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.