Evolution

Had a productive session at the range yesterday.

After a disastrous round at Breamar last week I had been pondering what had gone wrong with my swing. How did I go from shooting a fairly legit 41 at Dwan, driving the ball 230yds and straight off the tee to the short fades I was hitting last Saturday?

I thought I had found a swing whose simplicity guaranteed that it would be repeatable - what happened?

I decided to re-trace my steps and thought back to the range session where I had first discovered the swing. That day my plan was to warm up with some easy swings where I just concentrated on my release - turning my hands over - and the ball just flew off the club face. As I remembered, it didn't even seem like I was taking the club back, and barely swinging it forward and I was hitting straight shots about 170 yds in the air (on a range that went uphill).

Reliving this experience in my mind, I realized that as my swing had gone downhill over the last several weeks I had been concentrating on the easy swing instead of the release.

Losing my swing could be a good thing, I thought - for if I could find it a second time surely I would have it forever!

So I went to the range yesterday with the intention of repeating exactly what I had done at the Highland range back in June.

I concentrated on the release.

The balls went straight.

With all my concentration on my release, really making sure I turned my hands over, I found I was swinging the club faster trying to insure a deliberate, powerful release. This faster swing seemed to be increasing my distance quite a bit. I say "seemed" because while it looked like I was carrying about 210 yds, I later noticed how far the tees had been moved forward (Chalet Golf) and realized that I was 25 yds closer to the yardage markers than I thought.
However, even taking that into account, I was still hitting the ball about 185 in the air.

And I was hitting them straight.

Not a single slice.

A few fades, but even those rolled forward instead of the usual sharp detour to the right.
All in all I was pretty pleased.

I'm anxious to see if it will carry over to my next round.