Kind of sick of this Jeckyl and Hyde stuff :/

[DarkPrince]

So, two days ago I decide to walk 18 before I go in for work at 3. The front 9 was a +16 disaster, 2 four putts, 2 three putts, a lost ball, missed putts within 3 feet...etc. Back 9 I pull a +3 out of my ass while still only hitting 1 green in regulation. Surprisingly, I hit 57% of my fairways on both front and back, and hit more greens on my front 9 than the back. Working with Dan Piecha my course's PGA Pro yesterday, I brought this round up, and we looked at the stats. He pointed out to me that I had 24 putts on the front, 13 on the back, so in all, I only had 2 extra strokes off the green, with 11 more putts, something we are going to work on a lot more haha. Scorecard via Golfshot for iPhone:


But yesterday was my first lesson of the year, something I felt I desperately needed with my Uncle taking me to Whistling Straits this next friday for graduating from college. Since starting playing again last spring after a 3 year break I quickly got back to shooting the same scores I did in high school which was 42-45 on 9 holes, this year so far though I've been kind of hit and miss. I know I can play well enough to shoot +3 for 9 holes since I've now done it twice within about a week, but I can't seem to find a consistency in my game. I can't count on my driver off the tee since I have a 2 way miss, my hybrids were untouchable as I couldn't get them in the air, and my 4 and 5 Irons were usable but not as good as I'd like them, 6 through Pitch I can hit well, but when i have to muscle a gap or sand wedge it inevitably ended in a pull. Chips and putts almost always end up abysmally short, and unlike all the stupid NBC/CBS anchors statements, I tend to over-read break rather than under-read.

Dan starts out by asking me if I had anything in specific I wanted to work on right away, or if I just wanted him to kind of watch me for a bit and then form some ideas, so I opt for the latter. After a few shots with my 8 Iron I'm somewhat in the groove, hitting it the 150 I usually do, just a touch to the right and a bit of left to right movement. Sure enough he takes one of my alignment sticks, puts it at my feet, holds another on my shoulders, and has me step back and look at where I am. Despite feeling that I am aiming well left of the target, I was actually aimed just left of or on the "150" yd dumpster, causing what I perceived to be a push fade. We change the alignment, sure enough I start putting more on target, with a few pulls. The next thing we did was stop flaring out my back foot, and putting it perpendicular to the target line. He said my overly long backswing was being caused by my hips over-rotating, and my shoulders continuing from the point where my hips finally stopped because my foot was flared out, allowing the extra turn. He explained that with the foot perpendicular to the line, it would stop my hips at a certain point, allowing my upper body to continue coiling more as opposed to more hips and less shoulders.

The other thing he explained to me was that my weight was shifting to the outside of my back foot, causing me to have to start my back swing with moving my upper body rather than pushing off with the inside of my back foot. This actually worked right away, I stopped having to actually slide my body back as hard as I could, instead starting with my lower body and moving upward. The last thing we worked on was ball position, which he felt was too far back, unless I was planning on playing punch shots all day :P This felt super-awkward playing all of my shots front of center, I felt like I had to move so far forward on my downswing that I was going to fall over, but my shots got crisper.

He told me to pull out one of my hybrids as I had told him I couldn't hit them worth a damn. So we pull them out, he has me put the ball just off my front heel by an inch or 2 (where I usually play my driver...which was again too far back :P) Applying what we had been working on, I was pretty much striping these godforsaken hybrids, something I couldn't do consistently for the year I have owned them. I was still hitting a pretty big fade with them (despite being set to Neutral Upright for a slight draw), but at least they were in the air again rather than low duck hooks, low slice, chunked, thinned, big pull hook...etc

So for now, my 4 things to work on:
1. Align more to the left.
2. Square back foot to target line.
3. Widen stance a little bit.
4. play ball further forward.

I'm going to keep working on these things each day until I get them ingrained, hopefully it will add some more consistency to my game. Either way, both Dan and I are looking forward to the next lesson whenever I get the money/time to schedule it.