The weather here in Virginia was unseasonably warm this past weekend. On Saturday, I managed to hit a few balls into the net in the morning, and then played eight holes at the end of the day in shorts – not something I’d expect in early March. On Sunday, I made it out to a different course with a chipping area and driving range, and was able to get in a practice session.
For both days, I focused as much as possible on swinging smoothly, and trying to make my swing feel more like my practice swing. Overall I was very happy with the results.
For the partial round on Saturday, I decided to once again carry just a few clubs. I wanted something different than last time, so I brought my drivers, eight irons, sand wedges, and putter. I also had my right-handed pitching wedge, only because I forgot to take it out of the bag.
I started off by hitting two righty drivers off the first tee. Under calm conditions, I wouldn’t normally hit driver on this hole as anything longer than about 215-220 yards can mean trouble. If your tee shot makes it over the hill, it will almost certainly roll down into a very narrow landing area – there are only about 15 yards between a pond and some trees that come into play. Further left and you go through a fence and into the maintenance area. Generally speaking, I prefer to hit a hybrid that I know can’t clear the hill. The landing area is over twice as wide, and there’s much less risk. However, since there was a pretty brisk headwind and I wasn’t warmed up, I didn’t think I’d be able to hit it over the hill.
I sliced the breakfast ball a bit, so it was held up by the wind and didn’t make it to the top of the hill. However, my second ball was struck very well and made it over the hill. This was some immediate validation that swinging smoothly isn’t going to cause me to lose any distance. Fortunately, the tee shot avoided the pond, though it was partially blocked by the trees. I played a smart lefty punch to the right of the green, hit a safe righty pitch onto the green, and two putted for a (mulligan enhanced) bogey.
I’m not going to go through a detailed shot by shot description of the round, but here are my takeaways. I certainly was not 100% successful in staying relaxed and swinging smoothly on all of my shots – I did tense up on some swings. However, it felt like since I was focused so much on swinging smoothly, even when I tensed up, my results were better because my “peak tension” was lower than normal. It’s not uncommon for me to top a driver when I tense up and come up out of the swing. Today though, I still managed to make decent contact on these sorts of swings.
Another takeaway was that I got really good distance. The sample size was very small, but it certainly felt like I was hitting the ball at least as far as normal. Given that my mis-hits were still pretty serviceable, it may well be the case that my average distances will go up by swinging more smoothly. I know it will take me a while to go from intellectually understanding this to truly accepting it, so I’m going to try and really pay attention to how far I’m hitting the ball with a smoother swing – not just on the best shots, but the stinkers as well.
The final takeaway was that I was still able to hit “golf shots” with less tension. When I use the phrase “golf shots”, I mean anytime when I’m trying to hit something other than a stock shot. There were two shots in particular that stood out.
The first was on the third hole, when I hit a pretty good drive, leaving me with a very uphill lefty approach shot. It would have been a good distance for a soft pitching wedge, but I didn’t have my pitching wedge. I decided to hit a sand wedge, putting the ball further back in my stance and aiming a little more left than usual. In part this was to accommodate the movement of the ball for uphill lies, and in part it was because it is flatter left of the green, making for easier chipping. Normally on this shot I would focus on being extra firm through the ball to try and keep my hands in front and deloft the clubface. This time though I stayed smooth and trusted the setup to take care of things. The shot came out perfectly, and rolled out to within 10 feet of the back pin.
The second “golf shot” was on the fifth hole. I hit a lefty driver extremely solidly, but it was started too far left and hit the trees that guard the left side. Given how high in the trees the ball hit, I could tell that I had gotten really good distance with the shot. I was left with about 110 yards to the green with some branches that were about 20 feet off the ground about 30 yards away from me. I decided to punch a righty eight iron under the tree limbs, and try and run it up to the green. I setup just as I had with the sand wedge a few holes earlier – ball back in my stance, aiming a bit more right, and keeping my hands well in front to deloft the club. As before, I made a conscious effort to keep my grip relaxed and was ecstatic to watch the ball fly straight toward the green, never getting more than 10 feet off the ground, and run up just short of the green. It was nice to get some validation that I could hit shots like this while still keeping tension out of my swing.
On Sunday, I started out by chipping for 20 minutes or so. My one main takeaway is that I’m still not very comfortable with my left grip when chipping. Despite playing half lefty for over a year at this point, my left grip still doesn’t feel completely natural. For some reason though, it has always felt even more unnatural when chipping. I’m going to need to spend some time in front of the mirror to try and figure out what’s going on with that.
The range at this course just has mats, which I am not a huge fan of. I’m usually able to feel the difference between a good strike and a bad strike, but I typically will hit a lot more drivers off of mats just because I don’t want to ingrain too many bad habits with my irons. Also, I’ve definitely internalized the importance of the driver, and have been making a conscious effort to put in more time practicing with it. Regardless of mats versus turf though, any range is great for repetition.
For this range session I really focused on trying to make my actual swing as close to my practice swing as possible. Some of the things I was paying particular attention to were reducing tension and swinging through the ball instead of at the ball. I found that I was best able to do this when I took a couple of practices swings, then stepped up and hit the ball without hesitation. Without realizing it at first, I had stumbled into a Brad Faxon tip that I heard about before. Faxon refers to this as “continuous motion”. Here’s a link to his video where he describe the process.
The basic idea is that you never allow yourself to get static over the ball, and this helps you to reduce tension and make a better stroke / swing. I started making a conscious effort to keep my feet, hands and head moving before taking the club back. Normally I am very diligent about getting setup to the ball just right and getting everything positioned properly before starting the swing. Using continuous motion and hitting the ball without hesitation felt a bit haphazard at first, but I was very pleasantly surprised with how well I hit the ball. I seemed to have a much easier time keeping things smooth and tension free. The strike quality and distance seemed to be quite good as well. I also seemed to have a more balanced finish, as I seemed less likely to overswing. This is yet more validation that swinging smoothly certainly doesn’t cost me any distance, and once again, felt more consistent than normal.
I’ve been playing long enough to know that these sorts of “revelations” can be very fleeting. I can’t count how many times I’ve “figured it out”. However, a change in mindset can have a very positive and lasting impact on the golf swing. I have no doubt that it will take quite a number of rounds to more fully internalize and trust this new approach. I also have no doubts that there will be setbacks. It will be important to not get too worked up when the inevitable series of bad shots shows up. Hopefully the act of documenting all of this will help me to push through.
Alternate Golf 