Thursday, December 31, 2009

New Year's Eve Reality Check

After so much practice with the left arm alone swing and after feeling so good at the range the other day, I had to try out the swing today, despite the weather.

Callaway Hx Soft Flight Practice BallsStarting at about eight in the morning, snow came down in a hurry. It was cold out, probably in the upper twenties, and the snow was sticking. By afternoon, after I had shoveled the driveway, I was wondering if it were possible to hit practice balls without losing most of them in the snow, which was about three inches deep. The prospect of hitting balls over the snow quickly won out over the propect of losing most of them until the snow melted, and I threw down my practice mat on the front walkway. The obvious choice was to use my Callaway practice balls, since they are orange and might be easier to find, once I hit them.

So I set up and started hitting balls with the left arm alone drill. Out of the first dozen or so, I yanked several over the stone wall that marks the left boundary of my property (I found all of them later), but it didn't take long to get warmed up and get in a groove where I could hit almost every ball straight ahead and with a good, clean hit. With this encouragement, I collected the balls, finding all of them in the snow, and decided to try hitting with a full swing.

Hitting thirty balls was all the encouragement I needed. I found that I was hitting the balls out towards my target and almost every swing was a clean hit. When I finished, I thought, maybe I should film my swing at this point, as a kind of reality check, and see what it looks like. Amazingly, I found all the balls in the snow again and set up some on the mat to hit in front of the camcorder.

In the video below, you'll see that I'm wearing my Sorrels, the boots I typically wear when I know I'm going to be walking around the backyard in bad conditions looking for the practice balls that I've hit. You'll also notice that I'm dressed pretty lightly. That's because I know I'm going to be outside hitting balls only for a few minutes, just long enough to get a little video footage.

In the video, I've added some lines to highlight my swing plane and the club position at various points in the swing. You'll also hear my stamping my feet to get some snow off my Sorrels before I start hitting with the camcorder behind me. In all these shots, I'm using my typical practice club, my seven-iron.

As you can see, I've got a reasonably rhythmical swing on a fairly good plane and with a good follow-through, very different from what it was a few months ago. If I can do it with my video software, I'll try to do a side-by-side video soon that shows my swing as it was not too long ago compared to what it looks like now. The improvement that you'll see is the result of daily practice and almost daily videotaping and review. Then, of course, there's the left arm alone drill. It is just fantastic!

In the slo-mo section (from behind) of the video, you can see some good aspects of the swing and several that need some work and readjustment. For example, on the backswing, the plane is a little too flat. In an earlier video, the plane was more vertical and on plane throughout the swing. Now it's dropped a bit, and I want to fix that. I added some graphics to highlight the target line and other lines in the swing that I like to pay attention to. Another problem that I see is at the top of the swing, where I go past parallel to the target line and past parallel to the ground. On the plus side, the downswing looks pretty good -- on plane again and maintaining the spine angle and a right angle between the swing plane and the spine angle. And the end of the follow-through is almost parallel to the original swing plane, and my balance is good, most of my weight on my left heel.

Now on New Year's Day, I'll go out with the Callaways again and work on the plane of the backswing. I also want to get over my excitement at how good the swing feels and pay closer attention to staying in the shot longer and really delaying the release, getting over my eagerness to hit another great shot and work on a smooth, unhurried approach to the ball.


Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Left Arm Alone Drill: Frigid Fun

The next day, the weather was so delightful, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to go to the range and hit a bucket. Driving my daughter to her varsity basketball practice at nine in the morning in my Matrix, which gives the outside temperature among the dashboard instruments, I saw that it was eighteen degrees out and with wind chill (advisories out for the whole day), it probably felt around ten degrees, at most. But the range I was going to had good heaters above the mats, and I thought I might be able to hit a hundred balls before losing all sensation in my hands.

First of all, the heaters didn't come on right away. For some reason, they really didn't start making noise and producing real heat for about fifteen minutes, maybe more. Even so, I was doing OK. I was dressed warmly in layers and was gripping the clubs with my winter gloves, not ideal, but that's how I've been swinging in the backyard the last couple of weeks when outside temperatures have been consistently in the thirties. My ears were getting pretty cold, though, and I took off my baseball hat and snuggled on a knit hat that, fortunately, I had brought along.

Once the heat kicked in, I decided to take off the gloves and swing normally, with a golf glove and one bare hand. Hitting that way, I had to stop every five to ten minutes and warm up my fingers. At first, I just put them under my layers and grabbed some material and tried to surround my fingers with warmth. Walking back and forth across the mat while I waited for my fingers to thaw, I realized that my head was staying pretty warm from the heat reflecting down from the overhead heaters. Tentatively, I put one cold hand up on my head and felt the warmth of my hat, which felt warmer than under my layers.

So, one at a time, I put one hand and then the other on top of my head, burying my fingers as deeply as I could into the heated polyester, walking back and forth, and waiting for the cold stinging in my fingers to ease up. Pacing back and forth across my mat, with one hand on top of my head and the other grabbing a handful of clothing right on top of my stomach, I must have looked like I was doing that stunt we all did when we were children of trying to pat your head and rub circles around your stomach at the same time.

I didn't have to worry about being seen acting like a third-grader, however, since there was only one other person outside with me, and he was down near the other end of the range, and with all the mats separated by plastic partitions, there's no way he could have seen me. The circumstances, in a case like this, are crucial to any attempt at interpretation. Observed, I would have looked ridiculous, but isolated and by myself, I was simply practical. In any case, it was the best I could do. Once my fingers started to get cold, there wasn't much I could do about it. And, in the end, it didn't really matter. I hit the ball well.

At the beginning, when I tried out the seven-iron that I use every day in the back yard, I tried to duplicate the loose, relaxed swing I had been practicing, and it worked, from the very first swing. Holding the handle loosely in my fingers, letting in hinge at the top and lag and then coming down and whipping the clubhead through the ball, I could feel that the swing was good. The ball was going straight out there, about 150 or a little more, which looked good to me, considering that I couldn't really warm up in this weather and that the wind was blowing steadily across the range.

Then I tried my hybrids, which have become my favorite clubs. The results were even better. In the course of hitting the whole bucket (100 balls, early-bird special), I found I could hit the hybrid 4 about 190-200 yards and the three about 200-210. On really good swings, I was conscious of seeing the ball really well (I like to pick out a dimple and focus on that) and feeling the club handle loose in my fingers and rotating my shoulders and releasing my left wrist late into the swing and feeling the clubhead really compress the ball with a great, cracking sound. And when all this happened, I knew where the ball would be flying when I looked up during the follow-through.

With frozen fingers, I went through the eight-iron and the five and the six. With all the clubs, now, I'm hitting straighter and farther than before and getting closer to hitting distances that I know are decent for an amateur ( I did laugh to myself at one point, however, when I hit a 4 hybrid about 180 and remembered writing down at my desk at home that some pro in a recent tournament hit his 8-iron 183! How do they do that?).

I also hit a few with the driver, just enough to satisfy myself that I could swing that with my practice swing, too. I ended the session with some fives, just to prove to myself that I'm making progress with that club and getting nearer to my goal of hitting the five somewhere over 180. Today, I probably was hitting it around 160-170, and it felt really good. The last few balls I hit with the 4 hybrid, and by this time, I knew they were going out there about 190 and right around my target. After the last ball, I was completely satisfied. The results confirmed that the left arm alone drill is, indeed, a valuable way to improve the swing. I'll keep on practicing that way all winter.

On my way out of the range, as I was walking past the front desk inside the heated main part of the building with the pro shop and the cafeteria, a couple of men were standing in a group talking (none of them dressed for golf outdoors and none had clubs with them) and one of them looked directly at me as I approached, in my layers, my winter gloves, my knit hat, and my golf bag slung over one shoulder and said, "And here's a die-hard...," but before he could finish his sentence, I interjected, "Frigid Fun!" Obviously, he liked the alliteration because he stopped what he was saying and smiled more broadly at me and repeated, "Yeah, Frigid Fun!"

As I drove up the hill toward the highway, I noticed that the wind had been so strong there that it had lifted up a whole section of the turf carpet and thrown it right through the netting alongside the road. How to deal with this must have been what those men inside the range were discussing as I passed them. "Frigid Fun!"

Monday, December 28, 2009

Left Arm Alone Drill: Payoffs

Because I can feel such fine variations leading to obviously good results, I've been devoted to the left arm alone drill for several weeks now. Of course, I can't resist the temptation to swing with both arms when I want to assess where the drill is leading me, but aside from that, the drill feels so good that I continue with it every day, even now, in late December in the Northeast with temperatures in the thirties and snow on the ground. As you'll see on this video, the temperature is in the low thirties with a windchill in the high twenties. On this day, I went out for a series of separate hitting sessions in the backyard. Chilled, I would go back inside, do some computer work, warm up, and then come out again later.

Typically, when I start the left arm alone drill, I can hardly hit the ball. For quite a few strokes, the ball squirts out to the right, just a glancing blow with the club face wide open, or it's a weak slice right, and sometimes, I even miss the ball entirely. But once I get the backswing lined up and loosen my left wrist for a snappy, unconscious release,I gradually get to a point where I can whip the ball out there right in front of me, with good arc and good distance.

I think of what Nicklaus said about Tom Watson during last summer's British Open, "He always gets to the top of the backswing." And that's become a key checkpoint as I practice the left arm alone drill. If I can get to the top of the backswing on plane and let the club hinge and lag before beginning the downswing, almost invariably I know I'm going to pop the ball out there just where I want to. It's such a great feeling. When everything is in place, the results are perfect. And I'm at the point now where I can go through a few balls in a row with perfect, or nearly perfect, results. That string of successes will usually end with a thump of a fat swing deep into the hitting mat, producing a short ball or one sliced off to the right. You'll see all the bad results on the video below. But you'll also see how sometimes, when everything is in place, the swing and the ball flight are just what you'd want.

Now that I have the sense of the swing, the goal over the remaining winter months is to work this into a dependable, repeatable, accurate swing, and this is something that I'm quite sure I can do. Hitting at the range is the "reality check," and that will be the subject of the next post.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Left Arm Alone Drill: Lag and Lead

The left arm alone drill has given me the feeling that I'm in the final stage of building a competent swing. Like all golfers, I'll be working on the swing itself forever, that much goes without saying. However, for the first time since I started trying to build a swing -- it's been three years now -- I feel as though I can see the finish line. Even with a flawed swing, I persuaded myself that I could shoot in the eighties this fall (I didn't actually do that, but I came very close the couple of times I played a course, and I felt so competent that I was certain that with some more on-course experience, shooting in the eighties was not a problem).

Now, with the learning that's coming from this drill, I can see that I should be able to break 80 next season. There's no reason not to. I'm a good putter, and I read greens well. My short game is very good, and I think I've learned how to get out of a bunker. With a solid, repeatable swing, that gives me reasonable distance and control, I'm expecting to shoot in the seventies next season, once I start playing regularly. That will be a significant change for me, since practice, not playing, has been my priority until now. And I have really enjoyed practicing. Submitting myself to a practice regimen that will lead to progress toward long-term goals makes sense to me. And looking back over the last three years, I see a gratifying record of progress and improvement. There have been horrendous patches, of course. Learning golf is a great test of one's character. And in learning a golf swing, one has to be able to learn from failure. In that respect, I suppose a golf swing is like a baseball swing, only baseball is much worse. Now, three years into this building project, the left arm alone drill is illuminating some key concepts.

First, the swing has to be on plane. This sounds so obvious. Yet how do you know whether your swing is on plane or not? One way is to videotape yourself constantly, as I have done. Another is to do this drill. It's absolutely unforgiving. If you're not on plane, you have no idea where the ball is going to go, or even if you're actually going to hit it! I've had numerous swings where I didn't even hit the ball! How could that happen? Easy! When the backswing is out of order -- off plane, for one thing -- you may not hit the ball, even though it's only a couple of feet away from your hand. Hitting around 500 plastic practice balls a day has given me a good feeling for what the swing should be, or could be. You always have to remember that whatever your most recent discovery about the swing is, it's not the last. You never get to that point. The golf swing is "the vanishing point" in art. You have no idea where the end point is or, even, if there ever is an end point. It is an eschatological question. I guess the pro golfers have figured it out, but for the rest of us, it will always remain mostly a mystery.

The title of this post comes from an understanding that the last two days of practicing in my back yard have taught me. Today, especially. The temperature was below thirty, and I was wearing my Sorrel boots. But in the course of hitting about 500 balls, I got a feeling for a swing that worked. It involved swing back pretty steeply, with my wrist bowed, then letting the club lag, then coming though leading with my left wrist and snapping my hand through at the instant of contact with the ball. To simplify it for myself as a practiced, I started saying to myself, "Lag and lead," by which I meant, let the club lag at the top of the backswing and then, on the downswing, lead with the left wrist.

As I approached the ball, I could feel my left wrist in front, and then I could feel the clubhead trapping the ball against the hitting mat and then the wrist releasing and turning the clubhead over. This is, I'm sure, what Hogan means, in his book,
, when he says that he felt as though he was capturing the ball and then slinging it down the fairway. I've written about this in earlier posts, but back then, I don't think I really understood how this works. Now I think I do.

When I get the various parts of the swing in place, I can pop the plastic ball out there, right where I want to. I have to get the backswing path just right (it feels unright, but really, I think, it's not going past my body), and then I have to let the club lag. On the way down, I have to lead with my left wrist, and, last, I release my left wrist, feeling the toe of the club come around and fling the ball toward my target. Being able to do this time after time was quite an amazing feeling. I actually knew that I could hit the ball straight in front of me. I could feel that solid "Click!" and the full follow-through and then see the ball high in the air floating right where I wanted it to go.

Not every time, however. This succession of movements is so subtle and so fragile that the slightest error results in a variety of results. Sometimes, it would be hooks or slices. In the worst cases, the clubface would never close, and I would just shank the ball off to the right somewhere. But the practice was generally encouraging. When I was in a groove, I could hit balls cleanly and accurately. Getting in that groove is my next goal.

P.S. I went out again the day after this post to practice in twenty-five degree weather (at least there wasn't much wind). Yesterday, I had started to feel a groove, and today I felt under control, too. The drill feels quite amazing. When I hit the right slot on the backswing, let the club lag, then swing through, feeling my left wrist lead before releasing the left hand, I can hit balls right out there, straight in front of me, at my imaginary target. It feels so good, this incipient feeling of having a dependable swing that produces th similar fine, accurate shot time after time.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Good Swing, Bad Swing

Today, two days after my last practice at the range (took the day off yesterday because of an ice storm), I had one of those days I've become used to. It started out well, with good swings, good contact, and good distance. But it deteriorated. Out of the two hundred balls I hit (Early Bird Special -- half price), the last 150 or so were, for the most part, really bad.

The problem, or the cause of the problem, was, I think, trying to get too much distance. When I first started the practice, I thought I was in great shape. I was hitting my utility 3 and 4 out there around 180 to 190 and feeling really good. Then I went through the other irons. No problem. I hit the 5 and 6 out there a respectable distance, and contact with the ball felt good. The 7 and 8 also felt good. Somehow, though (and I can't remember the sequence that led me to this point), my swing suddenly deserted me. For days now, I've felt that the swing was right where I wanted it to be and that, by spring, I'd be poised to break 80. With today's swing, I'd be lucky to break 120!

I'm pretty sure that I lost the swing after hitting a few 7-irons and thinking that they were way too short. Once I started trying for more distance, that's when I lost track of the swing. I started shanking the ball again, something I haven't done much since I started the left arm alone drill, blading it, hitting thin, and topping the ball. It was an awful experience! It started somewhere in my first bucket of 100 balls and continued until I hit the last ball. Then I stopped and thought, "Do I want to hit another bucket?" I answered myself, "Of course, you do! You'll understand the problem and find the solution and be better off than ever!" So I went and bought another Early Bird.

A whole new bucket of balls didn't solve my problems. I started talking to myself. On many swings, hitting the ball felt as though I were hitting a rock. There was absolutely no sensation of compressing the ball and getting that great "Click!" when you hit the ball just right. The ball felt dead. It felt like lead. This utter incompetence being impossible for me to accept, I tried a new swing thought each time I teed up a new ball. Most of the time, the result was dismal. I couldn't hit the ball any better than a beginner. I really had a hard time with this. If you look at the video, you'll see that these swings aren't bad. They could be better, but they're not too bad. And the results were gratifying, too. These were my early swings. once I got into trouble, I couldn't stand the idea of videotaping myself.

Hitting so many balls gave me multiple opportunities to try out different swing thoughts. I thought about swinging along an arc. I thought about releasing with my hands way in front of the ball. I thought about relaxing. I thought about turning my shoulders and rotating around my spine. I thought about swinging like Ernie Els. I thought about swinging slow and relaxed. All were excellent ideas. None of them worked.

Feeling pretty despondent and defeated, I packed up, and as I started to leave my heated hitting station, I made plans for my next practice. The only thing to do was to go home and go into the backyard and start hitting balls -- left arm only -- into the snow. By now, I trust that drill completely. It's going to be my ticket to shooting in the 70s, I'm sure. Of course, that's assuming that today is just a temporary nightmare!

Once I got home, I checked my email -- no new job offers -- and headed out to the backyard, the humble origin of my future golf greatness, and started doing the left arm only drill. It felt so good! Not all the time, but enough so that I reassured myself that I really could hit a golf ball well, if I relaxed. The first fifty plastic balls were a gallimaufry (a hodgepodge), but I quickly identified one ingredient of a good swing. By now, I'm used to bowing the left wrist slightly during the backswing. But suddenly, I discovered -- or rediscovered -- the feeling of dragging the club, with fingers 3,4 and 5 of the left hand down through the hitting zone. That was huge.

The next fifty balls, I hit 75% OK (I counted). The final fifty (it was now four o'clock and the light dying), I hit all but four in an acceptable way, with this feeling of letting the club hinge at the top of the backswing and then feeling as though I were dragging the club to the ball and finally releasing -- with a Snap!-- when my hands were in front of the ball. It felt so great! And I was able to do it over and over again!

After the last fifty balls, while I was picking them up in the gathering darkness with my shag bag, I was thinking to myself that more of this one-arm practice is what I need.


Saturday, December 12, 2009

Working on the Release 1

The video below shows my practice at the range two days later. As you can see, I'm the only person there. I wonder why. The temperature is about thirty-three degrees, and it's shopping time for the holiday season. Where is everybody? You can also hear the ticking of the gas-heat igniters up above me. The heat here is not very efficient. At times, I actually stretched my hands out above me toward the heaters, hanging from the ceiling, to get warm. I also put the grip of the club I wanted to use up there, hoping it would get a little warmer.

You're not going to see anything dramatically different from the previous video. However, I thought it would be instructive to show you that the swing takes some time to develop, even at this point, where I feel I'm very close to a very good golf swing. You can see that I'm still swinging much too fast from the top of the swing, instead of sequencing and building up momentum. The question we must all ask ourselves, at this point, is "Why isn't my practice swing the same swing I use when I actually hit the ball? Great question!

This whole practice session is my attempt at an answer. In my first bucket of balls (100), I didn't get it, but somewhere in the middle on the second bucket, I started to feel as though I was getting closer to my practice swing. This would be my ideal swing where I delayed and delayed until my hands were in front of the ball (that's what I would like to think). But, as you can see, I'm still speeding up way too early, and the short follow-through shows that I still am not close to developing maximum clubhead speed at impact. There's a very helpful video on YouTube of Ernie Els talking about his swing and demonstrating how he likes "to stay in the shot longer," which I now understand means holding the release until the hands are, or feel as thought they are, out in front of the ball and even out in front of the left side.

But what I noticed continually during this session is that I really wasn't waiting until my hands were in the hitting zone. I was thinking about hitting the ball a long time before that.

Still, I know I'm getting there. I know that I'm starting the downswing way too early. On the other hand, I'm more aware than ever that I need to rotate my shoulders around my spine and let the release take care of itself.

When all is said and done after this session, I'm hitting three- and four- hybrids around 180 or beyond, which is what I want to be doing. I hit a few drivers, too, and that swing also feels more powerful. When everything worked well, it looked as though I was carrying a drive somewhere around 230 or 240. So I can tell from the greater distances that I'm getting with all the clubs that the swing is, indeed, building in the right way. And the keys to my practice, at this stage, are doing the left arm alone drill and videotaping every practice session, either in the backyard or at the range.

I also keep in mind that practice should be fun and that improvement is constant and gradual. To keep the fun in my practice at the range, I always hit a variety of clubs and try hitting for accuracy and distance. Sometimes I play a virtual hole, hitting a driver and then an iron or two, finishing with a wedge to the imaginary green. Playing the game this way, I always shoot close to par. There's nothing like shooting par to keep your interest in the game sharp!


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Making Progress - Swing Tips 6

Two days after my last visit to the range, I hit at another range near me, and I made palpable progress toward retarding the release. Again, in this video, you'll see the same symptoms as in the previous video: I'm starting too fast from the top of the swing. I don't know if the improvement I feel is actually visible, but each day over the past couple of weeks, since I started that left arm alone drill, I can see exciting and satisfying evidence that my swing is approaching the limits of my ability.

Conscious of that habit, I focussed on relaxed fingers and releasing later. With my left arm alone drill in mind, I started to see that I was still losing power potential by rushing through the swing, instead of building up momentum. Slowly, very slowly and tentatively, I started to feel that my hands should feel that they are out ahead of the ball when I release the swing. The improvement was immediate and dramatic.

Practicing with 3- and 4-hybrids, I started to hit farther and straighter. I could tell that the reason I have been hooking the ball is because I've been releasing too early. Now, when I got the feel of releasing later, of waiting, I suddenly had more power and more control. With this later release, I was hitting both clubs somewhere between 180 and 200 yards, probably a gain of at least ten or twenty yards in distance. And the hook disappeared. I began to feel the sense of power that friends of mine had when they talked about "crushing" the ball. Impact felt so good!

I hit a dozen or so balls with the driver, too, just to see what would happen. With the delayed release, I felt I was hitting with more power than before, with drives carrying somewhere around 230 or 240 slightly uphill. And they were straight!

In the last two weeks or so, my progress has been steady. It seems that every day a new swing subtlety reveals itself to me. Now the swing depends on the shoulders turning, the club handle in relaxed fingers, a gradual increase in momentum through the downswing, culminating, when the left shoulder is rising, in an incredibly fast release. From this vantage point, I can see myself maximizing the distances I can get out of various clubs. To test this thought, I hit one of the last balls with a 5-iron. Typically, I hit this about 160 to 170. I actually think that I hit the 7-iron better and farther. But with this new sense of the delayed release, I hit a perfect shot about 175 or 180 on the fly. That's got to be close to my maximum with that club. If I can hit it 180 or a little bit more, I'll feel I'm getting just about everything out of my swing. It was a gratifying end to the session, and I can't wait to go back and push that release point to the limit.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Making Progress - Swing Tips 5

After going through some swing thoughts using plastic practice balls in the backyard, it was time for a "reality check" by seeing how the swing works at the range. The video shows rear views of a utility club and a side view of a couple of driver swings (I think that that background noise you hear is the overhead heaters; it's about 42 degrees).

You'll see almost immediately what I meant when I said earlier that I feel completely relaxed hitting plastic balls, but I can't stop from getting tight and rushing when I hit a real golf ball. You'll notice the quick start from the top of the swing, and you'll notice that the swing is basically over shortly after impact. Instead of swinging around in a nice arc, the clubhead jerks over to the side and slows down dramatically. You'll also see that with the utility club, I let it get behind me on the backswing, whereas I keep the seven-iron in a much more vertical plane in the videos showing my practice swing.

I videotaped myself and watched myself on the camcorder during this session, and you might notice some differences between the first swings and the last ones. They certainly felt different to me. The most important learning point was how loose and relaxed the fingers have to be, and the club has to rest in the fingers. Complete looseness and relaxation are prerequisites for clubhead speed at impact and for greater distance. And surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any sacrifice of accuracy. Near the end of the session, where I was concentrating on completely loose fingers, during the backswing and maintaining that looseness during the downswing, I was hitting a utility three around 180-190 yards and straight at my target. It was amazing! When I talked about holding the club in the fingers (in an earlier post), I didn't realize that the fingers should stay loose throughout the swing, especially on the downswing and through impact. That looseness is what allows the club to whip at tremendous speed. It is a mistake, I now realize, to think about consciously manipulating the club at impact. There is no way to do that. Instead, the correct approach is to let the club fly. Just let it go and snap at the bottom of the swing arc. And there is no rush getting there, either. I have to work on slowing myself down so that I build up speed gradually from the lag at the top of the backswing and save the club's potential for speed until the last possible instant before impact. The video today clearly shows the work I have to do in my backyard practice.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Making Progress - Swing Tips 4

In this fourth part in the series, you'll see the full swing from a rear view, with a slow-motion sequence for analysis. If I could repeat this swing at the proper tempo ( 21/7 or 24/8 from the book Tour Tempo), I'd be all set. As you'll see, though, from the other swings, this ideal swing happens only now and then. Grooving it will take some time, and who knows how long that will be? And then I end the segment with two ideas for increasing distance: sequencing and tempo.

The key to all this progress in creating a good swing is constantly videotaping myself. I take my camcorder with me outside, when I practice in the backyard, and to the range. Regularly, while I'm practicing, I tape myself and then take a look. What I see then determines the aspect of the swing that I work on next. The plane, for example, is attainable only through videotaping.

What I've learned about learning a golf swing is that while you're practicing, you think you're doing one thing, but, in reality, you're doing another. The only way to reveal that is to look at yourself. You don't need to go to a pro to see yourself on camera. Do it yourself. Then, on your computer, you can play your swing in one browser window and compare it to Ernie Els (or any other pro you can find on YouTube) in another browser window, side-by-side, and the work you have to do will be completely obvious. As you can see, after all this videotaping, I'm very close to a solid swing. I have to relax more and get rid of the tension in my swing, but already you can see the swing plane, the balance, and the follow-through. Once I groove those, I'll start to work on sequencing and tempo. That's the plan for next year.

The next post in this series will be at the range, where we can all see how the practice swing, with plastic golf balls, translates into hitting real balls for real distances. That prospect changes everything. From experience, I know that the practice swing does not travel well to the range, let along the course. At this point, it is important to juxtapose practice, the range, and the course. The results will give me a real-time sense of where I am in the long arc of developing a good golf swing.


Making Progress - Swing Tips 3

This is the third in the series, showing a full swing from rear and side views.

Making Progress - Swing Tips 2

This is a continuation of the previous post about the left arm alone drill, this time from a side view.

Making Progress - Swing Tips 1

It's been quite a while since my last post, but I've been making good progress in developing a sound swing. I was talking with a brother the other day and wanted to show him my swing in its current state, and the video here is the first of several installments where I describe my practice goals. The first part is about the basics of a drill swinging with the left arm only. The next few videos will show the same drill from the side and then the full swing, using Wilson white plastic practice balls off a mat in my backyard.