A New Chapter

So I haven't posted in a while. Sorry. I have made the difficult decision to make a rather large change in my swing. I want to start by saying that this is not because S&T does not work. On the contrary I think it is a great way to swing the club, but after 2 years of using it, I feel that it is not taking me in a better direction. I will write another post on why I don't think S&T works for me, but that is later. I will still incorporate many of the principles in my swing but I want to start working with somebody new.

In the study of the swing I feel that my biggest challenge is that my pivot stalls and with that I dump all the accumulators prior to hitting the ball. The power accumulators are what drives the power in the golf swing, without them the ball is not going to go as far as it could. Considering this I have scoured the internet to find a way to improve my pivot. This lead me to Advanced Ball Striking which is run by John Erickson (more on him in later posts). ABS has a very simple approach by which you learn the swing in modules. This in my opinion is the absolute best way for me to learn. Step by step. I can integrate pieces of the swing over time rather than trying to change everything at once.

A big part of the process is hitting an impact bag. I think this pisses of my neighbors, but in the vien of golf improvement one occasionally pisses of a neighbor. I will take photos of my impact bag later. It is quite an experience in itself.

So far I have graduated from module 1 and now I am in the middle of module 2. I am not totally certain of the improvement yet, but I do notice that I am hitting the ball a bit better. Here is a video of my latest swing.



I still have about a month or so left of module 2, it takes about one month to go through each module.

More to come.

Rebuilding

This weekend I had another poor round. I made the mistake again of trying something new and while I started very hot (first hole hit it to 4 feet, second hole to 3 feet) by the end of the round I was not hitting the driver very well. To compound the problem I putted horribly. I 3-putted the 1st green after hitting the ball to 4 feet, and also 3 putted the 9th and 17th holes.

I decided that I need to re-start. I need to nail down the things that my coach told me to work on, and in addition build the swing with good fundamentals. So I have been working on hitting the ball with only 3/4 swings. The purpose of the 3/4 swing is to get myself in the proper positions and once I get comfortable hitting the ball with 3/4 swings, I can add speed to get the distance back.

Here are some swings from my last practice session where I am working on 3/4 swings. This is going to be a long process, but I think the results will be very good.



Round Update:

San Jose Country Club

Fairways:                    8/13
GIR:                           5/18
Putts (per GIR/total):  2.20/34
Scrambling:                2/7
Score:                         83 (+13)

Latest Swings

Here are some swings from my latest practice session. I was working on standing up a little taller at address. It seems my coach did not like my plan to pre-load #3. I got too hunched... Oh well, likely a good lesson in not wondering off on my own little path of improvement when I haven't even mastered the things he has me trying to improve. I also worked on loading #3 faster and keeping the extensor action going. In the background I am working on keeping those hips moving forward. Most of my bad swings come from not having them forward enough.

The ball flight was a high shot that started to the right and drew back. Although it was quite windy on this day so the draw might have been from the wind and the shot might have been the dreaded push-cut. We will see at my round on the weekend.

Tournament Recap and Extra Round Summary

This past weekend we completed the tournament, and for the most part I played pretty well. The highlight was a eagle I made on the 11th hole the second day. I hit a beautiful drive then played a 3 wood to about 5 feet and sunk the putt. It was a good thing I made the eagle because our opponent made a birdie on the hole. The overall result though was not so good. We started by winning the first two matches 13-7 and were the leaders in the flight, but the final match on the first day we were beat badly 6-14. We then started out Saturday getting beat 6-14 again in the morning 9, but made a nice comeback winning 13-7 in the final match. We finished 3rd in our flight. My stats for the round are below.

I really feel that for someone to win a golf tournament one needs things to go their way a couple of times. I don't mean to say that you need to get lucky, because I don't really believe in luck, I think we make our own luck. But, things need to go your way to win. For example our opponent on the morning nine on Saturday completely mishit a chip near the green, it hit a hill popped straight up in the air, and went in the hole. I mean there was not much one can do when that kind of stuff happens. So that is how it goes sometimes.

My partner and I have a very impressive record in the tournament after 2 years. We went 7-2-1 over the 10 matches we had. A pretty good record.

Tournament Stats (note, there were 9 holes that I didn't record because my software can't do 9 holes, but I was +4 for those holes, second note, these are for 36 holes)

Fairways:             12/26

GIR:                     10/36
Putts(GIR/total):   1.90/56
Scrambling:          10/26
Score:                   154 (+14)

I then played a round on Sunday with some friends at Half Moon Bay. At I will preface these results by saying that the wind was blowing crazy hard out there. 20-40 mph. I played quite well considering the conditions.

Fairways:              8/14

GIR:                      6/18
Putts(GIR/total):   1.83/31
Scrambling:          4/12
Score:                   81 (+9)

Latest Lesson and Tournament News

Here is my latest lesson. I will post later with a discussion on moving the hips forward. From what I can tell most people I see struggle with this concept, especially me.





I have my first major tournament starting tomorrow. I will be defending my Member-Member championship tomorrow. It is 5 nine hole matches and the winner of each of the flights go into a horserace to determine the overall champion. Last year, we faced chip offs on the first two elimination holes of the horserace and then watched the eventually runner-up miss a two foot putt to win on the last hole. In the play-off I hit a great 8 iron to about 15 feet and my partner lagged it up to about 2 inches from the hole and we won with a par on the first play-off hole. 


I don't know what to expect this year. My handicap is one stroke lower and my game has been up and down for the past month or so. I will report later.

Round Updates

Fairways:             9/13

GIR:                     9/18
Putts(GIR/total):   2.33/34
Scrambling:          2/9
Score:                   85 (+15)

This is a case where the stats lie a little bit. I hit the ball very well in this round, but the end my putting was terrible. I also has 1 triple, caused by a poor course management decision, 3 doubles caused by some bad luck and poor course management. I was missing the ball left more than usual which I like more than missing it right.

Power Accumulator #3

PA#3 or #3 for short this is the angle formed between your left hand and the club shaft. The term and numbering system comes from "The Golfing Machine" written by Homer Kelley. Homer was a engineer by trade who loved the golf swing. Sound familiar? He broke the swing down like a physics book. Numbering power accumulators, pressure points, aiming points, very scientific. I have not read the book because I am worried I will get lost in the scientific detail. Sometimes all you want to do is hit the ball close to the hole, not worry about how you accomplish it. 

I am aware of some of the terms because the stack and tilt guys use them. I can tell you one thing, I struggle mightily with #3. My first lesson that I posted shows that prior to starting with those lessons I never loaded #3. This caused me to lose the lag on the start of the downswing. Even in my latest swing I have struggled with #3. In the S&T swing we want #3 to be loaded by the time the left arm is parallel to the ground. 

In the photo here, I have still not properly loaded #3. The club is not at a 90 degree angle to my left arm. When I am really struggling my club is even worse than in this photo.

I have gone out and started to do some research on how I can do better at this. My research led me to Mac O'Grady. He was a tour player in the late 80's and has one of the most efficient swings I have ever seen. Lots of leverage. He does a great job loading #3 as you can see in this photo.

His club shaft is perfectly parallel to his left arm. A perfect job of loading #3 at the perfect time. So I looked a little deeper into his swing sequences and determined that he was starting to load #3 right from the start at his address position. 

His hands seem lower at address which would help him load #3 much faster. As you can see in my address position I have a long way to go to properly load #3 as Mac does.

I will start to try to incorporate this into my swing to help load #3 better.