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…