Lesson 4 - Practice and a Round of Golf

WOW!  That's all I have to say.  The things that Tim has taught me and the practice I've been putting into the new changes (and killing the bad habits) are really starting to come together!  It's almost frightening.

Lesson 4 was all about my backswing - drawing the club straight, keeping my left arm parallel with my shoulders, and keeping a firm left hand.  This lesson really changed my game.  Not that the other lessons weren't as powerful.  But, without the backswing, the stability in my lower body and keeping my shoulders level wasn't a big of an impact... of course, it's also vice versa.  Without a stable lower body and level shoulder turn, the backswing wouldn't be as strong.  That being said, I saw huge improvement with all of it coming together.

After a crazy 4th of July weekend with lots of alcohol, swimming pools, and just getting beat down from throwing people in the pool (and getting tossed in several times), my body and mind were in pain.  Fortunately, I made a conscious decision to take it easy on Saturday, only beer and chilling in the pool, because I knew I would be golfing on Sunday.  Plus... I was still in pain!  One thing I've learned the hard way, partying the night before golf really affects my golf game.  No more of that.  I'm not going through this whole golf diet and training only to mess it up with a night of heavy drinking.

Ok... so back to my game.  I went to bed early last night so I could hit the range early this morning.  I was at the Revere at Anthem golf course today at 9am practicing.  Although this was really the first day hitting balls since last Wednesday, I have been practicing my backswing at home all the time everyday.  As expected, it was a rough start.  I was hitting balls fat to start with then slightly thin.  After about 20mins, I was starting to relax and was hitting some decent shots.  I kept practicing until we tee'd off on the Lexington course at 10:32am.

On the first hole, I pulled out my driver and topped it.  I took a first hole mulligan and tee'd up another ball.  I relaxed myself and hit the ball.  Correction, I crushed the ball straight down the left side of the fairway.  That felt good.  The rest of the day was same.  Every shot I hit, regardless of what iron or wood, was solid.  I was completely focused on my swing on every shot.  I was hitting balls in the fairway or just off the fairway, hitting greens in regulation or on the fringe of the green, and every shot was solid.  Solid contact and solid consistency.  I had smiles all day after every shot. 

For first time, I only screwed up a couple times and they were pretty much back to back on one hole.  I'm going to say that the first one wasn't really my fault. :)  My tee shot had rolled down the fairway and ended up in the rough - the deep rough.  I tried to get underneath the ball but ended up hitting it fat, short but straight and in the fairway.  The second shot was totally my fault.  I pulled my 60 degree wedge out and was trying to hit it 80 yards into the wind.  Once again, I hit it fat and I ended up having to hit my 60 degree again.  This time only needing about 55 yards into the wind.  Easy...

I ended the day with a 93 on a par 72.  This score isn't very good... I know that.  But, this was the first time in the past couple months that I have hit into the 90's.  Plus, I had a few penalty shots because the wind on the back 9 was BRUTAL!  I would hit these shots great but either overcompensated or undercompensated for side wind carry.  In fact, on the 18 handicap (easiest hole), par 3, 17th hole, I lost 2 balls because of the wind - ridiculous.  Also, I putted horribly today!

I took my new Scotty Cameron Studio Select Newport 2 out for the first time.  I literally peeled the plastic from the grip right before we tee'd off.  For whatever reason, I missed putts... just barely, but still a miss.  The 3-8 feet putts kicked my butt.  I couldn't believe it.  One the green for birdie, and 3-putting the hole.  Multiply this by several holes and there are the extra strokes.  In fact, I count that there were at least 10 putts from 3 feet that should have dropped but didn't.  Assuming that I dropped these putts, I would have shot an 83.  That's with my penalties!  I'm going to keep practicing with that putter... if I don't get used to it... it's either going bye-bye or I'm going to send it to Scotty Cameron to get the weights in the head increased to 20 grams instead of the 15 grams that I currently have right now.  It just doesn't seem as head heavy as my Odyssey Black Series.  It may be the swing weight... i don't know.

Anyway, I dragging on and on now... Overall, I had a great day of golf.  Great ball contact and consistency was exactly what I was looking for and Tim Sam with GolfTEC has helped me to achieve it.  I'm looking forward to learning more (i.e. downswing and follow through). 

Here have been my lessons so far:

Evaluation:  Stance and Grip
Lesson 1:  Lower body stability
Lesson 2:  Shoulders level
Lesson 3:  Shoulders level reinforcement (consistency)
Lesson 4:  Backswing

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!

Lesson 4 - Lessons Learned

NOTE: The information below is specific to my golf swing and is not intended to be a lesson plan for you. If you are working on your swing, I highly recommend signing up for private lessons with a golf pro. Yes, I would highly recommend GolfTEC.

How exciting! I got my shoulder turn level in the past couple weeks and I'm pretty consistent now. Tim was very impressed at how quickly I was able to progress with that. What he doesn't know is that I worked really hard to making that happen. Lots of practice.

Because I had made so much progress, Tim decided it was time to move onto my backswing. I was very ready for this. This has been on my mind for some time now. Look at this video of my swing before we worked on it. Notice at the top of my swing my clubhead is pointed to the right. In fact, my entire backswing up to the top of the swing is pretty sloppy:

Tim had me start with the takeaway. As you can see from this picture, my takeaway was way off from the get-go.




And at the peak of my swing, I was all over the place:



What Tim had me focus on was keeping my left arm and club shaft parallel to my toeline (checkpoint 1).



The next step was the peak of my swing. I tend to turn my shoulders a little too much and really wind up before the downswing. To work on this, Tim recommended that I keep the butt of the club pointed at the target line (checkpoint 2). My left arm should be parallel with my shoulders and my hands should be in front of the right shoulder (checkpoint 3). Finally, I need to work on keeping my wrist flat and not cocking it (checkpoint 4). All this may sound easy, but it really does require me watching myself on video to make sure I'm doing it correctly.



At the end of all these changes my backswing looked great! Check it out.

Lesson 1 - Lessons Learned

NOTE: The information below is specific to my golf swing and is not intended to be a lesson plan for you.

Today I had my first official lesson with Tim at GolfTEC. The lesson started out with Tim asking me about and looking at the grip and stance changes we made from the Initial Evaluation. Overall, Tim said that I made great progress. He made a couple little, but important, tweaks to my grip again as I was still holding the club with a slightly strong grip.

The primary focus of today's lesson was my lower body. The areas of focus was my right leg and my hip turn. According to Tim, one of the reasons I have so much upper body movement in my swing is due to an unstable lower body. To start off with, the sensors showed that I had very little hip turn in my backswing. I was swinging with my arms and not my body. Next was to work on keeping my right leg bent and stable. I was straighening my right leg, causing my upper body to go up.

This was a major change for me. It was quite uncomfortable and tough to do. Not because it was all that difficult, but more due to body memory with my old swing. Fortunately, Tim was very helpful with this. He taught me about the Dynamic Weight Shift - which is the shifting of my weight from address to my backswing. To take it a step futher, he grabbed my right knee with one hand and used his other hand to apply the pressure shifts in my feet during my backswing. At address, the pressure should be on the balls of my feet. During the backswing, as my hips turn, my right knee should stay bent and stable, while the weight on my right foot shifts from toe to heel. I'm really oversimplifying what we worked on, but it's the best/easiest way for me to put it into words.

Here is one of the many pics from my lesson. As you can see my hip turn is much better, my right leg is bent and stable. But, my shoulder turn is still too much.

We also worked on some exercises that I could do to train my body the new things I learned today. Some of these exercises are the same ones you see the pros do on TV after they hit a bad shot. NOW... it makes sense to me of what they are trying to do! Tim recommended that I do these exercises without going to the range to get the "feel". He also reiterated for me to stop trying to work on other parts of my swing (see my previous posts) since I'm not working on the actual cause and could end up developing more bad habits. :P

Overall, I'm still extremely pleased with selecting GolfTEC to work on my golf swing/game. The experiences, thus far, have been excellent and Tim is awesome. I particularly like the way Tim explains things in detail and asks if I understood what he said. I also like the way he gives me tips on how to make the changes he recommends vs just telling me what I need to change. This is key.