Let's Have Your Best "Ah-ha" Moment in your Golf Development

[inthehole]

I'm sure we all have many "discoveries" along our golf journeys, but to me, the one thing above all others that really seems to have helped me the most & I'm embarrassed to say that it took me 2-1/2 years to discover it ... is that adding just a little WRIST HINGE to everything (irons, wedges, hybrids) helped every aspect of my game.     I dabbled with wrist hinge with only the driver off and on - and when it works, it adds an amazing amount of distance, but for me, the lack of control wasn't worth it, so I abandoned it.    So I never tried it with irons, wedges, etc.       Was struggling as usual with consistency with the longer clubs and especially wedges for the better part of this year & I added just a little wrist hinge for fun & VOILA, never saw such beautiful consistent ball flight - I think it allows me to feel proper "compression" that occurs from a downward ball strike that there is so much talk about.    It's easy to overdue the wrist hinge thing, but using a little bit just clicks for me & my fairway shots are so much better than they used to be ...

... lets have your best "ah-ha" moment of discovery ... GO

[Dave2512]

Shorter backswing was everything for me.

[JonMA1]

Ah-ha! This game is really f#$*ing difficult!

O.k., seriously, controlled tempo produces cleaner shots.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Imagine you have a child on a rope swing.

If you pull the swing back and shove it as hard and fast as you can the kid's going to fall off.
If you push the swing before it gets to the top the swing will jerk and the kid is going to fall off.

To push a kid on a swing you wait for the swing to get to the very top and just a fraction after it starts to go back down you push at a steady pace.

For me the golf swing is a kid on a swing. As soon as I stopped rushing into the downswing early and trying to hit as hard as humanly possible I started getting all sorts of consistency!

[David in FL]

At the risk of sounding sycophantic, it came 5 years ago right here, when I was first introduced to the true laws of ball flight.

[ay33660]

Never really understood the "grip your club like you're holding a bird" comments till about three years ago.

At the range I combined a very light grip with the wrist hinge and good tempo .... all of a sudden I hit my 8 iron over 150 yards. Before that I needed a 6 iron to consistently hit over 150 yards.

While I now know what a "pure" shot feels like, it is very elusive and I probably only manage one in ten shots at the range.

But when I do .... wow it feels great .... high and a slight draw flight.

[iacas]

Golf instruction is only weird magical voodoo when you're talking about a lousy instructor. For the good instructors out there, and especially for the great ones, it's very much a cause-effect thing, and it can be simplified and properly prioritized, and golfers can get better right away, without needing to "rebuild" or "tear down" their entire motion.

[Crim]

So far...it's when I switched to a cross-hand grip on my putter. I very rarely ever 3 putt anymore.

[saevel25]

After Erik finally bugged me enough to get me to drive up to Erie, PA for a lesson. It was about 30 minutes in, "AH-HA, I should have got this lesson way sooner".

[Ernest Jones]

I'm still waiting for it. :-( Have had a lot of eureka moments but none of them have stood the test of time to be a real ah-ha moment. Swing's getting steadily better but no huge leaps yet.

[billchao]

My moment came one day when I realized that I wasn't as good as I thought I was. Really put me on the right path towards improvement.

[nevets88]

Sounds silly, but I hated seeing my swing on video. With instructors here & elsewhere pushing me to use video (thanks iacas), I used the heck out of it finally this year, learned a lot, started doing lots of mirror work as a consequence and discovered I'm a very visual learner. Not much of an aha, it was sitting in front of me all these years.

[RFKFREAK]

Golf instruction is only weird magical voodoo when you're talking about a lousy instructor. For the good instructors out there, and especially for the great ones, it's very much a cause-effect thing, and it can be simplified and properly prioritized, and golfers can get better right away, without needing to "rebuild" or "tear down" their entire motion.

Finding the right instructor locally has been difficult.

Quote:

Originally Posted by saevel25

After Erik finally bugged me enough to get me to drive up to Erie, PA for a lesson. It was about 30 minutes in, "AH-HA, I should have got this lesson way sooner".

This might have to happen.

I'm still waiting for it.

Have had a lot of eureka moments but none of them have stood the test of time to be a real ah-ha moment. Swing's getting steadily better but no huge leaps yet.

Same here.  There are times when I find myself  learning a nugget or two but nothing that has been a big step forward.

[AmazingWhacker]

I have had several on my way from being "the worst golfer you've ever seen" to where I am now . .a pretty average recreational golfer who can occassionaly break 90 on easy courses.  I used to have the most horrible swing ever (big booming slice, every swing, for years) - and I'm sure a lot of people get to skip over some of my "realizations" just because they aren't so athletically hopeless.

First one - keep a flat left wrist.  This one really opened to my eyes to how wrong I had been doing things.

Second one - Turn, don't sway in the backswing.  This was funny because I had several "ah-ha" moments where I thought "now I've stopped swaying" . but I really was still swaying - just less.  Probably still am - but definitely a lot less than several years ago.

Third one - Rhythm is extremely important - especially in the transition.  I was the biggest transition-rusher out there (still have that tendency).

Fourth one - Shorten the backswing to a length my flexibility can manage.  And that's a big one because it took me a while to realize what my flexibility could or couldn't manage because I was doing it wrong to begin with.  I can load the shaft a lot more with a short, compact backswing than with a long, out of synch, arms-outracing-the-body backswing.

[Heady monster]

Golf is a game of seeing the line and hitting your ball down it. Tee to green. Driver or putter. See the line. Align yourself accordingly. Hit the ball down the line.

[mvmac]

For me learning and understanding how the lower body works in a good golf swing was very important.  I grew up being told that the lower body had to stay "quiet" and that you used your "big" muscles to power the swing.  Yet all the old school players would talk about footwork and the motion of the knees, how the swing worked from the ground up, etc.  Whenever I would inquire about that I was told the "modern" swing was better.

So when I learned about the knees changing flex, how the hips control the shoulders, how the hips have to actually transfer forward, how you push off the ground for speed, it was a big deal for me and made a lot of sense.

This might have to happen.

Same here.  There are times when I find myself  learning a nugget or two but nothing that has been a big step forward.

Would obviously recommend you go see Erik in Erie but if you don't have the time I would suggest taking a look at Evolvr.  Hands on instruction is more preferable but at least you won't have to guess how/what you need to work on.

http://evolvr.thegolfevolution.com/

[MS256]

I have lots of them. Occasionally the Ah-ha moment even hangs on for an Ah-ha month or two but it always reverts back to an Oh-crap moment sooner or later.

[Wardy]

I've had 1 recently:

1) The halfway back position of moving your hands parallel so the club faces upwards, without hinging your wrists until after this point. This has totally changed my swing and I now understand the 'feeling' of having an open clubface during the backswing