It's Getting Better All the Time

Early this afternoon, I hit a bucket of practice balls (45 swings), in the yard, just ahead of some rain and before a slight lower-back twinge could become something worse. The results were extremely gratifying and reassuring. I didn't hit one bad ball, which made me think that I finally have a repeatable, efficient swing—the good golf swing I've been working toward.

As I focused on staying in the shot, I began to see how the release snaps the clubhead through the hitting area. The physics of it suddenly seemed so obvious, just like snapping the end of a wet towel. I picture the swing arc and mentally time the release at the point where my hands are just past dead bottom center. At this point in the swing, a delay measured in milliseconds will add significant power and distance. This is the part of the swing that people must be referring to when they talk about holding the release as long as possible. What seems so clear to me now, almost a childish concept, has taken me only three years to discover, but when the time came (which was yesterday), the discovery happened very quickly—within 24 hours or so. Now that my swing is consistent and reliable, I can work on greater accuracy, distance, and control. This understanding has put me on a whole new level of development.

The split-screen below shows my swing yesterday with my swing the day before that. No glaring differences here, which goes to show how subtle and invisible this release point of the swing is, hard to see and hard to learn. Looking back on the way I've learned the swing, I see that Swing Vision, though it's certainly helpful in some ways, is of no help in showing how the release works. For that reason, I stopped looking at Swing Vision videos on YouTube, for the most part, and searched more often for real-time swing videos, which would show me something useful about tempo.

In addition to the invisibility of this crucial point in the swing, there's another impediment to learning more readily. That's is the power that we see in all the PGA pros on TV. To us amateurs, that power implies muscle and the leverage of pure strength. Even when we watch some pros who are in questionable physical condition, the opposite of Villegas and Woods and some others who are in great shape, we still think that strength has to be responsible for the tremendous distances these pros can hit. Getting beyond this conception of the swing and understanding what the clichés mean ("Let the club do the work," "Swing easy, hit hard," and all the others we've all heard forever) takes patience and diligence and dedication.

I just went back to look at the end of Hogan's book and had to laugh when I re-read the last page.

The golfer-reader who has applied himself with some diligence to these lessons, spending at least a week on each, should already be well on his way to developing a correct, repeating swing. However, you cannot expect to acquire a real control of the correct movements in a month's time. You must continue to work on the fundamentals throughout the golf season, both on the course and on the practice tee. Through this steady familiarization you will gradually come to execute the movements of the swing more easily and efficiently. Within six months—as soon as that—an average golfer who has applied himself intelligently should be coming close to breaking 80 or actually break 80.

Six months? How about three years! I guess I must be a remedial case, a slow learner.