Today, I hit the ball great again.  I didn’t start hitting the ball great until I could control the length of my backswing.  You see, overswinging causes me to slide my whole body to the right and by controlling my backswing, I was able to control my swing better, thus hit straighter shots online to the target.

So today’s key:

Swing within myself, do not overswing!

Remember my post on swing thoughts the other day?

Well, today I had another great swing day and have one more modification:

Think more about the process of keeping your upper spine very vertical on the downswing and also think more about the downswing process and let the backswing dictate itself.

What I mean is that you want to be really thinking about the end result, which is good follow-through.  Once you get a good follow-through going, your backswing will naturally follow that path.  It’s never the other way around, similar to hitting bunker shots.

Well, the only reason I made this blog in the first place was to record my swing thoughts so I can go back in the future to see the swing thoughts I had when my ball striking and short game was good.

Today was a really good ball striking day, perhaps the best in a long, long time.

Here’s are my thoughts through the swing:

Address

Make sure to setup up with the left foot about 15 degrees open, I have a bad habit of opening up almost 45 degrees, which hinders my balance.

Takeaway

I really want to feel like I am taking my stomach and all of upper body together away from the ball on-plane.

After that, I simply feel the momemtum of my body (stomach and all of upper body) swinging a little further to the top of the swing while cocking the clubs with my hands.

From the Top of the swing

I don’t really feel the top of my backswing anymore as I feel the body constantly moving in action.  But from the top, I really feel like my whole body simply swings inside-out pivoting on my upper body or the spine.

Well, that’s about it.

This also worked really well with the short pitch and chip shots.

Okay, this does really happen to me every couple months.  That is that I find the secret to the golf swing.

You go to the golf course and return with this “amazing” feeling that you’ve finally mastered the game of golf, or at least just the golf swing in this case.

Let me tell you how it happend and the secret too.

I have been on a long-trail of hitting balls on the range and really not practicing my short game or putting.

Well, yesterday, I go to the range at Harding Park GC, and found that the range closes early on Mondays.  Of course, this was my first time going to the range after 6pm on a Monday.

So, I decided to practice my short game for 2 hours.  What happened after that was amazing.

For the first hour and a half or so, I was really struggling to hit these hard-pan lies.  After trying several things, I hit a goldmine, the secret to my golf swing.

You see, the secret is in the dirt just like Ben Hogan said.  Literally, I found it in the hardpan dirt, where it’s practically impossible to hit the shot good unless you strike the ball perfectly.

As such, I found the secret of the golf swing as the following:

Your full swing is an extended version of your short shots.  It’s never the other way around.

For example, you are hitting the 2-iron really well.  You miniturize that 2-iron swing on the short pitch shots.  It might work and it might not, simply because what’s working for the full swing isn’t guaranteed to work on the short shots.

However, if you are hitting your 30-yard pitch shots from a hardpan lie perfectly (as you do need to hit it perfectly on the ball in order to avoid chunking it or thinning it) and you extend that short swing into a 2-iron swing, you will find that 99% of the time, the swing works.

This is why tour pros practice their short game so much because the rhythm and the swing technique flows into other longer shots.

Now, that is how I found the secret, let me tell you the “technical” details of my findings:

You need to feel that on the downswing, you are rotating everything including your stomach, shoulders, arms, and hands to the left while your weight is centered over the left foot.  You also need to feel you are standing very tall.

Here’s the important part, you need to feel like your wrists are uncocking upwards toward the sky just after impact.

If you take a careful look at Hogan’s after-impact position, you will notice that his wrists are actually lifted toward the sky.  This really helps you to hit the ball perfectly while minimizing wrist action through impact.

Now how to achieve this feeling?

It’s pretty simple, try to imagine there’s a giant ball hanging from the sky sorta like the above picture.

Then, try to rotate your body to move that ball foward toward your target.  Also try to hit the big imaginary ball with your elbows, this will automatically uncock your wrists the correct way by letting your wrists lift upwards.

I tried this and boy, I am going to the PGA Tour Q-School next year baby!

I did go out to the range the other day and took a small video.  Although I was hitting the ball fairly good, my impact position was too sqaure.

Here’s my impact position compared to Ben Crane and Adam Baddeley:

If you look carefully, both of these guys have their shoulder slightly open.

Now, what I’ve found out is that, I tend to get my lower body too close to the ball near the impact, causing me to hold on to my release, thereby causing an open shoulders and also annoying hooks once in a while since I have to “flip” my wrists slightly after impact.

But the most interesting thing I found was in my practice swing.  As you can see, this is a snapshot of my practice swing impact position.  The shoulders are slightly open and the hands are exactly where I want them.

Next time, I will try to stand a little taller during the swing and that should help me fix the kink.

Darn, if I could only swing like my practice swings…