A Good Day

I was watching a video by Bobby Lopez on Youtube yesterday.  It was a rebroadcast in re the shoulder turn of Tom Watson.

The discussion led quickly back to Bobby's main point is that the golf swing is a shoulder rotation from behind the ball. 

He has a lot of videos on this and I will not dwell on the details.  Take a look if you are curious.

But I am here to report on how well it works.

I attempted to slide or lean backwards and then rotate hard from there.  To do this, the idea of "use the shoulders to rotate the arms back, then use the arms to come back down."  Bobby's words.

I was able to do this.  It was the best ball striking day of my remembered golf life.  Oh, I pulled a couple and hooked a couple of shots, but hit only one bad drive (old habits return at the damnedest times), but I was taking a rip at the ball and hitting it quite well.

The golf course has the greens punched and we played the front 9 twice.  A nine where I probably average 40 or so and smoothly shot 38 and 39 without any birdies.  The holes I usually feared, were trivial in their problems.

I wanted to play more and was not tired at all.  My lower back was happy and all was well. 

This is Tuesday; on Monday I played the back 9 twice, where my average score is a number of shots less and scored about 4 strokes worse than today.  And the greens were unpunched.

It is a different game when you know that you're going to be able to smack the ball.

I look forward to the future!

Notes from Today, March 9, 2017 - happy birthday dad!

Posture and create the circle with the club.  Don't go forward to hit it, just spin and enjoy. 

I've just seen a couple of Peter Thompson vids on you tube.  

1) A shorter backswing generates more speed and more control.  Taking the club back to parallel requires about 80 degrees to recover.  His examples showed golfers losing the club angle at impact and golf picking up about 20 yards when they shorten.  I hope this works, I'm probably going to try it tomorrow.  If I get energetic I'll go back to the range and try it out.

2) Point your head to the right at address.  This is to allow the shoulders to turn without being blocked by the head and neck.  I like this as I agree with the blockage.

My big problems are remembering all of this.  It worked mostly, but didn't create any monstrous moments.

I also want to control the backswing with the right hand and not allow the left to move the club flat and behind my back.   Thus more of a throw of the club than some swing. 

Making some progress 3/14/17

I've been out a couple of times since the last post.

I hit the long ball quite well today and was pleased.  I only played 9.  Two bogies and one birdie for a total of one over.  The ninth hole at Las Po requires a very good tee shot, which I didn't provide, and I needed to pitch out.  I wasn't able to sink a 15 footer from past the pin and took bogey.

What was interesting about the 9th was the approach shot.  I had 115 to the pin and choked up on a 9 iron, which I've calibrated at 120 carry.  So I was expecting less than 120, but I swung very well, and fairly softly, cleared a tree, hit past the pin, and then spun it back a bit.  It was one of those creamy, solid strikes that one covets.  Could it be possible that a slower swing can provide a full speed club head?  Nah!

I was doing a good job staying near plane on many swings and had a lot of birdie chances.  It was a very easy 9 holes without much drama.

My putting has been creeping into my areas of interest.  I was trying to ensure that I kept the putter face at impact to match that at setup.  I used to just swing it and trust, but this was more controlled and I hit a lot of good putts.

 

Back on the Course! 3/3/17

I've been traveling and northern California has been collecting rain.  At least my little corner of it.

I returned to the course today and noted some very interesting high tide lines around the parking lot and the restaurant.

Various bushes along the creek had flotsam in very high branches.  There were pumpkins along the creek bed, many, many plastic bottles and at least three coolers that were collected by the floods.

I was told that the parking lots were 4 inches deep in mud and water.  The sewer grate where I like to park, and where I think about dropping keys down it, is fully packed with mud.  No longer 6 feet deep, it's at 0.

But we are not here to talk of the weather!  Back to golf and its propensity to cause mental anguish.

I was trying a few things, as what else is new, and I tried to pull down from a back swing position and pull down hard.  Aiming at a spot about 2 feet to the rear of my right foot.  Amazingly I still managed to hit the ball and hit it well.

I think this effort caused a couple of things to happen: I didn't slide forward to hit the ball, and it helped to keep the wrists cocked until the area of impact.

I managed a very nice 5 iron and 6 irons on the 18th, a par 5 and ended the day with a par.

I'll have time at the range to play with this tomorrow.

Now this technique is not unknown to the rest of the world, but it's the first time I tried it.  It was nice to swing hard and the solidity of the hits were an added bonus.

Tutelman. Com!

Dave Tutelman is a retired physicist and avid Golfer.

He has a golf section of his site devoted to golf. 

I got a lot of good info out of this. I was looking for info on 'crack the whip' and how hands slow to speed up the club.

The various videos on YouTube seem to have it backwards!

Worth a read.

This is terse as I don't have a keyboard and the phone input slows me down.

Catching up 2/11/17

Hello reader,

Here are a couple of items I've been testing.  One must keep in mind that the things are right or not and also whether I can produce it correctly.

I'm trying to get a lot of my body out of my swing.  I'm progressing towards an arms start with the body to help as needed.  ABC is the memory help: Arms, then Body, then Club.

Also as part of this is to post  a bit on the left leg.   Use the body after the club has started down. 

Monte Scheinblum talks about starting smoothly and slowly to make the run with the hands and arms - get them off the chest.  You'll also hear this from Bobby Lopez and Tony Luczak too.  See all of them on youtube.

Tony also mentioned the karate chop hand position on the way down. 

I was at the range today and hit about 130 balls.  I found starting the arms to be fairly easy to do if I started slowly.  I lost no distance with this approach and my ball flight was a lot higher. 

It's tough to start slowly particularly with the longer clubs.  This was probably mentioned in chapter 3 of the Scottish Book of Golf Instruction in 1647, second edition. 

I also found it difficult to post to the left leg.  I like to slide a bit and thus we have a mental conflict.  But when I could do it, it worked well and my directional accuracy went up.  When I can't I push to the right.

When chipping, I'm working on the takeaway.  Too much inside and I push and too much outside and it goes left.  There is a sweet spot there!  I'm using my right hand in these as well, which is new to me.  It seems to add some speed.

I'm pretty happy with the items.  I am able to take a good whack at the driver and 3 wood with good results and avoid the huge slide. 

I played 3 days last week.  We are in the tail end a drought and the mud is thick.  I played the par 3 course a few times, the last round in even par.  I hit 8 of the 9 greens.  The distances range from about 80 yards to 190.  So there was a variety of irons in play.  The greens are large with a lot of tiers and such.  They are easy to hit, but the putts can be challenging.

Promising Results 2/5/17 (or 5/2/17 for you out of the states!)

I had a little list:

• drop arms from the top of the backswing while maintaining the shoulder coil
• think about hitting with the left shoulder - and by that the arms, which have a longer way to go, must start first and go faster than the shoulder turn.
• after a full backswing, which moves the head behind the ball, stay there and just swap the shoulder positions
• Hands should be outside of the right foot at the end of the backswing

Okay.  I was dubious that I could move arms without moving shoulders.  I was able to do this after a bit of effort.  This seems to be useful to me, as it keeps me from sliding aggressively onto my left side and getting past the ball.  I seek to stay behind it.

A good backswing will move your head and torso towards your right foot.  Thus moving off of the ball.  Look at Stenson's swing.  He shifts back, then stays there.  Any weight shift is due to the arms moving over the right leg.

The hands are in position outside of the right leg too.  They have a nice path back to the ball.

This backswing will angle your body towards "right field."  So the swing plane is tilted to the right as well.

While it was not on the list, the thought to "hit the ball to right field" between first and second base came to mind.  Should it have been on the list?  I would say yes at this point.  When I tried this, I found the swing to right field to be easy to do.  It seemed I was aimed there and it required no reroute or adjustments in the swing to do that.

So, I hear you ask, where did the ball go?  A good question and if I had not tried it, I would have thought that it would be on its way to right field.  But, praise the new gods and the old, the pill went right up the middle.  We are not talking an "n" of one either.  I was able to hit all my shots pretty much up the middle with all the clubs.  It was a nice feeling and I feel confident that I can dismiss the miss to the right.

I have a tendency to push the ball and I thought that the hit to the right would compound it.  Those fears seem unwarranted at this point.

We have a game tomorrow morning weather permitting and I'm going to give it a go.