After eight months...finally started taking divots. My thoughts on why.

Gotta say, it feels pretty damn good to hit the ball the right way.  I've had ups and down since I got back into the game last year, always going from extreme frustration to (what I thought was) good ball striking back to even more frustration.  Whenever I made big improvements, it would stick around for maybe a couple of weeks, and then my swing would go straight back down the toilet.  After a recent bout pretty much the shittiest ball striking I've experienced since I was a kid, e.g., maybe 20% of shots were crisp, the rest were chucked, topped, or shanked, I got some excellent advice regarding keeping my hands much closer to my waist at address.

I don't believe in quick fixes for any aspect of golf, but this one was an outlier.  I'd been working on keeping my back swing on plane as I had a tendency to separate the hands from the body and take the club back way too far to the inside.  For some reason, this proper method never felt comfortable, and I think the way I was doing it was leading to the terrible contact I was experiencing.  However, once I moved my hands in at address, the takeaway felt almost effortless. Club stays on plane with little effort, and best of all, is right where it's supposed to be at impact.  I taped my swing, and for the first time I can see significant flex in the shaft in the downswing, and lo and behold, I maintain lag all the way through impact. This (clearly) allows me to strike the ball solid right on the sweet spot, and then take a divot in front.  I've had to adjust my wedge swing/selection because I'm getting 15 additional yards on all my wedges.

So, my thoughts are this: there are a million different things you can do to try to achieve good contact, lag, etc., but really it's as straight forward as keeping the club on plane and rotating properly (not swaying in back swing).  Purposefully holding the lag will wreck you swing (at least it did mine), if you rotate and keep the club on plane, you will maintain the proper wrist angle without thinking about it. That's not to say I don't still top or chunk one here and there, it's golf, and this shit is hard.  But at least when I DO flub a shot, I can immediately feel why.

Now, if I can just get rid of the stupid chicken wing...

I hear ya brother. Took me forEVER to start to hit down and through but now its pretty much consistent (aside from the odd top or chunk as you said). Now I have a host of other issue, early extension and too steep on the downswing for starters but it beats topping the ball 4 feet at time!

So much more fun when the ball goes CRACK and takes off with authority!

Its amazing what happens when the leftwrist is flat and the hands are leading through impact, I remember that day. Now you will start to see the ball spin back with the wedges.

The coolest thing (so far) is that when I used to "take a divot", I would look up and see the ball the ball flying limply about 20' further than the divot itself...since the divot came from about 5" behind the ball.  Now I take the same size divot, but when I look up the ball is seriously rocketing away...it doesn't always rocket in the the right direction, but you know, baby steps.

Yeah! I even shred the ball sometimes! Awesome!

Know what you mean by baby steps. Improved contact is great but there is a crapload of work to be done. Where the ball goes can still be a surprise but it GOES!!! Still, I think that the flat wrist (still need to be conscious of this or I lose it) and ball first is the BIG piece that was holding me back.