I had a lesson today and...

SimonC

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Just got back from a lesson at The Beeches in Knutsford with Peter Barber. Really enjoyed it. He explains things simply and I find it quite easy to implement the changes he makes.

I was taking the club away slightly outside in an effort not to get too flat. I was then having to work hard to drop it "in the slot". That's why I was getting handsy and flipping the odd one left.
He had me taking the club away with my hands moving over my right foot and hinging to set the club early. It felt like I was hinging my wrists pretty much as my hands moved away. I then had to try to hold the angle as late as possible. We then worked on start lines by hitting it through two alignment sticks stuck in the grass.
Was flushing it by the end. Shame I'm not playing this weekend ?

Sounds good, getting the club into the correct position at the top of the swing definitely makes it easier on the downswing it just stops you having to compensate.

Keep at it, scratch can't be too far away for you looking at your current handicap. Scratch is my next goal.
 

Junior

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Sounds good, getting the club into the correct position at the top of the swing definitely makes it easier on the downswing it just stops you having to compensate.

Keep at it, scratch can't be too far away for you looking at your current handicap. Scratch is my next goal.

Cheers mate. Being realistic, if my handicap starts with a 2 at the end of next season I'll be happy. I dont ever think ive practised more than i am right now, plus im planning to work hard this year on the chipping and putting , so hopefully that will help shave the handicap.

Im not long back from Portugal where I putted really well on some quite fast greens. Ordinarily I'd have been a broken man by the end on slopey greens stimping at 11 Lol
 
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HomerJSimpson

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Very happy camper. Grip change still feels alien (which is actually a good thing as I have to focus on it) and the change to stay more over the ball with my chest working until I was under pressure and the old early extension tried desperately to take over. Managed to keep it in check most of the time. Plenty of work still to do but feel like I'm making progress and hopefully a cut coming after today
 

SteveW86

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Very happy camper. Grip change still feels alien (which is actually a good thing as I have to focus on it) and the change to stay more over the ball with my chest working until I was under pressure and the old early extension tried desperately to take over. Managed to keep it in check most of the time. Plenty of work still to do but feel like I'm making progress and hopefully a cut coming after today

All sound positive, but surely you know if you are getting cut or not as you know what you scored?
 

Region3

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I should be getting cut as a rubbish score dropped off but given up trying to work it out on WHS. I'll wait until the morning

When a rubbish one drops off, you get a cut if you beat the worst differential of your counting scores.

Sorry if you already knew this.

I quite enjoy working out what difference any particular round will have but I like numbers and I know a lot of people don’t.
 

SimonC

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Cheers mate. Being realistic, if my handicap starts with a 2 at the end of next season I'll be happy. I dont ever think ive practised more than i am right now, plus im planning to work hard this year on the chipping and putting , so hopefully that will help shave the handicap.

Im not long back from Portugal where I putted really well on some quite fast greens. Ordinarily I'd have been a broken man by the end on slopey greens stimping at 11 Lol

Sounds like you're going the right way about it then with all the practice and lessons. I should focus some time on my short game too but it will have to wait until the weather picks up.

That sounds like how my dad used to be, we played in Spain on the fastest greens we've ever played on many years ago and he was 3 and 4 putting everything. He's much better now though, he needs to be though putting on our greens week in week out.
 

SimonC

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I had another lesson yesterday, backswing is now where we want it but I was pulling the right elbow in and behind me on the downswing. This causes the club to get a little stuck behind me and I get too narrow so we did some work rectifying this by doing what looks like a funky drill but it works well. I also had to have the feeling of pausing at the top of my swing to stop the pulling of the arms, it felt almost wooden but it kept the club in front of me.



Here's how my swing has changed in the last month and a half:
 
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HeftyHacker

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Just got back from a lesson with a new (to me) pro.

Went with the intention of improving my long irons and hybrids as currently I've a massive gap between my driver and the rest of my bag...

Couldn't put a swing together! Spent the first 30 mins of my lesson working on my takeaway, transition and follow through (basically my whole swing) and then had a look at ball position and grip.

Honestly felt like a complete beginner - which i am in the grand scheme of things - but I'd obviously ingrained a lot of bad habits over the past few months with more regular range sessions as opposed to being on course with more punishment for bad shots.

By the end we finally got round to looking at bridging that gap at the top of the bag and was hitting it miles better and was regularly getting it out to where I wanted it to be.

Will see how it goes for the next few weeks...
 

HomerJSimpson

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Just got back from a lesson with a new (to me) pro.

Went with the intention of improving my long irons and hybrids as currently I've a massive gap between my driver and the rest of my bag...

Couldn't put a swing together! Spent the first 30 mins of my lesson working on my takeaway, transition and follow through (basically my whole swing) and then had a look at ball position and grip.

Honestly felt like a complete beginner - which i am in the grand scheme of things - but I'd obviously ingrained a lot of bad habits over the past few months with more regular range sessions as opposed to being on course with more punishment for bad shots.

By the end we finally got round to looking at bridging that gap at the top of the bag and was hitting it miles better and was regularly getting it out to where I wanted it to be.

Will see how it goes for the next few weeks...
I'm not a big fan of changing too much in one lesson but at least you were hitting good shots by the end so thats progress. It'll be interesting to see if you can take all the changes out onto the course
 

HeftyHacker

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I'm not a big fan of changing too much in one lesson but at least you were hitting good shots by the end so thats progress. It'll be interesting to see if you can take all the changes out onto the course

I'm the same, and if I'd been hitting the ball well at the start then maybe he wouldn't have felt the need to change so much. But in his defence it felt easier and more natural by the end, and gave me a few pointers to come back to if I started slipping again.

I had basically lost all tempo and form and was trying too hard as a result.
 

HomerJSimpson

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I'm the same, and if I'd been hitting the ball well at the start then maybe he wouldn't have felt the need to change so much. But in his defence it felt easier and more natural by the end, and gave me a few pointers to come back to if I started slipping again.

I had basically lost all tempo and form and was trying too hard as a result.

I've had then going to a new teacher. I think it's a sub-conscious need to try and impress instead of swinging like you normally do
 

BrianM

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Had my last lesson of this trip away, hit the ball pretty well, my biggest problem is getting to steep.
I've just got to start implementing the changes on the course, big difference (for me anyway) hitting at the range or simulator.
It's been a major swing change for me but I'm feeling a bit more confident it's coming together.
It felt like 3 steps back to get 1 step forward.
 

spongebob59

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Lesson 3 on the comeback trail, working on a better release .
Got to try and get then feeling of with my back to target during release , feels weird.
Got to try the Ping G425's which I liked but still ££££
 

HomerJSimpson

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Albo

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This thread convinced me that I would actually benefit from lessons, I spend stupid money on golf membership to 2 courses, new equipment, launch monitors, balls, clothing etc etc etc and my golf has stalled and is regressing backwards of late. Yet despite all of the outlay, I wont dump £60 on a lesson to help myself, rather watch youtube and put a bad version of a fix ontop of a bad foundation and expect everything to get better.
After playing last weekend on Saturday and fatting 75% of my shots off the deck, I applied a youtube fix, which worked and on Sunday I thinned about 60% of my shots, i decided enough was enough.

Id done some research on coaches near by and booked myslef lesson for yesterday. The guy was really good with me, talked about what was wrong in my mind with my golf (poor swing, too many fat/thin shots, too inconsistent), what I wanted to achieve from lessons (be able to actually play as a reasonable single figure capper, currently off 9.8 but thats last years number and on my home course and usually as soon as I go to any other course im struggling to break 90, along side consistency in strike / shot shape).
I also told him if things worked out and I can see progress i'd happily rip up my swing and totally revamp it, im not looking for a quick fix.
So had the lesson, I asked him to be brutally honest about my swing, which he was and worked on;
Set up: Ball position, posture, hand poaition, left foot
Take away; right hip movement and left arm position at the top
Downswing; impact position and low point of the swing.
Took a while to get used to a new way of standing and swinging and as i've been coming up off the ball in my downswing (leading to fat or thin shots and shots very high on the club face), hardest bit was trusting to stay down and commit to the low point of my swing way ahead of the ball. After a few bad hits ot started to click and I started to connect much better with the balls, he spayed some foot spray on the club and at one point I hit 4 shots ina row out of the middle 3/4 groves up, that may not sound like much, but to me I can see the improvement, better still I can feel it. Post lesson I got about 50 balls, and would honestly say that 35/40 of them were as better or as good as the best strikes id hit pre lesson and ot would have taken me 100s of balls to hit 40 of that quality. For reference last weekend over 2 round, I felt id middled 1 iron shot in total.

Need to stick at it now and not lapse into old ways and not watch anymore youtube!

My body aches this morning and given the amount of golf I usually play thats very unusual, so I am moat definitely using different muscles or the same muscles differently.
Had a second lesson today after a covid related cancellation. Checked what id been working on in the last lesson, right hip, left arm both much better and now feeling natural which is good, I was worried that as they were feeling natural I may have lapsed back go old swing feel but no.
Still struggling with low point in the swing, pretty much no fats these days but too many thins so had more work to do on staying down and commiting to hitting a divot in front of the ball (I really struggle having been a sweeper my whole life).
Worked today on that and also why my club was coming in open and im working hard on shutting it down leading to either pull hooks when too closed and or fade/slice if I dont close it down enough. Good work on a feeling of my right hand bring on top of the shaft for a while until i was starting the ball left and curving it away, then moving onto aiming straight and having the right hand underneath (so ball goes way right) then back on top so ot goes way left, then finding a middle feel so it goes straighter. Then points between those, on a scale of 0 to 10 left or 0 to 10 right, 0 being straight 10 being the extream left or right, basically to give me a better feel of where the club face is in my swing with relation to what my hands are doing. I was basically rolling my wrists over on my back swing which was opening the face.

Anyway.... that has given me some stuff to work on, strike was still getting better (not great) but at least im underatanding
 

spongebob59

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3rd lesson on the comeback trail, working on release without spinning out, even the silly little clips were going a decent distance.
 

HomerJSimpson

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Had a second lesson today after a covid related cancellation. Checked what id been working on in the last lesson, right hip, left arm both much better and now feeling natural which is good, I was worried that as they were feeling natural I may have lapsed back go old swing feel but no.
Still struggling with low point in the swing, pretty much no fats these days but too many thins so had more work to do on staying down and commiting to hitting a divot in front of the ball (I really struggle having been a sweeper my whole life).
Worked today on that and also why my club was coming in open and im working hard on shutting it down leading to either pull hooks when too closed and or fade/slice if I dont close it down enough. Good work on a feeling of my right hand bring on top of the shaft for a while until i was starting the ball left and curving it away, then moving onto aiming straight and having the right hand underneath (so ball goes way right) then back on top so ot goes way left, then finding a middle feel so it goes straighter. Then points between those, on a scale of 0 to 10 left or 0 to 10 right, 0 being straight 10 being the extream left or right, basically to give me a better feel of where the club face is in my swing with relation to what my hands are doing. I was basically rolling my wrists over on my back swing which was opening the face.

Anyway.... that has given me some stuff to work on, strike was still getting better (not great) but at least im underatanding
3rd lesson on the comeback trail, working on release without spinning out, even the silly little clips were going a decent distance.

Glad to see the lessons are working. Keep the hard work up and hopefully we'll be able to play soon without excessive winds making life even harder. I had a lesson a few weeks back but had been struggling to get any range time because of the storms and even on other days with the wind here gusting around 35mph at other times it didn't seem worth it. Managed a session on Monday and another last night to work on my own changes (post #203). Off tomorrow so going to hit some balls at the club (and some pitching work) and then got 18 holes off the yellows in the afternoon. Hoping it'll start coming together properly. Really excited again about my golf and can't wait for the season to start. I'm even going to start going to the club after work from next week for a few hours practice (mainly short game)
 

IainP

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Had my second Gears lesson today. Quite useful being able to compare with previous, and captured more swings during the session this time to demonstrate result of a change. This is how they draw you in & grab you! ££ ?
Note to self - need to stop playing golf-swing soon ?
 
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