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

In the swing now, there are some notable improvements.

• 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.

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.

1. Steeper backswing
2. Keep right leg flexed and reduce hip turn
3. Drop right arm at top -- straight down
4. Keep spine angle (I stand up)
5. Lower body -- legs -- rotate first and let arms follow
6. Hands stay back (my arms start moving too fast and too early)
7. Arm angle is pretty good on way down
8. Keep working on opening hips and holding lag
9. Keep right toes grounded
10. 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.