SEMI_Duffer's Golf Journey Saga

[SEMI_Duffer]

In another thread, @Shindig asked:

Quote

You've been on this site for a while and it's still golf season where you live -- let's talk (in another thread) about what's stopping you from whatever level of play would start to get you nervous, and then let's get you there so you can experience it.  It doesn't even have to be an 18 hole total -- if you're a 30 handicap, having a three hole bogey stretch can start some nerves that you're getting better. 

Since you asked  (I really did try to keep it as short as possible):

I took up golf at the ripe old age of sixty-nine years, in late June of 2020. Took two sets of group lessons at a local golf store.  When I felt I was ready I started playing.  Bottom line: After two sets of group lessons, countless hours in the back yard, at ranges, taking Internet advice, watching YouTube videos, etc, and 7-8 games: My ball-striking was worse than what it'd been at the start of the season. I couldn't hit diddly worth squat with anything.

At the end of the season I started training with True Motion Golf. The plan was to rebuild my swing from scratch, get to the point just shy of doing full swings, for which I hadn't the room, indoors, and move it outside.  Good plan, but...

In May of 2021 I needed arthroscopic knee surgery due to an injury sustained nine years before.  After recovering from that, resumed my training. (Backed-up a bit to re-do some of what I'd already done, as a refresher.)  Was going well.  Then I allowed a couple friends to convince me to play before I felt I was ready.  Calling the game a "train wreck" would be an understatement of epic proportions.  Then, a couple hours after that, I suffered a Branch Retina Artery Occlusion in my right eye--losing about 1/3 of my vision in that eye.

Dropped golf altogether.  Felt it likely I wouldn't play again.

Nonetheless, I'd become curious if the training I'd done actually worked.  Late in the season I took my mat, 7i, and some lake balls out back and hit into the woods, concentrating on the form I'd learned. Darned if I wasn't hitting them better, more consistently, than I ever had.  (Out of well over a dozen strikes I had one slice and one ground ball. [Those had been my most common misses.]  The rest were straight out or with a slight to moderate draw. All nice and high.)  Could hardly believe it.  Took my driver out, a week later, and did the same thing.  (At the end of the prior season, the last time I'd swung my driver, I couldn't hit with it to save my soul.)

Still: I had no conscious intention of playing again.

This spring rolled around and, driving by a local golf course I found myself gazing at it and thinking about golf.  Realized it and thought "Really?  Maybe you're not done with it, after all?"

So, finally, about six weeks back I resumed my training with TMG. I'm almost back to where I was about this time last year: Just beginning full back-swing training with a club. The first micro-motions in the down-swing transition are next.

I fully expect that, once I get to where I'm comfortable my swing is well-enough developed, that the myriad of flaws in my old swing have been replaced by good swing mechanics, I'll get back out to the range. Provided that goes satisfactorily, I'll start playing again.  I expect that to happen this season.  But it won't happen until I'm satisfied with where I am. I am not going to repeat last years mistake.

To answer the question I'm sure some may have, why am I going-about it this way, there are two reasons: I have an engineering mindset. I approach everything very methodically. Secondly, and probably more importantly: I am not at all athletic and never have been.  It's just never been in me.  I suspect part of the reason is I have very poor proprioception, which is the ability to sense where the body is and what it's doing at any point. (Case in point: My recent insistence I wasn't raising the club on the back-swing.)  So, for me to "learn" a motion and repeat it consistently, it takes a lot of repetitions doing it correctly.  That is one component of TMG's method.

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by SEMI_Duffer

[StuM]

37 minutes ago, SEMI_Duffer said:

To answer the question I'm sure some may have, why am I going-about it this way, there are two reasons: I have an engineering mindset. I approach everything very methodically. Secondly, and probably more importantly: I am not

How you are going about is fine in my opinion.  The important thing is you gain pleasure from how you choose to do it.

if getting frustrated on the course will bother to the point of not enjoying the game then by all means, wait until you want to.

[SEMI_Duffer]

15 minutes ago, StuM said:

How you are going about is fine in my opinion.  The important thing is you gain pleasure from how you choose to do it.

That's been one of my two attitude changes this time around: Getting enjoyment out of training.  Celebrating getting a motion right, then, after getting it at least more-or-less ingrained, being able to repeat it without external visual cues.  (I've "registration marks" all over the floor and on the walls, the latter of which I can see in mirrors and videos.)

15 minutes ago, StuM said:

if getting frustrated on the course will bother to the point of not enjoying the game then by all means, wait until you want to.

Yeah... I don't handle frustration well at all.  I'd like to think I could cure myself of that, but, if I'm being honest with myself: If I haven't done so by now, it seems unlikely I will.

I know that, no matter how thoroughly I train, no matter how mechanically sound and how repeatable I make my swing, there will be bad swings and times when my game will go straight in the dumper.  That's golf, right? That I think I'll be able to handle.  It was the nearly constant frustration I was experiencing before that made it not a lot of fun.

[StuM]

4 minutes ago, SEMI_Duffer said:

I know that, no matter how thoroughly I train, no matter how mechanically sound and how repeatable I make my swing, there will be bad swings and times when my game will go straight in the dumper.  That's golf, right?

Yup, even the best in the world have bad shots/holes/rounds.  The key is how you bounce back.  

[SEMI_Duffer]

2 minutes ago, StuM said:

Yup, even the best in the world have bad shots/holes/rounds.  The key is how you bounce back.  

I think I'll be ok in this respect.  My recollection of the games I played is that I didn't become truly frustrated until about the 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever bad hole in a row.  And even then my recollection is I approached each new hole with a "This will be better" thought.  At least consciously 

[Vinsk]

3 hours ago, StuM said:

 The key is how you bounce back.  

Well, I pay for the damages I’ve caused, apologize for scaring any children, and dig embarrassingly fast through my bag for another ball.

[SEMI_Duffer]

8 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

... and dig embarrassingly fast through my bag for another ball.

Keep one in your pocket, it's faster. Upon this subject I've ample experience 

[Vinsk]

1 hour ago, SEMI_Duffer said:

Keep one in your pocket, it's faster. Upon this subject I've ample experience 

That bad shot was the ball from my pocket….

[boogielicious]

2 hours ago, Vinsk said:

Well, I pay for the damages I’ve caused, apologize for scaring any children, and dig embarrassingly fast through my bag for another ball.

And you are medically qualified to treat any injuries you cause. So you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.

@SEMI_Duffer, you are going to have peaks and valleys in your golf journey. Don’t get down when you’re in the valleys and enjoy the peaks.

[SEMI_Duffer]

18 hours ago, boogielicious said:

 

@SEMI_Duffer, you are going to have peaks and valleys in your golf journey. Don’t get down when you’re in the valleys and enjoy the peaks.

I understand that.  If it was easy, anybody could do it and it wouldn't really be a challenge, would it? 

I'm actually enjoying the challenge of it as much as anything else.

It wasn't just that one thoroughly-unpleasant game that resulted in my time off.  It was that, coupled with the eye insult (that's what they call such a thing, an "insult"), that did it.

TBH: That stuff did more than just put me off golf.  It actually put me into a nearly-year-long funk where I did almost nothing except the bare minimum to be classified as "living." Getting interested in golf again is, in part, a tool I'm using to re-kindle my ambition.

[Big Lex]

On 8/18/2022 at 11:35 AM, SEMI_Duffer said:

In another thread, @Shindig asked:

Since you asked  (I really did try to keep it as short as possible):

I took up golf at the ripe old age of sixty-nine years...

Dropped golf altogether.  Felt it likely I wouldn't play again.

Still: I had no conscious intention of playing again.

This spring rolled around and, driving by a local golf course I found myself gazing at it and thinking about golf.  Realized it and thought "Really?  Maybe you're not done with it, after all?"

 

Thank you for telling your story. I love it. I love the parts above about how you can't quit it. 

Golf is like a drug, or a "mistress" or a "muse." Once you've tasted it, you can never really get rid of it.

About 6 years ago, I tried to quit. I had to stop because of a neck injury, and was feeling the weight of years of disappointment and frustration with my level of play, and just happened coincidentally to come upon another hobby that gripped me as strongly as golf had (ballroom dancing, by the way). I thought I was "cured" of golf by this new medicine. I also had the pleasure with dance to have begun with LESSONS, immediately, and virtually ALL of my dancing has been with a professional teacher, absolutely zero youtube, zero online reading or books or anything. So I got way better at it much faster than ever with golf. (Funny how that is 😉 )

But I couldn't let go of golf. I didn't play much at all from 2017-2019, but eventually the itch returned. I'm still dealing with injuries and so forth, but I'm back and dedicated to both hobbies now. I set up an indoor hitting hoping I can reach new heights 🙂

Keep playing golf and do not under any circumstances ever lose your self belief or surrender your will to get better. 🙂

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Big Lex

[billchao]

@SEMI_Duffer just be careful you don't get too fixated on fixing your swing to the point you're never satisfied if you play golf. Everyone has bad days. Even the pros can top or shank the ball.

[SEMI_Duffer]

@billchao, wise counsel, but I do not expect that to be a problem.  My goals are fairly modest: Just to get to the point I can play half-way decent bogey golf.  If I someday end up playing better than that: Wonderful.

I know that, no matter how hard I work on it there will be bad strikes.  I know there'll still be train-wreck games.  If it can happen to the pros, and it does, it can certainly happen to me.

I guess the best way to put it is I'd like to get the rest of my game to where my chipping was year-before-last.  Chipping was the one strong point of my game. I got particularly good at green-side lob shots. To the point I received regular complements from the guys with whom I played.  Of course I still misfired.  Shrugged my shoulders, thought "Well, that sucked," and didn't let it bother me.

That actually had a downside, btw. I was so good at it, it became a hammer/nail thing, and I'd try to use that shot where a bump and run, or even the putter, would've been the more sensible choice.  Burned myself more than once, that way 

[SEMI_Duffer]

Forgot I'd even started this thread.  Time for an update.

Last year I ran into Big Problems getting from the transition (surf hips toward target, push that lead buttock away from the ball, shallow the club) down the the ball.  Just could not seem to stop swinging down with my arms.  That would of course stall my hips and result in a poor impact position.  (I was getting the club down the ball well, but, that would've robbed me of speed.)

Was still working on that when it came time to tear down my golf studio for Christmas.  (My "golf studio" is in the living room.  Yes: I've a very understanding wife.)

Finally got back to it about mid-May or so.  The interruption meant I had to do remedial training to work back up to where I was when I left off.

It's taken a while, and experimenting with multiple drills to try to train myself out of throwing my arms out or down, but, I think I may have finally gotten past that getting-down-to-impact speed bump just a couple days ago.  The key word there being "may."  I've yet to have sent my coach a video to see if he's happy with my impact position and how I'm getting down to it.

If he is: I'll be putting in a bunch of reps--until I feel relatively confident the motion's ingrained, then it'll be time to start turning motions that are being done in steps into one, continuous down-swing.

One positive benefit of all this swing training (and re-training, and re-training again, and...) is, just the other day it occurred to me I'm not even sure I could swing my old swing if I wanted to 

[SEMI_Duffer]

Approaching the end of the golfing season, here in S.E. Michigan, so I guess now's a good time for an update.

Once again I'd been overly optimistic about my progress.  I did finally find an effective drill to help me learn to pivot-down to the ball well--get things started from the bottom, keeping my hips through my shoulders turning through the impact position.  After 4-6 weeks of drills, 2-3 sessions/day, I got that dialed-in.  But, as soon as I put a club in my hands and tried swinging, my persistent swing nemesis, swinging the club at the ball, came right back.

My brain, knowing what the result of that would be, would stall everything else and I'd end-up with something not much different from my old down-swing--except without all the swaying and waving about.

Now experimenting with some drills suggested in a video from Athletic Motion Golf--a way to train & ingrain the feel of bringing the club handle down, rather than down and around with the arms, letting the body take care of the "around" part.

Initial impression is it looks promising.

So, it now looks like I may get to the point I may get something grooved well enough to hit the range before the snow flies (range has heated bays), but, playing this season is unlikely.

I will get it.  I will not be deterred 

[bkuehn1952]

Did you play any golf in 2023, or just practiced?

[SEMI_Duffer]

On 10/6/2023 at 12:30 PM, bkuehn1952 said:

Did you play any golf in 2023, or just practiced?

Trained, actually. I never even quite made it to the practicing phase.  (Except chipping and putting.)

So... after breaking for Christmas/New Years, during which time my wife inexplicably forces me to tear down my "golf studio" in the living room , I got back to it a week or so ago.

I was gratified to see all the training reps I'd put into setup, take-away, and back-swing stuck.  Even better: All the reps I'd put into transition and pivot-down stuck, as well.  Took a few days for my body to groove the range-of-motion and execute smoothly, again, but I had the fundamentals down pretty much right out of the gate.

Now for that pesky arms thing: Swinging at the ball with my arms.  Last year, despite a good take-away, back-swing, and initiating the downswing well, my arms would take over on the downswing.  My brain, realizing what my arms were doing, would stall my pivot, and... *ick* 

I may have finally found the cure.  A couple AMG videos, entitled "Shallowing Like You've Never Seen Before" and "The Magic Downswing Move Everyone Needs," both of which I happened-upon entirely by accident (I generally tend to shun YT golf "instruction"), appear to have finally unlocked that last door for me.

I'll do 1500-2000 reps of motions just to ingrain having my trail arm come down like it needs to, rather than across, then add my lead arm back in and do another 1500-2000 reps.  If I apply myself, I should be able to do those in three to four weeks of training.  (Assuming 3-4 sessions/day, twenty-five reps/session.)

Then it's on to the finish move.

[bkuehn1952]

Best of luck with this process through which you are working. At 73 you are approachig the point where your aging body is going to make it even more difficult to perfect your golf swing. At 71, I speak from experience.