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Playing golf is a pain (literally) in the ass. Every time I enter myself into another event (they are all major at this point) I inevitably start wondering why the hell I keep putting myself through this. This week I’m out at the CPC in Oregon where I won in 2001 and am trying to put together a game that won’t post embarrassing scores. I have continued to struggle with my pivot as my back just won’t really loosen up anymore and the attempt to lower as I get to the top of the swing would require far more practice time than I can give it, both in terms of time availability as well as the detrimental effects it has on my already goofed up body. So now I have to come up with something to play with, and it has to be based on what I know or something I have previously had success with.
In the video I shot the other day (Heading to the CPC) I looked at the swings that I made when I won here 12 years ago and told you that I was going to go retro and try to recapture that feeling. There were two main differences in this technique: one was the open stance, which I adopted because of my inability to clear my left leg in the downswing. The other was the fact that I was less concentrated on the pivot movement (partially as a result of the stance) and more on my hand path through impact. As you look at the swings from 2001 you can see that I was crossed at the top but employed a hard catch to shallow the shaft, after which my arms came down fairly close to me and I exited nicely to the left, although on some shots (especially with trouble left) the exit was higher.
As I practiced this week a couple of things became apparent. I was losing too many drives way right and I could not hit many shots that didn’t move left to right. My short game (pitching and bunker play) felt good and my putting was solid, but, as usual, as the clubs got longer my shotmaking suffered. In yesterday’s pro-am I hit a number of excellent iron shots, but the driver was a struggle. It was a chilly start to the round, and I felt kind of stiff, and for some reason I didn’t put enough focus on making sure I got enough early trunk movement in the takeaway to get any depth in my right leg, which was already more forward because of the open stance. I experimented unsuccessfully on the course with a square stance, but still came out from under it and hit it right. I felt jammed and steep, and was reduced to aiming down the right rough and hitting a sizable fade to get the ball into the fairway. After lunch I went to the range and began to hit some shots, and as I felt pretty good physically (it had warmed up considerably since the frost delay in the morning) I worked up to the driver. I began to fiddle with the square stance again, and then one of the TaylorMade guys offered to turn on the Flightscope and check out my numbers. The first thing we found was that tee height played a huge difference in the contact and trajectory I was achieving. We found that half the ball above the crown of the driver was perfect. I had added a half degree of loft (up to 10 degrees), but I was still launching the ball fairly low. When we looked at my angle of attack it became more apparent what the main problem was. I had an attack angle of almost negative 4 degrees, which meant that as I was getting under myself I was coming at the ball with too late of a release. There are 3 main ways to get the club to swing more upward at the ball: move it forward in the stance, release earlier, or come more from the inside (which doesn’t really guarantee a shallower approach but can help). I tried moving the ball, but that didn’t work, so I tried widening my release, which was helpful. I had moved back to the square stance to give my right leg a chance to deepen, and when I added the fuller upper trunk movement in the backswing to the widening of the release (I did this by aiming my hands further back behind my right leg when the shaft reached parallel to the ground in the downswing) I began to see some straighter flight, and even a few draws. One of the things I did well pretty consistently was that I had the ball landing (attacking the ground, as Dwayne put it) at right around 35 degrees, which is optimum.
So for today (I tee off at 2:20 PM) it is going to be: open stance wedge through 6 iron, then back to square for 5 to driver, make sure the upper body is turning sooner in the takeaway, and widen the release for the tee shots. One thing this exercise showed me is that it will be a good thing for me to acquire a Flightscope, as for better players the added information gives me a fuller picture of what is going on at impact. This added knowledge can only be helpful when trying to decide the causes of the ball flight and when added to my standard analysis would make that analysis even better.
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