Well, I just had another revelation. At address, don’t stand too close to the ball.

A little background: during yesterday’s round I happened to set up for a practice swing (I was on the tee box) with my club head grounded on some discolored grass. For some unknown reason I paid attention to where the head actually swept through the grass during the practice swing itself, and noted it was missing the discolored spot by a good inch or more on the outside. I said to myself, “Self? What if the ball were where the club head actually came through, instead of where I was setting up?”

Instead of my more-upright stance at address, I crouched just a little bit more, extended my arms a little further from my body (less vertical, more horizontal), and took a couple of practice swings (no one on the course to mind the extra time I was taking with this). Felt pretty good, so I went for it.

Bang. The ball leapt off the tee, dead straight and sailing as pretty as I’ve ever seen. I measured the distance via my Swami GPS unit and it went nearly 220 yards. Wow! For contrast, just a day earlier I’d been hitting off the tee maybe 170 yards with a wicked slice.

Folks, it wasn’t a fluke. I nailed every single driver swing just the same way. I got into trouble only twice, once when I pulled it left into trees on the edge of the fairway (and no sharp fade to save it), and once when I used driver where my new-found distance meant I should have used 3 wood. I’ll talk about both of those cases later, because I love blabbing about memorable holes played.

Analysis? I’m far from a swing coach, but I think I know a little about what happened. First, standing too close to the ball meant I wasn’t able to use full arm extension. That means I’d have to use muscle memory to keep the head on the same path from back swing to down swing, and of course I’d be off quite a bit each time. At full extension there’s nothing left to correct, you’re already at the limit, so the head stays on the same path. Also, my subconscious knew what was going on, and wanted me to pull the club closer into my chest to make sure I was on that desired path. That lead (my brother-in law was watching me and confirmed this) to an armsy, elbow-cocked kind of pull swing that couldn’t help but be outside-in and awkward, almost guaranteeing a slice. Again, you guys who already know this stuff, kindly stop snickering. You were this clueless once, and you know it.

How about away from the tee box? My first attempt at 3 wood on the fairway (and yes, it felt good to be in the short grass and looking at maybe reaching in two) was a bust. I over-did it, and the ball glanced off the toe of the club in a nasty shank. Being as how no one was around to care, I dropped another ball and tried again: similar result, slightly less shank. Okay, that was helpful in figuring out how far was too far. Yes, I played the original ball where it lay, so quit looking at me like that!

Ditto for irons. I was now far right and had trees in the way to the green, maybe 115 yards out. Normally that’s 7 iron for me, and that’s assuming I even hit it. I tried just a little bit of extra extension on the address, squatting a wee bit more than usual, and took an easy swing. I watched the prettiest arc I’ve ever generated from a 7 iron, all the way over the part of the tree that was in the way, and landing a good 20 yards past the green. Wow! Yeah, cost me a stroke to get back from there, but hitting 7 iron like that was a rush!

In sum, except for the inevitable mis-hits, I got similar results for the whole round. This was truly a revelation for me, and the results were consistent and immediate. If you’re still struggling with weak slices and fat shots, take a look at where you set up, talk to your pro (or buddy) about whether you’re really getting full arm extension with your current address position.

About those holes where I found trouble off the tee? Sure. I’ll start with the second one, because it ended well.

The hole was a medium par 4, maybe 380 yards long, with enough dogleg left you can’t see the green from the tee box. All along the left side of the fairway is OB, just a narrow strip of rough. Due to events during the hole just prior to this I was reluctant to press that left edge, so aimed it dead down the middle of the fairway and let rip with my driver. Another beauty of a shot, long and fast, with just a hint of fade towards the end. Problem was, the dogleg to the left. Never before was just banging down the middle with driver a problem for me. This time the drive went easily over 220 yards (yeah, I measured it), and ended up into a stand of trees just past the knuckle of the turn. I couldn’t decide whether to be excited (again) about the drive, or pissed about the results. I chose excited.

Got to the ball, surveyed the damage. If I knelt behind the ball I had a clear look at the green, no trunks in the way. Punch shot it would be, then! I took my 2 hybrid (being my lowest-lofted “iron”), set up with the ball off the toe of my back foot, and slapped down at the ball with locked wrists and a steep downswing (abbreviated to miss a possibly club-wrecking tree root). Sometimes a plan comes together, and the ball scooted on a perfect line, under the trees and with a ton of roll. I ended up inside 60 yards, made my chip, and two-putted for bogey. Success!

Okay, now about that other hole…

Sometimes, even when things are going well overall, the wheels come off the wagon for one hole. This hole is a long-ish (410 yars) par 4, the number 1 handicap hole on the course. The chief difficulty (apart from trees hugging the left part of the fairway at one point) is a huge bunker going all the way across the fairway, high lip on the front edge, about 80 yards from the green. There’s almost no getting around this puppy unless you play from the deep stuff up the right side.

I hit my drive, another scorcher, but I pulled it a bit left. No fade at all, ruler-straight, and one of those fairway-hugging trees on the left snagged it and spit it out right at its base. Ouch. I was in some deep cabbage, but still elected to try to dig it out with my 3 wood (probably a mistake, when I had 4 hybrids in my bag). I hit it really open-faced and it glanced off across the fairway (okay distance, nothing to exult over) and ended in more deep stuff off the right of the fairway and behind Yet More Trees. These were evergreens, no getting under them, but I could just see the left edge of the green peeking around. I figured if I played a slice with the 3 wood again, I could carry the bunker and worst case be off the left side of the green in three (I was about 150-160 out at this point). Again, why I didn’t pull out the 2 or 3 hybrid I’ll never know.

Tension of knowing I had to dig the ball out, plus the bunker in my face…it got to me. I over-swung and dug a 6-inch trench in the rough that ended at the ball, which popped out and rolled to within 20 yards or so from the bunker. Argh! Now I’m about 100 yards out, thinking an easy 8 iron will get me on track to maybe save double bogey from this mess. Klonk. My mind was full of woe instead of swing thoughts and I went back to my usual shtick of chunking my irons—right into the forward edge of the bunker.

Unprintable thoughts ensued.

My sand shot was unremarkable. I dug it out, sure, but it flew almost straight up, and almost straight down, landing (again) in thick stiff just forward of the bunker’s edge. Now I’m 70 yards out and lying five. I still believe I can’t carry my sand wedge more than 50 yards or such, so I got out my gap wedge. I’m used to getting about 70 yards out of it from a good lie, and this was a buried one, so I gave it a full swing. Up, up and awaaaaaaaay! It sailed picture-perfect to a soft landing well beyond the far side of the (rather large) green. No way in Hell would I have said I could hit a gap wedge that far, and out of a buried lie! Just goes to show you how much guess-work is involved in this game when you don’t have distances dialed in.

Facing a chip back onto a large green, now, and it sloped away from me towards the front with the hole placed dead center. I knew if I got too froggy with the chip it’d scoot well past the hole, so naturally I over-did my caution and landed it well short. Now a long downhill putt, and lying seven. Of all the crappy shots I’d managed to string together this far, my putt for snowman was actually pretty good, and I lagged it to tap-in range to end with a nine for the hole.

Le Sigh.

And that, my friends, is why I was loathe to crowd the left edge OB on the next hole.

(Oh, that next hole where I pulled a bogey out of my ass? That was my brother-in-law’s turn to card a nine. He ran afoul of those OB markers. So there.)

So, anyway, what’s the big revelation? Don’t grip the god-damned club so hard.

There, that’s it. Isn’t a proper grip supposed to be the very first thing you learn in golf’s equivalent of kindergarten? Hasn’t it been stressed in every book I’ve read, every lesson I’ve taken?

Just call me stubborn-stupid. In the scaly recesses of my lizard brain you have to have a death grip on that sucker if you’re ever going to use it to apply massive force.

Sigh.

So, during Tuesday’s round I took a chance. I held the club gingerly in my left hand, wrapped the fingers properly so I had the strong grip my pro suggests I use, relaxed the fingers deliberately so the grip was just nestled in there a bit, put the right hand on, and tried some test swings. It felt like I was going to launch the club into the stands like Johnny Damon swinging for the fences. I tried it again, anyway. Hmm. The head did feel like it was whipping around better, I felt more relaxed on the downswing (necessary, due to the fear-feeling of losing the thing), and by gosh and golly the club grazed the grass very nicely, no digging a post hole.

I tried it with the ball in the way. Ka-blooey. Clean contact and, while I didn’t come close to getting the kind of distance that would make me the envy of armchair hacks the world over, the shot was respectable. I didn’t hit it fat, didn’t shank it into the next fairway, didn’t end up with Yet Another Wasted Stroke. The ball flight was even decent, a slight fade and a good roll at the end.

I kept at it. It kept working. Fairway wood, hybrids, irons…they all started working for me. I didn’t end up with the round of my life, but I scored right on the goal I had set for myself, and that on a Robert Trent Jones course with wicked hard greens that had me three-putting often. Then I played my “home” course yesterday, and subtract the evil greens (this course is tons easier) I began the round with two pars (including par on a hole that I have NEVER made better than double on before), and broke 50 handily after 9 holes–still a big deal for me.

Okay, okay already. I believe it now. The lizard has been silenced. The death grip I was maintaining was forcing the head down into the ground too early, enabling me to tense up and “grip-n-rip” during the swing, and causing all kinds of nastiness. I’m thinking my major problem all these years hasn’t been what I thought it was, it’s been that silly-ass grip.

So, my droogies, believe it. Get that grip worked out before you try to progress to the rest of your golf swing. Take it from me.

I can hear the “I told you so!” from my pro at tomorrow’s lesson. Sigh.

Spinny

To start with I didn’t feel well prepared for this next lesson. Sure, I had played a few rounds in the interim, but I only got to the range once. It amazed me how much I had already forgotten in just one week. This is going to take a while, I can tell.

I actually came right off a round of nine where the temp was pushing 90 and the humidity was in the “oh, crap” range. I was as wet as though I’d been playing in the rain. I walked the round, but used my push cart so it wasn’t as bad as though I’d been schlepping my bag, too. The two guys I golfed with were both shoulder-strappers, and by the end they were pretty beat. We’re not used to this kind of weather up here!

I arrived at the range an hour early, but the pro was free and was glad to move up my lesson. Yay!

First order of business: hit some balls and see where I was at. Yikes. Over the top and gripping and ripping again. It is to sigh. The golf swing has been all arms for me for so long it’s really going to be hard to take them out of the picture as much as will be necessary. I also wasn’t turning my body enough on the back swing and the club was way too high back there. We went back to the feet-together drill and I loosened up some and started getting more body turn into it. He also added the drill where I stand on my lead foot only, with my trailing foot behind me toe to the ground. Then he stuck some slanted rods into the ground on either side of me, and I worked on taking full swings without hitting either one–I had to be below the back one and above the front one. I actually caught on to that fairly quickly.

Once I was taking a decent swing plane again, he had me start rotating my forearms through body-turn part of the swing. I didn’t start nearly soon enough at first, but got better over time. His goal right now is for me to hit hooks, every time. He feels that once I can consistently hook the ball he can work on straightening out the ball flight. I’m far from there yet, and my plans to get to the range on Friday were overcome by work-related events, but I pushed my next lesson off until Thursday to give me more time to work in some practice. It doesn’t help the nearest ranges to me are about a half-hour’s drive away from my house. Oh, well.

Later!

That was last year. In this latest case I learned of a real, certified PGA pro who set up shop reasonably close to where I work. He was highly recommended to me by two members of my league, and was recognized as the #1 Central New York teaching pro in 2007. He also teaches for a full hour at a time. Why not give it a go, right?

I arrived at the driving range where he holds forth. Besides a couple of main buildings there was a fabric “portable garage” type building set well off to one side where he was finishing with a student. He wrapped up quickly and greeted me, and we were off.

He looked over my clubs, selected a 6 iron, and had me hit a few shots while he watched. Normally he’d have filmed that, as well, but his video gear was on the fritz (he told me that when I booked the lesson, and gave a discount on the fee). I settled in and produced my usual fat chunky shots with divots consistently behind the ball.

Right off he seemed to know what was up, and began with getting me to re-think the entire concept of what a golf swing is. His philosophy? There are only two main parts to the swing. The arms bring the club up and down, the body makes it swing around your spine. And that’s it. The trick is to apply the philosophy. What I was doing, he said, was trying to force the club down and around, tensing my arms and shoulders and pulling the club into the ground instead of letting it swing freely. Other issues were the result of so-helpful advice from various golfing buddies: keep your head still, don’t look up, do this, don’t do that. I was so stiff and afraid to move much it’s a miracle I could even get the club up for a backswing. Your head has to move if your body moves freely, it’s the up-and-down bobbing of the upper body that you need to minimize. At the height of your backswing your head has to be turned somewhat to the side or else you’re not turning your upper body enough. In your follow-through you HAVE to look up, it’s part of your whole body unwinding and facing the direction of the ball flight.

Agree or disagree with his philosophy, he seemed to have my issues nailed.

He introduced several drills to help me visualize what I’m supposed to be doing. One is the “mini medicine ball” where I would hold it about waist high, he’d stand to my left (I’m right-handed) and I’d pivot away from him and then towards him while tossing him the ball. Very good for spine pivot feel, and you can do it with a throw pillow against a couch or something. He said tour pros toss a weighted ball like that sometimes hundreds of times a day to keep their spine pivot smooth.

Then came the two-step swing drills. Main one was to keep my feet together, make sure my grip was loose (and strong, if you know what I mean), and then do repetitions of takeaway, wrist/arm cock (the arms go up), then reversing that: the arms go down, then the body pivots the rest of the way to bring the club down and against the ground. Relaxed and smooth and let gravity bring the club down to the ground instead of trying to help it. I started to get it a little towards the end, where I was making pretty good ball contact. It was only going about 100 yards, but straight and with decent height. He said distance would come later when I was more comfortable in the groove of the swing and could speed up the second, pivot part without forcing it.

The cool thing about this visualization to me is that I know the swing is really a complicated mass of moving parts that all need to mesh together, but by focusing on just those two parts of the swing the rest of the body seems naturally to move to follow suit. By keeping my feet together I had to allow my body to wind/unwind as it’s supposed to–otherwise I’d lose my balance.

When I was starting to get it he had me take a normal stance and swing that way. Right away I started trying to force the club down and around and was hitting fats and toppers. It’s really, really hard to relax and trust gravity to do the work. I have a ton of practicing to do before my next lesson (I’m going to try a weekly pace at first and see where this goes) and my rounds today and tomorrow are certainly going to be very weird as I try to incorporate some of this new stuff on the course.

More to come….