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!

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!

Remember I revealed the secret of Tiger Woods swing plane secret little bit ago?

Well, here’s another photoshopped image of Tiger Woods’ backswing plane.

If you can imagine the plane formed by the red-circles I drew, you will quickly notice that Tiger is actually on an “inside-out” plane.

What can you learn from this?

Try swinging the club more inside to out. Backswing is always better suited for slightly inside-out planes than the other way around.

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Today, I was watching Ben Hogan’s swing on YouTube and found a secret, that is of Ben Hogan’s swing.

What is it?

The secret is when Ben Hogan finishes his swing.  Watch very carefully and you will notice that Ben Hogan never swings full out on his irons, woods, and etc…etc…

He seems to slow down shortly after impact and the finish looks more graceful while not wasting extra energy.

So how do I do it?

You gotta really think of a “balanced” finish, a swing that slows down near the very end.

You need to think feel that you are swinging a momentum ball.  If you go too fast, you will lose control of the momentum ball at your finish.  If you can control a heavy ball, that’d be how you want to finish in golf.