On Dented Kitchens, Scowling Cats and Threadbare Carpets

The trouble with not having enough time to play golf is that you have to practise indoors.

I use the kitchen - because of the high ceiling and the French windows (great as a mirror) - and the adjoining room - because my wife thinks it’s the cats that have been scratching holes in the carpet there.

I continue to get away with blaming the cats for my divots but she doesn’t believe me when I suggest they could also be responsible for the dents in the side of our standing fridge. A cat could dent a fridge, couldn’t it? If it were absolutely determined?

Still. 50% of the blame is better than 100%. Missie and Flash (cats) scowl at me as aforementioned wife, scandalised by the worsening state of the carpet, throws them out of aforementioned French windows and into the rain. I grin conspiratorially at them as they fly through the air.

Memo to self. Stand further away from fridge while studying top of the backswing…

Neanderthal Golf and Gore

I head for Knightsbridge and we discuss the chapter on transition. Dave and Steve think it’s all pretty self-explanatory. They don’t seem to understand the issue I have, moving from the backswing to the downswing.

As soon as I get to the top, I change. I change into a crazed Neanderthal. Armed with my club, I throw myself at the ball, I spin my shoulders and lash wildly. It’s a battle not to scream “Kill! Kill! Kill!” And that's just with my putter.

I discuss this with Dave at Knightsbridge and he suggests an exercise. I get to the top, then simply drop my arms back down the path they came up while keeping my hips solidly in position and my chest fully turned.

“Repeat that three times, then swing to the finish. The acceleration comes later, as you release the club into the impact zone,” he says. "And stop shouting 'kill, kill' all the time, it's putting our other students off."

It all feels very controlled, and balanced, and sensible, as it should be.

Dave goes for a coffee and I revert immediately. I don’t see a golf ball. I see a mammoth for breakfast.

I leave for home, a tusk under my arm and blood and gore dripping from my teeth.

A Winner and A Winner!

Oh sweet success! I am in the final of the club singles handicap competition after beating Kelly 3&1 in the semis. Better still, I declared a supplementary card and went round in... 76! I am now a 10.8 handicapper, down from 14 at the start of the year!

Apologies for all the self-congratulatory exclamation marks. But when you begin with a par-birdie at Lindfield, you know you’re in for a good day; 1 and 2 are tricky holes, I’ve never done that before (!). The secret of the round? I’m hitting much straighter, now that I'm concentrating on what is going on in the impact zone. It’s all much more controlled. And when I do miss a green, it’s a nearer miss than before, so I’m chipping rather than pitching. And today I chipped really well.

Kelly is a good 10 years younger and 40 yards longer and I had to give him two shots. Conversely, he hasn’t been playing much recently, to be fair, after a bout of ill health. But I played as well as I can, which is all I can control.

And I was remarkably intelligent - for me, anyway. When I was out of range of the green on the 8th after a mediocre drive, I accepted it and put my faith in hitting a 7 iron short and then getting up and down rather than risking a once-in-a-lifetime three wood out of the thick stuff. Which is a first. I parred the hole. Adam, my tactical mentor, would be proud.

Could I play better? Well, yes, but only when Dave and Steve tell me some more things I’m doing wrong. I’m definitely rolling my hands less and I’m definitely less violent during the transition but clearly there is loads more to correct. My ball flight is still left to right, so I must still be delivering a glancing blow across the ball.

Can I score better? Well, perhaps, but 76 is just fine by me. In fact, it’s hard to believe that the day could come where I’d be disappointed with a 76…

A loser and a winner

According to the rules, I’m a loser. It’s just that I don’t feel like one. Which is, at one and the same time, very pleasant but rather confusing.

I’ve just missed out on a place in the final of my club singles scratch competition, losing my match against James down the 18^th. No doubt I’ll be deemed a choker. I was two up with three to play, after all. But no, I didn’t choke. I parred the 16^th and the 17^th, only for James to go brilliant birdie, brilliant birdie. Can’t argue with that (I did, of course, drive behind a tree on the 18^th to gift him the match… perhaps I’ll keep that to myself).

But I still feel like a winner. I went round in 78, while James went round in 79. That’s matchplay for you. Annoyingly, I forgot to declare my card for my handicap, so there’ll be no cut. But I hit the ball nicely for most of the round. Sadly, there were two misses from 4ft, but that’s how it goes.

Better still, I’d warmed up with a six-over-par round at Poult Wood, in Kent. I was a loser and winner there as well. That match, with some Reuters former colleagues, is an annual event in memory of our late friend Graham Griffiths, one of the worst golfers ever to grace the sport. By definition therefore, the annual trophy is presented to the worst golfer. So I lost by a mile. But it felt rather grand. Again, I hit the ball beyond my abilities.

The fact is, I’m playing better than I should be at the moment.

I remain hugely confident that writing the Knightsbridge book is having a huge effect on my game. And we’ve not even written half of it… there must be more to come!

Wow!

Not often I use that word about myself but I think I deserve it. Wow. I am the only golfer left in all three of my club’s summer competitions.

Adam – he of the willowy and surprisingly dependable swing – and I – the 1970 shoulder spinner - have just reached the final of the handicap foursomes. Nothing flashy. A 3&2 win against Dave and Kevin.

So this is virgin territory. I’m already in the semi-finals of the scratch singles competition and the semi-finals of the handicap singles.

True, Adam and I won the foursomes last year – all Adam’s work, I have to admit, I was heavily subsidised - but I’ve never got this far in the singles. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever won a singles match before.

Mind you, I’d happily pass on all this very localised glory – Lindfield golf club, after all, is not exactly St Andrews or Augusta - in return for another handicap cut. I don’t want a trophy. I want a swing worthy of single figures.

Wow? Who am I kidding? I’m still a suspect golfer, somehow scrambling around in a slightly better score than other suspect golfers. Instead of a range session this afternoon I’ll re-read the early chapters of Dave and Steve’s prospective book…

Why I'm blaming Ben Hogan...

It turns out I belong to the 1970s. Or rather, my golf swing does.

Why? Because I spin open my hips and shoulders at the start of the downswing.

That's what lots of golfers used to do. Apparently Ben Hogan championed this approach in his iconic book ‘Five Lessons’. Ironically, though, Hogan did not do this himself - he just thought he did. 

His advice led to an over-the-top generation of slicers. And, lagging behind the times, it also led to me.

Dave Wilkinson and Steve Gould, the Knightsbridge boys, explain - as we discuss the next chapter of their book - that most players nowadays are much better at dropping their arms back down on the right plane nowadays. Their problem, though, is that they keep their body static. Result? Some slices, some pulls.

So I know where I'm going wrong. The big question is how will I convince my body to move in a different way after six years of bad practice?

“Go and work on the impact zone,” says Dave. “If you spin your shoulders, you’ll never come into the impact zone at the right angle or release your hands. It will be obvious as soon as you start your downswing. You’ll realise you’ve simply got to change your swing pattern. Don't worry - I had the same problem. I spent 10 years sorting it out.”

10 years? I’ll probably be dead by then. And my next club competition match is coming up in 10 days, not 10 years.

Swing changes hurt!

As concerns the book, we’ve now covered the impact zone, the takeaway, the backswing. While not forgetting about the impact zone, I’m trying to force my arms further inside on the backswing – without rolling my wrists, of course. It feels much tighter and more compact than usual.

Swing changes hurt. I feel like I did as a boy, when I tore ligaments in my elbow. They mended, but with my arm unable to extend fully. At the hospital, the physios kept stretching my arm out on a table to try and stretch the ligaments back to their original length. I feel a bit like that now. Grit teeth. Grin - if it is possible to grin with gritted teeth (it probably isn't) - and bear it.

I got out in the next round of the club handicap singles and struggle. I’m eight over after nine. Kevin is one of those unnerving opponents who hits it further than me, yet still gets a couple of shots.

I hang in, though, and suddenly things improve. With a bit of help – Kevin, misses a 4-footer on the 15^th – and with a glorious 4 iron to 8 feet on the next, I win 3&2. By the end I am 11 over.

Afterwards, I decide to write down a list of things I can do to improve.

I get writer’s cramp and have to stop.

How to write backwards, how to learn golf backwards…

Odder and odder.

 My first chapter for the new book is complete. It’s about how to come into impact from around waist high – the 8 o’clock position, as we’re calling it at the moment. The position from which the right wrist releases the club vertically downwards towards the ball.

Apologies. Without pictures, I may not be making much sense here. Suffice to say, I’ve written the start of the book about ‘the impact zone’ without so much as a cursoy reference to grip, posture, alignment and all the rest of the basics. We haven’t even done the takeaway yet either.

It’s like writing the book backwards. And it’s like learning backwards as well.

Strangest of all, I like it. I like the fact that, come what may, this ‘impact zone’ must be right before anything else. Only when it has been mastered will Steve and Dave discuss what should have happened before.

It’s traditional to get given so much information on stance and address and takeaway and backswing, turn, arm lift and transition that most of us are so brain-locked as we return to the ball that it’s a miracle that we ever make contact.

SG and DW’s approach? ‘Let’s get the bit that matters, the bit where you hit the ball, right first, then build on that.’

Which is doing it backwards. But which makes sense… I think.

I spend the next week doing mini, ‘impact zone‘ swings in the living room. My wife likes this development. The furniture remains intact.

PS: I think I’ve just understood why I chipped so well the other day. I just relied on the ‘impact zone’.

PPS: Played with my solid, dependable and never-say-die partner Adam in the second round of the Lindfield foursomes. We win an epic contest 1 up. We’re both a bit off colour for the first 12 holes and are three down. We play the last six in one under.

Somewhere during the battle, I forget about the impact zone on the downswing, instead resorting to my trademark spinning shoulders, violent clearing of the left side and my over-the-top arms.

 Still. Great fun and a great result – just.

Even Fat Dogs Have Their Day....

So did you guess?

Against all the odds and all my expectations – and, I fancy, Nick’s too - I went round in 76 and won 2&1, to record by far the best result of my limited competition-playing career.

I needed a fair bit of luck in the closing stages, I admit, with two 25ft putts – I am, at best, a mediocre putter - at the 15^th and 16^th to get to dormie two. That said, though, I hit very straight (for me), with 8 out of 14 fairways and four other first-cut-of-roughs.

My single swing thought? Get the impact zone right. Allow yourself to release the club (oh alright, my two single swing thoughts, then…).

Did I manage to stay true to those thoughts? I don’t really know. I mean, you can't see your own swing, can you? I tried. All I really know is that my 76 featured among my best 10 rounds. I’ve never got close to beating a 7-handicapper before.

How much credit goes to Steve, Dave and the fact that I am writing their book? Again, I don’t really know. The jury remains out. I mean, I have been having lessons since the start of the year and was already making big improvements - I'd come down from 14 since January. And, after all, every dog has his day, even fat ones with grey muzzles. Perhaps I just got lucky.

There was one other oddity about the round, incidentally – the accuracy of my chipping; 7 out of 9 of my chips ending up within 8ft. That I couldn’t explain.

PS: Having declared I would hand my card in before the off, I have since been cut to 11.6. Seriously chuffed!

What do you mean, I'm rolling my wrists?

I’ve known Steve Gould and Dave Wilkinson since 2006-7, when I took a series of lessons with one of their assistants at Knightsbridge Golf School. I went there for a year, beginning as a fully fledged 24-handicap hacker and getting down to 10 by the end. Crazy as it may sound, though, I’m not sure my swing improved as much as those statistics suggest. I managed to minimise my faults, but the same fundamental flaws – a bad takeaway and a violent over-the-top move on the downswing – remained.

I tried – I really tried – but I’m not what you’d term naturally talented. I’m not sure my brain and body have ever been on very close terms.

Steve and Dave have written two instruction books before. The idea behind the new one was to go into much greater detail. The more we talked, the more it became clear that the ‘impact zone’, as we began to call it – the two or three feet before impact, and two or three feet after it - was central to their ideas.

Basically, they told me, most bad golfers do not know how to hinge their wrists properly (hinging, for them, means putting your hand out in front of you, as if set to shake hands, then hinging your wrist so that your thumb moves towards your nose). Instead, bad golfers tend to roll them over (get ready to shake hands, then turn your palm over to face the ground or the sky), thus radically changing the direction of the club face as it approaches the ball. And if you roll your wrists, you can't release your wrists, thus failing to add speed to the club shaft as it heads towards impact.

We spent around two or three hours on this subject. I asked and asked and asked questions, and they answered and answered and answered. They kindly looked at my swing and declared: "Your're rolling your wrists." As if there had ever been any doubt.

And then I said, in a rare moment of lucidity: “If this impact zone is so important, then why don’t you teach people about it right at the start, right from the very first lesson?”

And Steve and Dave looked at each other, and answered: “Funny you should ask that. That is exactly what we used to do. That’s exactly what Lesley King, who started the school, used to do. But most of our students are too impatient. They want to get straight out on the course. They want the whole swing, straightaway.”

And I thought back to 2006-7 and wondered if I, too, had been one of those impatient patients.

Four days later, I played in a scratch singles competition at my club. Me, off 12 and with a head dangerously full of new theories, against Nick, off 7. You can guess what happened next…