So I had my second golf lesson with Mike. To help me understand the importance of wrist hinge, he taught me a drill where I set up
and take a backswing, making sure to keep my left arm straight as I let my wrist hinge back with the club. Then as I begin to
unwind, I keep my wrist set in this hinged position, letting my arms “pump” up and down.
Here’s the video of the before and after my lesson:
As you can see in the “before” shot, I had reverted back to
some of my old habits of “pushing” the ball. But I had performed the drill at
least one time that was good enough for Mike to record it as the “after” shot.
Couldn’t wait to see if this would help my distances, so I
headed straight to the range. It was cold and windy there, and the shadows were
casting toward my stance. I tried to practice the drill, but all the balls kept
flying to the right. I only hit one straight about 110 yards with my 7-iron and
wasted the rest of the bucket of balls trying to replicate it.
Frustrated, tense, and tired, I threw my bag of clubs into the
car trunk and slammed the lid. I really wanted to see if I could get the hang
of this wrist hinge concept but I didn’t want to spend any more time at this
windy, shadowy range.
Luckily, there is another driving range nearby.
There, I saw two Korean women practicing, and one of them
called out “Hi, Donna,” as I walked by. Donna is not my name, but this woman
did know me. My husband and I had once played with her and her husband, randomly
matched up by the same tee time. I’ll say her name is Bea, but that is not her
real name either. As I recall, she played from the yellow tees and still drove
the ball farther than me. Her swing looked really smooth, like she was sweeping
up bread crumbs off the floor. I told her I had just come from a golf lesson.
“Why? You’re so good!” she said.
“Oh, but I’m not,” I lamented. “I can’t hit very far. Only
about 150 these days.”
Bea told me she used to hit 235 yards, but then she had a
baby and stopped playing for 10 years. Now she’s trying to play again but her driver
distance has fallen to about 210 yards.
“210!” I said. “You’ve got to teach me how to do that!” I
ran to get some range balls and showed her the drill I learned during my golf
lesson.
“Hmm, that looks like old school,” she joked. “How old is
your golf teacher?”
She said she learned from a Korean guy who doesn’t teach
anymore. He taught her that the swing is based on the tension created by the
torso moving one way and the hips moving the other way. You wind up and release
like a rubber band.
Then she taught me a drill where I fold my arms over my
chest and she gets behind me and holds my hips still, while I try to rotate on
the backswing. “Do you feel those muscles working?” she said. “Use those.”
Apparently I was rotating too much in the upper torso and I
should be rotating more in the waist. Plus I was not keeping my left arm
straight. And I should be taking the club back longer. She put a stick on the ground
along my target line behind the ball, and a pebble a couple inches in front of
the ball. She said I should take the club head back parallel to the stick and
then aim for the pebble.
The swing thoughts were piling up in my head. Based on what
I’d seen and read about golf, everything Bea said rang true. So did everything Mike
said. I was beginning to feel like golf advice is like astrology. No matter
what horoscope you read, it always sounds like it could apply to you.
So I put both drills together and tried to hit some balls. The result was a lot of crazy, wild shots that had Bea and
me cracking up in laughter. A bunch of my balls dribbled past the 150 yard
marker, but I definitely wasn’t getting any style points.
After practicing Mike’s drill all day, I couldn’t help but pump
my arms up and down on the backswing, hesitating before the downswing like a
baseball player waving a bat in the air. It reminded me of a swing I’d seen
before. I spent the last dozen balls trying to swing in a fluid motion, but I
just couldn’t do it. Defeated, I trudged back to the car. Night was falling and
the cold air had a bite to it.
Driving away from the range, I remembered who my hitchy new drill
swing reminded me of: Charles Barkley, a name that strikes fear into the hearts
of aspiring golfers. Charles Barkley’s swing is known as the world’s ugliest golf swing.
People say that looking directly at his swing may cause permanent psychological
damage, but if you look at
Tiger Woods impersonating Charles Barkley's golf swing, you’ll get the idea.
I am really hoping tomorrow will be a better day.