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I decided to go to the practice range to try a little "polluted" 3 skills, and since this isn't the pure deal, I'm starting a new thread, with an obscure title, so no one is misled into thinking that what I'm doing is anything other than my own mongrel approach.
As I mentioned in the Mother of All Threads, I've had some trouble learning the three skills, or applying them consistently, or something of the sort. Despite working hard to hit down into the ball, I'm still getting a liberal share of thin shots. So I decided to go back and try to incorporate some swing ideas that I had been working with before the 3 skills experiment, and to use them specifically to try to get the skills to work.
1. Setup with weight on lead foot. This involves a slight shift of the hips toward the target in the setup, so that the left hip is just about over the left foot. This had been working pretty well for me, so I revisited it.
2. Pay attention to right knee in the backswing. Specifically, don't let it straighten or move far back, and keep the weight over the instep.
3. At the transition, fold the right knee toward the target. This is the new bit, based on the Calhoun article that cmays linked to in another thread. In reality, the knee isn't going straight at the target, but it feels like it is. What it's not doing is poking straight out toward the target line, which is what it "wants" to do.
The result was...amazing. The golf balls were flying like rockets, and with good accuracy. I'll have to wait until I'm hitting real balls off real grass to get a sense of the distances, but based on my usual range distances, they were outstanding. But the main thing is I was making good contact every time.
It seems that items 1 and 2 were working to facilitate delivering the club face down into the ball. I believe item 2 was helping me to bring the club to the ball from the inside (there suddenly seemed to be more room for it) to square.
This was all with the irons. I took out the driver and found that I couldn't get it quite right. The forward weight distribution didn't work, and I found that I was having trouble staying centered. So I tried a different solution. I put the driver away! Instead I took out this 13 degree 3+ fairway wood that I got at Boscov's for ten bucks. It has a shaft considerably shorter than the driver's, so I thought I'd be able to use the forward weighted setup and play the ball from the middle, hitting down slightly, essentially de-lofting the club to driver status anyway.
Bingo! That worked, and I was getting distance equal to what I'd get with the driver anyway. We'll see if that holds up on the golf course, but it certainly was working tonight. And there's something to be said for being able to use the same setup for all the clubs.
Obviously, practice range mojo often evaporates on the golf course, but I'm keen to put this to the test. Yes, these are "mechanical" ideas, but now I have a pretty good idea as to why these particular are working for my particular set of problems.
As I mentioned in the Mother of All Threads, I've had some trouble learning the three skills, or applying them consistently, or something of the sort. Despite working hard to hit down into the ball, I'm still getting a liberal share of thin shots. So I decided to go back and try to incorporate some swing ideas that I had been working with before the 3 skills experiment, and to use them specifically to try to get the skills to work.
1. Setup with weight on lead foot. This involves a slight shift of the hips toward the target in the setup, so that the left hip is just about over the left foot. This had been working pretty well for me, so I revisited it.
2. Pay attention to right knee in the backswing. Specifically, don't let it straighten or move far back, and keep the weight over the instep.
3. At the transition, fold the right knee toward the target. This is the new bit, based on the Calhoun article that cmays linked to in another thread. In reality, the knee isn't going straight at the target, but it feels like it is. What it's not doing is poking straight out toward the target line, which is what it "wants" to do.
The result was...amazing. The golf balls were flying like rockets, and with good accuracy. I'll have to wait until I'm hitting real balls off real grass to get a sense of the distances, but based on my usual range distances, they were outstanding. But the main thing is I was making good contact every time.
It seems that items 1 and 2 were working to facilitate delivering the club face down into the ball. I believe item 2 was helping me to bring the club to the ball from the inside (there suddenly seemed to be more room for it) to square.
This was all with the irons. I took out the driver and found that I couldn't get it quite right. The forward weight distribution didn't work, and I found that I was having trouble staying centered. So I tried a different solution. I put the driver away! Instead I took out this 13 degree 3+ fairway wood that I got at Boscov's for ten bucks. It has a shaft considerably shorter than the driver's, so I thought I'd be able to use the forward weighted setup and play the ball from the middle, hitting down slightly, essentially de-lofting the club to driver status anyway.
Bingo! That worked, and I was getting distance equal to what I'd get with the driver anyway. We'll see if that holds up on the golf course, but it certainly was working tonight. And there's something to be said for being able to use the same setup for all the clubs.
Obviously, practice range mojo often evaporates on the golf course, but I'm keen to put this to the test. Yes, these are "mechanical" ideas, but now I have a pretty good idea as to why these particular are working for my particular set of problems.
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