Both days 22 and 23 had me at the range hitting mainly driver.
It made me think of the Netherlands band Sniff n' the Tears 1978 hit tune, Driver's Seat.
I am working out the driver swing and I have made improvements.
Over the course of these two days, I hit what would be equivalent to 3 buckets – I hit 1 large and 1 medium bucket on both days. A lot of people will tell you not to hit a lot of drives in a row for various reasons. I now can see why – it takes a toll on your body (back) and many people try and kill it, so over the course of 30 or more balls, fatigue sets in and body mechanics go to the wayside. However, I was not trying to kill it and just trying to figure out the swing that would leave me hitting the ball well and end with that perfect, balanced finish that you see the pros do on television.
I am hitting the ball left – I just need to always remind myself to ‘stay back’ and let the club come to the ball. When I do that, I hit the ball straight and pretty far.
One thing that I know I have down for sure is my pre-shot routine:
1) I swing the club loosely 3 times consecutively like a pendulum – paying close attention to bringing that club back on plane, torquing my right hip and coming thru on that same plane with an inside out swing path and turning my wrists over at impact. I think of the bag drill from earlier posts when I do this. It’s a good little routine to get your body loosened up.
2) I pick out a spot, a specific spot, in the distance. It might be the 100-yard marker in the distance – even if that 100-yard marker is 350 yards away – or a specific tree or anything and aim for that spot.
3) I put my club down behind the ball and gauge my proximity to the ball – if I can reach the ball when I lean forward a little bit, I know that I am at the right distance from the ball. I used to stand so much further away from the ball, but realized that promoted too much reaching, jumping, casting and all resulting in inconsistent contact. This was a major reason why I never knew what ‘guy’ would show up at the tee box – the guy who drives the ball fairly decent (10% of the time) or the guy who slices, hooks and pops-up drives (90% of the time).
4) I bring my feet together with the line between your feet forming a straight line all the way to the ball.
I turn my left foot out about 30 degrees (only by twisting my heel) and bring my right leg back so my feet are a little more than shoulder width apart. I have been taking more of a closed stance (placing my right foot behind my left foot) in an effort to keep my shoulders and hips more squarely pointed at the target (vs. opening my stance which opens my hips and shoulders to the target and causes me to come across the ball and promotes that beloved slice).
5) I put the club about 8 inches behind the ball, bend my knees a bit and look back at my specific target. All this time, I am adjusting my arms and getting my bearings by making the slight adjustments (aka the ‘waggle’). I am calling on memory and body to visualize what is needed in order to move all those body parts and end it with a nice, balanced finish. I last think I think to myself in this stage is 'keep your head behind the ball at impact'. This saying makes me tilt my spine back about 20 degrees and reminds me the rest of the way to stay behind the ball and sweep up on it. It is total muscle-memory recall at its finest.
6) Once I am all set, I make sure that before I start to take the club back, I am completely motionless in the perfect position – having great posture at address.
All of this takes about 20 seconds. I should actually have someone time me to see how long it actually does take. I have seen players complain about Ben Crane who is ‘working on it’ and still takes around 46 seconds. I know mine is not that long but I would like to be aware of it because nothing is worse than playing with a slow player. I am sure that the more you play, the faster you would get going from 'a' to 'b' in your pre-shot routine, but at the same time there is a natural rhythm to the way we do things, especially those things we do with any type of routine behind it. If someone timed you in the shower every day for a year, you would probably find out that you take relatively the same length of shower every day. So if you took a 5 minute shower everyday, there is a high likelihood that your showers are probably between 4 minutes and 55 seconds and 5 minutes and 5 seconds. Some days you might take a longer shower, but rarely do you take a shorter one. You throw out the rare long ones and you are probably left with an eerily spooky number that is exactly the same amount of time spent in the shower each day down to the second. But I digress.
After those 6 steps, my focus moves towards the swing (i.e. the take-away) – where I concentrate on taking the club back smoothly in conjunction with my arms, shoulders and hips all on the same, correct plane. I firmly believe that if you have made it to this point perfectly – from taking your driver out of your bag to the point in which you are bringing the club back per above, then you will have good odds of hitting the ball and seeing a good result.
And so it goes. I look forward to seeing how I hit them on the course.
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