Community Blogs

First off what a great site! This year I  as many other have seen Ray Romano wanting to break 80. I decided that I would do the same thing. I have played for about 10 years now but nothing real serious, at one point I was a 14 and now I am a 21. In 2007 I had a back surgery that did not turn out the way I had anticipated, worse pain to say the least. Needless to say I have played like I have been injured, I decided no more of babying myself. I want more from my game a lot more. I manufacture and sell putters for those of us that "Side Saddle", so I want my game to back up what I sell as well. My father in law, which has played in 4 senior PGA championships is one of the best golfers I know, he also tries to instruct me, did I mention I do not agree with his teaching ability. One thing that I know is that it takes a lot of hard work to maintain a single digit handicap, and spraying the ball does not help. I have been told do this do that or I see Tiger do this move. These things only work if you have an ingrained swing, I do not. So I needed to start from the bottom up. I recently read about Homer Kelly and his quest for the swing. This guy shot a 116 the very first time he played put the clubs down for 6 months and then shot a 77.  He wanted to know why, he went to every instructor and they all tried teaching him the same swing, which was not the swing he had, he studied this for years and found over 4 quadrillion variances in the golf swing, big conclusion, if a person can't do one way then there are a lot of other ways to teach them. With that said I went on my own quest, no more band aids, I need a swing that I understand and one I can play with. I started from the feet up and using a video camera found a lot of flaws, just in my set up alone. The next biggest thing I found was an outside in swing, I corrected that with Jacks first move, head rotation and leave it there. Next was that I hit the ball high and to the right, I was cupping at the bottom. I corrected this with two things; first I started hitting a PW off my back foot trying to hook it, this helped me understand the release, second I started hitting punch shots this helped to learn shaft angle at impact, keeping some bend in my right wrist at impact. This was the feeling that I was looking for with the two combined. My ball flight is great and my distance has increased up to 30 yards. Before I started this I was swinging a speed stick, I was lucky to get it to 100mph now I get it to 115 and even 120 without swinging harder than before. I do hit 200-400 ballsa day too. What I am learning is that the power is really from hip high and through, the proper release is POWER. The greatest thing that has happened is my scoring, I have since shot three rounds of 83 from the blues. My quest such as Homer Kelly's is for my perfect golf swing not yours or his, my next quest is to make it in the Championship flight. On the 17th of April is our mens club net amateur qualifier, you qualify to qualify then go to Spyglass for the Championship. I will keep you posted as I go and hopefully one day I make it to the tee at a mini-tour event, this is my quest.