Keeping my head behind the ball

[Open-Faced Club Sandwedge]

I had one of those swing epiphanies I sometimes have last week at the range.

I had worked a good bit some time ago on making my hips slide correctly, which is a very important aspect of the swing that I've read about.  It never seemed to be helping.  In fact, the harder I worked on it, the more I was pull-slicing the ball.

Last week, I decided to try making sure my upper body didn't move forward with my hips.  Feeling like I was keeping my head back behind the ball, with just my hips sliding forward past the ball, until well after contact when my upper body would follow through and find balance on my front foot.

Man, what a difference.  The first few shots I connected with after making the change were mini push-draws instead of big pull-slices.  They were higher, way longer, and way more consistent in terms of side-spin on the ball; always just a bit of draw spin (amount of backspin is still largely dependent on whether I hit it fat/thin).

Yesterday I played 18 for the first time since making that change, and had my best tee-to-green round of my life by a wide margin.  I hit 8 fairways and 10 GIR, which is 2-3 fairways and probably 5 GIR better than any other round I've ever played.  Some of my missed fairways were actually very good drives that barely missed, and my misses were evenly distributed between left and right.

And somehow I still managed to shoot 95.  The 44 putts had quite a lot to do with it, as did the 3 penalty strokes, and the one short par 4 where I hit my drive in the fairway 65 yards from the pin, but my wedge play failed me so badly it took me the next 4 strokes to actually make it onto the putting surface, followed by 2 putts for triple bogey.

Anyway, just wanted to post about it, see if anyone has other swing epiphany stories, and any other useful information about keeping the head back behind the ball through impact.

-Andrew

[NuclearMike]

I had a swing epiphany a couple of weeks ago that I can't wait to take to the course.  I'm 5' 6" and had had my previous set of irons bent 2 deg. flat.  The irons that I purchased after my return to the game are standard.  I had been reading a lot of posts about lie angle and plan to get mine bent to the proper lie, but in the meantime I moved closer to the ball and made sure that the clubhead was flat on the ground before I began my backswing.  Talk about night and day!  I had been hitting the middle of the ball pretty regularly before and now I make solid contact nearly every time.  My irons are longer and my distances are reproducible when I hit them right.  I had hit literally thousands of balls at the range in the last four months and just couldn't get the necessary change through my thick skull. I've been able to maintain the stance change and results for the past three visits to the range.  I'm just afraid that my distances will be a club or two off when I get back to the course, but I think that's an OK problem to have.

[Open-Faced Club Sandwedge]

Originally Posted by NuclearMike

I had been hitting the middle of the ball pretty regularly before and now I make solid contact nearly every time.

...

I'm just afraid that my distances will be a club or two off when I get back to the course, but I think that's an OK problem to have.

They should be different if you were constantly hitting the ball varying degrees of thin before!  Look at it this way: you never knew your distances before.  Now you get to discover them.

-Andrew