For any golfer who wants to play great golf
30 Day Challenge
30 Day Challenge – Day 7
Feb 18th
So how are things one week into the challenge?
I went to the driving range today after playing a round on the simulator with a friend. The changes are good and they are sticking. My irons feel crisp. They are going for the most part to the target as imagined. I feel like I can hit draws and fades pretty much at will and hit the ball solid. I also don’t feel bogged down by mechanics. I don’t have any swing thoughts. Or at least it feels that way. My only swing thought, if you can call it that, is visualizing the shot and feeling what my hands need to feel to create that shot. Then it is a matter of executing.
I did a test to see how consistent I could be. I picked the club that has historically given me the most trouble, the driver. And I picked one shot to execute 20 times. I decided on hitting a high draw. Out of those 20 times, I had one shot, where I came over the top and the ball went left, although it faded back right and would have ended up in the left rough or left side of the fairway, and I had one shot that didn’t fade and would have ended up in the right rough, or or first cut. The rest were beautiful high draws that would have landed on the right center of the fairway.
I had never done that.
It was very exciting to see those shots. It really is still amazing to me, how feeling what your hands do can simplify the game.
30 Day Challenge – Day 6: Can I hit more greens in regulation?
Feb 17th
The past few days I have talked quite a bit about things I have been doing with the driver. Things that astounded me. Today I really wanted to focus on how I can hit more greens in regulation, which means improving my iron play and approach shots.
One of the most frustrating things in golf for me is to hit a great drive and follow it up with a lousy iron approach. It really bugs me to have placed the ball in perfect position and not get home. I don’t know if it’s happened to you but I always feel like I wasted a good opportunity when that happens.
I can only imagine how many more greens I would have hit if I could have just improved on that shot and how much more it would have changed my scores and my handicap.
So how can I hit more greens in regulation?
Improve my golf swing or improve my game – lessons from the first 5 days of the 30 Day Challenge
Feb 17th
Although I was hesitant at first to accept the challenge of going 30 days without video analysis, I soon realized it was because I had become completely dependent on video. I had become a technical golfer and even though I was slowly getting better, I relied too much on video, golf practice aids, and lot of technical information.
To improve my golf swing and to improve my game I needed to take a new approach because I had plateaued. But I hadn’t even realized I had plateaued. It’s strange when you look at the technological leaps the equipment has taken and the amount of knowledge available about the golf swing, to realize that scores for the average golfer have not improved.
Somehow things came together and this challenge was set for me. By taking a step away from the video, the detailed analysis, and the training aids, I think I have created some room to grow. It’s kind of like when you’re going to the gym. You can gain muscle pretty quickly, but if you don’t challenge your body by changing up the routines, you’ll plateau.
The biggest change I have seen so far is that even when I’m on the driving range, I’m not thinking about my swing. I’m thinking about the shot I want to create. I’m visualizing how it’s going to fly to the target. I’m visualizing the trajectory and the curve, and then feeling what my hands need to feel like to make that happen. And then I do what I felt in my hands.
30 Day Challenge – Day 5
Feb 16th
Practice in the tundra
Well not a tundra, but the driving range was covered in about 6 inches of snow, and more snow was coming down as I was hitting balls. I turns out I was the last customer before they closed for the day. To top it off , the heat was not working.
So what did I do?
I hit balls. I hit one large bucket of balls and kept focusing on my hands and shot shape. The past 4 days I was practicing with only a lob wedge, 8 iron and driver. Today I got a little bit more variety. I hit some 5 irons as well as a fairway wood (4w to be exact).
I find it truly amazing that what I do with my hands has so much of an effect. I tried a very interesting little drill. With the driver in hand, I alternated between hitting high cuts and high draws. So I would hit one high draw, then one high cut and rinse and repeat. It was pretty cool. I had never had this amount of control with the driver. Occasionally my high draw, would go straight and not really draw back, and occasionally the high fade would stay a bit left. Still I was not disappointed by that. I was thrilled that I could get as much consistency as I did.
30 Day Challenge – Day 4
Feb 15th
Today’s driving range session was eye opening for a number of reasons. I experienced some significant changes.
1) Improved center contact on irons
As I was hitting shots with both an 8 iron and Lob wedge, I noticed that I was seeing a dime sized circle in the center of the face fill with white strips in the grooves. I realized that my strikes were in the center even though I wasn’t focusing on that. All I was focusing on was feeling the shot in my hands and finding the most effective path for my hands to travel.
The result was some of the most solid ball striking I’ve had in 6 months.
30 Day Challenge – Day 3
Feb 14th
Another driving range session in the cold. It was an excellent session. I’m beginning to feel my hands working and it’s amazing, where I point, that’s where the shot is going (when I do it right).
Those time, it feels so easy and I’m getting a good sense of when I’m trying to hit the ball, and when I’m letting the ball get in the way. Letting it get in the way results in the ball exploding off the club face with that sweet feeling of a pure shot. Trying to hit, results in inconsistency, and sort of a dead feeling in the hands. I can still go where I want, with distance, but it just doesn’t feel as good or as easy. It’s hard to feel what the hands are doing when I’m trying to hit it.
The other difference between the shots (when I’m trying to hit it, vs when I let the ball get in the way) is that the trajectory is completely different. With the driver, I get this nice boring, flat trajectory. Going after it results in some balooning. But the interesting thing is that this is also true with the 8 iron. Letting the ball get in the way just results in some beautiful shots.
Today I continued to focus on the hands, and letting the ball get in the way. As Eben told me in a phone call, the ball is designed to bounce off the club face, and the club is designed so that it does not require any out of sequence motions to work best.
30 Day Challenge – Day 2
Feb 13th
Yesterday I accepted the challenge to go 30 days without looking at my swing on video, without trying any swing tips from the internet, magazines or golf channel. I spent some time on the phone with Eben Dennis and he prepared me for the first few days of the challenge. We talked about simple principles of the role of the hands, and balance between the eyes, hands and feet. We also discussed creativity and feeling the shot.
Today I had my first driving range session. I must say at the begining of it, when my shots went astray I had a huge urge to video and see what happened. But since I didn’t bring the camera, there was no way I could do that.
I kept my focus on the feeling and soon I started to feel some things. I started to feel the club head more and intuitively knowing where it was. It took much concentration to not manipulate it and just react to the shot I was trying to produce but it started coming together. Overall I’d say I hit about1/3 of my shots from a feeling perspective, with the other 2 thirds reverting to my old swing. However I was able to clearly feel when I reverted.
My biggest challenge was with the driver. I started out with some bad drives. And I knew I was back to my old habits. The driver took the most focus but by the end of it I was hitting some very different looking shots. I finished up with a few drives that were bombed, even though the temperature was only 27 degrees. They had a flat trajectory and they just hung in the air forever, without any ballooning, and ran like crazy (though I’m sure part of that was the frozen ground). Those last few drives also felt effortless and that is how I want all of my drives to feel.
30 Day No Swing Video Challenge
Feb 12th
Today was a very interesting day. I spent the afternoon with the Head Professional for Sterling Farms Golf Course, Rob LaRosa. I went there because I had just won a Project X driver shaft and I wanted to be fit so that I would know which shaft to get from them. The afternoon though evolved into much more than that.
The conversation turned to different teaching philosophies and the impact of technology on the way that golf is taught. Rob knows that I am a big fan of video analysis. I record and anlyze almost every day. And I have learned a lot of from it. Through the analysis I have learned a lot about the golf swing.
However, I think it has robbed me of feeling the swing. When you look at the PGA tour there are a number of players who achieved their early success and rise to the top as feel players, and who later lost that as they worked with much more technical and position oriented teachers.
We talked about the way the game has been taught recently, with the proliferation of video analysis and the impact that has had on the game. I think there are other players like me, who may have become too reliant on video analysis and reaching certain positions rather than playing the game by feel and understanding at the kinesthetic(mind body feeling) level what their body is doing.
