Tuesday 7 August 2012

Improving the right way

First of all I have to briefly mention the recent Club Championships. If you read my last post you will know that I was really hyped up and confident in my game going into the event. My first 18 was a fairly decent 79 which put me in a good position to go out the following day and really challenge for the title....... Now, I don't like to dwell on failure so I'll keep this short, ha ha. Day 2 was far from pretty both with the weather and my scorecard.... this leads me on to my next post.
     I recently went to my local Pro and booked a lesson. This ( probably quite mad to others ) was my first lesson in over 10 years. Since my recent run of good form I have hit a mini slump. My ball and trajectory control has become somewhat ragged and this is having a knock on effect on my whole game, including my mindset. My Pro is using a flightscope, which compared to the strikeboard I used at my lesson previous was absolutely brilliant. Straight away I could see my numbers and pin point exactly where I was going wrong. The results showed my clubface to be slightly closed through the hitting zone but more importantly my path was way out. This revelation explained my shot shape and also my trajectory ( especially with my irons ). We found from the video analysis that I was swinging over the top, using my shoulders to start rather than my lower body. This in turn steepened my angle of attack on the ball causing high pull fades and slices.
      With so much great feedback from my lesson this only meant one thing.....PRACTISE. If you follow the PGA Tour like myself you will have heard on numerous occasions the mention of ingraining swing changes. This is something that I have ( only very recently ) began to fully commit to. In the past I have tried these bandaid fixes, which help very infrequently, then slowly revert back to my old COMFORTABLE swings.
        I feel now that I must continue to ingrain any new swing changes ( fighting through the bad shots ) till I fully own the swing which works best for me. This way I can then have more trust when on the course and also feel/prevent my old swing habits from creeping in and ruining my momentum
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