Great tip.

[buteman]

There is not a lot of difference between a touring pro. shooting 63 one day and 75 the next and one of us amateurs shooting 78 then 92. Good days, bad days, we all have them and as we all know, no two days seem to be the same.
I had an absolutely brutal game last week, short, hooked tee shots, short irons pulled into greenside bunkers, stubbed chips and a couple of perfect shanks into the lake on my last hole. Oh well, thats' golf, I never dwell on a bad round, it's gone, history, look forward to the next round.
I was on the practice tee yesterday trying to find some tempo, I was hitting little seven iron shots with my feet together ( a tip from this forum, an excellent wee drill it is ). I started to work on the driver and I hit numerous hooks then I worked on something I was told during the lesson I had with the head pro.
I took my normal stance but played the ball about four inches outside of my left foot and concentrated on coming into the impact area with the back of my left hand square. This is a brilliant drill for that great extension through the ball and also gives you that solid feeling of being behind the ball at impact. Fire through it to a nice full finish, hands above the left shoulder and your tummy facing the target. A poor extension and follow through is common with many of us amateur players but this drill works and it certainly warrants a try ( at the range, not on the course ) hopefully it may help some of you out there, it works for me.

[BrianW]

Re: Great tip.

You are not wrong there my friend

I have been on very good form just lately and a week ago in horrible weather came runner up in a society away day with 38 points.

I played in a club medal yesterday and was full of confidence on the way to the course. I had my normal half hour practice on the putting green then a warm up in the nets. I started hitting some easy 8 iron shots and immediately started shanking them into the corner of the net. Not a good omen

I then shanked almost every iron shot around the course. I just could not stop them and was not able to find an on course correction. I turned in the worse score I have for many years and am too embarrassed to say what that was

Today I went to the range to carry out a post mortem and figured out the problem almost straight away. I was allowing my upper body to get ahead of the ball through impact forcing the clubface to come in wide open thus exposing the hozel to the ball causing the "socket rockets". After a short practice keeping my head and chest back while allowing my hips to transfer weight to my lead leg and I was creaming the ball down the range. This was the first time I can remember doing this and am frustrated that I could not see the problem yesterday I guess the tension of competition can get to any of us at times.

Ah well, "Ce La Vie"