Monday, February 22, 2010

Throwing with the Right Hand

I seem to be on a roll, here in the Northeast, deep in February, with snow covering the yard and wind blowing plastic balls off the mat. Even to go out, I have to put on several layers, then a fleece coat, a scarf, a knit hat, gloves, and my Sorrel boots. That's all OK with me because the results have been very gratifying. From my last day at the range, I can see that I've come a long way. I've learned to relax and swing with confidence, and I'm seeing greater distance and accuracy than before.

And every day that I go out to practice, I know I'm going to learn or feel something new. During the session, my swing is going to change in some subtle way. I can never predict what that change will be, but whatever it is, it will make my swing better. I couldn't ask for more. The golf paradigm seems to be this: keep putting in the practice and the golf swing will gradually reveal itself. There's no magic here, no shortcuts.

And you have to be ready and receptive. When the revelations come to me, they trigger aspects I read about or saw on video or heard from a pro. And, all of a sudden, something makes sense in a way that it never did before. As I've said, several times before in these blogs, you think you know, but you really don't. Not until you have the concept working in your nerve synapses and muscle fiber. When the concept gets down to the anatomical and physiological, then you can say to yourself that you understand.

Now, to recapitulate a bit. On Saturday, two days ago, I went, with some measure of trepidation, to the range to see if I could hit real balls with my practice swing. On previous attempts, my practice swing served me well for the first go-around through the irons, but when I started to try for more distance, the swing fell apart, and I could hardly hit the ball.

This time, the practice swing prevailed. I remembered to stay loose, and through all the irons and hybrids—even the driver—I was relaxed. As a result, I hit the ball very well. I didn't get the distances I wanted, but I didn't worry. That will come later.

When I returned to my backyard to start hitting plastic practice balls, it was with a renewed sense of confidence. Yesterday, my swing was the best it has ever been. I could hit ball after ball right at my target, the tall Norway Maple.

Today, the difference was that I got the feel of throwing the right hand. Maybe it was something I saw while watching Paul Casey and Ian Poulter in the Accenture Match Play. Somehow, I got into my head, and into my imagination, the right hand turning over and finishing into a long follow-through. With my pink practice balls, I tried to emulate that look. And very quickly, the sense of what the right hand does became clear. It's what Hogan means when he talks about the second baseman's throw, with the right arm down low and the forearm hanging back, ready to sling the ball to first.

From my experience at the range, day before last, I was primed for this new aspect of the swing. Hitting real balls, I found myself, without consciously trying to accomplish this, turning over the right hand and finding my forearms crossed on the follow-through, just as all the online instruction advocates. Particularly with the driver, I found that if I could replicate this feeling, I could hit a good ball.

At some early point in today's practice, I remembered that feel of the right hand swinging through and over the left. Mentally, I coupled that with what I remembered of Hogan and began to sweep the club through with my right hand. Instantly, it made all the difference—in both the swing and in the result. The swing started popping the ball out there, towards my target, time after time. Direction was almost no problem. Neither was distance. When everything flowed, the results were sublime.

Realizing that I had stumbled upon a great secret of the swing, I started concentrating on maximizing the benefits of this new swing. You'll see the results in the video below. No longer did I worry about the club being parallel to the ground at the top of the swing. And no longer did I think primarily about the shoulders turning sharply, with the left shoulder coming away from the target line and enabling the snap of the wrists. All I attempted to do was to swing back normally, keeping behind the ball, and then to swing forward and to swing with both the left hand and the right.

This is not easy. Sometimes, the left hand would dominate. Other times, the right. But if I took a practice swing and mentally laid out a plan for the real swing, invariably, I would hit a good ball.

Naturally, this kind of success excited me, and I hit bucket after bucket. I took some time out to film my swing using the Callaway balls and the Almost Golf balls, a real test of how well the swing was working. By the end, as the sun was setting, I felt as though I could hit ball after ball towards an imaginary target in my driveway. Accuracy and distance were all taken care of by the way I executed the swing. I really didn't have to think about the ball—or about impact—as long as I carried out my swing plan.

Take a look at the video and see what you think. I show some swings today, and one in slow motion. At the end, I compare today's swing with one taken about a week ago. To me, I see the longer finish in today's swing. What I take away from this video is that I need to practice a full release and follow-through. I can see that I'm not really releasing the club fully. After impact, at some point, my muscles call a halt to the proceedings, whereas they should just let everything go, right up to the conclusion. Still, in the side-by-side last part of the video, I think you'll see that today's swing improves upon the one from a week ago.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Tensions

When my children were little and learning to use a Mac Plus, I remember how they watched it boot up. As icons started to fill the little screen, they would say the "tensions" were appearing, meaning all the Mac extensions. In the way that parents do, we started mimicking the delightful language. Mac "extensions" became, forever, Mac "tensions."

I've tipped my hand already, but at least I've introduced the theme of this post, which describes my latest discovery about the golf swing: no "tensions"; complete relaxation is the key. Now, you're saying to yourself, "That's SO OBVIOUS!" But stop for a minute. We all have similar memories of people telling us—our pros, our friends, magazine articles, videos, and so on—how easy the efficient golf swing is. But we all have the same trouble. We're all laboring under a set of misconceptions. And beyond that, we are all trying to understand a "letting go" that is impossible to convey in words or by example. As my first pro, Mark, told me, "You have to feel it."

Readers of this blog will remember my reaction to that advice. I thought, "That's ridiculous! You have to be able to teach someone what you're talking about!" But here I am, going into my fourth year of learning a good swing, and I'm just starting to get the "feel" of it, and I've read books on the subject, I've seen countless instructional videos on the Web, I've taken numerous lessons, and I've paid close attention to every little piece of potentially helpful advice or teaching that I've come across.

If I were correct—that you can teach the elements of the swing—then I would have mastered it long before this. The fact that I haven't is proof enough for me that I was completely mistaken. Mark, with all his experience as a player and as a teaching pro, knew far better than I did: in its essence, the swing is ineffable.

No one taught me how to relax and just swing. No one could. That I'm finally getting that feeling of release is a product of several years of practice, and, specifically, a few months of the one-arm drill. That's what really brought me to this point. With this drill, you can't muscle the club, and you can't consciously guide it. All you can do is to start the backswing, pause at the top, and then turn and let the club come through into the release and impact and, finally, follow-through.

Practicing the drill over and over, I set certain positions for myself: on the takeaway, at the top of the backswing, and at the release. The flight of the plastic practice ball tells me how well I did. I don't worry about bad hits. Those will happen, and happen every time you make the slightest change to your swing thought. I understand that. And it's OK. I'll work on it and refine the feel of it and correct what's wrong with it until the swing works. The one-arm drill is all about fine-tuning your musculature and nervous system to perform highly-stylized movements, measured in milliseconds.

Now, when I finish the one-arm drill and go to the full swing, I feel this sense of relaxation, of looseness. I feel as though I'm turning and whipping the club, and it's going through paths determined by all my time up until now practicing discrete aspects of the swing. But, most of all, I feel absence. That sounds like a conundrum or a paradox, but I am conscious that I have given over control of movement to the swing. I am no longer "making it happen." It is happening because I am letting it happen. Allowing it to happen.

And the results are encouraging. I can hit ball after ball right at a target I've chosen. The accuracy varies, naturally, and so does the distance, but there is a real sense of control. With my Callaway Hx Soft Flight Practice BallsCallaway Hx Soft Flight Practice Balls and the "Almost Golf" balls, I'm aiming just to miss the side of my house and hit shots way up in the Norway Maple in my backyard. Most of the time, I can do that. And I have no doubt, that with really serious practice, I could do it without fail.

Now I have the sense of losing the "tensions." I can make a full swing and feel as though it is effortless. See what you think, in the video below. The shots feel so good. I don't think I'm mistaken in looking at my swing on video and seeing that I'm in good shape. We all continue to improve our swings, and my next post will take a look at the role of the left shoulder in the golfer's attempt to rotate around his spine.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

K.J. Choi Gave Me My Latest Swing Tip

The weather in the thirties, snow on the ground, gloves on my hands, Sorrels on my feet, I'm still out there practicing every day, two hundred or so swings each time. I can feel the cumulative effect. I'm getting the feeling of a swing, rather than a hit. And, as a result, I can see a longer follow-through, rather than an after-thought.

I've also continued to study online videos, lately the one on YouTube of K.J. Choi, particularly the Swing Vision one when he's hitting a six-iron, but also the one where he appears with Jack Nicklaus at the Memorial for a clinic (Paul Casey appears at this clinic, too, and this video is just as important as the Choi video).

In the Memorial clinic, I was really taken by the loose, relaxed way K.J. swings. It seems so easy, and everything falls readily into place. The same with the Casey video. He's hitting a 5-iron there, and it's no sweat for him to hit it 195 yards. But let's focus on the K.J. Swing Vision with the 6-iron. I've seen this so many times, I can't tell you. And I've heard Bob Kostis, the narrator, tell us how K.J. keeps his head down "to ensure that he releases his hands and arms through the hit." I've listened to this over and over again, but I didn't really start to understand what Bob was saying until today, when I hit a couple of hundred practice balls, working on the role of the right hand.

Finally, I started to see how the right hand throws the club. I'm also reminded of the great Ernie Els video where Bob talks about Ernie pulling down with his left arm but throwing with his right hand. Today, for really the first time, I began to have this feeling. I wanted to feel a good hinge and lag at the top of the swing, and I wanted to feel that I was going (as Els says) "deep into the shot" before releasing. Then, at release, I wanted to feel the right hand—the index finger—throwing the club through. Once I felt relaxed enough, I started to do that and the results showed it.

Time after time, I was able to swing and send the ball right at the tallest part of the Norway Maple in my back yard, my target. As I was developing this subtlety, I was filming my swing, and, at one point, I filmed myself saying, as I walked away from the hitting mat toward the camera to stop recording, "This is getting scary." What I meant was that I was hitting ball after ball right at my target, and with plenty of distance.


In the video below, you'll see the results of this practice session. You'll also see a little test I did to check my tempo. Using the audio files from my book Tour Tempo, I measured my swing against a 21/7, 1 24/8, and a 27/9 tempo. You'll see how I'm slow on the first tempo, but almost right on with the last.

Last, I've included a side-by-side clip of my swing from yesterday and one from today. While they're both very similar, I think you'll see that today's swing is more assured. It's a little quicker, and watch the follow-through. I want to see the right hand going all the way through—up and around. Like K.J.