134 - Schwing...

As I write this article I’m struggling. My legs, thighs and back are seriously aching. The reason? I’ve just spent four and a half hours receiving some great golfing tuition from my friend Terry and my body seriously isn’t used to all the exercise. To add insult to certain injury, my head is spinning too.

I took the afternoon off and headed to Terry’s to find that he has ingeniously built himself a golf swing trainer (below). The device replicates the perfect arc that all golfers should create for each shot and if used regularly it is claimed to help promote muscle memory to make the swing more natural – clever stuff and clever Terry for making one.

After 10 minutes on the trainer it was clear that my swing is, to use a technical term, shite. From spaghetti arms to a wayward backswing and a nonexistent follow through there was little to applaud but with Terry’s help it improved almost instantly. Time to put the practice into theory.

We headed to the field at the back of the house and went through some drills. Not worrying about hitting it far or straight I hit a handful of balls ensuring my swing plane was correct and that I was rotating my wrists on follow through.

The results were impressive as my usual divot-scooping slice disappeared into the ether being replaced by reasonably straight, reasonably long shot after shot. It wasn’t a fluke either, I repeated the feat with my 9 and 7 iron too.

After the irons I started on my nemesis – the wood. As per usual I had a textbook newbie slice that irritated the life out of me until I had a bit of a breakthrough when I remembered something another mate said about ‘pointing where you want the ball to go’.

The idea is to focus on following through with the swing on the correct, straight path. By concentrating on this my wrists automatically rotated, my body turned correctly and, most importantly, the ball flew long and straight…until I started bragging about it which instantly put a hex on the whole thing.

After two hours on the field I felt I had taken a giant step thanks to Terry’s help. Ok, so the distance was a little lacking and there was still the odd slice but my ball striking was much more consistent. For the first time I felt pretty confident that I would be ok on a course, well except for with a wood but you can’t have everything, can you?