Out of A&E (just about...)

My golf swing is out of A&E, following Sunday’s tribulations. At least, I think it is.

Amazing what a little wind, rain and one of the slowest four-balls ever to play the game can do to you. Well, a lot of rain, actually. And make that the slowest four-ball in history.

Are these excuses for my ghastly performance in the club monthly medal? Well, yes, I admit it, they are. My golf swing, to be honest, imploded from the very first tee. Somehow I forgot all I had been working on during the past few months and went out and played with my old swing.

Which can be okay, in a nasty, left-to-right sort of way. It’s just not how I want to play golf, that’s all. So there I am, grumpy, wet through after six holes and with water sloshing around inside my shoes, and we’re going at a snail’s pace. The only consolation was that, by the 9^th hole, I had at last worked out where I was going wrong. By then I could barely hold my eel-like clubs, of course, but better late than never. At least I managed a few real golf shots and a few pars on the way in. Not on the last three holes, though – they had turned into lakes.

My score at the end? Would you mind if I don’t publicise that? It’s not so much the shame – everybody struggled, to be frank, with the winner – the winner! -playing to four over his handicap – but the memory. I’m trying to erase it.

Today, at the range, my swing seemed pretty much back to where I want it to be. Physically, I’ve been released from A&E. Mentally? That may take a while longer.

That 1st tee thing, that single handicap thing...

I’ve never suffered from 1^st tee nerves. It’s just not something I do.

Perhaps it’s because the opening tee shot at my local course is not that daunting. Sure, a push can mean the nastier of two fairway bunkers, and a slice can mean the trees and no clear second to the green. But it’s pretty straightforward, as first holes go, if a tad long for me in the winter.

Will this Sunday be different, though? A medal round, and me not having played since early December? Perhaps I should have squeezed in a warm-up round. Particularly because 2012 is the year, according to my Great Golf Plan, when I finally dip under 10 for the first time. There just hasn’t been time, though.

I do, however, have an advantage over other would-be golfers with too little time to live up to their limitless ambition. For the past six months, while you were stuck in an office or on a job site, I was helping write a golf instruction book.

‘Golf’s Golden Rule’, a product of the minds of Dave Wilkinson and Steve Gould at Knightsbridge Golf School, comes out in a few months. Will it transform readers’ games? I don’t know. That may be up to them. All I know is that, in writing down their thoughts, I’ve learnt things that golf magazines and, in many cases, golf lessons never got close to teaching me.

Knowing is one thing, though. Applying is quite another. I think I've changed the pattern of my swing since last playing, from a low cut to the right to a high draw - but have I really?

The book finally got signed off a couple of days ago.

So, six months after starting it, and almost three months after last playing – although there have been countless range sessions – I’ll step out on Sunday better informed than ever before. Better informed, but far from match-sharp.

It should be interesting. I just hope it’s not embarrassing. Oops - is this what 1^st tee nerves feel like?

The happiest golfer in the world

I’m the happiest golfer in the world. Since yesterday. And it's guaranteed to stay this way, for 24 hours at least.

I’ve just come back from the range. For the second day in a row, I’ve hit high, long straight shots with the mildest suggestion of draw. Me. The guys who hits ugly low cuts.

Of course, this is one of those dangerous self-diagnoses. Self-delusion, I know, is often an immediate neighbour. But I really, really do believe my swing is changing from an over-the-top pattern to an inside-to-square-to –inside.

I think I’ve (largely) stopped my hand roll. I think I’m releasing correctly at last. I think my left arm is extending for the first time beyond impact. I think my upper body is rotating around my spine and turning through to the target. I think my hips are behaving, and resisting rather than slipping and sliding.

Really. I do.

Now all I’ve got to do is wait for it to stop raining and put in a proper round after my local course stops impersonating a quagmire. I really, really believe I've got a mid-70s in me. Really. I do.

Knightsbridge Dave, Knightsbridge Steve, thank you for letting me write ‘Golf’s Golden Rule’ with you. I really think you may inadvertently have turned me into a golfer.

I’m the happiest golfer in the world. That's 48 hours of golfing happiness, and all in a row. I promise to return to this blog tomorrow – even if it means admitting to the most tragic of self-delusions. But I don't think it will come to that. Really. I don't.

Eureka!

I’ve a healthy distrust of eurekas.  If all my golfing eurekas had really been just that, I’d be playing on Tour by now. Most, if not all, of them slink off into the long grass almost as quickly as they appeared.

So what to make of today’s new sensation?

Hard to say.  But I think there’s reason to be hopeful.

In the past, I’ve often not understood my eurekas.  Suddenly, for no reason that I could pin down, I’d  start striking the ball better (not well, just better – it’s all relative, remember). It might last 10 minutes, it might last half a round.

Today, at the range, it wasn’t like quite that.

Suddenly, I felt that my left arm was extending fully in the follow-through. The arm seemed to be naturally extended, and seemed to fold differently. The club seemed to release more powerfully. And the ball seemed to hold its line better, even threatening to draw slightly. On shot after shot.

I paused and chewed the cud.

I never draw the ball. I cut.  I’ve been working recently on my body action, in an attempt not to come over the top. Somehow, though, I’ve still managed to slide the ball low and left-to-right, even when approaching  from the inside.

 Today, though, the ball went straighter and higher. Unheard of.

And this time I felt I really could pin something down.  I concluded that, previously, I’d still been chicken-winging my left arm slightly coming into impact, thus preventing the release.

I even believe I know why this happened. Having concluded a chapter on ‘hand arc’ – the arc that the hands follow throughout the swing - with Knightsbridge Golf School pair Dave Wilkinson and Steve Gould for their new book, “Golf’s Golden Rule”, I’ve been thinking hard about my hands.

So today, after a bucket of cuts and fades, I tried to feel as if I was throwing my hands further out along the ball-to-target line – or even outside it, towards mid-off (that was the feeling, not necessarily what I was actually doing, you understand!). That seemed to extend my left arm after impact, where normally I pull my hands inside the ball-to-target line and into my left side, bending the left arm in the process.

 This makes sense to me. It probably doesn’t to anybody else. Perhaps Dave and Steve know what I mean.

I just hope it makes as much sense tomorrow. I’d like to continue to flirt with a high draw. Who wouldn’t?

A Good Muscle Strain?

I've just strained a muscle down my right side - or the right side of my backt. I’m trying to convince myself that this is good, even if it makes sitting in front of my laptop uncomfortable.

I’m trying to convince myself, indeed, that it’s due to my at last beginning to ingrain a correct move into impact and follow-through.

I’m not saying this should cause a muscle strain. In fact, I’m sure it shouldn’t. But when you’ve been moving your body in a completely different way for years – forever, actually – it seems natural enough for your body to grumble.

When I was interviewing Dave for ‘Golf’s Golden Rule’, he mentioned that Nick Faldo used to feel his right side holding back for a fraction of a second as the downswing began. That seems to have struck a chord with me. I’m getting the feeling of holding my right shoulder and hip back, rather than letting them spin out and over as per usual.

It’s yet to be course or even range tested. It’s still in the early stages of kitchen-mirror development. But I like the new feeling a lot, despite the strain. Sneak out this afternoon and bash a few.

My left arm’s doing something odd ...

My left arm’s started to do something odd. No, correction – my arm’s started to feel odd. I think, actually, that it may have just started to do something right.

It’s sort of changed direction. Just after impact. It used to chicken-wing, the elbow bending towards the target. Now it’s not.

Did I say just after impact? That’s a ridiculous thing to say. How do I know when it started? All the evidence, indeed, suggests it happened before impact. Hence my cuts and slices.

Now my elbow seems to be staying straight. Two feet beyond impact, my arms are still in their ‘inverted triangle’ shape. Before, the left arm always tugged the triangle out of shape.

And as it did its chicken-winging, my whole left side, from the hip to the shoulder, used to stand up. Now my left side…

… oops, sorry about this. Nothing more boring than the analysis of someone else’s swing (and, of course, nothing more fascinating than the analysis of one’s own).

It’s interesting though (is it really though, Tony?!?) that all this seems to be happening while I’ve been editing the chapter on chipping for the ‘Golden Rule’. My chipping seems to be realigning itself. And realigning my long game too.

All very odd. And, I’m 99 percent convinced, all very right.

When is a chip not a chip? And when is a golfer actually a glofer?

I used to obsess about the long game. Chipping and putting just didn’t do it for me. I know, I know – “scoring is all about the short game”. In which case I wasn’t interested in scoring. Just striking.

Fundamentally, though, I thought I was already a pretty good chipper. I just needed to put in the hours, that’s all. I could do it already. I was just a bit rusty.

How wrong can you be?

Since my last visit to Knightsbridge Golf School (KGS) – and what with the rain and wind and dark evenings - I’ve spent the last few weeks on my chipping.

Not practising. I always think that word suggests just doing more of the same, while hoping for better results (that’s Einstein’s definition of insanity, isn’t it – doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result?).

No, I try not to practise. I try to change, or refine (in my case, still a lot more changing than refining). Trying to chip differently. Or, more exactly, trying to hit the ball properly.

It’s been a revelation. Until spending an hour on the short game with Dave Lamplough at Knightsbridge recently, I used to chip using my arms and hands. There was no body turn, just a bit of body slide. And it worked. Sort of. Some days. Some holes. 

Basically, I could not chip. It was more a chop, or a chap, or a chep. As in I still don't play golf, I play glof. An approximation of what I am supposed to be doing.

Now I’m basing my chipping on a body turn, no independent arm or hand compensations and a small downward press of the right hand to compress the ball. It feels better and it sounds better.

And, of course, this does not merely apply to chipping either. It applies to the impact zone in my full swing as well.

So a chip is not a chip after all. It’s also part of the full swing.

PS Oddly, learning to chip is affecting my long game as well. It’s making me want to be more precise. And by turning through and beyond impact, rather than sliding, my left arm feels as if it is doing something completely different. It feels as if my left arm is not chicken-winging through impact any more. Instead, it’s staying straight and helping to retain the inverted triangle shape of the arms and shoulders.

According to the new KGS book, provisionally entitled “Golf’s Golden Rule”, this is good. It should be more accurate as well as powerful. I’ll let you know the results when I next get the time to play a round. When it stops raining.