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.