So today, I finally started taking lessons....

[tiger187126]

Originally Posted by slodsm

Second lesson today, still concentrating on ball striking but he turned the trackman on to let me see what I was doing etc. I was swinging a 7i anywhere from 80-88 mph when I'd stop thinking about it and just swing the club. If I can just translate that to my round this afternoon I will be happy. I tend to put too much thought into doing it right and I cut my follow through short etc but progress is progress and I'll eventually get there.

i forget what the phrase is but it's "paralysis by analysis" or something to that effect. when i was working on new stuff i couldn't even make contact with the ball because every time i lined up i was thinking about getting 100 different things right and i forgot just to swing.

good full practice swings lets me get that out of the way without the ball and helps me get more settled to hit my shot.

[slodsm]

Well I just played 18, had some of the prettiest perfect shots I've ever had and I mixed them up with some of the worst shots I've ever even heard rumor of.

Your description is perfect, paralysis by analysis was killing me every other hole. I pulled 164 yards out of a 5i which is unheard of for me and followed it up with 2 strokes with a lob wedge and a 3 put for a triple bogey on a par three.

Oh the things I'm doing myself to try and learn this game.

[tiger187126]

Originally Posted by slodsm

Well I just played 18, had some of the prettiest perfect shots I've ever had and I mixed them up with some of the worst shots I've ever even heard rumor of.

Your description is perfect, paralysis by analysis was killing me every other hole. I pulled 164 yards out of a 5i which is unheard of for me and followed it up with 2 strokes with a lob wedge and a 3 put for a triple bogey on a par three.

Oh the things I'm doing myself to try and learn this game.

when you make a big swing change you spend a ton of time with your irons usually and your driving, short game, and putting can suffer pretty bad.

if you want to score better then you could just work on short game and putting, but i like being able to hit nice iron shots consistently and then moving on to other parts of the game. score is just a number for me now, and i don't invest too much into it and sometimes i'll just stop keeping track of it if it's not really relevant. oh and dump the lob wedge and use an 8 iron to hit bump and runs. (again, only if you're concerned about scoring. i know i feel good when i hit a nice shot in the air that stops when i want it to and it's worth it to me to keep trying even if i occasionally roll one off the other side or land it in the same rough i just hit out of, but a couple feet in front of me).

more important than keeping score is a little stat keeping. i like fairway's hit or where my misses went, gir, and putts. when i got my fitting the guy showed me a little ping chart for approach shots that was a square with a circle inside and lines from corner to corner. basically you could just mark whether you flew the green, came up short, or were on and what direction your miss/hit was.

it lets you figure stuff out that you might not realize when you average out everything from a couple rounds.

[slodsm]

I keep a pretty good record of stats, over my last 20 rounds I'm just over 50% fairways but less than 5% gir. I am shortttttt on everything, like a 5i is typically 155 for me (I bested that by 9 yards today but it's not typical). From my swing speed when I let the thinking go out of it, I'll be a 150yd 7i guy eventually but I let my mind get in the way of what my body can do a lot.

I am breathing, stepping back, swinging twice, addressing the ball, and giving it to it. They are doing a LOT better than they were a month ago so progress is progress. I pull short on my follow through, not sure why but I think it's because I'm so used to having a brutal slice that I started doing that to curb it some (all mental) but the instructor thinks it's because of how thick my chest is. I work on a drilling rig and spend a lot of time pulling 93ft stands of pipe back waaayyyyy up in the derrick so I'm fairly big and he commented today that it's part of my problem. Younger golfers are all pretty fit too and they don't have that problem so I'm thinking it's in my head still.