From Firm Foundations Single Figures Are Born

I had a lesson last night with regular teacher Rhys ap Iolo at Downshire Golf Centre near Wokingham.  I've not been swinging great as regular followers of my ongoing quest for single figures will know. If you don't then where have you been? I got down to a low of 9.8 after the Club Championships in June. Since then I've had three 0.1 increases. A couple of my rounds have been tales of frustration where I've played reasonably but have thrown in a few big scores to ruin otherwise competitive rounds.

I was due to play last weekend but an unscheduled visit to A&E put a kibosh on that. I've not felt happy with my swing for a couple of weeks and it feels as though everything is moving during the swing. Nothing seems stable and shots were inconsistent.

I explained the problems to Rhys and he watched me hit a few. His all singing, all dancing software showed the shot in all its gory details but from the data and the video captured from behind and to the side he could make a diagnosis. In simple terms I was right in the fact that everything was jiggling around and the feeling I was getting was correct but the cause wasn't coming from where I thought it was, the upper body. It was the dancing legs and exaggerated hip turn that was causing it all to be unstable from the ground up and that there needed to be any number of compensations from there to try and make a reasonable connection.

I managed to tax the teaching brain of Rhys. Was it better to cure the legs, hips or arms and once that was decided what to do to find a cure. Still that is what he is there for and he is a teacher that not only is very good at what he does but is someone I trust 100% with my game. If he says we need to change something then it is for the benefit of the swing and not to justify me being there. The fact that the launch monitor, software and Rhys's approach means that it is very simple to understand the fault and the fix.

In the end, the verdict was that nothing ever succeeds without a firm basis to build on and that the collapsing knees and moving legs were causing a number of faults in the swing sequence. I needed to stand on a firmer base and try and swing without as much hip rotation. Basically it went back to quietening everything down.

As always, the drills are always an exaggeration. I stood there with my legs feeling wider apart and with a feeling of the gap increasing as I swung. To be honest the set up felt like I was standing there looking like a cross between Charlie Chaplin and someone trying to lay an egg. It definitely didn't feel good and I doubt it looked particularly elegant.

Like all things in golf though, it isn't about what it looks like but how the ball flies and where it goes. Look at Bubba or Furyk. Neither are textbook or elegant but they seem to have earned a crust over the last few years. The monitor records every swing and it was funny to see how my good ones at the beginning, hitting a 7 iron 143 carry, decent swing speed, smash factor etc compared. Take away the bad ones I hit as we made the changes, once I cottoned on to what I was doing, we were hitting off a firmer platform. The top half with less hip movement felt more compact and we actually got the ball sailing out over 150 yards. All the other numbers fell into place too.

It is going to take a significant amount of rehearsals, slow motion swings and loads of balls to get this to sink in. The hip action has been with me for years, which shows I'm in pretty athletic shape for 46. The theory that less rotation gives everything time to synch up and become more stable was a key link to the Winter programme we were going to work on. It does feel very good in the teaching bay with Rhys standing there. Of course it all comes down to doing it properly tomorrow on the practice ground. We know it works as I hit some shots that took my breath away. Knocking down a 30 year old wall of idiosyncrasies and faults will be a long taxing road.

That said, the road towards single figures is a one worth taking. I've got myself into a position where the carrot is dangling tantalisingly close. The work we did last night and plan to do going forward mean that once I hit 9,  hopefully before the curtain closes on 2012, we wont be stopping there and that 8, 7 and who knows, even lower is obtainable. The short game will need a serious makeover as that is closer to 28 than 9 but we need to take it one problem at a time. A firm base to set the swing on, just like the guys you see on the TV, is the way forward.

The Plane Truth one plane system is a revelation and my 2012 season has been a joy. Not every round has been great but even the majority of the bad ones have been so much better than they would have been a year ago when I reached a nadir of 14. The good ones have been so much better than I could have imagined and I have a firmer concept on where the swing is suppose to go as I hit it. As I've said, breaking down 30 years of rubbish is arguably the biggest hurdle to overcome but Rhys seems to think it's a case of stripping it back, for now, layer by layer.

Either way the plan is to hit the range early tomorrow before the heat and sun really get going and it is quiet and stand there looking vaguely ridiculous with my new stance and try and hit it with minimal movement. Take a breather, replenish fuel loads and then a few hours sharpening the short game and putting. Keep that ticking over all week and hit the course on Friday when I've a day off work. That will give me a good idea of my progress. Until then we'll work on firm foundations. It is where single figure golf begins.