Swing! Swing! Swing!

Before we go any farther, you have to read Larry David's piece, "Fore!" in the July 4^th 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."