Posts Tagged ‘practice’

Turn Your Hip Drill

I came across a pretty good video that explains the hip turn during the golf swing.  It’s from a guy named Shawn Clement and he has his own website: http://www.shawnclementgolf.com.  (Why is that chic in the background working on the computer?)

golfTEC Taught Me to Skip Stones

Okay, it’s been about 4 weeks since my swing evaluation session at golfTEC.  I’ve had 2 lessons since then.  The results: I feel like a gunshot victim who has a bullet lodged in his brain who has to relearn how to talk (Regarding Henry for golf?).  Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but you get my point, right?

Taking a look back at my golfTEC Swing Evaluation post, you can see how much work needs to be done.  The first 2 sessions, we’ve been focusing mostly on takeaway and the top position.

Here’s the progress I’ve made in that regard:

Granted, just because I got to the correct top position for that particular pose, doesn’t mean it comes naturally.  I still drill every day for that.  My golfTEC coach, Thomas Baird proclaims, “10,000 swings”.  That’s the number of swings to make it stick.  100 swings a day for 100 days.  That should do it.

So between my first lesson and second lesson I went out a few times to hit balls, concentrating on getting in the correct top position.  I thought I did pretty well, but then the problem was we didn’t talk about the downswing yet, so I was still hacking up dirt plenty of times.

The second lesson we focused on turning the hips during the downswing.  Apparently, there’s also some lateral movement toward the target as well as the hip turn.  That’s a lot to remember in a split second!  You can see some of my pictures here.

Toward the end of the lesson, Thomas gave me an analogy that made the most sense.  I was struggling putting my head around the idea that your spine angle is away from the target, your head is behind the ball at impact, but your weight is on your left side (see Appleby above).  Thomas had me pretend to skip some stones.  That was easy and it ends up being practically the same motion as the golf swing.  When I skip a stone, I look like Appleby in that picture above.

Well, I can’t say that when I went to the range with my new mantra that I was crushing balls.  Anything but.  However, I did play Melrose Par 3 course the other day and I crushed a 6-iron with that new philosophy.  Translation: progress.

Now it’s back to drills, drills, drills.  Thinking about playing a real round this weekend to test some of these new things out.  Wish me luck!

golfTEC Swing Evaluation

Last week I wrote about every golfer’s frustration: not getting any better.  No matter how much I play, I never feel that I get make significant progress in my game.  I’m a 25 handicap and although I’ll go through phases that I shoot in the low 90′s, I can never do that consistently.

My friend Travis recommended I check out golfTEC (www.golfTEC.com) which is a company that teaches people to play better golf.  I believe that most of their instruction takes place in hitting  bays inside their store locations, although my coach alluded to some short-game sessions that take place at a real course. From their site:

“Using an instructional system proven in over 1.7 million lessons with 170,000+ clients since 1995, GolfTEC is the world leader in golf improvement. From tee-to-green, clients gain skills to reach their shot-making and score-reduction goals.”

For the record, I am not compensated by golfTEC.  I’ve decided to blog about my experience with golfTEC so that it might help other golfers out there looking to improve their games.

This post will be about my swing evaluation session which I participated in last week.  My coach’s name is Thomas Baird and he explains the process thoroughly and obviously knows how to teach golf.

When you start your session, you put on some straps that quantify your golf swing in terms of a number of metrics, including shoulder tilt, shoulder turn, hip bend, etc.  golfTEC utilizes high-tech equipment so you can see exactly what you are doing.  After you take a couple of practice swings and one feels good, then your coach will display your video next to a pro’s video.  Here are some screen shots of my swing next to Larry Mize.

In these shots, a number of things are obvious:

• I’m squatting so much it looks like I’ll shortly need some toilet paper
• My upper body moves forward towards the ball during my swing
• My swing is severely coming from outside in, aka over the top
• I should probably never play golf again

Here are a few more pics of me next to my golfing idol, Tiger Woods (and to all the Tiger-haters out there, chill out and give the guy a break, you’re not his wife).

Look how my head is left of the ball and Tiger’s is right of the ball.  Big difference.  And in my swing, Tiger reaches full extension well in front of the ball.  I reach the bottom of my swing about 2 feet behind the ball!  How ugly is that?  No wonder I’m constantly digging into the dirt.

After going through a bunch of golf mumbo jumbo, my coach made some tweaks to my setup and my backswing.  See the before and after pics of my backswing.

One of the things I like from this session is that I was assigned homework: drills that I can do at home without a ball.  My drills are the chair drill, proper setup, and arms at top.  You have access to videos of these drills from their website, but I can’t link to them from here.

I’ve spent 20-30 minutes per day working on my drills.  I have to confess, I got a little cocky after my drills over the weekend and hit the range thinking my re-invented self would start blasting balls like a champ.  Ooops!  I guess it’ll take more work than a few sessions of drills.

I have my next session this week and I’m feeling good about where this is going.

To be continued…

Look, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s… GolfTEC

Do you ever get to the point where you want to hang it up?  How much suffering does an individual need to endure before quitting?  What torturous soul keeps going out again and again and again to re-live the same agony over and over and over again?

Well, enough is enough.  I can’t stand to be soooooo inconsistent.  How the hell is it possible to hit a clean 5-iron with a little draw and have it fly beautifully, then 10 minutes later, pull up 3 inches of dirt hitting a fat 6-iron?  Rounds with handfuls of 7′s and 8′s, mixed in with some bogeys and a few pars.  A 43 on the front followed by a 57 on the back.

I’ve had lessons a few times, but I always revert back to my old shit swing.  A friend of mine I work with has been going on and off to GolfTEC and he recommended it so I decided to go down for a swing evaluation, typically priced at around $165, but for a limited time only $79.  Whoooopeeeee!

Anyways, this has prompted me to blog about my experience at GolfTEC.  I’m not getting a dime from them, so I don’t have any reason to be biased if it ends up sucking, but at this point, I’m ready to try anything.  I’ll post about my swing evaluation session later and start a little GolfTEC journal.

For the one or two people out there that actually read this blog, I hope you brace yourself for the journalistic power that will have you begging for more with this new little endeavor.

I think I found my irons again

After my disheartening showing on Sunday at Bear Creek Masters, my biggest gaping hole right now is my iron play, specifically 4I – 6I, but let’s be honest, I couldn’t even hit a good PW last week.

I’ve been anxious all week to hit the range and try and figure out what the hell I’m doing.  I finally made it out to Melrose yesterday.  I was tempted to just take a 5I, but decided to take my whole bag.

Boy, did I hit the shit out of the ball.  Typically, I overthink my swing and end up being too mechanical, thus losing any fluidness (is that a word?) and power.  Yesterday, my goal was to not think (too much) and just knock the cover off the ball.

I think it worked!  I was flying my irons at regular distances.  I was still hitting a few shots really fat and I’m not sure why yet, but what the hell, in the words of Paul Newman, “I’m back!”

Hope the weather holds up and I can hit Gus Wortham over the weekend.

Getting Ready for League Event part deux

I’m officially joining the Little John Golf League tomorrow.  I played in my first event as a guest at Blaketree about 2 weeks ago.  Our event tomorrow is at Bear Creek Masters.  I played there once before about 2 years ago and shot horribly. 

I remember the day before that painful experience I thought I had figured out “the secret” to golf.  I crushed balls on the range that day… no matter what weapon I chose, it was long and straight.   “Eureka!” I thought, “I better book a tee time ASAP so I can utilize my newly discovered talent and wisdom….”  The next day when I went out to conquer the world, I shortly realized any gained insights on the driving range vanished while I slept and I went on to shoot my worst score of the year!

Hope the sequel is better than the original!