Anyone who has read Hogan's Five Lessons knows my reference. In the hitting zone, the right hand is laid back and the right elbow is leading the right hand. It looks simple, but it's taken me six years to get to this point, and I used to play baseball. This is such an important concept. This is where most of your power comes from. This is where you have to be in order to extend the right arm, as all swing instructions advocate. This is how you get to that post-impact V that we players all try to emulate. This is how you get that tremendous clubhead speed that whips the clubhead around its arc and finishes somewhere behind your back. All these good things--all golf swing clichés-- will happen once you work this arm motion into your swing. And when you do this, you will take a place in the golf pantheon: only good golfers have this sequence in their swing. You will immediately separate yourself from almost every other golfer you'll run across at the range or on the course. You will establish yourself as a real golfer.
In the video below, you'll see me working on this move from several different postions, both in my back yard and then, finally, at the range, where--when I can do it--I hit my three-wood a good 220 or so carry uphill at the range. And straight. It's really quite amazing. Waiting is the key. You have to give your lower body time to turn, instead of trying to initiate things with your arms. And the feeling I try to get to is turning my upper body so that my left arm can use my left ribcage as a fulcrum on which to lever the left arm and really fire the clubhead through the hitting zone. I'm not near perfecting this yet, but, already, I can see the results, which are quite exciting. With this move, I can hit the ball respectably.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Use Big Muscles
Over the past few weeks, I've been making major changes in my swing, mainly as the result of a lesson I had with Max Galloway at Mohansic Golf Course, a lesson that started me thinking about what happens, exactly, just before and through and after impact. I've realized that I had never really understood how the complete swing works.
Now, I think I'm starting to get it. I'm starting to feel my core—lower body and torso—turning and pulling my arms through the swing. The interesting thing, for me, is that practicing pitching and chipping and putting showed me how the full swing works. As Paul Wilson of Revolution Golf, advocates, the hands and arms are passive, while the engine of the lower body and torso provide the torque that propels the clubhead.
I've also been viewing Jim McLean's videos on YouTube and in my email subscription to Revolution Golf. His videos have been very powerful. It also helped that Max Galloway, my pro at Mohansic, know Jim and mentioned him to me in conversation.
Slowly, I'm putting the idea of using the big muscles. It's not easy. Especially for someone like me who's a control freak, full of tension and the exact opposite kind of personality suitable for golf.
I've decided that it's better for me to practice with plastic balls in my backyard than to hit hundreds of balls at the driving range on Route 202 in Yorktown. In my backyard, I can practice swinging without hitting any balls or hit plastic balls and not worry about distance or anything else. This kind of practice pays high dividends.
Aside from the full swing, I've also been practicing pitching with the yellow practice balls I've mentioned before, with satisfying results. And the pitching helps me understand the full swing.
To pitch well, I have to feel completely relaxed and allow my torso to bring my left arm through the hitting zone. I use the Mickelson hinge-and-hold method, and if I can relax and feel my upper body bringing the club around, I invariably get a good pitch. That's the kind of feeling I'm trying to establish in the full swing. And, after five years of study, I'm finally learning about creating the fastest part of the swing at the very end, from release through impact and on to follow-through. It's hard, and a lot of swinging without hitting a practice ball gives the best results.
See what my swing looks like now, both full-swing and pitch. You'll see there's more follow-through now in the full-swing, although it still slows down. Still, it's a lot better than before. And the pitch looks pretty good.
I think that in my next post I'll be talking about how I'm learning to use leverage and connection.
Now, I think I'm starting to get it. I'm starting to feel my core—lower body and torso—turning and pulling my arms through the swing. The interesting thing, for me, is that practicing pitching and chipping and putting showed me how the full swing works. As Paul Wilson of Revolution Golf, advocates, the hands and arms are passive, while the engine of the lower body and torso provide the torque that propels the clubhead.
I've also been viewing Jim McLean's videos on YouTube and in my email subscription to Revolution Golf. His videos have been very powerful. It also helped that Max Galloway, my pro at Mohansic, know Jim and mentioned him to me in conversation.
Slowly, I'm putting the idea of using the big muscles. It's not easy. Especially for someone like me who's a control freak, full of tension and the exact opposite kind of personality suitable for golf.
I've decided that it's better for me to practice with plastic balls in my backyard than to hit hundreds of balls at the driving range on Route 202 in Yorktown. In my backyard, I can practice swinging without hitting any balls or hit plastic balls and not worry about distance or anything else. This kind of practice pays high dividends.
Aside from the full swing, I've also been practicing pitching with the yellow practice balls I've mentioned before, with satisfying results. And the pitching helps me understand the full swing.
To pitch well, I have to feel completely relaxed and allow my torso to bring my left arm through the hitting zone. I use the Mickelson hinge-and-hold method, and if I can relax and feel my upper body bringing the club around, I invariably get a good pitch. That's the kind of feeling I'm trying to establish in the full swing. And, after five years of study, I'm finally learning about creating the fastest part of the swing at the very end, from release through impact and on to follow-through. It's hard, and a lot of swinging without hitting a practice ball gives the best results.
See what my swing looks like now, both full-swing and pitch. You'll see there's more follow-through now in the full-swing, although it still slows down. Still, it's a lot better than before. And the pitch looks pretty good.
I think that in my next post I'll be talking about how I'm learning to use leverage and connection.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Immortal Beloved
After dinner tonight, I wanted to finish listening to a recording of Emil Gilels playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, and as I listened, I thought I would search YouTube for Gilels and the Gary Oldman movie Immortal Beloved. The search, and the videos, reminded me that the golf swing, in several ways, resembles music.
Watching Gary as Beethoven, in the YouTube scene where Beethoven visualizes the origins of the Ninth Symphony (which he couldn't actually hear, at this point in his life), I thought about the golf swing. It is just like the music that Beethoven couldn't hear. The swing is part of you. It is not external. It is not an action that you impose on an external object. That is what we call practice. Instead, a good swing is a performance, fully-formed and autonomous. You consciously start it, but then it proceeds naturally, independent of most conscious decisions (the golfer may be vaguely aware of the quality of the swing-in-progress and may attempt a quick correction or a further relaxation, if the swing feels really good). In the same way, Gilels lets his fingers produce music. As my first golf teacher said, "You make the swing, and the ball is just in the way." Now—more and more—I'm learning the meaning of what Mark Polchinski told me then.
That thought produced a flashback to my teenage years, when I was taking piano lessons from Vladzia Mashke, a pianist from the Russian school, whose pronouncements about music were way beyond me then. But one of the things I remember her saying to me was that "the music is in you." Whenever she said that to me, leaning closer and speaking in a serious tone, I didn't understand her at all and paid no attention to her when she talked like this. To me, the music was the sheet music in front of me. I was merely a stenographer, translating symbols on the page to the keys on a piano. Now, almost fifty years later, I'm starting to understand what she meant.
In my recent practice, I'm getting the same feeling I had when I played the piano seriously and could feel the music in me. Each day as I practice and continue to develop my swing, I work on beginning and continuing and finishing a complete arc. As my pro at Mohansic, Max Galloway, put it, the swing wants to make its full circle, and the golfer's challenge is to learn to get out of the way and allow the swing to happen.
Thanks to Gary Oldman and Vladzia Mashke and Max Galloway, I'm slowly learning to let go. And it feels great! Each day now brings another improvement, a further loosening of my grip and a new level of relaxation and a clearer appreciation of those familiar basics of instruction: use your arms and hands just to hold the club and use the big muscles of the lower body and the trunk to generate an efficient and repeatable swing.
Watching Gary as Beethoven, in the YouTube scene where Beethoven visualizes the origins of the Ninth Symphony (which he couldn't actually hear, at this point in his life), I thought about the golf swing. It is just like the music that Beethoven couldn't hear. The swing is part of you. It is not external. It is not an action that you impose on an external object. That is what we call practice. Instead, a good swing is a performance, fully-formed and autonomous. You consciously start it, but then it proceeds naturally, independent of most conscious decisions (the golfer may be vaguely aware of the quality of the swing-in-progress and may attempt a quick correction or a further relaxation, if the swing feels really good). In the same way, Gilels lets his fingers produce music. As my first golf teacher said, "You make the swing, and the ball is just in the way." Now—more and more—I'm learning the meaning of what Mark Polchinski told me then.
That thought produced a flashback to my teenage years, when I was taking piano lessons from Vladzia Mashke, a pianist from the Russian school, whose pronouncements about music were way beyond me then. But one of the things I remember her saying to me was that "the music is in you." Whenever she said that to me, leaning closer and speaking in a serious tone, I didn't understand her at all and paid no attention to her when she talked like this. To me, the music was the sheet music in front of me. I was merely a stenographer, translating symbols on the page to the keys on a piano. Now, almost fifty years later, I'm starting to understand what she meant.
In my recent practice, I'm getting the same feeling I had when I played the piano seriously and could feel the music in me. Each day as I practice and continue to develop my swing, I work on beginning and continuing and finishing a complete arc. As my pro at Mohansic, Max Galloway, put it, the swing wants to make its full circle, and the golfer's challenge is to learn to get out of the way and allow the swing to happen.
Thanks to Gary Oldman and Vladzia Mashke and Max Galloway, I'm slowly learning to let go. And it feels great! Each day now brings another improvement, a further loosening of my grip and a new level of relaxation and a clearer appreciation of those familiar basics of instruction: use your arms and hands just to hold the club and use the big muscles of the lower body and the trunk to generate an efficient and repeatable swing.
In the short clip below, I'm doing a drill I just started using and which produces good results in a hurry. I heard Tiger Woods on YouTube talk about how he hated it when Butch Harmon would have him do this drill because "you can't fake it." I know what he means. You feel every little flaw in the downswing with this drill.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
It's Getting Better All the Time!
Every day now, when I practice, I feel the same optimism that the Beatles sang in their 1967 song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I feel as though the golf swing is now revealing its secrets more cooperatively than before. There's less negativity (today I hit only one shank at the range) and more gratifying success.
In my putting and chipping, I'm starting to feel how using the upper body works to pull the left arm through, and I'm now starting to apply that principle to the full swing. So today, in my backyard practice and, then later, at the range, I worked on feeling the lower body turn and pull the left arm through to a point where I could release and use that leverage that Max talks about.
See what I've learned in the last one or two days.
And here's the same video with some lines superimposed to check various positions. In general, I like what I see, although my hands at the top are still too close to my head, and I have to drop them as I start down. I do notice that my head stays in its vertical spot pretty well. I don't know how that happened. One of the things about my swing is that I can do a good swing only now and then. The good swing is replaced, often, by variations where certain predictable things happen. For example, I pull the follow-through way to the left, or I lose my balance, or my release isn't quick enough, resulting in a push to the right. Or, certainly, I revert to old habits, typically pulling with my arms. I'm aware of that, and when that happens, on the next swing, I try to feel my left arm pushed against my ribs as I turn my body left. That's a key move and one that I want to feel more often. Also, the right elbow is flying out still. Today I worked with a head cover in my right armpit, which helped. I'll need to work that into my practice regimen.
Plastic and Progress
In my last post, I showed a video of the state of my swing and ten comments about what I saw. Since then, over the past week, I've worked on some of the flaws by hitting plastic balls in the backyard, the kind with the big holes and soft plastic so they don't go very far. I videotaped often, and after three of four days, I was happy with the way the swing was beginning to look. See it below. Here are comments from last week.
- Steeper backswing
- Keep right leg flexed and reduce hip turn
- Drop right arm at top -- straight down
- Keep spine angle (I stand up)
- Lower body -- legs -- rotate first and let arms follow
- Hands stay back (my arms start moving too fast and too early)
- Arm angle is pretty good on way down
- Keep working on opening hips and holding lag
- Keep right toes grounded
- Do something with the follow-through so that the clubhead is on the swing plane
- the swing plane is much better. I worked often on swinging the driver back and forth, without a ball, in order to get the feel of staying on plane.
- I'm using my big muscles better and keeping the arms more passive. This involved learning to speed up the leverage that Max taught me with my left arm against my left upper ribcage.
- That late speed with the left arm gives me that complete follow-through, something I've always lacked, mainly because by impact, I had always expended whatever clubhead speed I was able to generate.
- Right knee is more flexed.
Now I'm going to work more on keeping the hips from turning so much, keeping the right knee flexed, and really relaxing my arms. One other thing I noticed is that on the backswing, my head moves away from the ball considerably. This is something Wayne DeFrancesco sees in his own swing and works on correcting.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
To the Max!
"OK. You're booked with The Max at 5:30 on Thursday." So did the staff member in the pro shop at Mohansic confirm my appointment for a lesson with Max Galloway at Mohansic Golf Course in Yorktown, NY. I wanted a progress report and a check of my putting. In my last lesson, Max gave me a great tip about using my left arm as a fulcrum that levers the club through the hitting zone. In my early practice, doing the 8-to-4 drill that Max gave me, I could tell that this tip was a great revelation for me. I could see that this movement of the left arm against my upper ribcage was how I could generate power that I never knew existed before. I think Max told me about this last summer, when I was taking a series of lessons with him, but, at the time, either I forgot about it or didn't understand it and then forgot about it. But now, it was a tip that came at the right time to a receptive audience.
This is a good example of what I've learned about taking lessons. I go to Mohansic for a lesson to take golf "To the Max!"
So I did the 8-to-4 drill every day for two weeks, feeling the benefits, and then decided that I had made good progress and could use an evaluation. At the same time, if Max could do it, I wanted him to look at my putting, which I also thought was looking much better.
The lesson went very well, and Max was very encouraging about both my swing and my putting. He had one comment on my swing, which was about the takeaway. He thought I was moving my arms back independent of my upper body. Immediately, I knew he was right. I've been conscious, lately, about my takeaway and the image of keeping the clubhead outside my hands. To do that, I'm sure I've been consciously using my arms to get to the position I wanted. Max was talking more about momentum. That would get me there and would continue and get me to the top of the backswing. Once again, Max pinpointed a discrete tip that really helped.
A few days later, at the Mohansic range, I videotaped my swing to see where I am. Here are the results.
As I watched the video a few times, I watched it and took notes.
- Steeper backswing
- Keep right leg flexed and reduce hip turn
- Drop right arm at top -- straight down
- Keep spine angle (I stand up)
- Lower body -- legs -- rotate first and let arms follow
- Hands stay back (my arms start moving too fast and too early)
- Arm angle is pretty good on way down
- Keep working on opening hips and holding lag
- Keep right toes grounded
- Do something with the follow-through so that the clubhead is on the swing plane
Because of rain today, I cancelled a tee-time with my son. Now that I've studied the state of my swing, I see that there is no rush to go out. Maybe in September.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Learning to Draw and Learning to Swing
It is almost certain—indeed, beyond doubt—that most people and most golfers never engage in the struggle that anyone who can draw with a pencil or swing a golf club efficiently has undertaken. Go to a driving range or observe those around you when you play a round. Practically no one knows how to swing.
At my course, Mohansic, in Yorktown, NY, and at my favorite driving range, Yorktown Baseball and Golf, the best swingers are the high school or college players who come out to practice or play during their spring season. Everyone else stinks. When I have a lesson with Brian Lamberti, at Golfworx in Baldwin Place, NY, Brian usually does his own practice hitting after we finish, and I always watch him. No one else is in his universe! No one knows how to swing! It's amazing! All these people, spending their money, carrying their golf bags, and none of them knows how to swing. How does one explain that phenomenon? And it certainly must classify as a phenomenon.
Of course, the same is true of tennis. I used to play tennis seriously, and I can tell a skilled tennis player at a glance, just the way a golf pro can tell at a glance that I'm a beginner. At Club Fit, in Jefferson Valley, NY, where I have a membership, I never see anyone who's any good, except when the club hosts a sanctioned tournament. Yet all these people come out in their tennis clothing and rackets and shoes, and they poke at the ball. I wonder how this can be fun for these people. Since they can't hit the ball, they get very little exercise, and since they can't hit the ball, they can't get much satisfaction out of playing games, let alone sets. What is wrong with them? Maybe they simply crave something social, and this is an alternative to playing cards in the club's lounge.
Recently, Adam Gopnik's piece in The New Yorker (June 27, 2011) struck a chord: his difficulty in learning to draw corresponded to my difficulty in learning to swing. And as I read his account, I mentally drew parallels.
To begin with, in drawing, as in learning a golf swing, there is the problem of dealing with constant failure. In drawing, when he drew an errant line with his pencil, "...you could always erase and remake; the eraser was the best friend a would-be artist had." In my parallel case, after a wild hook, I could just use my club to ease another range ball into place and get ready to make a better swing.
Then, there is the teacher or golf pro. Jacob (Adam's teacher) would say things like, "Just make tilts in time.... Image that there's a clock overlaying what you're drawing." In a similar, Yoda-like way, my pro, Max, will say, "Use your fulcrum.... The swing is basically just a simple lever system." I don't know what Adam did when he got this kind of gnostic advice, but I went home and refreshed, on Wikipedia, my understanding of a simple machine.
Eventually, after much practice and failure, Adam begins to see some accomplishments in his drawings, limited and "terrible" as they seemed to him. The process revealed itself to him, and it sounds remarkably similar to learning a golf swing.
In truth, the rhythm of fragment and frustration, of erasure and error and slow emergence of form, was familiar. I'd hoped the drawing would be an experience of resistance and sudden yielding, like the first time you make love, where first it's strange and then it's great, and afterward always the same. Instead, drawing turning out to be like every other skill you acquire: skating, sauce-making, guitar-playing. Ugly bits slowly built up, discouragingly not at all like what you want, until it is. You learn, laboriously, the thumping octave bass with the chord two octaves above, and suddenly you are playing 'Martha My Dear.' And then you have it and you play along with the record and are half sad and half happy: that's all the magic of it? The bad news, I was finding out, was that drawing was just like everything else you learned to do. The good news was that drawing was like everything else, and even I could learn to do it.
"Even I could learn to do it." That is the premise of this blog. The golf swing is difficult, but even I can learn to do it. And I'm getting closer. Like Adam, I learned from failure. And lately, I'm not thinking so much about failure as I am about success and efficiency. More and more, I'm able to hit balls out there straight and farther than before. I've got the swing. Now I want to make it repeatable and powerful. The repeatable part is coming along pretty well and so is the distance part of the swing. There are huge deviations, however, and each evening when I practice at the range, I'm working on reducing those deviations. Fewer balls pulled left or blocked right. More balls hit to the max. In practice each day, I accomplish something lasting and positive. As Adam says, "Skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment." This blog is all about that skeleton.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Come Together, Yeah!
Do you have the 1969 Abbey Road album? If not, you're missing something great. Check it out. Get it on vinyl, if you can. The developments in my swing lately have reminded me of the cut Come Together. To me, it now refers to three exemplars that have changed my swing in a significant way.
The first lead to my recent improvement was a pivotal lesson with the great pro at Mohansic public course in Yorktown, Max Galloway. I've been studying with him since last year, and he has been instrumental in the improvement I've made since last summer. In my last lesson with him, last weekend, he detected two problems with my swing. One was with my weight shift, the other with my release.
He said he likes to move his weight to the forward foot to the middle of the ball of the foot. That's as close as I can get it. Basically, you want to stride forward to the inside of the wide part of your front foot.
Second, he said that he was concerned about my arm-chest connection, and he described the fulcrum-like action of the left arm against the chest to create great clubhead speed in the hitting zone. This is something he told me last summer, but it was something I forgot about. When I asked him how to practice this, he said, "The 8 to 4 drill."
I did that for a few days, both at the range and in my backyard with plastic balls, and the difference was fantastic. I began to feel how real players generated their clubhead swing, making the golf swing look effortless.
Since then, as I've been practicing what Max told me, I saw some Justin Rose instructional videos on YouTube and noticed how effortless his swing looked. Then I watched some more lessons on Revolution Golf, the Paul Wilson Website, where I noticed, again, how effortless Paul's swing looks. Even though I've been very happy with my swing lately, I still wondered why these swings look different from mine.
Today, I think I found at least part of the answer. Swinging with plastic balls in my backyard, I suddenly felt what these guys, like Max and Paul Wilson and Justin Rose, do in their swings. And it reminded me of what Hogan says about the "hitting zone." It turns out that when you make your coil and uncoil, the clubhead develops its own speed, and then when you get your hands down toward the bottom of their arc, the clubhead is traveling very fast, and then--all of a sudden-- you allow the clubhead to release by letting your forearms go and turn over, then, "Boom!" (as John Madden perfectly captures the instant), the clubhead explodes through the hitting zone, taking the ball with it. It's magical. And not difficult. Once I got the concept, I could do this pretty consistently. I was using a pitching wedge for this practice and then switched to the driver. More on that club in a subsequent post. But the driver looked pretty good with the plastic balls.
Take a look at the video and see what you think. I'm happy with the way it looks now. You'll see me practicing Max's 8-to-4 drill, and then some other backyard swings. Notice how I'm not jerking the club through anymore. It's starting to look like a swing! Just what we're all after!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Home on the Range
As I said in my last post, I went out on the course at Mohansic with a friend and felt as though I had a swing I could use. That turned out to be definitely true. What also became immediately obvious—no surprise here—was that while I may be at home on the range, I am not comfortable on the course.
The first hole exposed my inexperience. I hit a nice drive, right down the middle of the fairway, a dogleg left and a blind tee-shot, but not terribly long. Having no idea of my distances, I hit a lob wedge for my second shot, right at the pin but twenty yards or so short, which was OK with me, since I definitely wanted to avoid any encounter with the two bunkers on either side of the green. I chipped on and then prepared to putt. I could tell immediately that this was not like putting on the practice green behind the clubhouse. I felt stiff and nervous, and could not feel the clubhead at all. Luckily, I two-putted for bogey and was glad to have such an easy start.
Putting really became a problem on the next hole, where I found myself on the green in two, with a (let's say, since I didn't pace it off) 40 foot putt. The first putt went about two-thirds of the way, and I missed the second. Three putts for a bogey. Whatever comfort zone I normally felt on the practice green was gone on the course.
On the next hole, a slightly downhill lie exposed my range habits. Even though I knew the lie was downhill, I still didn't align myself correctly and with a pitching wedge hit the ball way fat. Another bogey. The rest of the front nine was pretty similar. No good putts, but I was doing OK from tee to green. In with a 45. The back nine was a different story.
The first blow-up happened on ten, where I pulled my tee shot left into the trees. When I found it, the ball was lying on top of three rotten pine cones, and the best I could do was to chip out with a seven-iron. From the rough, I pulled a hybrid and lost that ball. I dropped a ball and hit a pitching wedge left of the green, across the cart path, into some thick rough. About three strokes later, I was finally on the green and probably two- or three-putted (I can't remember because by that time I was keeping track any more).
On the eleventh, I hit probably the best shot of the round. After a drive right down the middle and just short of the barber shop pole at about 200 yards out, I hit a three-metal right at the green. I bounced a few times and rolled on, pin high on the left. Naturally, I left the first putt short and took two more putts to get down. Another bogey.
The round basically continued in this way. A few decent shots balanced by a few pulled shots and no putting. I ended the round by pulling a five-iron left of the eighteenth green and losing that ball. then pitching into the sand trap (I needed the bunker practice anyway), and several more putts.
Total for the round was probably somewhere around 110. And this is for somebody who now has a golf swing. What do most people score? Or do they even bother? The round didn't discourage me, however. I felt I could hit some good shots, and once I settled down with my putting, I could save strokes. Now, I need to get out and play.
The first hole exposed my inexperience. I hit a nice drive, right down the middle of the fairway, a dogleg left and a blind tee-shot, but not terribly long. Having no idea of my distances, I hit a lob wedge for my second shot, right at the pin but twenty yards or so short, which was OK with me, since I definitely wanted to avoid any encounter with the two bunkers on either side of the green. I chipped on and then prepared to putt. I could tell immediately that this was not like putting on the practice green behind the clubhouse. I felt stiff and nervous, and could not feel the clubhead at all. Luckily, I two-putted for bogey and was glad to have such an easy start.Putting really became a problem on the next hole, where I found myself on the green in two, with a (let's say, since I didn't pace it off) 40 foot putt. The first putt went about two-thirds of the way, and I missed the second. Three putts for a bogey. Whatever comfort zone I normally felt on the practice green was gone on the course.
On the next hole, a slightly downhill lie exposed my range habits. Even though I knew the lie was downhill, I still didn't align myself correctly and with a pitching wedge hit the ball way fat. Another bogey. The rest of the front nine was pretty similar. No good putts, but I was doing OK from tee to green. In with a 45. The back nine was a different story.
The first blow-up happened on ten, where I pulled my tee shot left into the trees. When I found it, the ball was lying on top of three rotten pine cones, and the best I could do was to chip out with a seven-iron. From the rough, I pulled a hybrid and lost that ball. I dropped a ball and hit a pitching wedge left of the green, across the cart path, into some thick rough. About three strokes later, I was finally on the green and probably two- or three-putted (I can't remember because by that time I was keeping track any more).
On the eleventh, I hit probably the best shot of the round. After a drive right down the middle and just short of the barber shop pole at about 200 yards out, I hit a three-metal right at the green. I bounced a few times and rolled on, pin high on the left. Naturally, I left the first putt short and took two more putts to get down. Another bogey.
The round basically continued in this way. A few decent shots balanced by a few pulled shots and no putting. I ended the round by pulling a five-iron left of the eighteenth green and losing that ball. then pitching into the sand trap (I needed the bunker practice anyway), and several more putts.
Total for the round was probably somewhere around 110. And this is for somebody who now has a golf swing. What do most people score? Or do they even bother? The round didn't discourage me, however. I felt I could hit some good shots, and once I settled down with my putting, I could save strokes. Now, I need to get out and play.
Swing! Swing! Swing!
Before we go any farther, you have to read Larry David's piece, "Fore!" in the July 4th issue of The New Yorker. Hilarious! This material shows he's one of us. You'll find yourself in familiar territory, once you get past his allusions to Kűbler-Ross. "So you hit down to make it go up and swing easy to make it go far?" And then he ends with another nonsensical idea—hitting blindfolded. "I have a very good feeling about it. Very good."
Now, back to the present, where I have some ground to cover. Since my last post, some good things have happened to my swing. From the Depths of Depression and the Salt Flats of Frustration, I have attained solid footing in the Confidence of Competence. I solved my shanking problem and discovered the Missing Link in my swing, which gave me a complete swing and reminded me of the great January 16, 1938 Benny Goodman band performance at Carnegie Hall. Benny, Jess Stacy on piano, Gene Krupa on drums, Harry James on trumpet—just a few of the virtuosos in that band, which laid down a musical standard that night.
In my last post, I was ready to quit. I had spent a completely fruitless visit to the range with nothing to show for it and didn't understand the point of my last lesson. I felt I couldn't even hit a ball, now after four and a-half years. Within twenty-four hours, my clubs and bag and balls and all accessories would be on Ebay, with no minimum.
Then, the miraculous happened. I have to think that the Golf Gods spoke to me and planted the idea of going to the range one more time the next morning.
Once there, I just wanted to make swings. Leave all the thinking and the doubting and just make swings. And, surprisingly, that worked. Not only did it work, but in one serendipitous move, I found out how to rotate the hips to bring the club through. This is the most amazing breakthrough! When you lead with the hips, the lower body movement brings the left arm down to the bottom of its arc, at which point the club releases automatically. The clubface is squared up with no consciousness required. Later practice showed me that if I continue the rotation, past where the hips are fully rotated, and use the upper body to sling the left arm around its arc, that's where you get that easy, full swing that you see good golfers make. You can actually feel the lower body bringing the left arm along its arc, and when you feel that, you know you are making a great swing. I'll try to get some video of my latest swing so that you can see what I'm talking about.
This all happened early this week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. By then, I had made a tee-time at Mohansic to play eighteen holes with a friend, assured that I knew the stroke and could play a round with confidence. In the next post, I'll relate what happened during that round. I blew up on a couple of holes in the back nine and stopped keeping score, but in spite of those horrendous swings, my play was pretty encouraging.
One of the main lessons was that hitting on the range is not always like hitting on the course. The other lesson—and probably the main one—was that I have to learn to make the swing and trust the swing and get over my habit of trying to hit the ball and hit it harder if I have a longer shot. I learned the Larry David lesson: "Swing easy to make it go far."
Now, back to the present, where I have some ground to cover. Since my last post, some good things have happened to my swing. From the Depths of Depression and the Salt Flats of Frustration, I have attained solid footing in the Confidence of Competence. I solved my shanking problem and discovered the Missing Link in my swing, which gave me a complete swing and reminded me of the great January 16, 1938 Benny Goodman band performance at Carnegie Hall. Benny, Jess Stacy on piano, Gene Krupa on drums, Harry James on trumpet—just a few of the virtuosos in that band, which laid down a musical standard that night.In my last post, I was ready to quit. I had spent a completely fruitless visit to the range with nothing to show for it and didn't understand the point of my last lesson. I felt I couldn't even hit a ball, now after four and a-half years. Within twenty-four hours, my clubs and bag and balls and all accessories would be on Ebay, with no minimum.
Then, the miraculous happened. I have to think that the Golf Gods spoke to me and planted the idea of going to the range one more time the next morning.
Once there, I just wanted to make swings. Leave all the thinking and the doubting and just make swings. And, surprisingly, that worked. Not only did it work, but in one serendipitous move, I found out how to rotate the hips to bring the club through. This is the most amazing breakthrough! When you lead with the hips, the lower body movement brings the left arm down to the bottom of its arc, at which point the club releases automatically. The clubface is squared up with no consciousness required. Later practice showed me that if I continue the rotation, past where the hips are fully rotated, and use the upper body to sling the left arm around its arc, that's where you get that easy, full swing that you see good golfers make. You can actually feel the lower body bringing the left arm along its arc, and when you feel that, you know you are making a great swing. I'll try to get some video of my latest swing so that you can see what I'm talking about.
This all happened early this week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. By then, I had made a tee-time at Mohansic to play eighteen holes with a friend, assured that I knew the stroke and could play a round with confidence. In the next post, I'll relate what happened during that round. I blew up on a couple of holes in the back nine and stopped keeping score, but in spite of those horrendous swings, my play was pretty encouraging.
One of the main lessons was that hitting on the range is not always like hitting on the course. The other lesson—and probably the main one—was that I have to learn to make the swing and trust the swing and get over my habit of trying to hit the ball and hit it harder if I have a longer shot. I learned the Larry David lesson: "Swing easy to make it go far."
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Shankopotamus Redux
After my last post, Brian Lamberti, the other pro I've been seeing, called to see how I was doing, and I told him about my shanking problem. We scheduled a lesson for the next morning.
He watched me hit two wedges (which I thought I was hitting great) and said, with conviction, that my weight was on my toes and that unbalanced stance was causing the shanks. That diagnosis began a long conversation about posture and turning. After he left, I hit a couple hundred balls, just working on turning and balance and posture. Of course, this working on basics represented a huge regression. I had to forget about hitting full shots and focus, instead, on an abbreviated swing where I could pay attention to keeping my weight under my ankles and finishing with my chest forward and vertical over my left leg, the post around which I was turning.
After a break for a little while at home, until about 4:00, I remembered that I had to pick up my driver at Yorktown Baseball and Golf and that when I did, I could hit another hundred balls and do some more practice. While I hit (I hit only a couple of shanks, none of them as bad as the day before), I felt really good about the irons and hybrids. Even with a short swing, I was getting decent distance and, even more important, consistently accurate shots. I liked the way I felt and liked the way I looked at the end of the swing. I had my balance, my chest seemed to be erect, and my left arm had swung around my body over to the left side. I felt as though it must look something like the pros after they hit an iron shot for accuracy.
The 3-metal was a wreck. I continued to slice it and mis-hit it and hit the ground behind the ball, all kinds of swing problems. Out of curiosity, I tried the repaired driver a few times and actually hit one decent drive, after which I quit; ending on a good swing seemed more positive than pushing my luck by trying to hit one more drive.
After my hundred balls, I went over to Mohansic to practice the short game, which has become, be far, the practice I enjoy the most and which is the most rewarding for me. The putting felt great. I can see that I'm getting good touch in my hands. Observing Dave Stockton's advice, I hit with one ball and practice a complete putt every time I hit the ball. The long putts are the focal point of my putting practice, from, say, 25 feet up to 90 feet, with the primary goal of controlling speed and getting the ball to the hole without leaving it short, one of Stockton's fundamentals about putting (he always wants the putt to die at the hole but get to the hole and stay within 17 inches past it). Letting the back of the left wrist take care of the direction is another fundamental I keep in mind.
Lately, I've been practicing chipping with a 9- or 8-iron, following up on Brian Flanagan's suggestion during a recent lesson down at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford. Today, I chipped with the lob wedge from thick grass to a short-side hole and then used a 9-iron to chip uphill across the green, just to a spot, working on rolling the ball consistently, probably about 60 or 70 feet. That felt awesome. I could really feel the similarity of the putting stroke and the chip, and I was able to chip ball after ball at the same spot and roughly the same distance, concentrating on using the toe of the club. As usual, a very satisfying hour or hour and a-half.
Like a minor god in classical mythology, Golf looks down on pale mortals with amusement. As King Lear says, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport." At least there's an end in sight, and, fortunately, we don't have to suffer the eternal futility of Sisyphus
, endlessly rolling his boulder uphill. All we have to say to the Golf immortal is, "OK. You win." Easy. The problem is that golfers are nuts. The Golf gods must be crazy, and they make us crazy. We can't recognize an impossible situation when one squats right in front of our noses—in the correct posture and weight under the ankles. Completely oblivious, we show up at the practice tee or the driving range the next morning. That's where I'm headed now.
He watched me hit two wedges (which I thought I was hitting great) and said, with conviction, that my weight was on my toes and that unbalanced stance was causing the shanks. That diagnosis began a long conversation about posture and turning. After he left, I hit a couple hundred balls, just working on turning and balance and posture. Of course, this working on basics represented a huge regression. I had to forget about hitting full shots and focus, instead, on an abbreviated swing where I could pay attention to keeping my weight under my ankles and finishing with my chest forward and vertical over my left leg, the post around which I was turning.
After a break for a little while at home, until about 4:00, I remembered that I had to pick up my driver at Yorktown Baseball and Golf and that when I did, I could hit another hundred balls and do some more practice. While I hit (I hit only a couple of shanks, none of them as bad as the day before), I felt really good about the irons and hybrids. Even with a short swing, I was getting decent distance and, even more important, consistently accurate shots. I liked the way I felt and liked the way I looked at the end of the swing. I had my balance, my chest seemed to be erect, and my left arm had swung around my body over to the left side. I felt as though it must look something like the pros after they hit an iron shot for accuracy.
The 3-metal was a wreck. I continued to slice it and mis-hit it and hit the ground behind the ball, all kinds of swing problems. Out of curiosity, I tried the repaired driver a few times and actually hit one decent drive, after which I quit; ending on a good swing seemed more positive than pushing my luck by trying to hit one more drive.
After my hundred balls, I went over to Mohansic to practice the short game, which has become, be far, the practice I enjoy the most and which is the most rewarding for me. The putting felt great. I can see that I'm getting good touch in my hands. Observing Dave Stockton's advice, I hit with one ball and practice a complete putt every time I hit the ball. The long putts are the focal point of my putting practice, from, say, 25 feet up to 90 feet, with the primary goal of controlling speed and getting the ball to the hole without leaving it short, one of Stockton's fundamentals about putting (he always wants the putt to die at the hole but get to the hole and stay within 17 inches past it). Letting the back of the left wrist take care of the direction is another fundamental I keep in mind.
Lately, I've been practicing chipping with a 9- or 8-iron, following up on Brian Flanagan's suggestion during a recent lesson down at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford. Today, I chipped with the lob wedge from thick grass to a short-side hole and then used a 9-iron to chip uphill across the green, just to a spot, working on rolling the ball consistently, probably about 60 or 70 feet. That felt awesome. I could really feel the similarity of the putting stroke and the chip, and I was able to chip ball after ball at the same spot and roughly the same distance, concentrating on using the toe of the club. As usual, a very satisfying hour or hour and a-half.
Like a minor god in classical mythology, Golf looks down on pale mortals with amusement. As King Lear says, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport." At least there's an end in sight, and, fortunately, we don't have to suffer the eternal futility of Sisyphus
, endlessly rolling his boulder uphill. All we have to say to the Golf immortal is, "OK. You win." Easy. The problem is that golfers are nuts. The Golf gods must be crazy, and they make us crazy. We can't recognize an impossible situation when one squats right in front of our noses—in the correct posture and weight under the ankles. Completely oblivious, we show up at the practice tee or the driving range the next morning. That's where I'm headed now.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Shankopotamus
"Read the rule book, shankopotamus!" Great TV ad. It's given my golfing coterie an epithet that we can use often. Even though I haven't been playing, I've noticed at the range that every once in a while I shank a few balls. Then I make some correction, and the problem disappears. Since my last lesson with Brian Flanagan at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford, NY, shanking (if it occurred to me at all) was a distant, if amusing, memory.
On Saturday, I wanted Brian to talk to me about the driver. At the start of the lesson, he asked me how my swinging was going, and I said, "I'll show you," and hit a 9-iron, fortunately hit pretty well, really high and on target. Then I hit a driver, and Brian said, "That's not your 9-iron swing. You wanted to jerk the club down to the ball." I recognized that immediately, and we went through the rest of the lesson talking about a smooth, long, shallow swing, with a level hip turn.
The lesson over, I went to a nearby mat and hit 300 of the free balls that a lesson provides a student and worked on what Brian had taught me. After about 150 balls, I started to get the feel of a level hip turn, and then everything fell into place, giving me the misconception that I had leaped to another level of golf competence.
The next day, I happened to be near the Doral course in Purchase, NY, and I hit about 60 balls at the range, generally cracking the ball and starting to feel like a pro. I hit mostly 3-metals, since Brian had told me, "That's the last piece of the puzzle." If I could hit that repeatedly well, then I had learned the swing. I left Doral feeling really good.
Today, I went to my usual range at Yorktown Baseball and Golf to hit several hundred balls. In the morning, I reviewed a Dave Stockton DVD on the short game, and at the range I tried out what he says about hitting various short shots. At first, I hit the ball great. Wedges right on target, irons right at the flag 155 yards away. All Systems Go.
Then, I made the fatal -- or revelatory, considering the eventual outcome -- mistake of trying to hit low punch shots. All of a sudden, I started shanking the ball. Time after time and no matter which club I picked up. If I made a slight adjustment, I could hit a 9-iron or a 7-iron OK. But the 5-iron was recalcitrant. No matter what I did, I shanked it into the net on the right side of the range.
I actually began to panic. "What has happened to me?" I wondered. "How could I have hit the ball so well yesterday, and now, today, I can't hit it any better than a complete beginner?" "What gives?"
Finally, I saw Eric, who sometimes works at the desk, and a very good golfer, come out the front door where I could walk over and talk to him. Desperate for help, I did.
"Eric! What causes a shank?"
He explained that it's being off-plane and swinging the hosel into the ball ahead of the club face. I recognized that as my problem instantly. Earlier in my practice, I had been hooking many balls way left, and now I understood why. I was coming from way inside and either shanking or hooking.
So I went back to my mat, with the mirror behind me, and paid close attention to the plane of my downswing. It didn't take me long to solve the shanking problem. Pretty soon, I had demonstrated to myself that I could hit the ball cleanly and straight. Then I started working on fades. I never really got it, but I could feel that I was close. And I thought that I need to go back to YouTube and find some instructional videos on shaping shots.
Three hundred balls and several hours after I started, once again, I felt as though I might be competent in the swing. Tomorrow, at the range, I'll see. But it felt like a good day's work.
On Saturday, I wanted Brian to talk to me about the driver. At the start of the lesson, he asked me how my swinging was going, and I said, "I'll show you," and hit a 9-iron, fortunately hit pretty well, really high and on target. Then I hit a driver, and Brian said, "That's not your 9-iron swing. You wanted to jerk the club down to the ball." I recognized that immediately, and we went through the rest of the lesson talking about a smooth, long, shallow swing, with a level hip turn.
The lesson over, I went to a nearby mat and hit 300 of the free balls that a lesson provides a student and worked on what Brian had taught me. After about 150 balls, I started to get the feel of a level hip turn, and then everything fell into place, giving me the misconception that I had leaped to another level of golf competence.
The next day, I happened to be near the Doral course in Purchase, NY, and I hit about 60 balls at the range, generally cracking the ball and starting to feel like a pro. I hit mostly 3-metals, since Brian had told me, "That's the last piece of the puzzle." If I could hit that repeatedly well, then I had learned the swing. I left Doral feeling really good.
Today, I went to my usual range at Yorktown Baseball and Golf to hit several hundred balls. In the morning, I reviewed a Dave Stockton DVD on the short game, and at the range I tried out what he says about hitting various short shots. At first, I hit the ball great. Wedges right on target, irons right at the flag 155 yards away. All Systems Go.
Then, I made the fatal -- or revelatory, considering the eventual outcome -- mistake of trying to hit low punch shots. All of a sudden, I started shanking the ball. Time after time and no matter which club I picked up. If I made a slight adjustment, I could hit a 9-iron or a 7-iron OK. But the 5-iron was recalcitrant. No matter what I did, I shanked it into the net on the right side of the range.
I actually began to panic. "What has happened to me?" I wondered. "How could I have hit the ball so well yesterday, and now, today, I can't hit it any better than a complete beginner?" "What gives?"
Finally, I saw Eric, who sometimes works at the desk, and a very good golfer, come out the front door where I could walk over and talk to him. Desperate for help, I did.
"Eric! What causes a shank?"
He explained that it's being off-plane and swinging the hosel into the ball ahead of the club face. I recognized that as my problem instantly. Earlier in my practice, I had been hooking many balls way left, and now I understood why. I was coming from way inside and either shanking or hooking.
So I went back to my mat, with the mirror behind me, and paid close attention to the plane of my downswing. It didn't take me long to solve the shanking problem. Pretty soon, I had demonstrated to myself that I could hit the ball cleanly and straight. Then I started working on fades. I never really got it, but I could feel that I was close. And I thought that I need to go back to YouTube and find some instructional videos on shaping shots.
Three hundred balls and several hours after I started, once again, I felt as though I might be competent in the swing. Tomorrow, at the range, I'll see. But it felt like a good day's work.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Mania and Depression
I know I recently promised to show you how I use the club shaft and bungee cord when I want to work on staying connected. Interestingly, I just saw a Paul Wilson video where he says that he doesn't like this idea very much because it prevents the golf student from reaching a good position at the top of the swing. Paul's point really doesn't deter me much. I'm not so interested in whether or not I can get to a good position at the top of the swing. I'm more interested in what happens after impact. And the bungee cord teaches me the feeling of my left upper arm connected to my ribcage as I complete the follow-through. The latest example of a player I'm trying to emulate (please hold down your laughter!) is Dustin Johnson on YouTube.
He's 6'4" and hits his driver about 350 yards, or about 150 yards past where my drive would be. That would be pretty discouraging. However, his swing is very instructive for anybody. I've looked at two analyses, one from PurpleGolf.com and one from WayneDeFrancesco.com. The detail in each video is fantastic, and both analysts make great points. A couple of fundamentals struck home with me.
One is the "squat," which I haven't really thought about in quite a while, not since I was poring over the Swing Like a Pro book that I've mentioned in these posts. And the other is the whole phenomenon of the follow-through, something about the swing that has mystified me forever.
When Dustin swings the driver, he's very athletic, and that gives me hope. He squats and uses his legs and rotates his hips with the upper body following, and he keeps that left upper arm connected to his ribcage after impact. I think it's this connection that must help to give him the whip that sends the ball out there to places on the fairway that most players never venture.
After watching Dustin on YouTube, I started experimenting with the squat and posting on the left leg. Result: Mania. I felt great. The ball went out there straight and traveled a good distance for me, about 200 or 210 or even 220 yards slightly uphill at this driving range. I thought I had found the answer.
Then I started doing some more reading about the squat and did some more thinking about the clubhead traveling around me as I uncoiled my body. Result: Depression. All these variables are far too much to think about during the swing. As usual, I found that I could focus on maybe one thing on any one swing. Every once in a while, a lucky swing would produce a nice drive, right down the target line and carrying a pretty good distance. Usually, though, the result was much worse. A depressing sight.
The good results did tell me that I was onto something that I should pay attention to. Now I need to do much more practice on each new swing thought that I have. I'll see what works and see how I can start to build a repeatable swing. Remember, I'm four and a-half years into this. And it's still far from complete. Not even enough to go out and play a round.
Still, I feel as though I'm really close to the good, basic swing. With any luck at all, I ought to be able to settle on a decent driver swing and a decent 3-wood swing and go out and play Mohansic.
Let's see if it's "Famous Last Words" or "Stranger Things Have Happened."
He's 6'4" and hits his driver about 350 yards, or about 150 yards past where my drive would be. That would be pretty discouraging. However, his swing is very instructive for anybody. I've looked at two analyses, one from PurpleGolf.com and one from WayneDeFrancesco.com. The detail in each video is fantastic, and both analysts make great points. A couple of fundamentals struck home with me.
One is the "squat," which I haven't really thought about in quite a while, not since I was poring over the Swing Like a Pro book that I've mentioned in these posts. And the other is the whole phenomenon of the follow-through, something about the swing that has mystified me forever.
When Dustin swings the driver, he's very athletic, and that gives me hope. He squats and uses his legs and rotates his hips with the upper body following, and he keeps that left upper arm connected to his ribcage after impact. I think it's this connection that must help to give him the whip that sends the ball out there to places on the fairway that most players never venture.
After watching Dustin on YouTube, I started experimenting with the squat and posting on the left leg. Result: Mania. I felt great. The ball went out there straight and traveled a good distance for me, about 200 or 210 or even 220 yards slightly uphill at this driving range. I thought I had found the answer.
Then I started doing some more reading about the squat and did some more thinking about the clubhead traveling around me as I uncoiled my body. Result: Depression. All these variables are far too much to think about during the swing. As usual, I found that I could focus on maybe one thing on any one swing. Every once in a while, a lucky swing would produce a nice drive, right down the target line and carrying a pretty good distance. Usually, though, the result was much worse. A depressing sight.
The good results did tell me that I was onto something that I should pay attention to. Now I need to do much more practice on each new swing thought that I have. I'll see what works and see how I can start to build a repeatable swing. Remember, I'm four and a-half years into this. And it's still far from complete. Not even enough to go out and play a round.
Still, I feel as though I'm really close to the good, basic swing. With any luck at all, I ought to be able to settle on a decent driver swing and a decent 3-wood swing and go out and play Mohansic.
Let's see if it's "Famous Last Words" or "Stranger Things Have Happened."
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Drive, He Said
I was reminded of this Jack Nicholson 1971 picture after I finished an exhausting and fruitless day of hitting at Yorktown Baseball and Golf in Yorktown, NY. I have blisters on my fingers (as John Lennon complained out loud, too, on The White Album) with not much to show for my exertions.
My practice started out well. I put on the club shaft and bunji cord and started hitting, thinking that this would be the answer to whatever was missing in my swing. Not!
When I really relaxed, I could hit the 3-metal with a satisfying "Click!" sound, but, in general, I'd have to say that "Tension" is my middle name. I feel as though I'm hitting my wedges great ( though sometimes I pull them left or something else is missing, and I get a less than perfect shot), and if I could play golf with just those 4 clubs, I'd be very happy.
I'm still pretty happy with the 9-iron and even the other irons, down to my two hybrids. And I'm happy with the 3-metal, some of the time. I feel as though I can hit that. It doesn't go huge distances, topping out at, maybe, 190 carry, uphill, but I take the satisfying sound that the head makes on impact as a good sign.
The driver, in contrast, is a disaster. I have the idea that I should be swinging this club the same as I swing my gap wedge, but it's not happening. Either that bit of golf wisdom is mistaken or else I just am not making the same swing.
I am not easily deterred, however. I continued to hit with the shaft and bunji cord wrapped around my upper arms. And I hit without that training aid. It didn't make any difference.
Then I started swinging more slowly, trying to concentrate on turning my hips and letting the release just happen. The results were less than stupendous. Some drives went 150 yards, some 175, some 190. Balls were not flying over the fence out there at the 250-yard mark. Most results looked like what a beginner could do.
Self-pity -- let's not go there!
Instead, let's think about tomorrow's practice.
Obviously, I'm missing something obvious in the driver swing. And I'd really have to argue with someone who tells me that it's the same swing as my gap wedge swing, even though, when I watch the ladies on the LPGA, it seems that they make the same swing every time, no matter what the situation. I guess I just don't get it. Or I'm not making that hip turn.
Tomorrow, I think I'm going to think about Iron Byron. Somehow, I'm not getting the clubhead to release and swing through. I have no follow-through, and, most of the time, when I hit the ball solidly, I push it right.
My pros tell me, "Turn, Sean, turn!" If only it were that easy!
After hitting at the range, I went to Mohansic to practice the short game. Much more gratifying. I love my putting, although I need to do some more practice on super-long putts (like 90' or so), but when I extend my arms and lead with the left, the ball rolls beautifully.
I did some chipping with a 9-iron and worked on that from various distances and learned a lot about how that shot reacts and how to hit it.
I finished up with some pitches, short ones, from relatively thick rough, and, for the most part, I was happy with the results. It was 6:30 or so, ninety-something degrees and high humidity, and I was ready to go home and have a Corona.
Tomorrow, I'll be fresh, and we'll see about "Drive, He Said."
My practice started out well. I put on the club shaft and bunji cord and started hitting, thinking that this would be the answer to whatever was missing in my swing. Not!
When I really relaxed, I could hit the 3-metal with a satisfying "Click!" sound, but, in general, I'd have to say that "Tension" is my middle name. I feel as though I'm hitting my wedges great ( though sometimes I pull them left or something else is missing, and I get a less than perfect shot), and if I could play golf with just those 4 clubs, I'd be very happy.
I'm still pretty happy with the 9-iron and even the other irons, down to my two hybrids. And I'm happy with the 3-metal, some of the time. I feel as though I can hit that. It doesn't go huge distances, topping out at, maybe, 190 carry, uphill, but I take the satisfying sound that the head makes on impact as a good sign.
The driver, in contrast, is a disaster. I have the idea that I should be swinging this club the same as I swing my gap wedge, but it's not happening. Either that bit of golf wisdom is mistaken or else I just am not making the same swing.
I am not easily deterred, however. I continued to hit with the shaft and bunji cord wrapped around my upper arms. And I hit without that training aid. It didn't make any difference.
Then I started swinging more slowly, trying to concentrate on turning my hips and letting the release just happen. The results were less than stupendous. Some drives went 150 yards, some 175, some 190. Balls were not flying over the fence out there at the 250-yard mark. Most results looked like what a beginner could do.
Self-pity -- let's not go there!
Instead, let's think about tomorrow's practice.
Obviously, I'm missing something obvious in the driver swing. And I'd really have to argue with someone who tells me that it's the same swing as my gap wedge swing, even though, when I watch the ladies on the LPGA, it seems that they make the same swing every time, no matter what the situation. I guess I just don't get it. Or I'm not making that hip turn.
Tomorrow, I think I'm going to think about Iron Byron. Somehow, I'm not getting the clubhead to release and swing through. I have no follow-through, and, most of the time, when I hit the ball solidly, I push it right.
My pros tell me, "Turn, Sean, turn!" If only it were that easy!
After hitting at the range, I went to Mohansic to practice the short game. Much more gratifying. I love my putting, although I need to do some more practice on super-long putts (like 90' or so), but when I extend my arms and lead with the left, the ball rolls beautifully.
I did some chipping with a 9-iron and worked on that from various distances and learned a lot about how that shot reacts and how to hit it.
I finished up with some pitches, short ones, from relatively thick rough, and, for the most part, I was happy with the results. It was 6:30 or so, ninety-something degrees and high humidity, and I was ready to go home and have a Corona.
Tomorrow, I'll be fresh, and we'll see about "Drive, He Said."
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Turn, Turn Turn!
Maybe you remember The Byrds song "Turn! Turn! Turn!" If you don't, check it out.
I'm thinking seriously about the song right now because of what my pro, Brian Lamberti (at Golfworx in Baldwin Place, NY) was advocating in my last lesson with him.
Brian qualified for the sectional qualifier for the US Open at Canoe Brook CC in Summit, NJ, and finished the 36 holes yesterday, turning in 78-68-146, not quite good enough to make it to Congressional.
But in my last lesson with Brian, I watched him do his hitting routing, and he told me that all he was doing with every club was turning. He continued to say, "All I'm doing is turning." Certainly, every swing looked the same. If he wanted to hit the ball farther, he would make more of a turn through the follow-through. That was the only difference I could detect. And he could do whatever he wanted to with the ball flight: fade, draw, high, low. I think he accomplished those different shots with his address, but don't quote me on this. He was just awesome, and I didn't want to distract him with novice questions.
At the time, I tried to do what he told me during the lesson, but, naturally, my old habits made that impossible. However, over the last two weeks, I've been working on that turning as my main practice goal. Brian Flanagan, my pro at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford, NY, was telling me the same thing. I'm a hard case, and it takes a second opinion to convince me.
I've been hitting 200 or 300 balls a day at Yorktown Baseball and Golf in Yorktown Heights, NY, and it wasn't until late this afternoon, after a frustrating time with the driver, that I finally started to feel what the full hip turn feels like. Before that, my other clubs felt good. I feel like a pro with my wedges, and the other clubs felt good when I swung on plane.
But suddenly, I tried something different. It may have been the videos I've been watching of Brittany Lincicom, with her quick hips, that made me try something a little different. So I started focussing on the hip turn and not thinking about my hands or the release or anything else. And, suddenly, I was cracking the ball straight out there!
Dubious, I grabbed my 3-metal and tried the same swing. "Crack!" right down the middle.
Back to the driver. "Crack!"
The driver still isn't hitting the fence at the 250-yard mark, which means I'm missing something, but what I'm doing is a lot better than what I was doing before.
In the next practice, I want to practice this turn with the irons and see how my accuracy and distance change. With all the work I've done, I feel as though I can make flexible changes without too much trouble.
As The Byrds sing, it's "A time to build up, a time to break down." Tomorrow, I'll work on the new concept of turn and try to forget about the old swing habits.
I'm thinking seriously about the song right now because of what my pro, Brian Lamberti (at Golfworx in Baldwin Place, NY) was advocating in my last lesson with him.
Brian qualified for the sectional qualifier for the US Open at Canoe Brook CC in Summit, NJ, and finished the 36 holes yesterday, turning in 78-68-146, not quite good enough to make it to Congressional.
But in my last lesson with Brian, I watched him do his hitting routing, and he told me that all he was doing with every club was turning. He continued to say, "All I'm doing is turning." Certainly, every swing looked the same. If he wanted to hit the ball farther, he would make more of a turn through the follow-through. That was the only difference I could detect. And he could do whatever he wanted to with the ball flight: fade, draw, high, low. I think he accomplished those different shots with his address, but don't quote me on this. He was just awesome, and I didn't want to distract him with novice questions.
At the time, I tried to do what he told me during the lesson, but, naturally, my old habits made that impossible. However, over the last two weeks, I've been working on that turning as my main practice goal. Brian Flanagan, my pro at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford, NY, was telling me the same thing. I'm a hard case, and it takes a second opinion to convince me.
I've been hitting 200 or 300 balls a day at Yorktown Baseball and Golf in Yorktown Heights, NY, and it wasn't until late this afternoon, after a frustrating time with the driver, that I finally started to feel what the full hip turn feels like. Before that, my other clubs felt good. I feel like a pro with my wedges, and the other clubs felt good when I swung on plane.
But suddenly, I tried something different. It may have been the videos I've been watching of Brittany Lincicom, with her quick hips, that made me try something a little different. So I started focussing on the hip turn and not thinking about my hands or the release or anything else. And, suddenly, I was cracking the ball straight out there!
Dubious, I grabbed my 3-metal and tried the same swing. "Crack!" right down the middle.
Back to the driver. "Crack!"
The driver still isn't hitting the fence at the 250-yard mark, which means I'm missing something, but what I'm doing is a lot better than what I was doing before.
In the next practice, I want to practice this turn with the irons and see how my accuracy and distance change. With all the work I've done, I feel as though I can make flexible changes without too much trouble.
As The Byrds sing, it's "A time to build up, a time to break down." Tomorrow, I'll work on the new concept of turn and try to forget about the old swing habits.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Hitting and Swinging
After four-and-a-half years of learning a golf swing, I'm still mostly a hitter rather than a swinger. Until recently, my "swing" (I'm using the term loosely) ended at impact. I just wanted to hit the ball. My lessons at Mohansic with Max Galloway last fall helped me think about using the lower body and doing some turning, and lessons with two other pros this spring have helped me immensely.
Brian Flanagan, at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford, NY, saw my problem right away and started urging me to coil and uncoil, to continue turning the hips all the way through the swing. It took me about six weeks to feel comfortable even attempting that. Then I took a single lesson from Brian Lamberti, a pro at Golfworx in Baldwin Place, NY, who basically told me the same thing, along with a few other valuable comments.
Brian is a touring pro and is getting ready to play in the sectional qualifier at Canoe Brook CC in Summit, NJ, this coming Monday, June 6. He just played a practice round at the Trump course in Briarcliff, NY, and shot a 29 on the front nine en route to a final score of 64. I'm going to go down to Summit and watch as much of the 36-hole qualifier as I can. I told Brian that I'll pick up my lessons with him, sometime in late June, after he wins the US Open.
Both pros told me, each in his own way, to think about the whole swing, rather than focusing on individual parts or positions. And this advice was crucial. Brian also gave me an idea for a learning aid, using a club shaft and a bunji cord to help me maintain connectedness through the swing. I'll have more to say about that in the next post. For now, you can see where my swing currently is in the latest video.
Brian Flanagan, at Fairview Golf Center in Elmsford, NY, saw my problem right away and started urging me to coil and uncoil, to continue turning the hips all the way through the swing. It took me about six weeks to feel comfortable even attempting that. Then I took a single lesson from Brian Lamberti, a pro at Golfworx in Baldwin Place, NY, who basically told me the same thing, along with a few other valuable comments.
Brian is a touring pro and is getting ready to play in the sectional qualifier at Canoe Brook CC in Summit, NJ, this coming Monday, June 6. He just played a practice round at the Trump course in Briarcliff, NY, and shot a 29 on the front nine en route to a final score of 64. I'm going to go down to Summit and watch as much of the 36-hole qualifier as I can. I told Brian that I'll pick up my lessons with him, sometime in late June, after he wins the US Open.
Both pros told me, each in his own way, to think about the whole swing, rather than focusing on individual parts or positions. And this advice was crucial. Brian also gave me an idea for a learning aid, using a club shaft and a bunji cord to help me maintain connectedness through the swing. I'll have more to say about that in the next post. For now, you can see where my swing currently is in the latest video.
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