Progress Update: April 27, 2008

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It always seems to get worse before it gets better. I already knew that, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

After last week’s video analysis, I started to work on improving my hip action. I have a tendency to slide laterally toward the target on the down swing, causing several problems. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be one of those quick fixes that just clicks into place suddenly. It’s a long-standing problem of mine.

At the driving range yesterday I tried to key on really rotating my hips instead of laterally sliding. My swing thought was a common one for this type of situation: pull my left pocket behind me.

Of course, such a drastic change threw me all out of sync and I was hitting the ball pretty poorly. Every so often, I started to catch on and would hit one that felt great, but I wasn’t able to make it repetitive. On the course later on, it was more of the same. More often than not, I found myself reverting to the old hip slide.

That’s natural because I just started to work on the new move, so it’s a long way from becoming muscle memory. On the course, you have to trust your swing and let it become automatic. That’s one positive thing I had going for me. I wasn’t getting too mechanical in my swing thoughts, so my body just reverted to what it knows well. It’s nice to know that my mental game is improving that way.

I’m interested to see how this will progress my overall move toward the one-plane swing. Right now, I’m keying on my hip turn, but Jim Hardy’s one-plane swing concept focuses on turning the torso and shoulders hard because of the rotational action of the swing. I’ll need to make sure that as I progress, I eventually start to incorporate that into my learning.

This is one swing change that I’m going to have to dig out of the dirt. It’s going to take a while, so that’s a little frustrating. It looks like we’re in for some rain today, so I’m going to have to just sit here and stew over it.