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 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.