Improvement expectations & lessons

[Effington]

Hey all,

I encountered a slightly unusual situation and thought I'd share here to see if any of you have also experienced this. I'm new to the sport, but can hit the ball straight and high; 80-90 yards with the PW and 120-130 yards with 7i fairly good consistency. I can sometimes hit the 5i around 150-160 but that's fairly inconsistent, and I'm even more inconsistent with my woods. I've been to the driving range 4+ days weekly for about two months, so finally decided to enlist the help of a teacher to make sure I'm practicing correctly, and hopefully improve faster.

Anyway, I had my first lesson with an instructor and one thing that was unusual was that I was striking the ball worse than I had in weeks. I arrived early and warmed up sufficiently, but even then I was hitting them badly. My thought is that I had nerves because it was the first time I was having him look at my swing and I wanted it to be good.

Has that ever happened to you?

He only had me take four shots, where 2 were fine and 2 tailed about 30 degrees to the right. His analysis was that I was over swinging on the poor shots; everything looked fine until right before contact, where I turn my shoulders left in an effort to generate more power. This created an outside-in swing, poor contact, etc etc.

Another question I had for you guys is regarding my expectations for lessons. He seemed to be very complimentary of my swing. My expectation going into the lesson was that since I hit the ball 80 yards with my PW, I must be doing a lot of things wrong, considering this is well below the typical average. My friend can hit his 130-140. I'm abnormally small, so I estimated that I should be able to get it 115 and I'd be happy. However, he said I had a great athletic set-up, straight backswing, and good follow-through on my downswing and a good finish. He made a tiny adjustment to my grip but didn't have too many comments overall there. Besides the shoulder turn issue, his main comment was that I should kink my wrist more as I only had about a 75 degree angle instead of 90, and that I released it early. He said that will help with distance, although it will be difficult and require a lot of practice to time it correctly. I'm hoping that I'm jumping the gun and that I actually have more things to adjust, he just didn't want to overwhelm me with too many things on day one.

My goal is to be able to hit the ball far/straight enough to give myself a chance at GIR's on any hole of an average difficulty course. While I don't expect to be able to actually get it consistently, I at least want to be good enough to give myself a chance. Right now my only option is to lay it up, so I'm losing one stroke before I hit the green. It takes a lot of fun out of the game knowing that I'm essentially giving up a stroke on every hole...if I 3-putt enough, I'm shooting 100 or more then. I'm aiming for mid-80's...some pars, some bogeys with an occasional double.

Is that too high of an expectation?

[MacDutch]

To be nervous and hit your balls poor happend to me a lot when having lessons. Your expectations are a bit high. I chopped my goals into pieces of one year. If you break 100 the first year, that would be a nice goal. Important will be if you will find a pro who will be able to teach you the way that suits you best. I state this because I had a couple who could not. Every person has a learningstyle. The pro should recognise yours and be able to adjust his lessons. I for instance get lost when they start talking technical. I have to feel and get a mental picture of the right movement.