Things are starting to click now. In my lessons, we’ve been addressing a few problems.  Here’s a rundown of the tweaks I’ve had to make: Stop taking the club way inside to start the swing.  I’ve been concentrating on taking it more back along the line.  To me, that action feels like I’m taking the club back outside the line and re-routing it on the downswing.  Of course, I’m not, but it’s way different than taking it back inside the target line. Stand a little closer to the ball.  Over time, I’ve begun reaching for the ball a little.  This is a change that I’m not having too much trouble with.  However, I’m catching a lot of shots on the toe, I think I’m subconsciously trying to avoid a shank because I’m standing that much closer.  When I concentrate on not hitting the ball on the toe, I hit it solidly.  It’s just a matter of gaining trust and confidence. Tempo.  I identified tempo as the secret of golf a while back, and without a

The thing I hate about making swing changes (or fixes) is that it’s such a long, painstaking process to commit the correct moves to muscle memory.  In my case, I’m revamping my tempo and making other minor corrections. After a couple of lessons (and more to come), I’m seeing drastic changes.  It just hasn’t translated into lower scores yet. On the plus side, my quality of contact has drastically improved.  I’m making crisp, center contact a much higher percentage of the time.  When I’m feeling the correct tempo in my swing, my accuracy is also greatly improved. One other thing I noticed, that I briefly commented on, is that my release right near impact is much more under control.  Before, I would swing very hard and the release of the club just sort of happened and there wasn’t much I could do with it.  Now, I feel like I have a lot more feel through impact. On the downside, that extra control at impact comes at a price – I need to get the timing

It was good to get back to taking lessons this week. I had my first one in quite a while on Saturday. After watching me hit a few shots from face on and down the line perspectives, my pro’s first observation was that my takeaway is bad. I’ve been taking the club too quickly to the inside of the line to start the swing. This is likely due to my work with a one-plane swing. It’s very rotational and the desire to take the club back on the correct plane caused me to go a little bit in the wrong direction. It goes a long way to explaining why sometimes I don’t feel right at the top of the swing and why when that happens, the result is a guaranteed snap hook. Even when I don’t do that, I still have a tendency to pull the ball left. After putting me in a better takeaway position, my pro gave me a good drill to work on getting in a solid position to start the swing,