Real Progress

Last week I dumped my kids and wife off at a movie and hit a nearby driving range.

Though I bought a pile of balls, I mostly just hit wedges. I found a real groove when I was able to focus on having very quiet hands at the end of my backswing. The key was to keep them quiet on that first move downward - that night anyway.

I've also been goofing around with taking HUGE backswings. I mean ones where my club goes past parallel and I can see it near my left eye at the top a la John Daly.

Why do I do this?

Well, after hitting tons of half-wedges, I usually get my swing in a really good, smooth place. Then I whip out my driver and am really able to take monstrous, slow swings that are real head-turners on the range. The ball simply explodes off my club.

I played my regular round last Saturday, after my range session. I was simply all over the place. I hit bombs and stiffed some pins....and was also picking up on some holes.

But when I was finished, I was surprised to realize that in between snap-hooks and slices....that I managed 8 pars which is always a decent achievement on my extremely hard home course. So I had at least that to take away from the round.

Then, on Tuesday, I played Wachusett CC. It's a track that would invariably annihilate me as a young Hacker. I'd play my wide-open muni (Green Hill) and shoot mid 80s (when I was *on*) but then my uncle would take me to Wachusett, more of a real, tree-lined course, and it would smack me back down to reality, and up to the mid 90s.

But that was then; I'm a much, much better player now. This Tuesday I ate the course up. I shot a 78 despite carelessly bogeying 17 and doubling 18.

Why'd I play so well?

Well I was taking that incredibly big backswing with my driver from the first hole on. I tried to get my left shoulder as far under my chin as possible; I tried to see the clubhead next to my left eye; and I tried to start my downswing with those *quiet* hands from the range session while I kept the left shoulder wound as long as possible.

I was flat-out smashing the ball off the tee.

Wachusett also has one of the most *unfair* practice greens I've ever seen. It's literally carved into a hillside. I found it to be awesome practice trying to chip, pitch, and putt on it. To make my warm-up session even harder, I would only use my 8 and 9-irons for *flop* shots. I'm definitely going back to this practice green when in the area again. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that playing and practicing under extremely difficult conditions really pays dividends.

But getting back to my driving....

This is what makes golf so darn frustrating. After weeks of hitting my tee shots sideways, I fixed my swing up in Maine by shortening my backswing. That only worked for a little bit.

So now the temporary solution is to take a huge swing????

Crap.

Chipping Away

I've really committed to practicing more and better these past few weeks. That great book I read really clarified the *hard work* foundation of success. For more it, read the end of this post.

I've been hitting the range a couple of times per week and I've been using Dave Pelz's putting track several times per week.

AND I'm trying to diligently articulate my swing thoughts here.

So my recent break-through was hitting it high...

I played twice in the past week and also hit the range twice. Unfortunately I haven't been able to regain my insight; I hit the ball OK and high at times. Though I've clearly got a lot of work left to do if I think I'm ever going to *taste* elusive consistency.

One newer thing I addressed was the position of my hands heading into impact. Us wristy casters all have the same weak position at impact, i.e. club pre-released.

So I was just making sure my hands were ahead of the ball at impact. I did this by simulating a *stop* of my hands just beyond the ball. It had the effect of slowing down my downswing, delaying the hit so-to-speak, and, best of all, of making my ball striking purer.

It increased my trajectory and pushed my divot out closer to where it's supposed to be - ahead of the ball.

So in my tinkering I got ball high like I wanted but did so in a much different way. This didn't feel good at all. It felt *handsy* - the opposite of what I want - no matter the result.

I also goofed around with standing further from the ball - particularly on my driver. A while back I tried this with great success and thought I *finally had it*!

And I experimented with moving my hands both higher and further ahead at address. Sometimes I was able to hit the ball really solid doing this.

We All Know The Feeling

Higher Than Ever - My Trajectory

On days I play golf, before I go to sleep I always think over my round and count *good* shots.

So what's a good shot?

Well, anything solid and straight - no matter the outcome. Even putts can count.

I usually dump about 7-15 shots into this mental category after each outing.

Scoring, as we all know, is something else.

I've been in a serious scoring slump for the past 8 weeks or so. But curiously, my confidence is at an all time high.

You see, I've made some wholesale swing changes, some swing *realizations* that I'm trying to adopt. Hence the erratic play I've been offering up.

This past Saturday was a perfect example. I had Xs on the two of ther first three holes (triples or whatever) and a couple of *foul* tee shots later on. Still, I went home very excited about my play because I made two terrific birdies and hit a handful of tremendous shots in between duffs.

I think I've finally discovered the source of my consistent inconsistency. And I owe it all to this blog. As I was writing a previous post, it hit me that I let the club float in my hands, I basically let it go at the top of my backswing....ON EVERY SINGLE SHOT, putts included.

So I've been working on swinging with the deadest possible wrists with great success. [This feels, to me, like an intense squeezing at the top of the backswing.]

My course has five par-3s, four of which are very difficult, very penal.

For 20 years I've been either pushing or pulling mid to long irons. I knew I sucked with those clubs, but was unaware of the extent. After all, they are the toughest clubs in the bag to swing, right?

Turns out, my flippy wrists were not only adding irremediable inconsistency to these shots, they were DELOFTING the club. Maybe if I had only played with scratch golfers I would have been more conscious of how low my trajectory was?

Anyways, with my new swing, I have been able to positively SKYROCKET these longer irons, once in a while.

I hit a few last Saturday, two 4-irons and one 6 iron, so well, that I've been thinking about my epiphany all week. The 6-iron was so tight, so solid that a hefty crosswind didn't budge it even though it went extremely high. (That was one of my birdies.)

We see what happens next time out.

BTW, I've been using my Dave Pelz Putting Track a few times a week and it's helping.

Wacky Par-3

Not that one...another.

Click here.

Shaker Hills

Shaker Hills has been ranked the *Best Public Course* in Massachusetts. Above is the signature 13th hole - a short par-3 that drops a whopping 90 feet tee to green.

I drove 65 miles to play it early the other day. Alarm clock went off at 4am.

So, is the course good?

Yes, definitely. I can see how it the *critics* can rate it so highly.

There are lots of elevation changes; tall trees line the fairways and preclude lofted recovery shots; the greens are fantastic; they are fast, sloped, and true; the clubhouse is nice; and it's relatively reasonable at $85 for a weekend round.

Despite some bursts of fantastic golf, I shot a disappointing 88 from the blue tees - which played a *long* 6500 yards on account of zero roll. I simply missed every single putt but one 10 footer on the first. This is a part of my game that's, still, in dire need of attention. I don't miss short putts and seldom 3-jack....I just don't EVER make midrangers or long bombs. Putting is 43% of the game, right? Over my golfing career I'll bet I haven't committed 5% of my practice time to it.

What's frustrating is that I KNOW what my problem is. It's handsiness once again. I flip the ball a bit; probably just enough to lessen solid impact; and just enough to twist the putterface at impact. Yeah, my misses are more to the right like a total bleepin' Hacker. That's it, my putting track is coming with me to the course every week henceforth.

It was tough to enjoy this round given my mediocre play, the long drive (got killed in *Cape Cod* traffic on the way back to boot), the five hours it took to play, and *cart path* only. Yeah the course was soaked from the preceding 6 weeks(!) of rain. I'm probably at risk of trench foot given how much of my past two weeks I've been walking around in saturated golf shoes. See my prior post.

Anyway, I can now cross this course off my list. I'd play it again but only if I was staying closer to it. There is another highly rated course in the same area called Red Tail that remains on the agenda.

By the way, anyone who thinks Shaker Hills is a *tough* course will be disabused of that misconception after playing Widow's Walk. Widow's is a good 5-10 strokes tougher depending on your handicap.