I Can't Take It Anymore!

All winter I have been patiently waiting for the weather to allow me to play a round, or at the very to least hit the driving range. I wandered into the local golf shop a few weeks ago to buy a new bag and to get about 30 minutes in on their SkyTrac, to hopefully find my swing again, since there has been too much time for practicing. After I took a few swings at it and was looking at the monitor to see how bad my slice was, a guy who couldn't have been anymore than early 30s MAYBE. He offered to show me a few things with my swing and of course I was willing take all the help I could get, the goal is to break 90 this year. He adjusted my grip, stance, club head speed. He did all this without me being able to use the launch monitor. After about an hour or so he hooked the SkyTrac back up and told me to hit a few. I have never hit a golf ball straighter. I went from having to a very bad slice to having a slight draw. Luckily over the weekend we had 60 degree weather and I was able to go to the driving at a course just down the road from. I wanted to put this new swing to the test. After I got warmed up and cussed at my clubs for about 10 minutes I started hitting those beautiful shots I was hitting at the shop, with a slight draw. Of course I'm not 100% consistent with it yet, but over the 4 years I have been golfing so far this is probably the biggest breakthrough I've had. Now I'm just losing my mind wanting to get out there on course and put this to the test once and for all. How long was it before you found your swing?

I took out an ad years ago in the personal section of the newspaper, and every year since. Still looking.

--kC

Still looking for it 25 years on. Numerous instructors have come and gone. Even more equipment. A quick change like you saw is very common, the question is does it come to the golf course with you? I've lost track of the amount of simulator/driving range heroes I've encountered over the years that look like they could give the tour a good run. Heck I was one of them for a season. But get me on a course or them on a course and the wheels fall off when the pressure to hit the shot is on.

I hope for you that this lesson stuck with you but the odds aren't in your favour, unfortunately! Muscle memory is a really hard thing to break.

I met my buddy on the range with his son the other day. I don’t know what transpired before, but the fellow next to me opposite them when I slipped in between them started saying things loudly like “Trying to shape a shot is for pros, just hit the ####ing ball, straight”. I uneasily yet politely agreed with him before shaping my shots LOL. When I got to driver, I managed one shot into the fence about 260 yards away. It was the first time I actually clipped it high up in quite a while. Usually lands just short with occasional rolls into it. I was following my buddy's advice when I did all this. As this other gentleman left his hitting area, he walked up to my friend’s son and says “Listen to your dad!”.

I have to guess that my buddy was giving his son lessons about shot shape even though his own shots were horrible due to lack of practice, and this other fellow thought it was BS advice or something to that effect? It wasn’t. He helped me get my shot shapes and really nail them.

Sometimes, it’s good to have someone knowledgeable watch you swing, and it sounds like you found your “swing advice man”!

When spring hits, go back to that store for a refresher then take it out on the course.

I've found it hundreds of times...… and then it goes away.

You never really find the magic bullet, because it's a myth. Hard work and practice throughout your golfing life is the only answer. I'm 56 and been golfing to basically a 0 to 3 handicap for 30 years and I never feel like I have it mastered or down.

I'm always working on my game. Range and short game.

Did you get this guys name?

Here is how this goes: a fella “finds it” and finishes the range session satisfied. The following round he plays terrific. The next range session he hits the first 20 or so great again. Fella then says “now, let’s stretch this out a few extra yards”.

and it’s gone.......

I was that guy. I think I'm over it. Hopefully. You have to accept that good enough is good enough and go practice pitching and chipping instead.

I saw the same thing happen to a friend of mine. 5 minute free lesson with one of the best instructors in North America. He went from hitting a low weak fade with the 6i, about 140 yards to a high push draw, 165 yards. It was like he was touched by the hands of God, I've never seen anything like it in 30 years.

Winter is the best time to make swing changes. If you have to look for your swing, it is better to find a new improved one rather than the old crappy one. Lol.

Winter time is a good time to groove something. However, without taking it outside and testing it, you could go down a very deep rabbit hole that is hard to get out off. It happened to me in the 80’s.

After I got warmed up and cussed at my clubs for about 10 minutes I started hitting those beautiful shots I was hitting at the shop, with a slight draw. Of course I'm not 100% consistent with it yet, but over the 4 years I have been golfing so far this is probably the biggest breakthrough I've had. Now I'm just losing my mind wanting to get out there on course and put this to the test once and for all. How long was it before you found your swing?

I had that feeling about 3 yrs ago when I got serious about fixing my swing, once and for all. It took 2 1/2 yrs after that to reach an aha moment and have it all come together and be reliable on the course. Nearly every time out. Lots of ups and downs in between.

You certainly have mastered it. How many armatures get that low, a tiny percentage.

Original poster, when you get to top of back swing, just try to remember to lay the club off when you start the down swing. That will stop you slicing forever.

Look of great tutorials online on how to do it correctly

My game is so solid since I have started do that. No more slices, now its just a draw or a hook if my grip to too far to the right on my left wrist.

So much more striking the ball consistently, will take this to the course if the weather in the UK ever improves.

Mentally and emotionally if you suddenly "find" your swing via breakthrough moment chances are you didn't have a swing problem - you probably had a set up problem. Preparing to swing gets the brain and body ready to execute. You will be more mentally stable (quiet, relaxed, confident, decisive) when you have a repeatable stance, grip (and pressure) and alignment. The instructor set the basics of grip, stance and alignment - and chances are your grip pressure was relaxed.

Work on your pre-shot routine and you'll be posting more "consistent" scores.

Good luck.

This year will be my 25th season playing golf. I would say I started to really find my swing around 2014-2015.

I did a package lesson with Golftec in 2013, and the guy got me turned onto to a more stack and tilt type of swing. I really noticed it with my irons, I was really connecting with them solidly and getting some nice distance gains. Problem was, my driver and fairway woods became an awful mess. Nasty hooks with a ton of top spin.

I spent the better part of a season struggling with it. I could not get off the tee with a driver to save my life. But man, my long irons were phenomenal. The coach at Golftec insisted that the iron and driver swings should be identical. But no matter how hard I tried to stick with that philosophy, it just didn't work. I hit the point where I tried to make every excuse I could to hit an iron off the tee - even par 5's - because I dreaded what would happen if I tried to hit driver. I feel as though I had the "driver yips" if that's even a term.

Fast-forward to 2015-2016, I finally decided to take the approach that the driver swing, and the iron swing are different. Which I had thought all along, but the Golftec guy insisted and I really was trying to follow his advice. Now I am back to being able to get off the tee with a good degree of confidence. My handicap is down to a 7, and I am liking where my game is. My goal this year is to get down to a 5.

All the comments are fine. Your looking for a feel for what you are trying to do. I know my swing so well that I can tell just by the the ball mark on the clubface what I have done. Normally it is right on the sweet spot but when it starts to get off a little, it will move a little toward the toe side.

Putting the time in is the seceret. That is where you get to know your swing. Don't deviate either. To many people give up on things too soon and chase the lesson rabbithole and never get out. I found that most of the time when things get a little off it is such a small adjustment to get back on track.

To many guys go and change there whole swing when all it needed was a little thought and a small tweak.

At the end of the season last year I was playing the best golf of my life. My swing felt natural and easy and everything felt like it was coming together.

Then winter came. And I started watching YouTube videos because what else am I going to do? And thinking about my swing. And taking mirror swings.

I've gone to the golf dome twice now in the last month or so. My swing is in shambles. I'm thinking about 100 different swing thoughts at once and I'm a total mess. Shanks, dead pulls, slices, whatever. It's an unathletic mess. I'm thinking about my stance, my pressure shift into my left heel, my hand path, my hip turn, shoulder turn, backswing length, bowed wrist, don't yank the handle, now shift to your left heel but don't fall backwards, SHANK.

I need help. Mentally and physically. I'm pretty sure my swing is gone. And I need to move somewhere warm.

I have been playing for 15 years and still haven't found it.

This happened to me last winter. I read the slicefixer manifesto and grooved what I thought the moves were in my indoor hitting area. For the first couple of months, it was great. I even broke 80 for the third time in my life. Turns out I was messing it all up. My swing videos from that time look hideous. By the end of the summer, I could barely keep the ball on the planet. I know what I was doing to make it work, but it was just one compensation on top of another. I’m still trying to unwind it!

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Went to Texarkana and found I was nowhere close to the 9-3 I thought I had down. Spent a lot of time heading down that path where I had stretches of decent golf and major issues with shanks. I learned a hard lesson that it's really hard to make golf changes based on what you read online. I learned my lesson and found someone I could work with locally.

I wish I could find someone to adjust my clubhead speed up by 15mph

Now that's some wise insight there. I've been guilty myself on numerous occasions.

After two rough seasons following years as a + handicap I put the club away this winter. I have zero expectations. I even put a net up in the garage this winter - zero swings. Its next stop is the curb.

I hope that guy move to Australia. Great story, so many times I think I build castles of cards that fall down with my tired breath

And my experience was the opposite. First read the ET as a perennial 6 hc, improved to a 3-4 on my own. Ultimately connected with the man and continued to improve. 8 years later spent a good portion of the 2019 season as a +1 and just this past weekend won the club championship at my new club in FL. I attribute a lot of my success to clearing up some serious misconceptions about what SHOULD be happening in the golf swing, and sticking with a single swing philosophyrather than bouncing around from idea to idea..

Still, I dont really believe in swing breakthroughs. Golf improvement typically comes from small incremental changes. Unless you have some radical fundamental flaws it's often 2 steps forward, 1 step back, and on it goes...

There is no question he's knowledgeable about the golf swing. Your former and current handicap has you at the top echelon of amateur golfers. So your ability to get results are a bit different than the average golfer. Sort of how a very talented musician gets a lot more mileage out of the work they put in than somebody who isn't as gifted. If you have pretty good mechanics and knowledge of the golf swing, no doubt you can benefit from a trip out there. Or if you are a blank slate that can learn 'the right way'...which is why so many kids out there have fantastic swings.

But if you need more help, it was hard to learn through ET (which was never designed to be an instruction manual) or an average golfer looking to get more fundamentally sound, it's a bit harder of a road. For me it was just finding someone locally that I could see consistently and build on the same concepts. And over the period of 18 months, my swing has rounded into shape. That got me to my lowest handicap last year, shooting my personal best round, winning my flight of multiple club events and most of all enjoying golf. For a lot of years golf felt like I was chasing a golf swing and any semblance of consistency. Now I actually have a swing consistent enough to get my albeit modest goal of single digits and have more fun playing than ever.

It’s all relative my friend. 0-3 hasn’t mastered anything. Not close. I speak as a guy in that boat. There’s always more. And yet you constantly work to tread water to stay where you are. Master. Lol. Not by a long shot.

I would agree. I'd say for the past couple of years I have generally stopped overthinking things, and have just stuck with what is currently working. I don't make big swing tweaks anymore. At most I will make small tweaks depending on what the swing is doing for the day.

I've found that once I was able to get my swing thoughts down to one thought or less while standing over the ball, that's been key for me. I dread the old days when I'd have 3 or 4 things that I'd try to focus on as I made my swing. I just can't execute on that many things in the 2-3 seconds that it takes to make a swing.