Golf lesson.......

Warning to all readers, this blog entry may contain information of a highly golfing nature. Non-golfing viewers are advised at their own discretion to perhaps bypass the coming words in order to perhaps save their sanity. The blog is solely intended for future recollection by the author, or whoever may be interested.

That being said, I would like to write about the golf lesson I had this week as well as to document to the swing changes I will be making and have been implementing over the winter.

Before I go into the lesson, I have to first highly recommend my swing teacher Richard Kirby over at Chichester to any advanced golfer serious about improving their game. I selected him on the basis of his teaching background and the facilities available. I have to see him about 5 times now and here is an overview of some of the things I have been working on since lesson 1:

1) Grip - My grip on the club was way too much in the palm of my hand! This has caused me to have very little flexibility in my wrists, which reduces power and control. I am now holding the club with the grip running through the base of my fingers to promote maximum mobility and this is also giving me much more control of the club.

2) Wrists - the above grip fault has caused me to create virtually no wrist hinge in the early stages of my backswing. They havent been fully hinging until the top of my backswing which has thrown the syncronisation of my swing right out ie my arms were trailing behind my body on the downswing which tends to leave the clubface pointing way to the right. I am now working on creating a full wrist hinge early in my swing to prevent problems at the top of my backswing. This so far has been the hardest change so far and it as not drilled into my swing at all just yet!

3) Synchronisation - this has been the most succesful change so far and I have made quite a large improvement in my consistency with this swing thought. I have been focusing on holding my stomach facing away from my target at the top of my backswing which allows my arms to come down first as opposed to my problem of my body leading my arms. This has made my errant shots far less errant and very nearly could have got my through either of my last two tests!

now, the more current things...

4) Posture - I have had very little knee flex in the past so I have been looking to implement this quite significantly in order to create more power through my legs and improve my balance. I have also been looking get my upper body more over the ball too which in turn will help my swing plane also.

5) Takeaway - this is by far the move that has been causing me the most problems. My takeaway as it is now, actually goes outside of (to the right of) my ball-to-target line. This causes me via the use of a severe wrist compensation, loop the club back in an attempt to get it square again. Due to this, I end up with the club laid off (aiming left) at the top of my backswing.
This means that the club ends up approaching the ball from way too far inside the target line and unless I make another strong wrist compensation to hit the ball square (and usually ends up as a big hook), I hit it way right, especially if I am out of sync too (as in the first problem), not to mention way too high!
I am now using any physical barrier I can find to prevent this outside move when I practise. It feels very strange and 3 weeks into working on this, it has nowhere near ingrained itself so again this will be continued work throughout the winter. I am excited about making this change as I feel it make me far more consistent and I notice that when I get it right, the ball goes very straight and quite a lot lower too, which is a bonus.

6) Shoulders - I will eventually be working on steepening the angle of my shoulders throughout my backswing ie get my left shoulder lower which should help me get more of a powerful strike on the ball. This is not something I will be focusing on just yet, as I feel the takeaway problem is the foremost priority and should help with this problem anyway.


So, as you can see, there is plenty to work on. I wont know the frui of my labour until the real acid test - my playing test in May but am excited to have the time and freedom to work on these things. Come the new year, I will also be starting to work very hard on my chipping, putting, pitching and bunker play.

Boring blog over........... I hope those non golfers who get to this point are still awake and may have even found this interesting. Did you R?x