Palm Springs golfing lessons part two

Today I met with Bruce Furman for the third time since I arrived in the desert 9 days ago.  The first lesson was a great intro into what I will be working on while down here and (you can read about that in the last blog post) the second was laced with some things that stretched my swing comfort level beyond what I was comfortable doing.  That usually means it’s a good thing as if it’s comfortable it probably isn’t a big change.

Today, we continued to work on my turn.  In order to eventually be able to generate the necessary power to get up to Tour distance I have to make a full shoulder turn.  The difference with today’s lesson and the last one was I finally found a “feel” for what it meant to make a full shoulder turn.  Last time I thought I understood what I was supposed to do, but didn’t have an internal concept of the new move and so left the lesson a little clueless.  As a student, I should have spoken up and said that I didn’t get it, but I figured that I would be able to find it on the range later.  That didn’t happen and I spent a few days blindly trying to figure it out until today.

Here is Bruce describing what it’s like to teach students a feel (sorry that the audio is a little quiet):

I think that idea is pretty fascinating as everyone has different swing keys and just because someone says you should feel like you start with your shoulder and that is their key doesn’t necessarily mean that is actually what they are doing.  For me, my new feel is to turn more with my hips and to keep my head over the ball.  When I do this, my shoulders turn more and my head doesn’t stay over the ball, but moves back just a hair in the backswing.  Before I was moving my head and upper body so much that I was having a hard time finding the ball in the downswing.

It was a great lesson.

And, at a convenient time as I left the range hitting the ball well and tomorrow I am driving down to Carlsbad to have my long sticks looked at during a second club fitting with them.    Here is the blog from the first time down there in case anyone didn’t get a chance to read about that:  Titleist fitting

Since that fitting I have changed a lot about how I hit the ball and seeing as I am just 100 miles away right now I figured it was a good time to stop by and get a tuneup.  The swing I bring tomorrow will have most of the elements in place for what I hope to bring into this coming golf season.  I’ll write about that experience soon.

The Humana Challenge is down here too, so there is a lot going on right now.  I hope to see some of that action this weekend.  It’s been too long since I went to a professional event.  I think the last PGA Tour tournament I saw live was back in 2011.  They don’t have many of those in Oregon.

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