In my ongoing pursuit to drop my handicap I’ve been utilising all of the awesome teaching facilities that we have here at Peter Field Golf Shop. If you’ve not read my previous blog about my last session with Lewis, then check it out here to read about the continuation of my journey on tech.
As the weather has started to finally improve and give more time to practise on the course as the season gets started in the coming months, I jumped back into the tech bay to do a little work to assist something that plagues many golfers in the wetter months: strike.
In my previous tech lessons, we’ve focused on the position I get myself into in the backswing, in order to most efficiently create power and control path. These are the building blocks on which I can always set myself up to put my best swing on it but in order to get from the top of my seeing to the ball I need to transition from the backswing into the downswing well. So, we looked at what I was doing as I came down towards impact. Historically, I’ve had consistent problems regarding my strike, hitting the heel and poor low point control and although I have had improvements with the work that we’ve done so far, those tend to be the misses I see in my approach play. A lot of this owes to a pulling action that I have in my downswing which allows the club to get too far out in front of me which reduces the space between me and the ball, often presenting the heel. The aim for this session, get my hands lower, earlier to move the strike towards the centre more consistently.
While much of the focus regarding strike is where my hands end up, it can’t be achieved without also looking at the lower body and the way I use the ground. A theme of our sessions has been that I turn a lot, but too late in the swing and by the time I’m making a good turn my hands are already in front of my body which is always going to lead to a path that fades the ball. To work on this Lewis got me in a starting position to simulate the downswing, where I start with the club in a nice, flat position where I’d hope to be in the downswing and then initiate the movement by pushing down into my left foot and pulling my left hip back. The idea being that if I can do this earlier in my swing and use this
feeling as the trigger movement for my downswing, I’ll be in a much better position at impact where I can hit the ball from the inside and keep the strike away from the heel of the club. We saw some interesting results with most of the strikes being in the low toe, with it being an exaggerated movement it was good to see that it moved the strike away from my main miss. We mainly used the face-on camera to achieve this and wouldn’t have been able to analyse this movement in the same way without it, breaking down each position and how to get my hands into a better spot.
Moving forward to promote the right feeling I’ve been starting my range sessions with hitting 40-yard wedge shots with an alignment stick stuck into the ground in front of me. My aim being get my hands nice and low while pushing hard off my left, if the ball starts right of the alignment stick and falls left, I’m making the right movements.
This process is a perfect advert for a series of lessons. The time and space that having multiple lessons affords has meant that we can look at each part of my swing and break it down where we need to instead of finding quick fixes, so that we can really make the most out of all of the tech and go into real detail. The main benefit of all of this is I now have a really detailed understanding of my swing, which not only makes it easier to work on but also makes it easier to understand on the course, allowing me to play to my strengths and recover better from bad swings.
If your appetite has been whetted and you’re keen to see what all the fuss is about, then you can book lessons here, or phone the shop on 01603 740979.
