Swing Shortcomings

As you’ve probably noticed, at this point in the evolution of my swing, my primary influence lately has been Tom Bertrand and his synthesis of

Hogan’s book Five Lessons. For the past four to six weeks, I’ve been working with Tom—his YouTube videos and his book—figuratively speaking, my latest swing coach, and we’ve been working on the left elbow turn.

In his video, Tom tells you that you have to practice this movement rigorously and in slow motion, at least at first. I followed his advice and saw immediate results. My practice balls seemed to explode off the clubhead, their trajectories starting out dead straight and then curving, incredibly, right to left. All of a sudden, I was able to hit a draw. With all my research on the development of a golf swing behind me, I knew that I was on the verge of graduating from a Stage One golfer (one who slices) to a Stage Two golfer (who can draw the ball). I was so excited! I’m still excited about this progress! Finally, I thought, I’m learning a golf swing!

However, I quickly realized that I couldn’t do this regularly. And as all “Wannabes” do, I probably liked to remember my good shots and forget about the bad ones. When I hit a wicked slice or topped the ball (which happened way too often), I would make an adjustment—anything to get that sweet right to left trajectory back again. These adjustments included

• turning my shoulders farther on the backswing
• leaving the clubhead farther behind me as I started the downswing
• keeping my left arm across my chest as I started to the downswing
• staying behind the ball at impact
• extending both arms into that desired “V” after impact
• feeling my weight on the downswing transfer to the outside left heel
• finishing the swing with a follow-through in the classic position, around my neck somewhere

As you can tell, this was too much to accomplish. Day-to-day, I would focus on one or two of these objectives, depending on how the practice balls flew. Then I spent two hours at the driving range. That was a turning point.

I started out hitting a seven-iron to a green about 150 yards out. I thought I was hitting the ball pretty well. Generally, I could hit ball first and watch the flight track right and come back left to hit somewhere on the green. Naturally, I hit many balls badly, too. I still felt that, for me, I was hitting the ball well, and accurately, too.

When it came to the driver, I saw the same kind of results. I could hit the ball out there where I wanted it to go. Sometimes straight ahead, sometimes slicing right, sometimes straight ahead and drawing left. I never knew what was going to happen. The track of the ball didn’t really matter to me, however. What mattered most was the distance. After all my practice, I still couldn’t hit the ball more than about 195 yards on the fly (and I was concerned only with the fly). To me, this meant that I might as well not play golf. I knew of holes on public courses that I’ve played near me where you had to carry the ball at least 210 yards. If I couldn’t do at least that, then I might as well take up chess. Recently, I saw Camilo Villegas hit an eight iron about 180 yards. That means that he can hit a

• seven iron 190
• six iron 200
• five iron 210
• four iron 220

Basically, he’s hitting clubs two and a-half times what I hit. This told me that I had a distance problem. And it determined what I would practice. Going for greater distance is the subject of the next post.