Underdog Golf Blog

Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. I’ve grown to love that sound so much. The sound of connecting with the ball first and launching it off the club face. Anytime you watch a PGA tournament you hear this sound with almost every shot. As an amateur, and most importantly beginner, the occurrence of this is a bit more spread out.

One of the main things Brian and I have been working on lately is lagging the club on the downswing and forward shaft lean at contact. This traps the ball between the de-lofted club face and the ground launching the ball much further than releasing the club early which in turn scoops the ball or hits the ground first.

When learning to do this I was getting stuck on two parts of the swing, releasing the club early giving up all club lag and dropping my arms at the start of the downswing first rather than lead with my shoulders.

Being 6’4” I’ve got this inherent thought that if I don’t release the club early there is physically no way the club head will connect with the ball. This all leads back to my earlier habit of moving my head all over the place during my swing. Being a visual learner I had Brian show me exactly what he was describing then he physically moved my arms from the top of my back swing down to contact to show me in slow motion what this would look like if we could slow down time.

That’s when the light bulb went off and I started to understand the why behind the lesson. Below are two pictures that show how my club was connecting with the ball and how the club should be and now is connecting with the ball. Keep in mind these were taking with my phone while trying to demonstrate with one hand.

The Before
 

 
The After
 

 
The motion transferred in my brain to all my clubs up through my driver and is going to just take some practice to get used to doing without having to think about it. We’ll see how fast this actually sticks in my memory bank as I go play this Saturday in San Marcos.

I’ve also been working on my chipping and putting all week in preparation. My putting has suffered as of late due to lack of focus in my practice and I want to make sure this is not the norm. I’ve felt putting is the part of my game that needs to be the most solid. A lot of people I talk to about golf will always tell me if they could go back they’d have focused more on putting. I’m not going to be one of those people.