Tight and loose swing...at the same time?

[anthony]

Before I get to the point of the post title, a little about my weekend. First, a big thanks to iacas for his driver tip. Friday, I worked on my driver at the range with the idea of putting more weight on my front foot than usual. Well, that was the problem. I tied my best 9 hole score on Saturday thanks to my driver being straight all day. If it weren't for some bad chips and putts I know I would have broke 40.

Sunday, I played in a scramble and was driving the ball even better than Saturday. We played my tee shot on probably every hole but 3. I won longest drive of the day to by coming up about 12 yds short on a 330 yd up hill Par 4. I hit a draw on that hole to boot. My irons weren't that great. By the back 9 though I realized I was trying to hammer the ball and improved for the back. If I were playing my own ball all day I'm sure it would have been round of the day.

Anyways, back to the point of today's post. I went to the range after work to hit some balls. I started with my PW. I noticed the ball flight was kinda low. Somewhat similar to Sunday's irons. Well, after a minute I was getting them right with a few lower one thrown in. I then went for the 6 iron instead of going through the bag. The first few shots weren't that great. Then I started hitting some better shots and they were pushing and slicing a tiny bit. I thought "don't start this shit". Then, it got a little worse with some lower ball flight shots.

At this point I stepped back for a minute to think about what I was doing (I take regular breaks by the way). I've been playing well and my irons have been top notch, especially since I started keeping my weight forward. So, I kept the 6 iron out and started hitting little half swings. They were easily going 120 or so and the contact felt great. My average is probably 165 or so with my 6 iron. That lit a little light bulb in my head. So I took that smooth easy half swing and increased the backswing by 10% and hit a few more. I repeated that process until I was at a full swing. Honestly, these swings felt like I was using 50% of my power, but they were soaring through the air. I'm pretty sure I went past 165 on a bunch of these swings. My backswing felt less than before too. This just proved to me how much tension was in my swing and how hard I was trying to swing, when obviously I don't need to.

This was a major swing change for me today. It's like when you see guys on tv that look like there barely swinging but, it just soars through the air. It was like I wasn't trying. So SMOOTH. I pulled out my 9 iron with the same mind set and was puring eyery one. I was hitting my 9 iron distance with what felt like a 3/4 swing. I finished off the bucket with some 3 woods off the deck and had the same success. I can't get over how smooth and easy I was swinging. I had the acceleration to hit the ball obviously, but since I wasn't trying to hammer it I could just let it rip. I never felt so confident hitting golf balls. I can't wait to go back or go play 9 tomorrow.