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?