The Potential for Power

My dismal distance at the range, related in the previous post, turned out to be a catalyst of progress and change. When I resumed my practice in my backyard, I was re-reading Tom Bertrand’s The Secret of Hogan’s Swing more carefully and paying more attention to where or how in my swing I could develop the clubhead speed that I wanted.

The day after the blustery, frigid practice when I just made slow motion swings, I went out again, not intending to hit practice balls, but content just to make full swings and see if I could speed up the clubhead. The answer I found came pretty quickly and was one that I had discovered months earlier and then set aside to practice other swing thoughts.

My problem turned out to be a familiar one—relying on muscles and conscious control of the swing. Lately, in my shortened swing drills, I had been concentrating so much on the role of each hand and the timing of the release that I had completely obscured the necessity of “letting the club do the work.” I was consciously doing the work, consciously moving the club along its path, consciously turning my left elbow, consciously throwing the clubhead with my right hand at impact. No wonder I can’t hit the ball 200 yards. Instead of distance, I had deliberate control. As I practiced swings, I could feel the weight of the club and every position of my arms and hands during the swing.

That weight and muscular awareness reminded me to keep the grip in my fingers and to keep my fingers and hands and arms relaxed in that active way that Tom Bertrand talks about. That did it. Once I let go of everything I had been so careful to control before, I was able to really start swinging the club with some speed and some acceleration. I could hear the club ripping through the air, a sound I had become unaccustomed to listen for. I began to pay attention to the transition once again, to have a sense of lag, and to feel the gathering momentum of the clubhead on its downward arc toward the ball.

With a loose, relaxed swing, my left elbow and right hand automatically did what I had been teaching them to do for weeks. Near the ball, nearly at the bottom of the swing arc, the club snapped through, my forearms were crossed, right over left, and the club was finishing its semicircular path up over my left shoulder while my hips completed their turn and my right shoulder finished over my left toe, just as Tom describes the finish of the follow-through.

From the feel of it, I knew that this is what a good golf swing is supposed to feel like. Naturally, as excited as I was by my re-discovery, I couldn’t wait to hit some plastic balls to see what would happen. Even before I teed them up, I knew. The worst hits you could imagine. Off the toe of the club, wicked slices, shanks, and topped grounders. I knew this would happen because it always does, without fail, whenever I make the slightest change With a change as wide-open as this—giving complete freedom to the swing—I couldn’t reasonably expect to hit the ball. Not at first, anyway.

I went back to some more slow swings and some swings at a faster tempo. When I started hitting again, at least the balls started going out in the general direction of my target line. And before too long, they were actually looking pretty good. And a couple felt like bombs, straight and way out there, I’d guess another ten or twenty yards longer than I was hitting at the range a couple of days before. You can see the results in the video below. The swing now felt as though it had the potential for power.