Figured out what's wrong but...

I've spent years fighting my swing and floating between an 8-12 HC where I used to be a 6-8.  I remember having dreams about becoming a 2 or something, thinking I'll never regress.  How dumb that was.

Anyway, I had a breakthrough on Sunday.  Not a scoring one, but a realization about what I had been doing wrong.  When I suddenly went from a 13 or what-have-you to an 8, it was because I suddenly had a repeatable swing.  I suddenly rediscovered that feel on Sunday.  The grip felt right, the swing felt right, for the first time in years.

Why had my game fallen apart?  It was simple.  I was doing something that felt natural (as in, what my old swing felt like) that was off.  Taking slow motion practice swings while we waited on a bunch of holes I realized that in my old swing I was rotating my body far too early.  This was causing the club face to deloft and become closed.  I recognized the problem years ago, but had been making numerous changes for all that time to fight one problem after another.

So I made a conscious effort to do what I felt was natural (grip right, swing right), but make sure I started the downswing before my body rotated, and forced a bit of a high finish, and BOOM.  The shots on the final five holes looked and felt exactly like my 6-8 HC days, with an important caveat--I'm not doing it consistently.  The shots felt right about 70% of the time.

My timing is off.  Hey, five holes isn't enough.  So what I'm looking for is this:

Do you think it's just a matter of hitting the range and pounding balls with this new swing thought? (I think it might be that simple)

And do any of you have any drills for this move? Whatever stupidly simple it might be, let me know.  I've had success with stupidly simple drills in the past.

Thanks in advance.

In case any of you are wondering, that 8.3 index is higher now.  I had one of my temporary adjustments late last summer that resulted in a bunch of low scores that reduced it to a low level.  Those temporary fixes have vanished and I've put up a bunch of crap this year and that number has climbed to 10.1 and is about to go much higher because I stink right now.

One little move that helped me capture this feel is to, at address, take your right hand off the club.  So your left hand has the club soled on the ground.  Swing back with your right hand only, feeling your left knee go in toward the ball and the rest of your backswing happen in tempo (but keeping your left hand on the club).  Go back about 1/2 way to 3/4 of the way with an empty right hand, left knee flexing in to the ball and the left hand still on the soled club.  Make sure your right arm and hand stays limp during this move.  The only way you can possibly return your limp right arm to the club is to allow it to fall for a split-second and then rotate your body to the club.  If you throw you body down first (you won't, because it will feel really weird to do that) your right hand would get stuck behind you.  You have to allow gravity to start it to return it to the club.  I'd do 3 or 4 and then hit a ball, trying to duplicate the arms / body feel that the drill had at address.

This little feel helped me a lot in feeling the proper sequencing in the backswing/downswing, but after a split-second pause at the top.  YMMV, obv.

Just means your due to go low.

Oh man, this is good.  And I'm having to do the constant lefty/righty adjustment because I play golf as a southpaw (holdover from baseball).  But this is good.  I mean, real good.  I'm standing here in my living room staring at your instructions while I do it without a club and I can feel the point you're making.

Also, tell me what the acronym YMMV means plz.

Your mileage may vary.

Give it a shot on the range and let us know how it goes.  Make sure you've got some shaft lean at address so you aren't grooving flipping (you want your right hand to return just beyond the ball not at or before the ball).

Make sure that left knee is going slightly into the ball.  Its easy to get lazy and just do the drill with your arm only which doesn't help you feel anything.