I've had a lightbulb moment

[nomadpaul]

I was over the range this afternoon as i'm playing tomorrow and was a bit ring rusty. After approx 20 balls , with consistent striking but inconsistent range/direction, i took a step back and had a think. Now , someone on here posted a comment or a video and from this i remembered a 'grip-tip'. I sorta worked out that i may have been gripping the club too tight ( it may have been the thread about interlock/overlap grips thinking about it ) and that maybe maybe my muscle groups were too tense .
Anyways , i conciously loosened my grip , so much so that the club actually felt quite loose. "Hmmmm..." thought i , "....doesn't feel very secure but i'll give it a go"

So i set up and Bosh !!!....straight and longer than normal ( 7 iron ) . OK , lets see if it was a fluke - repeated the swing - Same result

Ended up suddenly finding a straighter and seemingly longer consistency , in all clubs , just by this loosening of my grip. I've just got to see if i can transfer this swing on to the course

Have you ever had an epiphany where you suddenly realise just what might be wrong ?


p.s As a funny aside , whilst i had stepped out of my bay to 'ponder' the intricacies of the game , the bloke next to me was using his 1 wood . He had the ball tee'd up very high and was trying to larrup the skin off the ball. He'd already put 2 balls into the rafters of the bay and as i watched as he swung with an almighty grunt , got the club right under the ball....which just popped up off the tee and he caufght it in his left hand....i had to applaud him on that one . Probably the best unintentional trick shot i've ever seen

 

[TonyN]

By loosening your grip, you are relaxing the muscles in your arm. Relaxed muscles travel faster than tense ones and it will enable you to keep your clubhead speed up.

Well done you, great when things go well!

 

[Glenfish]

What a great trick shot, bet he can't do it again???
My Pro is always banging on about too-tight grips causing probs, I solved my driver slice problem by changing to gripping VERY lightly with my left hand.

 

[viscount17]

food for thought here.
I don't think I grip my driver anything like as hard as I do my irons, actually its pretty loose. this may be because I'm more confident with it even though I get the occasional bad one and (another thought) they may be because I'm thinking more of what I'm doing instead of doing it. I'm much less confident of my irons and too frequently duff them.

 

[StuR]

Had pretty much exactly the same epiphony on the range on saturday, made all the better by my freind seemingly reverting to a 'never swung a club before in my life' level of ability. So, allow me to waffle on for a minute..

Spent the night before soaking in tips and info from the various videos on youtube, and every time I had a ciggie I banished myself to the back garden to get some practice swings and a couple of drills with tees etc.

I'd been having similar probs to yourself, though more with driver and woods than irons. After watching a few vids I concluded that A) my grip was rubbish and B) my swing was ugly as I was trying to hard, swinging too fast and had a rubbish stance.

So off to the range on saturday with my new interlock grip (i used an overlapping grip previously which I thought worked for me, it didn't as it turns out), a few tweaks and a new drill for getting myself and the club setup and I'm feeling quietly confident I'll do better.

My mate, who wasn't in the best of moods took the first swing, and promptly sliced it with the inevitable expletive leaving the tee faster than the ball had.

So a quick chuckle, practice swing and mental briefing, here goes... *ping*.... god that felt like a good un...and.. straight past the 200 yard marker, flying straight as an arrow. I'm not sure how far it would have gone, the range only has 200 yards marked, and an embankment at 225ish, but it was straight into a mild headwind and went into the embankment at some speed.

Not a great achievement for most people on here I suspect, but for someone who's relatively new to the game and had previously struggled with his tee shots, it felt like I'd won the green jacket. came off the sweet spot perfectly, took no effort and felt like I'd used 50-60% power as opposed to my previous attempts at full bore swings.

The question was could I repeat it consitently. Reasonably as it turned out, out of 200 balls I had 2 horrid shots, one sky shot, one daisy cutter slice, and a few problems with a run of 10 or so balls where I'd started drawing the ball fairly severely. Rechecked my stance, ran through the drills again and got back on track, straight flights, consistent range, and one very happy me stood on the mat.

Biggest breakthrough for me so far. I've taken to iron shots like a duck to water, but woods and particularly driving has been my undoing and it feels great to have discovered why and corrected it.
So this week it's back up to the range for an hour or two a day, and hopefully getting some proper tuition next week.

That's my long-winded eureka moment, and 2 days later I'm still grinning like an idiot because of it

 

[nomadpaul]

Well , the change has defintely worked - Shot a 94 today which is an improvement of about 14 shots from my previous round...so happy days for me at the mo'. Now i just have to continue this form through the next few games !!!

 

[TonyN]

great going that, nice to break 100 consistently, Breaking 90 will come before you know it, for me it was a week later!