Playing proper golf whilst trying to change your swing

[timd77]

Had my 2nd lesson in mid December, the irons are definitely improving. Numbers were showing I’m hitting much less down, still down but more where you’d want to see it. Path is in to out and I’m getting much better height with the irons.

We talked about my driving seeming to have gone backwards and so spent a while looking at that. I can’t remember the numbers but I’m not hitting up enough, but a big issue is not catching the sweet spot, and although my swing speed isn’t great, somewhere around 90mph, I’m losing potential yards due to hitting it all over the face. So he sent me away to work on that.

For one reason or another today was the first time I’ve been able to get on the range. I set up a gate with 2 pegs either side of the head (heel and toe). I used the wet balls on the dry club face to see where the ball was hitting. Initially pretty much all out of the heel, I use a ping g430 max so there’s lots of forgiveness and the shots were still ‘in play’, so I set about gradually moving my set up. To me it looked like I was addressing the ball from the middle of the face, but when I had a look from down the line, it was closer to the heel. So I moved it a bit to the point that it looked to me like it was closer to the toe (when I was at address). Hit some shots and was catching it more from the middle to toe on the face, the ball flight was decent and by eye I could see they were carrying a touch further.

Something to keep working on, but if anyone has any drills for this I’d love to hear them!

 

[Orikoru]

Had my 2nd lesson in mid December, the irons are definitely improving. Numbers were showing I’m hitting much less down, still down but more where you’d want to see it. Path is in to out and I’m getting much better height with the irons.

We talked about my driving seeming to have gone backwards and so spent a while looking at that. I can’t remember the numbers but I’m not hitting up enough, but a big issue is not catching the sweet spot, and although my swing speed isn’t great, somewhere around 90mph, I’m losing potential yards due to hitting it all over the face. So he sent me away to work on that.

For one reason or another today was the first time I’ve been able to get on the range. I set up a gate with 2 pegs either side of the head (heel and toe). I used the wet balls on the dry club face to see where the ball was hitting. Initially pretty much all out of the heel, I use a ping g430 max so there’s lots of forgiveness and the shots were still ‘in play’, so I set about gradually moving my set up. To me it looked like I was addressing the ball from the middle of the face, but when I had a look from down the line, it was closer to the heel. So I moved it a bit to the point that it looked to me like it was closer to the toe (when I was at address). Hit some shots and was catching it more from the middle to toe on the face, the ball flight was decent and by eye I could see they were carrying a touch further.

Something to keep working on, but if anyone has any drills for this I’d love to hear them!

100% this! I think it's a common thing that people get wrong, I realised it about a year ago, and ever since then I've been aligning my ball slightly towards the toe with driver. Basically, if you line it up with what looks like middle, while your club is rested on the ground - once you bring it back to impact it's been raised an inch off the ground, and this brings the ball towards the heel side. So lining it up on the toe side brings it into the middle at impact. And even if I do get a bit of a toey strike at impact, I tend to get this high & straight bomb of a flight anyway, which is great. As opposed to hitting it out of the heel which gives you that squirty slice that nobody wants. That was one of the main things that saved my driving I think.

 

[timd77]

I kind of got used to that low fade, fairly predictable but it’s not much use in soft conditions as it relies on a decent run out. Looking forward to trying the new line up/feel on the course.