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.

Frustration

The journey to a better swing will always be a bumpy road. I have hit a major pothole. This weekends round was a total disaster. When I went back to look at my swing on video, I have slipped in multiple areas back into my old bad habits. Now, I need to start from the beginning and work on the fundamentals I learned in my first lesson that I last posted. 

I have to realize that this is not going to change overnight. I am only able to practice once or twice a week and that is going to make this change take time. Old habits are hard to break, especially when referring to a golf swing. My patience is being tested.

Part of the reason I am so worried is I have a tournament coming up in 2 weeks and having this bump in the road is not great timing. I have to realize that I need to work on my short game more to compensate for the lack of full swing quality. Part of the reason my round was so terrible was my short game was awful. I actually putted decently, I made a couple of nice birdie putts, but my chipping and sand play were downright terrible. I also got some bad breaks. On the first hole my ball buried so deep in the bunker I could not play it out, on the 7th hole I got another terrible lie in the bunker leading to a double bogey. I did have some bad swings, probably 5 that I can recount that were awful, but mainly I would charge the terrible round to bad course management and some bad chipping.

Fairways:             7/13 (all 6 fairways missed were in the right rough/trees)

GIR:                     5/18
Putts(GIR/total):   1.60/30
Scrambling:          3/13
Score:                   84 (+14)

One big big positive was the par 5 scoring, I was 4.3 average on the 3 par 5's, with 2 birdies. 

The Golf Evolution

As I mentioned I have been taking some lessons with The Golf Evolution and their evolvr program. The results have been no less than stunning. Here is my first lesson. Everything here I have worked on and pretty much have down.

Enjoy.

Swing Thoughts as of Today

Swing thoughts. I had another lesson this week, I will post an update of my swing later this week, but in the meantime I thought I would outline my swing thoughts as of today. In the past I would choose my swing thought literally on the range before the round. Now I attempt to keep the same ones for longer periods in effort to keep the mind clutter free.

During set-up:

Right hand more under the grip
Hips more forward
Right shoulder lower than left

Swing thoughts:

Set wrists early (90 degrees)
Hands inside
Push #3 around the body
Turn shoulders more level to start

Chipping thought:

Hinge and Hold

Putting thought:

Push the tack

Round Update

From this weekend:

San Jose Country Club


Fairways:              6/13
GIR:                     6/18
Putts(GIR/total):   2.00/29
Scrambling:          6/12
Score:                   77 (+7)

Extensor Action

Sounds strange, extensor. Sounds like a muscle thing. When I read about it on wikipedia (the source of all knowledge these days) it doesn't make any sense. Some complicated muscle movement term used by doctors.

Why is it in my blog, because it has really helped my golf swing. General instruction will tell you that you should have the club reach parallel at the top of the swing. I think that is all well and good if your shoulder turn is equal to a tour players. For most of us that is impossible. Extensor action to me means that the right arm is at approximately 90 degrees to the shoulder turn. I think the actual definition is more complicated than that, but that is what works for me.

The first image here is my position at the top of the swing a few months ago.

According to general instruction this would be pretty good. My club could double as a clothes line. Sadly though, because my shoulder turn isn't that big my shoulders stopped moving and my arms kept on going. This means at the top of my swing I would start to cast the club and lose the power that I wanted to save to hit the ball. If you look at the second photo in this sequence, when my arm is parallel to the ground the club is almost already outside my hands. Not a good position for solid contact.

Now after learning about extensor action and how to apply it to my swing my new position at the top is dramatically shorter.

This translates though to a much more powerful position of having the hands lead the clubhead as shown in this photo.

The second photo set hits the ball higher, further, and straighter. All good things for golf.

First S&T Lesson

Up until recently instruction for stack and tilt (S&T) has been difficult to find. Mainly one has to surf the internet and find the bulk of the instruction from forums. Dana's forum had been my main source of instruction since I switched to S&T. Lately he must be busy as the site has slowed down in terms of information, there is still a wealth of information there to search through even though there isn't that much new stuff. While on Dana's forum I learned of a S&T school in my area that Mike Bennett would be teaching at. The class was run by Paul Gorman a S&T teacher in Marin (about 1.5 hrs from me).

Mike is one of the two inventors of S&T and is a great teacher. Sadly though this was a class with 4 people in it, and while at the class I learned a great deal, I wasn't able to take much from the class to the course with me. Certainly there are some fundamentals that I still utilize today but it was only 4 hours spread out over 4 people and difficult to move from the half swings I was working on to full swings.

I later went to see Paul for a follow-up lesson and we worked on moving my ball position up, something I still work very hard on today, and getting my shoulders to a more square position at impact. This was a great lesson. I have struggled with losing the ball to the right and weak, since this lesson I have not had this problem nearly as much.

The only problem is that driving to see Paul is not easy. 1.5 hours means 3 hours of total driving and a loss of most of a day to have a lesson. Below is a video I took the day before and the day after my lesson with Paul.




Last Round update (Here I will post the stats from my last round in an effort to watch my improvement)


Village Country Club


Fairways:              6/14
GIR:                     13/18 (a new record for one round)
Putts(GIR/total):   1.92/33
Scrambling:          2/5
Score:                   74 (+2)

Genesis - The Journey Begins

The golf swing is such a complicated action, yet only takes a second or so. As a kid I took a few lessons, but rarely understood much about what should happen in the golf swing. For example, only a few years ago I learned that the divot should come after the ball. This was a incredible revelation for me. After college I struggled mightily with my game. I would play well in the summer when my short game was sharp, but in the winter months or when my short game was off, it was a massive struggle.

My handicap would range from 7 in the summer months to 10 in the winter months. I rarely had consistent swing thoughts and would go through long periods of playing terribly. My low came at my annual tournament in September at my club when in the final round I shot an 92 and played terribly.

Early the next year, in June 2007, I was getting ready to play with a friend at the member-guest of his club and the day before we were scheduled to play a practice round I read an article in Golf Digest, something called stack and tilt. At first read it seemed foolish the idea of staying centered over the ball would never work, at least not in the world that I had been taught. But what intrigued me was the idea of staying left the entire swing. I had always had a problem with swaying and having a reverse pivot. This swing almost seemed to encourage a reverse pivot to start. I would learn later it is anything but a reverse pivot, but that is for a later discussion. I decided I would try it out on the range. Just to see what would happen. I started to hit some shots really well. I thought, you know what, I am going to try this for this round. I shot a 77 and played beautifully. I have used it ever since.

This would definitely be the start of the journey. I have learned that in golf the fun is getting to the destination not in reaching it. Of course it is fun to achieve your goals, pat yourself on the back, but the real joy comes from learning and seeing the progress unfold. That is the purpose of this blog. I want to chronicle the journey, share my learning and keep them as a log to show new things I have learned and show the progression.

Part of this journey was started by purchasing a video camera. I think this is best game improvement tool I have ever bought....and I have bought a few. What you feel and what is actually happening in the golf swing can be TOTALLY different. I mean totally different, therefore you need a camera to go back and see what you did is what you want to accomplish. This first video is my swing shortly after switching to stack and tilt. It is older and the videos following will be newer and from my new Casio FC-100 which does 210 fps.

So more to come, but here is where the journey begins.