for keeping shoulders and arms as one unit
I’ve been hacking at improving my game
Since last I wrote, I’ve been digging and studying a practicing. This truly as an argonaut’s journey.
Couple things:
- Mike Austin – this guy from back in the day who made some videos with himself in a skeleton body suit to discuss the pair of ball joints and motions that are involved in the golf swing. The videos are really quite informative – check ’em out. I’ve never seen anything else explain it quite the way he does. You’ve got the connection between your skull/neck and spine which is a pivot area, your shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, ankles, knees and so on. He concludes many videos by emphasizing that the swing is about the sequence of these joints operating in pronation, flexing and extensions and a bunch of other muscle-motion related terms but it all makes sense when you watch. THIS has made an impression on me and I’m incorporating it into my practices
- My Grip – I’m done with the pinky grip. I’ve been using this grip since I’ve started learning on day one. I’ve now decided, “Who cares if Tiger uses it?! – it does not help my hands work as one!” I’ve played around and found that the baseball grip works much better for me. It was a little awkward at first but …. waddayagonnado? – it’s now quite comfortable. I can actually feel more of a pendulum motion at the top of my back swing and the bottom and the follow thru. I just have way more fluidity. In addition, after practicing with wiffle balls and a portable mat at the local university – SJSU – I made an adjustment to my baseball grip by putting my left thumb under the palm of my right hand instead of having it wrap around the club like a baseball bat. Both ways are better than the pinky but this small adjustment stops me from pulling inwards and coming over the top on my downswing. My fingers (especially my forefinger) don’t get in my way – meaning they don’t get excited and trigger happy making my arms and wrist tense up – who knew that the ability to pinch interferes with the ability to grip and hold. With this new method, I can really feel the club AND control it.
- More on posture – when how-to instructions talk about putting your weight left or right they’re really referring to your CoG (center of gravity) which requires a different mental calculus than just shifting some weight to one leg or the other. I finding that the imagery of having my head/neck act as the fulcrum in a catapult that is trying to fling a canon ball (that is cradled to the golf head) along an arc to its destination target – this helps me understand how the whole head-neck-shoulder-armpit-arm apparatus is suppose to ‘work-as-on’ and why my head needs to stay till. It’s all about the swinging – not the pulling or the batting but the rocking motion of an oil rig or those sailing ship pendulum swing rides at the amusement park. More importantly, I’ve realized that because I’m of average height (5’10.5″ – 11″) but have a low center of gravity (maybe its my runner-thighs) that I establish a much better pendulum flow and arc if I assume a fairly – actually very – straight posture – like I’m barely leaning forward. Basically, just slightly bending my knees and tilting my head a bit. Maybe it’s because I have a fairly pronounced curvature in my lower back already or something but …. things are more natural and my swing’s more consistent and the sequence of interplay between joints more natural when I do that.
So it feels like the good weather is bringing back some good spirits and good willingness and aptitude for this year’s attempt at improving my golf game. Maybe it’s related to the fact that my daughter is back home studying college courses via distance learning – because it’s been some time since I’ve focused this much. Or maybe it’s COVID-19. Or maybe my brain finally got tired of me trying to mentally imagine how to improve my swing.
But I must say – today’s practice felt good and generated good results. Out of about 100 wiffle balls I had only 6-7 shanks or pulls or top-overs. I had a couple balls fly right. And the rest all fell in a radius of 8 feet about 25-35 yard straight ahead of me with about 70% of those within a radius of 5 feet.
It was a nice day on the open grass. A lot of students were taking graduation pictures since there was no graduation ceremony. The flowers were blooming and it was a classic dry, clean sunshine, cautiously breezy easy kind of day.
I’ll take it.
