That’s really my goal at this point: day-to-day consistency. I know I can play well. The problem is that depending on the day I can also play very bad. On the days I play well, my shot spread is very small (+/- 15 feet for a wedge). On the days I play poorly, that spread can be 3-4x’s larger, if not more. I also tend to see more pulls left on those bad days.

This weekend I’ve really focused on what I can do to get more day-to-day consistency. I pulled out the video camera and recorded some swings, and I’m starting to see a couple areas to work on after comparison with Tour player videos.

To start, I need to keep working on staying connected through the swing. I’ve made progress on this in the last two weeks, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet. The benefit of staying connected has been less pull-hooks and more small draws. My misses are starting to trend back to slight pushes or small fades, which is what I want.

Next is the shoulder turn. Or perhaps I should call it “the coil”. When I compare my video to a Tour player’s video, it appears that my hips are turning way too much, Instead of a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of my shoulder turn to hip turn, it seems more like a 1.5:1 or in some cases even a 1:1 ratio.

Right off the bat, I know this means I’m losing power. I know that you leak out power if you don’t coil your body in the backswing. Basically, you want to get your shoulder turn to 90 degrees, but only turn your hips as much as is necessary to get your shoulders that far. From what I’ve read a 3:1 ratio is good (someone correct me if this is wrong).

A good example of the power I’m losing is some of the work I did today on the practice courses at LPGA. On the par 3 I was hitting from about 168 yards to the pin. I picked my 8-iron, which is usually around the 158-163 yard mark for me. I knew I hit the ball well, but I didn’t realize I overshot my target by about 10 yards until I got up to the green. So, by limiting my hip turn I hit my 8-iron somewhere around 170 yards instead of 160 yards.

While the added power is nice, I have another suspicion on the hip turn: consistency. I suspect that I’m over-swinging, partly due to my hip turn being greater than it needs to be (this also explains why I’m able to get my shoulder turn > 90 degrees). By over-swinging, I’m starting to believe that my entire swing has become dependent on timing.

Yes, timing is important in the golf swing, but having a timing-dependent swing can lead to pretty erratic results. Some days your timing will be good, other days it will be bad. And when the timing is bad… who knows where the ball is going to go.

As a result of this, I’ve also realized that I’ve started to keep my feet too close together at setup. Feet should be shoulder-width apart with a short-iron, and I’ve noticed on video that my feet are just inside shoulder-width apart. This would explain why I feel a little off-balance at times. I may video my putting stroke as well. I’m curious if getting a more stable base will translate into more consistent putts.

So, that’s what I’ll be working the next few days before going on vacation. I’ll be heading out of town for the 4th of July, and I won’t have golf course access so I’ll be working on drills and resting my body. The good thing is that the types of changes I’m trying to implement don’t require a golf ball, so by the time vacation is over I’ll be drilled-up and ready to go.

 The next day I participated in another scramble tournament, and while tournament rules had us winning 1st place there with a tiebreaker, we decided to play a sudden death playoff and ended up losing on the 2nd hole. So, that was sort of a win, but not with satisfaction.

When practicing the last two weeks I’ve been focusing on a number of complicated things during my swing:

1. Keep the clubhead outside my hands during the takeaway
2. While doing #1, keep my hands moving straight back until it’s time to start the shoulder turn
3. Hinge my wrists in a manner that keeps my left wrist straight such that my left forearm and top of my left hand are in sync
4. Turn my shoulders and bring my arms up such that my left wrist stays flat through the back swing
5. Downswing with the feeling of the shaft moving through my right bicep and right forearm before coming through to impact
6. At impact, keeping my hands in the proper position in front of the ball
7. Releasing the clubhead out and allowing my hands to rotate freely through the end of the swing

It’s a lot to think about, and while many would advise to not think about these things when you swing, I’ve learned that if I focus on keeping my backswing slow and smooth, then I can not only think about these steps but also execute them and get awesome results.

I still have a lot of work to do, but my swing is starting to pick up some good consistency with results. For example, today I played a full 18, shot a 75, and my GIR percentage was the highest yet – 61.1%. This is the type of stat I need in order to score low. I could have had a great day if I didn’t mess up some putts, but getting on the green in regulation is a great way to have the opportunity for lower scores. See the full stats on the scorecard at oobgolf. I’ve already setup a tee time for tomorrow at my nemesis course – LPGA Legends – it will be my last round of play for at least two weeks..

This week we’re travelling to NYC for my sister’s wedding, so I’ll have about 5 days of physical rest from golf. That can only be a good thing as I’ve been going pretty much full speed ahead the last month. Hopefully the weekend after we get back I’ll have another lesson, and then the following week I have another two scramble tournaments to participate in.

The lesson was awesome, again. After adjusting to a grip change and learning the importance of various rotations through the takeaway, this lesson focused on shortening the backswing – not with less power, but with less arm movement. It’s going to take some work, but I’m excited about the improvements I was already seeing during the lesson.

It turns out that Victoria Hills has just been ranked in the Top 50 courses in the country by readers of Golf Digest (41st overall). I was certainly impressed. Rolling greens, strategic holes, and a lot of elevation change – especially for Florida. It’s the first time I’ve looked down on a green from the tee box.

Given that I had a lesson in the morning, I didn’t play bad, but I didn’t play well. I started to score for the first few holes, but after a while I realized that my swing just didn’t feel right, mainly because I kept trying to work on the things I learned in the morning. So, I stopped keeping score and settled with focusing on good shots and putts the rest of the day.

It was fun, though. The course can be tough if you make stupid choices or try to get too aggressive. The greens were very receptive to ball spin – sometimes too receptive – but they left challenging putts for anything more than 10 feet away.

This week I’ll be working on the new swing tweaks from the lesson. I have to get better by the weekend. Both Friday and Saturday I’m participating in two separate best-ball tournaments. I think this means I’ll have some sort of swing practice every day this week.

We started on the range for a few shots before heading into the bay for video analysis. I think video analysis is one of the best ways to improve body motion for any sport. For one, video doesn’t lie, so what you see is what you did. Also, with the right software it’s possible to draw lines to better understand angles and the geometry of body movements. And probably most important, if you have the right setup it’s a quick feedback loop, meaning you can see what you did and make adjustments in a matter of minutes.

My lesson is a good example of the adjustment benefits of video analysis. The picture below is a capture from my video where we were looking at my takeaway. On the right side is what I was doing when I arrived at my lesson (the before), and on the left side is what I need to be doing on my takeaway (the after). The red line is the swing plane my clubhead should be on during the takeaway and downswing.

As you can see, in the before (right) it’s well above and outside of the swing plane, which my body translates into an above and outside-to-inside downswing. But in the after (left) you can see that the clubhead is pretty much on the swing plane, with the clubhead nearly perpendicular to the plane, which is how it should be at this stage of the swing.

When I execute the takeaway as I’m supposed to, I get near-perfect, straight shots. It’s really pretty amazing. I do have a few other small problems in my swing, but right now if I can get the takeaway down I should see a lot more accuracy in my shots.

In fact, even though I haven’t had a lot of chances to practice the takeaway, during today’s 9-hole round I started to notice more accuracy with my shots. For the most part I was hitting the ball where I wanted to, and if I didn’t, then I knew it was my takeaway and more often than not I could feel my arms separate from my body as you can see on the right side of the picture.

The instruction continues to be awesome, and I’m glad I signed up for more lessons. I won’t share my instructors name on here for privacy reasons, but he’s good at what he does and I’m thankful he’s willing to share as much technical information about the swing as he does. I feel like I’m learning all about golf swing mechanics to the point where I can understand the how’s and why’s behind the swing. I even caught myself analyzing other golfers during the 9-hole round today.

Speaking of the 9-holes, I scored a 41, which I’m somewhat happy with considering I’m going through swing changes. My main problem today was putting and short pitch/chip shots around the green with my sand wedge, but I can’t complain too much because I really haven’t been practicing any of my short game in favor of solidifying my swing.

I also played on both Saturday and Sunday over the weekend. Saturday turned into more of a practice round as I tried to learn how to do the new takeaway. Sunday was a little less of a practice round, and I scored an 80 at LPGA International’s Champions course – my best score at that course so far. As of today my handicap has dropped to a 6.2, but as I work through these swing changes and such I expect it to level off for a little bit until I get some consistency in my swing and start working on my short game again.

Wednesday and Thursday it rained all day, so I couldn’t make it to the range to try to figure out what was going wrong before my Friday morning tee time. So I arrived at the course about an hour and a half early so I could get some time to figure out where my swing was going wrong. While I had my quality shots at the range, I had very few solid shots during the round – something just wasn’t right with my swing.

Since that round I’ve spent a good number of hours on the range following a disciplined process of taking a shot, analyzing the shot and the feeling of the swing, taking a few moments to feel the adjustment I wanted to make, and repeating the next shot.

I’ve spent about 8 total hours on the range this weekend working through shot after shot, primarily with my 7-iron and 8-iron. It’s been a grueling process, but I’m starting to see progress.

I decided to focus on the swing plane since it has been a big issue for me in the past. Besides, I can tell from my ball flight that for the most part the problem has been related to the clubhead path on the downswing being either too far in-to-out or too far out-to-in.

While I could try to control my arms, hands and wrists more, out on the range I came to the conclusion that my problem was more subtle and indirect – the hip pivot.

Basically, I realized that during the downswing I’ve been putting too much spin in my body and not enough weight shift forward. Or, if I do shift weight forward, I’ve been allowing my head to drift with my body.

Every shot at the range has been focused on allowing my hips to slide forward right before I initiate the downswing. While it’s only a millisecond or less of time, sliding my hips forward at the start of the pivot allows my upper body – arms and hands – to get the clubhead on the swing plane before the downswing is initiated. Once the downswing starts, there’s no stopping it, so this hip movement is crucial to a solid swing.

My shots are perfectly on-target and solid when I execute this hip motion. In fact, the swing is nearly effortless.

After going through all this practice I decided to hit the course for 18 holes both for fun and also to see if my body has started to retrain its muscle memory. Thankfully, the answer is yes, but I have a while to go before I can call it consistent.

Scores for the week are overall good: 81, 79, and 77. My average score keeps dropping and has now reached a low of 82. Handicap has now reached 7.4, also a new low.

Besides the shot consistency, my course management needs improvement. For instance, club selection on windy days is pretty poor. This week has been a fairly windy week, and I missed a lot of greens short on approach shots because I didn’t consider or read the wind very well.

My short game continues to be solid, and I think it’s part of the reason my scores have stayed so low despite missing the green more than I want to on approach shots.

This week I’m off work, so I plan to play nearly every day. On Friday I’m heading back to the Tour Academy for some private instruction, which if I don’t figure it out by then may shed some light on my swing plane issues. So far, I have a tee time planned for Saturday morning at one of the more difficult courses in the Orlando area (Shingle Creek), which I’m looking forward to trying for the first time.

Last post I recapped last week and how I finished off Sunday with a 78 (+6) round of golf. Well, I did better this week. You can see my scorecards on oobgolf:

• Tuesday, Indigo Lakes: http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/score.php?id=676556
• Friday, Cypress Head: http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/score.php?id=683623

On Tuesday I shot a 39 (+3) during the 9-hole round, which is my best Tuesday score so far this year. To add to the great score, I made an eagle on the first par-5. I started with a 280 yard drive, leaving me about 196 yards to the pin (pin in the front) and about 210 to the center of the green.

This is where SkyCaddie is useful. If I didn’t know the yardage to the front of the green, I probably would have used my 5-iron, which would have put the ball on the back of the green or over it. But SkyCaddie let me know that I really only needed a 6-iron. So, I went through my pre-shot routine, put the one swing thought I’m working on right now in my head (keep the right wrist hinged through impact), and let’er rip. I came on top of the ball just a little, but it had a small fade on it leading the ball right at the pin. It landed about 10 feet short of the pin, took a bounce to the right, and came to rest.

As I got up to the ball I realized that the putt to the cup was fairly simple – not much break left or right, just uphill and straight. The green did seem to have a slight lean to the left, so during my preshot routine I aimed my ball mark slightly right of center of the cup. For once, I wasn’t all that nervous about one of these putts – I’ve had eagle chances before and missed them. Once I did my preshot routine, I pulled back, let the putter clubhead go, and watched the ball roll into the center of the cup. Eagle. My first one ever.

After 5 holes I was even-par, which got me excited about possibly making par for the 9-holes. That was dumb of me. I shouldn’t have even thought about my score because I ended up getting a bogey on the last 3 of 4 holes to end +3. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Which brings us to today: 18-holes, same course as last Sunday, shot a 75 (+3). The new best round ever and very close to the whole goal of me starting this blog (how funny will that be if I make par this year – I won’t be “going for par” anymore!). I made two 30 foot putts, had 3 birdies, had my highest green in regulation percentage, and didn’t think about the score much at all. Instead, I focused on “winning” each hole (par or better).

My focus was so good today that I didn’t even realize I made even-par on the front 9 until I added up the score before starting the back 9. That’s another first: even-par for 9 holes. Awesome. I only had 13 putts for those 9-holes too – real awesome. I finished with 28 putts total for the 18 holes.

The only unfortunate thing about today’s round is that I started getting tired as I got to the 10th hole. I attribute the tiredness to the 2 hour practice I went through in addition to the lack of food before playing. Plus it was a hot 90+ degrees Farenheit. Oops.

But I went into grind mode after I got tired of making bogeys and even got one back with a birdie on the 17th hole. It’s unfortunate that I got tired because for this particular course the back 9 tends to be much easier than the front 9. I usually average 3-5 strokes less on the back compared to the front. Today was a reversal of that statistic.

I took two days off this week (Monday and Thursday), but I had a nice practice on Wednesday. I’ve learned to stop when my body starts feeling fatigued, and it’s interesting how well it bounces back with just one day off – not just in strength but also in muscle memory.

I may be playing one more round this weekend, but so far I’m having a great week with my scores. I have to credit the Tour Academy instruction I received for helping with the improvements. I’m just applying the information I learned, and it’s paying dividends already.

So I took my picture and put it next to Tiger:

The angle from the camera is slightly different (mine is angled slightly behind; Tiger is head on), but it’s close.

A lot of things are similar, and I think a few key things are different. I see three major differences:

1. Left wrist – I have a bad habit of not letting my wrist cock straight so that my forearm and top of my hand are in a straight line. Tiger’s is straight and cocking toward his thumb; mine is cocking toward my forearm. If you look at the clubhead you can see the effect this is having (Tiger’s is near vertical, mine is rotated to the sky more). I’ve heard mixed analysis on the importance of this, but I do know that I get better results when I cock my wrist like Tiger’s instead of the way I have it in this picture. Another aspect of this could be the placement of my right elbow. Mine is stick out, away from my body. Tiger has his right elbow tucked nicely inline with his left arm.
2. Center of gravity – My weight is more on my front foot (left) than Tiger’s. This could be a side effect of my left ankle rolling (the 3rd difference), but either way my weight should be shifted a little more to the center of my body.
3. Left ankle roll – If I remember right, Jack Nicklaus did/does this, but that doesn’t mean I should do it. I don’t know why I do this, other than to take pressure off my left knee as I turn my shoulders. It’s a bad habit I need to stop. I have a feeling it’s taking away some of my power and control, and like many golf pro’s say, the golf swing is complex enough, so why bother adding more moving parts than necessary.

Otherwise, I like my left arm angle, shoulder turn, head, and hip turn. We’ll see how the swing differs after some instruction.

Anyway, overall, I’m not happy with the results, but throughout the round I had moments of excellent play, which is exciting. For instance, I had a number of approach shots everywhere from 90 to 170 yards that landed within 10 feet of the hole. On the flip side, I had a number of shots that were downright bad.

Right now it seems my rounds all come down to consistency – can I focus on every swing of every hole? I’m sort in the process of retraining my swing, so focus is going to be key to any success I might have.

My total score for the day was an 89. I suppose that’s an improvement from the other day, but it’s not where I’ve been and nowhere near where I want to be. I believe my two issues for today were swing plane and timing – basically the two things I started working on at the range Saturday morning.

I started the round off with pulling my irons and pushing my driver and 3-wood. After a few holes I seemed to go the other way – pulling the woods and pushing my irons. I attribute this see-saw, back-and-forth type swing issue to my timing being off. I’ve been noticing this more and more with every round I play. Even if I warm up at the range my timing seems to be off when I get on the course. I’m all ears if anyone has any ideas on how I might be able to address this.

Halfway through the 13th I started to figure out my timing and showed consistency with a string of better-played holes and some great shots. Of course, by then it’s kind of late, so I focused on finishing strong with a 4 pars and a bogey on the last 5 holes.

A slightly frustrating part of those last 5 holes was that I had four birdie chances, almost all with 10 foot or less putts that I missed. While I’m happy that I had 34 putts (1.9 per hole), I recognize that 34 putts is not good enough if I want to get lower scores. 34 putts is only good because it means that I had less than two putts per hole, which is a current goal. It may be time to make that goal more difficult and aim for 1.5 putts per hole.

You can check out the round’s scorecard on my oobgolf profile: http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/score.php?id=561610.

I’m going to try to figure out a practice schedule for the week. I have the 9-hole Tuesday golf, but beyond that I need to figure something out. I definitely need to get a few workouts in too.

My stats were pretty rough, but I didn’t get the scorecard so off memory I hit 3 greens in regulation, which translated into my three pars for the day, and I hit only 2 or 3 fairways. Putting was worse than normal with 37 total putts for a 2.1 putt per hole average. LPGA’s greens were the fastest greens I’ve played on in at least a year, so I’m not too concerned with the putting stat. It just means I need to play on some more difficult courses.

It was my first time playing at LPGA, but that certainly wasn’t the reason for my poor play. I simply didn’t swing well. Overall the course is not nearly as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. If I could have hit the ball straight and consistent then I probably would have been fine, and putting would have been my biggest problem of the day. Strategically, the course suits my style of play well, and I believe if I can cure these problems then I can go back there and get a better result.

I probably should have seen it coming since my swing has been “off” the last week. Something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Symptoms included pulling the ball and hitting the ball fat (hitting the ground behind the ball), both of which I did plenty of at LPGA.

I was so mad after the round yesterday that I threatened to go to the range to figure things out, but with the 95 degree weather I decided to take a break from golf and come back to it this morning. I’m glad I did.

This morning we went to the range and I worked on one thing: getting my arm across my chest on the backswing and back in the slot on the downswing. Basically, making sure my downswing maintained an inside-out path. After the first 15 or so swings, I realized that this was definitely resolving the pulls I’ve experienced, but the fat shots were still there and something still felt “off”. It was still too much effort to swing.

So I thought about some of the causes fat shots – lowering the right shoulder, too much angle bending over at address, etc. I realized I have been feeling like I’m bending over a little too much addressing the ball, so the first thing I did was stand up a little straighter.

The first swing after that adjustment felt great. My arms fell into place on the downswing, I didn’t feel “off”, and the ball was right on target with a slight draw – signs I had a good swing. After a few more swings I switched to the long irons to test out what I was feeling, and sure enough the hardest clubs to swing suddenly became just as easy to swing as a 9-iron.

I finished the rest of my range balls with swing thoughts focused on the backswing-downswing and standing up. I need to get some more repetitions in for muscle memory, but after feeling pretty down from that 98 yesterday these small adjustments give me hope.

Now I’m looking forward to the next round, which could come tomorrow if the weather cooperates. If not, I’ll definitely get some more practice in at the range.

The practice session overall went well, although I struggled a bit with my long irons and it took a while to straighten out my driver. However, I did realize a few bad habits I need to get rid of.

During my backswing I shift my weight to my right foot slightly, as I’m supposed to, but when my downswing goes through I either don’t shift my weight at all to my left foot or it isn’t shifted enough. The result is I hit behind the ball or top it, both of which are very frustrating results on the course.

I also have a tendency to lunge at the ball a little with my arms on the downswing. This widens my arc to where I’m coming around the ball ever so slightly instead of staying on my swing plane. This may actually be a corrective action my body is trying to make because I’m not shifting my weight enough. I haven’t figured out if that’s the case, yet.

The good thing about realizing these issues is that now I know what it feels like when I do them, and I have a sense for preventative action so I don’t do them on the course.

And I’m seriously thinking about the TOUR Academy instruction next month. I just need to get signed up.