Three New Things to Try and How they Did

I watched some more Monte Scheinblum videos yesterday.  There were three things I wanted to test at the range.

The items were a flippy pitch shot, leading the down swing with the right elbow, and keeping the left arm off the chest.

I tried the pitch shot a bit and was a lot less accurate in distance and direction from my usual methods.  The idea with this is to not accelerate fiercely into the ball, but gently and then feel as if you were hitting up on it.  I found this worked quite well for a 10 or 20 yard flop shot, but the little stuff around the greens didn't seem to work for me.  It was a means to drop a ball about a foot ahead of you, which would be useful when short sided -- of course that never happens to me.


The next item was to try leading the down swing with the right elbow.  Hogan talks about keeping the elbows close together and this is really part of that and part of connecting the body parts.  A gap between the right elbow and the body is a gap that has to be filled at some point.  Not allowing the gap seems to make it simpler.

I found that this worked quite well.  I was able to either start the down swing slowly or aggressively and still make great contact with the ball.  I used it through all the clubs and was very pleased.  It made the driver feel as simple as a wedge, which is what I've been looking for in my game.


The final item is getting the left arm off the chest fairly early in the swing.  This is something that Monte works on.  A stuck arm limits swing speed to the speed you can move your torso.  I'm old and fat and can't move it that quickly, so I thought I'd see if this applied to me.  It doesn't seem to.  I couldn't do much with this and with the success of the leading right elbow, I don't care to worry about it now.  Maybe later.

That's all for now, but there may be another theory tomorrow!