Well, I spent the better part of a week trying to figure out how to get things moving in the right direction. I think I might have picked the wrong week. The timing of these little changes took me into the ROMP Tournament, and I suffered dearly for it. I had found that I was not getting a full enough shoulder turn and diagnosed that my feet were possibly the cause. I thought that it was that they were too far apart, which then forced me to move away from the ball, thereby making my angle of attack too shallow.
Good theory, but I may have missed the point. I wanted to be a little bit more upright, so during that week, I tried to bring my feet together some and stand a little taller, while getting some full turns. It seemed that this worked for a little while, but the second day at Sakonnet with the boyz, I started getting some really wierd results.
Problem #1: Lost distance
First, and most importantly, I lost distance. I knew that this would happen.
I hit my irons very strongly. Some would say too strongly. My 9 iron is my 150
club and has been for about 2 years. My wedge goes about 135. When I made the
change, suddenly, my 8 iron was going about 140, and my 9 barely made it past
125. But the variability was still there. I had some 9 iron shots that went
105 and some that went 130. It just wasn't comfortable. To this point, I was
driving the ball fine and hitting the long ball pretty straight.
Problem #2: Fat shots, thin shots, off the
hosel, off the toe
Suddenly, I was a beginner again with my irons. I took a lot of deep, deep divots.
Some would call them toupee's, but Nelly called them Flying Squirrels and they
were a little bigger than a toupee, so that is what I would called them. On
one hole after hitting a particularly bad shot, I called Nelson over to inspect
the divot. It was humorous and distressing at the same time. I went for humor.
The divot was about 2 inches wide, and about 3 feet (let me say this again,
3 feet!) long! It looked like I took a chunk of turf out with a sickle. Well,
I knew things were perhaps a little too upright, since it had to be the toe
that made those marks. I also hit some really thin shots, the line-drive kind
that may work out to be a good shot, but are far from what you expect. I hit
countless balls off the hosel, sending them dead left into the woods. I was
beginning to judge a good round on whether I sent any left or not. And of course
there were the ones off the toe which make the nice soft ball feel like it is
a rock, and the distance lost is tremendous.
Problem #3: I started to sway instead of
turn
The only thing that would cause damage like that to a perfectly innocent fairway,
especially a 3 foot crevasse, is that I was swaying instead of turning. That
would mean that my angle of attack would bottom out, virtually flattening the
bottom of my swing for 2-3 feet instead of the normal iron angle which might
bottom out for about 6-8 inches. that is what good divots usually look like,
but mine were worth apologies to the grounds crew. I replaced all of them, but
I felt like I as on camera every time I went to pick one up.
Problem #4: Woods started to unravel
When we hit the 7th hole, it all started unravelling for my woods. Now keep
in mind, I was very pleased with my woods, so to introduce a new problem to
a part of my game that was right on track was dismaying. Earlier in the year,
I was hitting more fairways than any other year in the past. I had an average
of 10 fairways, and on some occasions, I hit 14 of 14. On Sakonnet's Hole #7,
I took a conservative play and hit my 5 wood. I duffed it. Then went up to play
it with a 5 wood again and sent the ball out of bounds to the left. The result
is not what counts, but I felt very weak and flimsy. Something was definitely
not right. On the next hole, I did the same thing with the 3 wood. Then on the
next hole after a good drive with the Driver, I sent my approach shot over the
stone wall and into the driving range. It was definitely a hosel shot. No mistaking
the sound and the ball flight. I was once again at wits end. How I managed to
pull together a few decent rounds after that, I can only attribute to my chipping
and putting which were holding me together, but I knew that once the changes
negatively affected my driver and woods, I was going to have to start over.
Problem #5: Muscle memory
I think the worst part of changing any swing is the problem of trying to tell
your body not to do what it has been doing effortlessly for the past two years.
Some of my bad shots were so bad, that it felt like somebody handed me a wiffle
ball bat and told me to swing. Everything went out of control and I looked like
and idiot. When asked what happened, I simply said, "Muscle memory. My old swing
is trying to hang in there."
Back to the Cage
After the tourney buzz subsided, I went back to the cage in my garage (I didn't
even want to see another ball flying, so the range was right out), and did some
preliminary work. My first thought was to see if my original theory about the
stance width held water. I set my feet down where they are with the narrower
stance, then took a rough measurement of my shoulder width and then put the
club down and then put my feet where the ends were. To my surprise, my shoulders
were much wider than I thought. I guess my original theory was based on my poor
self image of how big my shoulders are, instead of solid thought.
I started to swing the clubs again, and noticed that I was hitting the same general area with my clubs as I was before I started making changes. There were no, heavy hits on the mat, and no complete misses, just a light grazing with the club, which made a "scratching" sound. I felt that I needed to come back to the swing that I so handily dismissed two weeks before. But something was still nagging me. Why did I change in the first place? After taking a long look at my swing on the video tape, I realized that my problem was something that tends to happens every so often. I am not getting my hands high, and they sometimes cause the swing to get a little erratic (mainly fat and thin shots). So I went into the cage to try and force the muscle memory back to its old form. It took a bit of doing, but I think that I finally got it back. The next round is at Falmouth Country Club. A field test, if you will. Check out the results of the round, they are posted.
Final Thoughts
Well, its back to the basics for me. I have worn a theory thin. I have destroyed
some sod in the process. I have ballooned in handicap up from 12.9 to 14.5 (to
come back down to 13.1 after Falmouth). I have gotten angry. Really angry. I
have found ways to make a par when nothing is going right. I have learned how
to lose. I have learned how to listen to my body. I have learned how to be willing
to drop everything and try a new theory. And I have learned when to say that
I had something better in the first place and go back to it. My swing is feeling
fine, and so am I.
Until then, for God's sake, Fore on the green!
-Murph