Would you change your swing?

I've been golfing on and off for 15 years. Got my handicap down in the single digits,and generally pretty happy with the way i score. The thing is, I'm a self taught former baseball player. Never had a lesson, but know my game very well. I hit about a club shorter than most the people i play with, if not more, but i only take less than half of a back swing. If i take a full swing i gain no distance, and lose a ton of accuracy. I do really well on short tight courses, but struggle on the long wide open courses. Was considering starting over from scratch, and building a proper swing that could eventually get my handicap even lower. I'm 40, so there's still time, and when i see my 12 year son hit my 3 wood 250 yards, i kinda wish i could do that> Even though i still kick his butt.

I have trouble believing a 12 year old is hitting a 3 wood 250 yards..... But thats irrelevant. Best thing you can do is sign yourself up for some lessons. Major changes are kind of hard to learn otherwise.

This is the first intelligent question I've read since I've started lurking/trolling on this forum.

I've had this conversation countless times. Many of us have homemade or adapted swings, and know deep down we should be taking lessons. But then we'd probably be faced with correcting everything from the ground up.

On the other hand, there are some very successful golfers with unorthodox swings.

Tommy Gainey comes to mind since you mentioned you were a baseball player.

My swing is strange in that I break every joint on my backswing but straighten it all out at impact. The only pro I've seen who does anything like that is Angel Cabrerra.

As for increasing your backswing; that shouldn't require too much change to your actual swing. Hit the range, start with a 3/4 swing etc. If you are like many half swing golfers, you probably don't follow through either. Work on symmetry; 3/4 backswing = 3/4 follow through etc.

FD: I'm a high teens handicapper who doesn't let golf interfere with my .

Depends on the time you've got.  If you can do, say, 6 months where you can get a lesson every other week and put in a serious range session (or serious sessions in the backyard with birdieballs or almost golf balls, or at least back yard net hitting time with camera), say 2+ times per week on average, then I'd say go for it.

I'm a self taught former college baseball player as well, and I play just a bit worse than you and am also starting to feel like I could really use some time with a teacher and some swing reworking to break through to really playing how I think I'm capable of.  I can't afford it right now so I've been doing the reworking on my own for now, and in my experience at least things get harder and less consistent for a while, and I don't have kids and have the time to really work on my swing pretty regularly.  If I only had time to play once a week and practice once every other week I definitely wouldn't want to embark on a swing redo, especially if I could go out to tight short courses and shoot mid-70s with my current swing, which is what I gather you can do given what you say and your HC.

What's more impressive is that he can hit a baseball 300 ft. He's good for about 2 per round and uses the 3 as a driver. Between the equipment and the size of kids these days, you'd be surprized how strong some kids are. I only have about a month before my busy season starts down here in sunny south florida. I'll be fishing 6-7 days a week for about 8 months, after that i think i'll get with a pro and see what he has to say. Thanks for the replies!

Capt. Gavet

Has he had any lessons/formal training.

Both my kids have had golf and tennis lessons and their swings are very natural, yet technically good. When they start that young with lessons, they don't have to unlearn a lot of habits later on.

ww,

no lessons or anything for him yet. If he decides he wants to pursue it, we'll definitely go that route. We just figured out this summer which way he was more comfortable, lefty or righty. Baseball he throws right and bats left. My brother in-law gave him a set of lefty clubs, and turns out he likes righty better. He's starting to get the bug, and i know as well as anyone how hard it is to break old habits. He stays pretty busy with baseball year round, golf is just something different for us to do together.

Don't start a major swing change if you're questioning your dedication to see it through.

I'm a former baseball player who put golf down from age 15-18 after playing some as a middle schooler.  I started working with a pro when I got serious about golf at age 19, got to scratch by age 22 and it's dwindled up from there with kids, job, etc..  Last fall I was a 4.1 index.  I had the brilliant idea to rebuild my swing with (in all honesty) an outstanding teaching pro.  I'm now a "scrambling and really relying on my short game" 5-6 handicapper wondering why I decided to make major changes in my mid-30s.

I'm 75% of the way through and have really questioned whether or not it was a good decision.  I went from hitting 12-14 GIR to now hitting 8-10.  It's been frustrating.  I will add that I lost about 6 weeks of prime time this summer with a minor back problem.

I'm going to see it through and hopefully be better off by the spring, but I really feel like an idiot for messing with it.

Nah. I just try to groove what I got. I hit it about 240 off the tee & relatively straight. I'm on or around the green in reg. I work painstakingly on my short game cuz that's where the strokes are saved or wasted. So as long as I'm around the green in reg, I don't see the need to put the time needed in to add 10 yards off the tee or make my iron shots crisper. I'll go to the putting green instead. :)

I can tell you one thing.  When I was in my late teens/early 20's in the late 70's, early 80's, I was an 8 handicapper.  A couple scratch golfer buddies of mine were pushing me to move to the next level with some lessons.

After putting the game down in 1985 and picking it back up again last year, I can clearly see where I've lost a tremendous amount of flexibility in my joints and body.  Even with todays equipment I'd be pushing it really hard to drive a ball as far as I used to with those "real" woods.

I've changed my swing to compensate for that lack of flexibility.  I've lost distance but I'll make up for it with better accuracy.  I'm now down to about a 13 - 14 handicap and am expecting to hit single digits by next spring.  Don't be afraid to get the advice of a pro.

I'm in a similar position as cart7, after not playing much for the better part of a a decade, I started back playing regular this year. Only playing once or twice a year, when I went out I could manage to scrape it around and shoot somewhere in the 90's. Wanting to get better I've been taking some lessons, about 1 per month, this summer. Not making any big changes, just fixing the basics that have gotten out of wack over the years of not playing much. Each lesson we would work on 1 or 2 little changes and it would take about a month for those to become "natural" and during that month really didn't play that well getting adjusted to playing with the changes. Over the last few weeks I have really started to see all the work come together, last weekend shot my 2 lowest rounds of the year, 78 & 79, on different courses and I've gotten my handicap down from ~20 to a 12.2.

It takes time to make changes to your swing and sometimes you have to get worse to get better and it can be frustrating at times, but it's worth it in the end.

No, probably not.  I've messed with my swing alot this year and have gotten nothing but worse.  If your playing to a good 7 or 8, that is pretty good golf.  You seen it alot with the pros where they try to get better and get worse.

And changing is a big investment of time.  You have to put in lots of reps to ingrain a change.  Having a family and a job it is hard to get the time.  Then taking it to the course, that is a real challenge.

For a pro, swing changes usually take a year to see an effect in. So if your going to change something, make the commitment to it, don't constantly change, your going to have some lows. It took me about 2 years to get a push draw, but i stuck with it. My first thing was to stop dropping my head backwards and down in the downswing. When i did this i started comming over the top. It took a while, but i am seeing some  big improvements now. I use to be able to play near single digit handicap with my old swing. Thats because the old swing is what i used for 10 years previous to that, so i knew it well, i knew what the ball would do. But i wanted something that seemed more simple and repetative. If i wasn't three putting and messing up chipping and pitching i would be a single handicap. My ball striking has improved greatly. But in doing so i lost alot of my short game, because my focus was on my ball striking. So now its time to put the complete package together. For me it was a good idea to revamp the whole swing. I am only 27, so it worked out well. But you might just need maybe 1 or 2 tweaks in the swing.