I am thinking about starting all over with golf........

During the past year, I've progressively gotten worse at golf.  Started the year at around a 12h.c. and was improving.  And then the wheels fell off.  I shot up to a 15 pretty quickly.  Now, at the end of the year, I am a 23 and not happy about it.  I have developed some odd problems in my swing that pop up and completely kill my game.  My last 5 rounds, I've struggled to break 100.

1.  Putting -  I am a very bad putter.  I practice and practice but get no better on the course.  I can hit a straight putt, but can't read breaks very well and my speed is typically horrible.  I have setup to get a custom Edel putter built for me and then backed out because I didn't want to be embarrassed being such a horrible putter trying to get an expensive custom putter built to a swing that for all I know is completely wrong.  There's some resources available here including Aimpoint and The Seemore Institute that I should plan on attending this off-season.  I've also been fit to a Seemore, which is completely different than what I'm putting with now.  Maybe having the correct specs and Aimpoint will help me in this avenue.

2.  Chipping/Pitching - Again, I'm not very good here as well.  While I don't thin shots over the green like a lot of people do, I'm usually not aggressive enough, leaving me long 1st putts.  I definitely need to practice this area more and want to get much better at chipping with PW and 9 iron.  I've been using these shots a lot lately and I'm getting better, but still nowhere near where I want to be.

3.  Ball Striking - Seems to be improving and then receding in chunks.  I can hit 6-PW fairly well, but the majority of my shots are low.  I don't hit those nice towering 9 irons into the green anymore.  My big problem is that I have developed a pretty good fade on my iron shots along with a habit of digging trenches instead of divots.  I associate the two together, since every time I hit a slicing iron, it comes along with a huge divot.  Not sure what's going on here, I used to hit my irons beautifully.

4.  Fairway Woods/Driver - Absolutely the worst part  my game right now.  I have a couple problems going on.  I am playing with a standard length Regular Flex Miyazaki shaft in a 10.5 degree Z-Star head.  The shaft feels a bit long and whippy to me (being 5'5") in it's natural form.  I tend to hit everything high on the clubface to pop ups and off the toe.  I have been known to take a divot with the driver from time to time also.  My fairway woods are 80% horrible as well.  I have one cheapy 7 Wood that was built for me and fitted and I hit it well, but none of my others perform.  I know I will have to get my new RBZ Tour 5 Wood shortened and swingweight adjusted in order to become more consistent with it as time goes on.  It's simply too long for me at this point, and I'm taking divots with it as well.  My driver is a nightmare. High Right, Low Left, Low Straight and the Pop Up off the crown, which is the one that ticks me off the most.

So in this situation, would you start all over again with lessons and equipment?  I was thinking about replacing everything except for my irons, which are custom fit to me and doing the same with every other club and starting all the way over with a new instructor and telling him I am a blank slate and to teach me from the beginning?  I currently have the Stack and Tilt Book, which is a good read but It's looking like I cannot get the necessary information from the pages and into my muscle memory.  What about the 5SK DVDs?  Could I start all over using that product.

I really want to be a decent golfer.  I don't have aspirations of turning pro or winning the club champoinship, but I would love to be able to go out and shoot in the mid-80's on any given day.  A couple years ago that was a close reality for me, but this year things have went the other way for me.  It's almost not fun anymore.

I've worked with two pros during this year and came away disappointed with no significant changes in my game.  One would just shake his head at me sometimes because I would come back the next week worse than the week before.  I would practice and practice what they taught me, and seemed to get worse the more I practiced, which doesn't make sense at all.  I seem to be unable to make any changes to the crap that's going on in my swing right now.

Yes, I can and do play all year round here in North Carolina.  I did however take the month of November off because I wasn't having fun on the course anymore.

I taped a couple of my swings with my laptop webcam just to see how bad it looked, and to be honest, it's pretty bad.  Every part of it looks stiff and mechanical.   When it isn't raining outside, I'll take the video camera out and get some face on and DTL shots and post them. 

OK, I had a small break-through today.  The rain quit, so I decided to go to the range for a couple hours.

When I got to the course, I was talking to the pro about my problems, so he asked if I had time to play a few holes with him.  So we went out on the course and tee'd off where he made a few observations:

1:  I was not finishing my swing.  

2:  My alignment sucks.  

3:  I open my stance way up without realizing it

4:  My right hand grip needed a small tweak

5:  My stance was too wide, which contributed to #1

So we played with alignment sticks on every shot, narrowed my stance to where it almost felt like I was standing with my feet too close together and concentrated on finishing in a traditional pose, which helped me finish my swing.  This made a huge difference with my irons and fairway woods, but when it came to driver I was still doing the same stupid things.  Pop-Ups, Divots with the driver and hitting it off the toe.

The pro asked to see my driver, took a couple swings with it and then had me go back to the Pro Shop with him.  He had me take a couple swings using a small portable radar and I was swinging the driver at 97-98mph.  He said he thought that the shaft in my driver was too long and too soft for me and handed me a 9* R11-S with a stock still RIP Phenom in it that was 44" long and took me back out to the course.  My first drive was a low straight bullet that went about 200 yards.  He then increased the loft as far as it would go and my shots got a lot better.  I was still hitting it a little lower than I'd like, but after a quick weight change, I was hitting them dead straight.

Once I started hitting the driver better, my entire game picked up.  A 5 second change in my putting setup (narrowing my stance and gripping down on the putter) had me putting a lot better.  I could finally feel like I didn't have to worry about the speed of my putts. 

For the last 3 holes we played, I didn't use the alignment sticks, but had remembered where was straight when looking comfortably forward.  The last 3 holes were bogey (200 yard Par 3), Par (402 yard Par 4), Par (520 yard Par 5) with 4 putts.  On the Par 5, I hit one of the best 5 Wood shots of my life.

One observation he made is from working with me before, I don't do well on the range.  He said it seems easier to make me keep changes in my swing when we're on the course and I have a target and a goal.  So he recommended that every couple weeks, we do a playing lesson for a few holes in the evening when the course isn't crowded.  I even noticed a huge difference in getting my instruction on the course, when I had to see where I wanted the ball to land and I needed to hit a specific distance.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't instantly start striping every ball, but contact was better and the swing feels better.

I guess there's hope for me after-all.  I do know that on Thursday I'm ordering a 12* R-11S with a stiff shaft at 44" at a D5 swingweight.

Now that you mention it, when my handicap was dropping my regular playing partner was a 65 year old former mini-tour player who was constantly giving me advice on the course.  For the past year, he's been having a lot of health problems and hasn't been able to play golf which has left me playing with an entirely different group of people.  

He was quick to tell me that I was screwing up and how to fix it because he knew that I wanted to get better and the guys I'm playing with now are more polite and follow etiquette rather well and will not offer advice.  My old playing partner was funny and an ******* at the same time, but really cared about me getting better at golf.  I actually shot my 2 best scores when he was with me.

I had never put those pieces together until you mentioned playing with semi-pros, but it does make sense to play better when you've always got someone who's educated on the swing playing with you every round.  It's like taking a playing lesson every time you play, I guess.