The Swing and the Result

First off, check out part two of the Dr. Rob story now up on http://thedanplan.com. Rob is a great guy with a wonderful story.

I met Christopher Smith out at Heron Lakes yesterday for an on-course lesson. We played 6 holes and had a friendly wager going, but that went by the wayside after a few holes as we more focussed on why my 6-iron contact has been degrading over the past couple of months. The one common theme I have heard from good players, coaches, pros, etc is that my swing is looking really good these days, but my results aren’t there. In a lot of ways that is better than having decent results with a non-functional swing, but it still spurs a lot of frustrations. It’s almost as if the better my swing becomes mechanically, the worse I actually play. But, then again, it’s golf.

I’m actually not worried about it too much. This is a long term project and sometimes the big changes just take time out on the course and range. The good, and important, news is that my swing is looking good and once my contact improves I should be getting great ball speed and accuracy. It’s just not at that stage yet and the only thing I can do is keep at it and try to improve by a fraction of a millimeter a day, which is golf terms can produce dramatic differences.

For now, I pull the ball, push it, hook it, hit it thin and fat. All of these results stem from the exact same swing but with a different looking club face at impact. My swing path is slightly from the inside out and if I then leave the club face open I will push it, if I close the club face at impact it hooks. Thin and fat are from the path of the club bottoming out just before the ball instead of just after where it should. The problem with all of this is that the typical golfer thinks there swing is erratic when really it’s just slight differences in spot of contact and direction of the face.. The more I learn about golf, the more I want to learn about physics.

Sorry for getting too bogged down in minutia there. The gist of it is that we’re onto something with the full swing and it’s looking better than ever, but at this very moment the results are worse than ever. You really have to get worse, though, if you want to get better. If I just continued down the path of mediocrity that my original swing was producing I would never have the chance to be better than about a 4-5 handicap. This is a long project with a giant goal down the road, so I have to be willing to quell the ego and suck here and there for a while. It’s about 2016, not about today.

Speaking of today, I’m heading out the door as soon as I finish this blog. Driving to San Francisco to meet with my new mental coach Dr. Fran Pirozzolo and check out some of the Champions Tour play at TPC Harding. If anyone’s down there, let’s meet up and watch some great golfers in action!

6 Responses to "The Swing and the Result"

Brett Slater says:

November 1, 2011 at 10:18 am

Hey, Dan…

That’s always something I try to remember when I mishit: That even a fairly big slice or fat shot is probably the result of a swing error that’s only millimeters off. Kind of a miracle that there’s ANY consistency, when you think about it.

Enjoy Frisco.

Did you settle yet on where you’ll spend the winter?
Chris says:

November 1, 2011 at 1:14 pm

Hey Dan,

The reason why you are hitting it crappy is because you haven´t hit enough balls yet to engrain the new swing. You could have two people with identical looking “textbook” swings while one golfer is striping it and the other one is hitting it all over the place. Why is that? Because it takes roughly 50,000 swings to make a swing somewhat automatic. Your coach seems to know what he´s talking about, so the most important thing is to stick to what you are doing. Trust me on this.

Good luck bro!
williamevanl says:

November 1, 2011 at 9:11 pm

Getting worse… ?! I think I remember someone warning you about that.

Thats the WORST part about golf, It’s very difficult to just maintain all of the good things you’ve already figured out.

Your experiences are mirroring my own in a number of ways. My swing was out to in, so I got it more in to out, hit the ball great, got so good at it that I started to hit the ball bad because I was too inside out! I’d hit sweeping hooks with everything even a pw, Block, hook, block, hook.

Stance was to closed, (but felt open) so I went against my ‘feel’ and started to open, noticed after several months of practice that I’m way too open and now square looks/feels WAY closed! Also, went through shanks for months (yikes!)

You still have duck hooks to contend with too with the driver (likely if you are swing to right field with your irons, works great with irons, potentially disasterous with driver. You might even have some of that with the hybrid, but it’s way worse with the driver.

Are you catching the ball on the sweet spot on the face? Thats another incredibly difficult thing I.M.O. You have to get the divot to bottom out several inches in front of the ball to get a ‘real’ ball ie, low flight, boring. It looks like you catch it high. Woods club for reference:

http://www.greenjacketauctions.com/site/images_items/Item_6890_3.jpg
dan says:

November 3, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Hello Brett,

So totally true. Same swing and barely any difference where it makes contact, yet a dramatically different result. The trick is to know what happened at contact and how to fix it. That’s what I’m trying to learn at least!

I don’t have complete plans yet, but I’m pretty certain I will be in Atlanta this winter for at least a few months. While there, will have plenty of trips down to Florida for some warmer weather..
dan says:

November 3, 2011 at 6:13 pm

Hello Chris,

It does take reps, for sure. It takes a lot of things to get to the point where you are stripping the ball and luckily I have almost 8,000 hours of practice still left to get me there. Thanks for reading and for the comment!

Dan
dan says:

November 3, 2011 at 6:22 pm

Hello William,

So is golf, we all have swing issues and work on those until the opposite becomes the issue… It’s a tough game, but not impossible. I’m nowhere near where I want/need to be, but I’m content with the progress that has been made to date and look forward to the ups and down in the future. To me, it’s like a pendulum where at first your mistakes are very dramatic to the left and right, but over time those mistakes are slowly honed in until your mistakes and miss hits are acceptable. It’s not about hitting it perfect every shot, but about getting the ball to perform more or less how you want when you don’t make solid contact. But, I’m sure you know all of this already

Not catching many sweat spots right now, but I’m also not getting any more hossel rockets, so that’s some progress.

Thank for the comment as always, I enjoy hearing about your experiences. Please keep reading and commenting!

Dan

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