school's over for the semester.

school you say? what is this school you speak of? i have no idea; i try not to think about it (instead focusing on table manners). so that is exactly what we're going to do. this post will probably not be that interesting, since it's about golf, but hey; if you want to waste your time here, be my guest; the post is after the jump.





so my golf swing is rounding into form just in time for it to get cold. perfect. over the last year or so i have been going through the motions of reworking my swing into something that delivers more consistency. when i was working with scott years ago i was able to consistently make my less than stellar swing work for me due to the constant practice, and tweaking that i could do with his eye. unfortunately i am cheap and lazy, & i'm not going to go get a lesson. the biggest obstacle that i'm facing is that i'd really like a way to video tape my swing to see how it looks from behind, and then in front. there's even an app that i could get for my ipod so that i could take a swing video tape and do the same type of manipulations, to it like the program that scott uses to look at swings. if i can find an ipod tripod (hehe funny) i might get that app and put it to use.

my swing has for years been a very very long swing. usually when i take the club all the way back, i can see the clubhead out of the corner of my eye. usually, the goal is to get the club in the backswing to stop when it is about parallel to the ground, with the head of the club pointing towards the target. that has been my primary focus on changing my swing so that i take a shorter backswing. now at first, this greatly reduced my power and length that i could hit the golf ball. i lost about 15 yards on each of my clubs, which was very difficult to adjust to. the problem with taking the club back so far was that it would then take much longer for the club to swing down and through to the golf ball, and my lower body would be moving ahead of the club, lowering the accuracy of me hitting the ball. essentially my lower body (read as hips & waist) were moving past the golf ball before the club could catch up & hit the ball.
more recently, i have been able to keep my swing at a more controllable backswing length, which allows for much much greater consistency at hitting the golf ball. with my old swing i was only producing the shot i desired less than 50% of the time. now i am much better, getting the desired shot about 70% of the time. although that does not seem to be such a drastic improvement, the real improvement has been in my mishits. the shots that i hit off target now are generally less wayward than they were before.

my latest improvement has been much harder, and it is still a work in progress. all my life i have hit a fade, with the ball curving in the air to the left. i have been working on changing this so that i hit it more straight, and even possibly work a draw (moving the ball to the right) into my swing. i would do this for a few reasons. one is that the way a ball moves in the air with spin, a greater amount of backspin, which will slow the ball down and make it go a shorter distance creates the fade; and a greater amount of topspin, making the ball go farther will create a draw. so generally speaking, a shot that draws will go a farther distance than the same shot that fades, if that makes sense. also, if i can be able to get the draw down, then i will feasibly be able to hit either shot, and therefore have a greater repertoire of shots to hit when on the golf course. i would then be able to move the ball around a right hand turning hole, as well as a left hand turning hole. but really the biggest goal is to be able to consistently hit it straighter when i would like to.
so that leaves me where i am now. i have been able to move the ball in both directions, but only with the shorter clubs. my wedges, and 9-iron i can pull off a consistent draw. but unfortunately, i am at a very difficult impasse where i have a 2-way miss going at times. because i can hit it in both directions now, my misses are slightly more sporadic in their nature; this is causing a bit of a problem, but i just need to be able to get my swing at a nice happy medium where i can control both types of shots. it will just take time and plenty of practice. oh, and for it to not be so damn cold!