Split Screen Video

In my last post I wrote, "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." In the last two days, I learned how to do split-screen video editing, which you can see in the video below. I took two clips from that New Year's Eve Reality Check video and two clips from the videos I posted in early December. Seeing my swing at a three-week interval is instructive.

First, it confirmed some thoughts I already had after viewing my swing video two days ago: the backswing plane had dropped, the top of the swing crossed over the target line, the downswing is a bit too rushed, and I come out of the swing too early. All of this is pretty obvious in the split-screen view. Another thing that I wouldn't have noticed is the difference in swing tempo, but I attribute that to the different kind of hitting I'm doing in the clips. The other day I was hitting those Callaway balls that I like so much, while in early December, when there wasn't any snow on the ground, I was hitting my solid white plastic Wilson practice balls.

Because the plastic balls are so light (and many are cracked and misshapen after months and months of hitting), I was swinging in a very relaxed and unselfconscious way, not thinking about distance at all, just trying to feel a good swing. With the Callaway balls, which are made of some kind of soft rubber and which will take spin like a real golf ball, I was definitely thinking about distance and direction, too. You can see it in my swing—the downswing is definitely quicker and more aggressive.

In addition to highlighting these physical aspects of the swing, the split-screen also suggests a subtler realization, namely that learning a golf swing does not take a linear path; it is not a series of positive steps, each one representing an improvement. In the split-screen, you can see that I'm certainly developing a better swing, but you can also see that I need to go back and revisit certain parts of it that actually looked better in early December. It's good to recognize this recursive nature of developing a good swing. While the general trend is toward improvement, there are going to be times when the swing lapses back to some bad habits that you thought you had put behind you.

Now that I think of it, I've often felt reversals of this kind. Some days the swing feels good and what I'm working on seems to represent continued progress. There are other days, as we all know, when I make some little change, try something a little bit different, and then it seems as though the whole swing has been ruined. That's the way I often felt a few weeks ago, back in late November and early December, when I talked about shanking the ball all the time. That was really frustrating. We all know days and periods like that. But we keep coming out to practice day after day, and we look for answers, and we go back to fundamentals, and we search out instruction videos on YouTube, and we read articles.

Finally, learning a golf swing is like sailing directly into a stiff breeze. You expect that some waves will knock you off your course, but, with patience rather than panic, you waggle the tiller, you give the wind some time to fill your sails, you wait for your craft to regain her composure, and then, with gratitude, you watch as she slowly starts coming around and once again her bow is pointing right at your landmark on the horizon. Eventually, you'll reach your destination. Borne by wind and wave, you've chosen to travel with Zephyrus, not Evinrude. In golf and sailing, you can't be in a rush.