough so that I’d know when I hit to the right, the correct path I was after. If I missed and went left of my target, the ball would hit the cooler.

In this way, I spent the next few months, right up to the end of the golf season, hitting plastic balls in the backyard. Most of the time, I hit the white plastic balls with large holes in them. They don’t fly too far, and when one hit the garbage cans with a hollow, metallic tenor echo (reminiscent of the show "Stomp!"), it just bounced to the ground. If I felt I had made some progress, it was time to switch to the solid white dimpled plastic balls that I could hit about thirty yards or so and watch the flight of the ball.

Gradually, as I improved the path of my swing, I started hitting fewer and less severe slices. And when I was swinging well, I began to hit balls straight or with a gratifying right to left draw. This was such a novelty and such an encouraging development that even when I hit wicked duck hooks, I was delighted.

This was a period of patient, slow, and methodical practice. For quite some time, I’ve known that I can work on only about one thing at a time. More than that overloads my synapses. Even so, as I practiced, the slightest change in my swing usually produced terrible results. One minute, I would be hitting the ball fine. Then, if I make a slight modification, the ball would fly off right in a wicked slice or trip bouncing off the tee like a hot grounder during infield practice.

The hip turn, the weight shift, the swing path, staying behind the ball, rotating around the spine without too much head movement, keeping the left arm straight, relaxing the arms and wrists and hands, keeping the club in the fingers—all these basics I practiced basically one at a time. With the camcorder almost every day, I checked my progress and decided what needed more attention. This constant, daily practice taught me to use my time more wisely, too. Where I had been in the habit of videotaping myself for use after a practice session, and then working on a perceived weakness the next day, now I saw the wisdom of looking at the video during a practice session, while it was still fresh in my mind.

Speaking of wise practice, keeping a journal is a habit I’ve tried to maintain since the beginning, back in the spring of 2007. Looking back at my first entries, I can see that I took notes on research I was doing at the time, either by reading golf books or by watching YouTube videos. I see references to Shawn Clement (the great YouTube pro I mentioned in an early post), Hogan, Rory Sabbatini, Luke Donald, Kevin Na, K.J. Choi, Hale Irwin, Ernie Els, Sean O’Hair, Lee Scarbrow, David Toms, Aaron Baddeley, David Leadbetter, the golfcoastgolfschool.com posts on YouTube, Jim Flick’s book On Golf: Lessons from America's Master Teacher (listing his top ten drills), notes on the strength and flexibility drills on Roger Fredericks DVDs, and more among pages and pages of notes. I was very methodical back then and logged anything I though valuable in my journal. Maybe that was because I had read somewhere that Hogan a journal with him whenever he went out practicing. Though I still believe in the efficacy of this kind of note-taking, I do it only sporadically, the last three entries coming in September and November ’08 and then not again until a week ago.

I think that the reason for this is that, by now, I’ve narrowed down my biggest problems to a couple that aren’t hard to remember or keep track of, and these are mainly what Tom Bertrand illustrates in his YouTube video about the “Missing Link”, as well as in his book, The Secret of Hogan's Swing—turning the left elbow in towards the left hip during the downswing and at impact, keeping the arms close together as long as possible, and moving the left arm “directly across the chest and the right shoulder during the takeaway.”

At this point, I want to introduce you to Tom Bertrand’s wonderful video on YouTube, “The ‘Missing Link’ to Ben Hogan’s Secret.” I came across it, with impeccable timing, while browsing through other YouTube golf videos. After all my practice, I was receptive, and I didn’t miss Tom’s message. I had been trying to square up the clubface consciously, using my hands, and the second I heard Tom describe the role of the left elbow, I knew he was correct. This epiphany drove me back to his book, The Secret of Hogan's Swing. I was certain that there were other details I had missed or forgotten on my previous reading and study. For instance, I had forgotten the importance Hogan places on keeping the elbows close together on the backswing. Tom’s summary drove me back to the source. Hogan’s book, which I’ve had open ever since, next to Tom’s book and Swing Like a Pro) These three constitute my indispensable study guides.

In the next post, I’ll review what I’m trying to learn from them.