Swing Thoughts, no. 1

You'll Never Believe This One Crazy Plan

This is a periodic feature that I am trying out. Loop Links, no. 18 will be back next week.

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I’m not a swing guy. I find the more technical I get, the more I think about, the worse my swings become. I couldn’t tell you what a good spin rate is, or a bad spin rate, for that matter. When people tell me someone hit a certain clubhead speed or ball speed, my first question is always, “Is that good?”

So who better to introduce a periodic feature focusing on swing changes than myself, right?

Ok that’s an absurd introduction.

It’s not really swing mechanics that I want to focus on. It’s more about the pursuit. More specifically, it’s the pursuit while having a full-time career, a business on the side, two young kids, and little desire to be anywhere but on the course while golfing (i.e., I hate the driving range). People may go to great lengths while chasing scratch, but what is the average person supposed to do with limited time, perhaps limited funds, yet with the desire to reach a modest goal of self-improvement?

Let me back up a bit.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I previously lived in Chicago, where playing 18 holes often involved dedicating 8 or more hours of my day for a trek to the suburbs and back. When I moved back to Michigan and started golfing regularly, I established a handicap to play in events. My baseline become a 9 after posting a few rounds, and I slowly climbed (or fell?) to a 13 after two golf seasons. Hitting 13 was the first time that I really started searching for answers, back in 2022.

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Mental Game

I started with a timely book pickup, The Inner Game of Golf by Timothy Gallwey. My game was so inconsistent, hitting multiple good shots on each hole but ultimately coming away with bogey or double bogey, that I theorized my biggest issue was my mental game, rather than my swing.

As a former coach, Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis was already in my list of books that I had read, back when I was looking to pick up performance tidbits that I could share with my players. The premise of The Inner Game of Golf is very similar. As briefly as possible, Gallwey’s theory is that our performance is impacted by our conscious mind, which he calls Self 1, as well as our unconscious mind, which is Self 2. Self 2, according to Gallwey, has everything it needs to perform a proper tennis swing or golf swing, but the controlling thoughts of Self 1 inhibit our freedom and lead to poor shots. The way to let Self 2 take control, then, is to give your Self 1 conscious mind a task to do, to keep it occupied and away from messing up the swing.

After reading the book and incorporating some of its techniques, I went out to Leslie Park in my first round and shot an 81, a great result for me as someone with an average score of about 87-88. Buoyed by elevated expectations, I went out in the next round and shot a 90. Brought back down to Earth, I went to Calderone next with lowered expectations and shot an 80, the closest I had come to breaking 80 in about 15-20 years. I would stay on this roller coaster for awhile, posting another 80 at Washtenaw GC and an 81 at UMGC by halfway through the 2023 season, and finally getting my handicap back down to single digits.

I would like to say that I had found the answer. But as the latter half of the 2023 season continued, I started to see diminishing returns and my performance began to decline. To open up 2024, I posted some of my highest scores in years, including one in the triple digits.

Struggling in golf is frustrating. Tasting a little success and then backsliding, though, is almost unbearable. Just to make things a little more interesting, I picked up some chipping yips along the way, which started to seep into my wedge and short iron game, to the point where ground contact was becoming terrifying for me.

I had to do something, so I turned to the thing that I know you absolutely are not supposed to do. I started watching YouTube videos.

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The Chef

Of course it was the Short Game Chef that got me. I’m connected to the Golfer’s Journal in just about every form you can be (even appeared in an issue once), so one of their Index Experiment videos was bound to make its way to my feed. I can’t remember which video I saw first, but I definitely watched this one:

The idea of a shallow attack, reducing chunked shots while allowing thinned shots to still have enough spin to not exit the atmosphere, was exactly what I needed at that time. After consuming a bunch of Chef videos and practicing a little in the yard, I took my new technique to the course. It took a few rounds to dial in my distance, but I was pleased enough with the results to think that perhaps I could find everything I needed through the Index Experiment.

So next I moved on to a Cameron McCormick video about hitting a reliable 100-yard shot:

I could not have gotten less out a video than this one. Dynamic loft, launch angle, clubhead speed. I can’t deal with these things. McCormick might be brilliant, but this content isn’t for me.

Clearly just consuming everything that is out there is not going to work for me. That’s why YouTube content is so dangerous. You don’t take lessons from 15 different instructors at once, so you shouldn’t watch every video offering a “secret” or “one simple technique” to fix your flaws. You need one instructor whose teaching style matches your learning style.

That’s my theory, anyway. Back to the drawing board.

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Finding The One

In order to find the one instructor who might work for me, I did another goofy thing and just tried to find one through a Google search. I can’t remember now exactly what I searched for, but what I was specifically looking for was testimonials from people who stuck with a single instructor, paying particular attention to things like reddit and message board discussions.

One name that I kept seeing repeated was Danny Maude. He was praised for the simplicity of his lessons, the clarity in his descriptions, and for providing useful drills and visual cues. He also came with a disclaimer. Ignore the clickbait titles of his videos and just watch them, because they are much better than the titles imply. Such as this one, the first video that I watched:

I have an incredibly steep swing, one that I purposely developed over the years to counter a nasty snap hook that I had while competing in high school. This means I hit the ball incredibly high at all times, costing me a legitimate 20-30 yards or more off of the tee in a head wind. It also leads to my fear of ground contact with short irons. So this was one video that I purposely chose to watch first, hoping to improve my contact and start the process of working my way back towards a more shallow swing.

“The Ridiculous Reason Why…” is incredibly misleading. Other than to drive engagement, I’m not sure why a video with several good tips and one really insightful drill would have a title like that. There is no one reason in the video. This is what I took away for better iron strikes:

1. Make sure sternum is over ball at setup (don’t lean back). Start with slight shaft lean.

2. Turn ribcage to create effortless swing. Cannot force shaft lean or hands forward, has to come through proper body turn.

3. Focus can’t be on the ball as the target. The target is off in the distance. Your mental target should be a balance of he two, the ball and the target in the distance.

4. Ball throw drill to mimic a balance of the two: Line up with a ball in your stance but no club, use your golf swing, and throw a ball with right hand at the ground in front of the ball on the ground, with intention of then bouncing it over a basket 10-20 yards down the line (off of mat, wouldn’t work so great in the grass). So momentum is both down and forward. Will get body and club into correct position when trying to hit a shot.

I find the ball throwing drill to be unique, and it presents a good visual cue for what your targets and goals actually are. And after working on this in the yard, I took it to league night and made 6 straight pars. If I could putt at all, it would have likely been 6 pars and 2 birdies on the first 8.

So I gave Danny another shot and looked at a putting video:

Another clickbait title, and another video that mostly asks you to check your setup and fundamentals. Notes:

1. Nose-Spine-Putter in vertical line (Since a putter fitting last year I’ve had the ball forward in my stance to ensure the face isn’t open at impact)

2. Eyes directly over ball, eyes facing directly down

3. Shoulders level

4. Shaft on same plane as at least one of the forearms

5. Putter swings in arc (I’ve always gone for a straight line)

6. Strike center of face (as in, focus on consistent impact)

7. 1-2-3-4 counting routine. Line up. 1-Look at hole. 2-Look at ball. 3-Backswing. 4-Followthrough

8. Club collides with the ball. Don’t hit at it.

I practiced with these tips at home, and found that trying to focus on the arc swing brought a lot of inconsistency to my putts and didn’t feel comfortable. Using the 1-2-3-4 routine both at home and at the course, I simply don’t like that, either. It makes me feel rushed and uncomfortable with my pace.

So perhaps I should set a baseline of expectations with Danny, and have a plan moving forward. But first…

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Why Do You Care?

As I said in my intro, I’m not a swing guy. I would also venture a guess that most of you would not consider yourself someone who likes to read about a stranger’s swing thoughts*. If you made it this far in the article, why are you here? And why am I doing this?

I’m hoping it’s because you can relate to my situation. I know there are things out there like Tom Coyne’s Paper Tiger book, where Tom goes to insane lengths that aren’t on the table for most golfers in a quest to go from a 14 handicap to a pro-level golfer. Or the Chasing Scratch podcast, which I’m aware that a lot of people like but I just couldn’t get in to, where two buddies document exactly what the title says, chasing a scratch handicap. Those are fun stories, but not real life.

“Just go buy some lessons,” you might say. I have a hard enough time justifying how much money I spend on golf rounds. Now you want me to spend more to go hit balls with someone on the range or on a simulator? Honestly, I’d rather spend that money on playing more rounds, bad as the golf may be.

No, what I’m trying to do is simply be your guinea pig, to see if I can find a strategy that works for the casual golfer. If it doesn’t work, at least I might be able to document for you exactly what not to do.

Most of all, I’m trying to approach game improvement with a plan. I feel like I, much like a lot of people, am often flailing uncontrollably in all directions in search of something that will help me hit the ball more solidly and score better, without anything resembling a plan or any way of documenting my progress, other than that number that the GHIN** app spits out at me.

So let’s get on with the plan, shall we?

*You probably don’t even want to hear about a friend’s swing changes, if we are being honest, let alone a stranger’s.

**I’m on team GHIN and Tonic, as it concerns the proper way to pronounce GHIN in conversation.

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The Plan

Leaning on a few more resources I recently consumed, namely the Every Shot Counts book by Mark Broadie and The Four Foundations of Golf by Jon Sherman, has helped me analyze my game a little better and realize where improvement could help me the most. In order of most impactful:

1. Approach play. Strokes gained statistics indicate that approach play and proximity to the hole are the most important factor in scoring. I don’t know my own statistics, but I’m confident my swing changes over time to become more steep have negatively impacted my approach play the most. Better iron strikes will be my main focus going forward, and I will make a modest attempt at tracking my progress through greens hit, proximity to the hole, and avoiding bad misses. How I will track any of that, other than GIR, is a work in progress.

2. Driving. While not as important as approach play, driving is still a part of the tee-to-green game, which accounts for the bulk of the scoring difference between scratch players and high handicappers. This part of my game has not been too bad (thank you modern equipment), so my main focus will be trying to improve consistency in my swing, presumably by shallowing out a bit, and making proper strategic decisions on the tee to avoid the most costly misses. A vibes-based measurement system of progress is all that I’ve got planned here, at the moment.

3. Short game. I am going to stick with what the stats indicate and avoid the urge to say that the short game is my most urgent deficiency. First of all, I do really feel that the Short Game Chef changes have helped me a lot with my recovery shots. So my lone goal there remains to eliminate chunks and blades, and make sure I’m always hitting the green in my first attempt. For putting, my main goal will be speed control. It’s not a stat, but a key point from the Broadie book about amateur putting is that often our downhill putts are too hard, and uphill putts are usually woefully short. Those will be keys for me, along with 3-putt avoidance. Or maybe a more modest goal is simply being able to walk off of the green without hating myself.

I hope while you are reading this, you are nodding approvingly and saying, “that sounds like a pretty good plan.” Or, failing that, I hope you are at least entertained and saying to yourself, “this whole plan is terrible and I can’t believe he typed all of this stuff out.”

June is a big golf month for me, culminating in my annual Up North golf trip near the end of the month. So I am going to get with Danny again and see how the next few weeks go on the course. I will document as much as I can, and be back in a month with an update on all of my triumphs and heartbreaks. Wish me luck.