The Benefits Of Lessons

If you are a regular follower of my pursuit of a single figure handicap, you'll be aware that golf doesn't come naturally and that any small triumph and handicap cut is the result of dedication and sheer hard work, along with some bloody mindedness. I have been having one of those frustrating seasons where I'm doing a lot of things right and have been blighting my competition cards with one or two poor holes.

In recent weeks, the swing has felt out of kilter and full of too many moving parts and I've been struggling at the range and on the course to find a level of consistency. As a result, I booked a lesson at Lavender Park Golf Centre with Andy Piper. I've been seeing him since the winter, usually for a fix when the swing has fallen away and I can't find the repair manual myself. I like his teaching methods and he's kept it simple. We've tinkered with tempo and swing length a little in recent months and that is probably as intense as we've got and is something we'll re-visit in more detail over the winter. For now, it was about getting the swing working again.

Following my previous lesson, we'd worked on takeaway, which had been hands driven and too far inside. In the last few range sessions I've struggled and a big pull has materialised from time to time from nowhere. On the course that's caused a number of issues and big scores and I had no idea what the cause was. I was also missing right with a weak strike. I did say the swing was out of kilter.

Andy watched as I hit a few. As is the norm, I striped the first couple straight and true. Then came a couple of the big pulls and a couple of the ones going right so he got to see the full gamut within the first dozen shots. There was some good news, and some not so good. I'd been working hard all season on posture and he was very happy with where I was. One box ticked. The tempo was better. Not great but better. The pull was easy to diagnose and cure. All I was doing was aiming the left shoulder too far left of target and then simply swinging down that line. A simple change to the address position to get both shoulders square eradicated that. The bad news was that the swing was still too dominated on the take away by the hands getting too quick and coming inside too quickly.

We worked hard on a one piece action, letting the shoulder and the chest initiate the start of the swing. Tempo and the length of swing improved as I got into a flow and worked the club back better and on a correct path. The second part of the fix, to encourage me to strike down, ball then turf (mat) and get the club exiting better was to simple think of hitting a fade and working the club more to the left. I wasn't actually trying to move it right to left, and the flight wasn't moving in the air and it was more a feel rather than "real". To reinforce the feeling he placed an alignment stake about three yards outside the bay and asked me to imagine that was a sapling and I had to fade it around it.

These tweaks were minimal. A slight tweak to the shoulders, a more neutral start and a small change to the path and suddenly I was a different player. Every ball was higher and longer than in recent months. It all felt compact and there were no excessive moving parts and it felt compact and solid. As the lesson ended we talked about a plan for the winter. I still want to work on tempo and the length but when I swing as I had been in the lesson it all falls into place. The other big area I want to look at is the mental side. I am still working hard on New Golf Thinking and have gone back to the Kindle book and read one or two key chapters to remind myself what I need to be doing. However the key are for me is taking range performance onto the course and replicating what I am capable of on the course.

After the lesson I adjourned to a nearby bay to work on the takeaway and bask in the enjoyment of getting the ball to behave as I wanted. I had been hitting a six iron in the lesson and started to play about with longer clubs until I got to the driver. Wow. It was like a different, proper, golfer holding hitting it. Even with range balls I was hitting the back fence at about 220 yards almost on the fly. More importantly, dispersion was gloriously tight.

The biggest down side was Royal Ascot Golf Club was shut last week to accommodate the Red Bull Air Race taking place on the famous race course across the road. The course and facilities were shut to provide a sterile flying area. I was also away and so I haven't been able to work as diligently on the take away in particular as I'd hoped. I had ventured down to the golf club and the practice ground a couple of times after work earlier in the week before the closures took effect. In patches it was good but I came away with a tinge of disappointment. It wasn't as good as I hoped and I'm still struggling with the hands dictating the start and it coming too far inside,

However I feel I'm back on an even keel and with a nod towards my short game to come and an hour of tuition booked soon, I'm in a happy place with the game. We had Captain's Day on Saturday and I hoped it would come together in a strong performance. It's a hugely popular day in the calendar and this year we were raising money for the Berkshire Air Ambulance, a needy and under resourced which provides valuable support in life and death situations and gets the seriously injured to hospital in time to make a world of difference. A great cause.

I am still a huge advocate of getting regular lessons. The cynical out there will say it has made precious difference to my game and that my handicap has been on a plateau between 10 and 12 for the last few years and I still show precious little sign of cracking on towards my utopia of a single figure handicap. In simple terms they'd be correct if you take the handicap as the sole measuring tool. However in terms of progress towards a swing that is more than capable of seeing my goal fulfilled, it is getting better and better.

Captain's Day arrived. I hadn't been on the course for a fortnight. Practice had shown some forward momentum but as any golfer knows, there's a world of difference between playing on the course, one ball, once chance and hitting a number of balls off a nice flat mat. Warm up went well and I meandered my way to the fifth hole in time for the 8.00am shotgun start.

Things started well enough with an opening par, offset with a bogey on my fourth hole (the 8th). I wasn't hitting it perfectly, but riding my luck as my thinned tee shot at my seventh (11th) showed as it rolled up to within ten feet of the hole. I didn't make birdie but it was a stress free par.

I was compiling a score. I wasn't pretty but it was functional. As we came to my 15th (the 1st) if I could make a couple of pars, net birdie, I could get close to forty points. I missed the green but chipped well to three feet but failed to make the putt. I repeated the feat on the next, coming up short of the green in regulation but chipping to two feet but again missing a par putt. I finally converted an up and down for par at the penultimate hole. A closing par wasn't pretty. I hit a horrid three wood off the tee which was off the toe and scuttled away down the third fairway. I hit a solid recovery with an eight iron and two putted. In the end, I came in with a respectable thirty eight points. Not enough to trouble the prize table or pick up any money from the usual roll up group but a couple under handicap. The biggest shame was the event wasn't a qualifier and so there's no cut to come.

I played again today. Again warm up was good and I was hitting it well. My opening tee shot wasn't good but I chipped close and should have made par but was happy to settle for a net par and move on. I drained a monster putt for birdie at the second. Things started to go awry from the sixth where I hit a horrid snap hook. I did the same at the next but worked hard to recover for a net par. I then made horrible double bogey at the eighth and a lot of my early hard work had been undone.

I was steady at the start of the back nine, gave all the ground back with another snap hook off the tee at the thirteenth. These hooks had come with irons or my three hybrid and the driver finally joined in at the fourteenth. I put my third into a lateral hazard, dropped under penalty, and pitched to twelve feet and holed out for a double bogey (single point as I get a shot). By then the rain was falling heavily. Welcome to the British summer. I made a mess of the fifteenth but then hit a good drive down sixteenth and followed it with a hybrid to the edge of the green some fifteen feet away. I had put the Ping Cadence Anser back in the bag and it rolled another birdie putt. I made another putt from ten feet at the seventeenth to save par. My closing tee shot was another snap hook but I found a way to make a bogey at this par five thanks to a good fairway wood and a seven iron to the heart of the green from 142 yards in torrential rain after initially chipping the tee shot back out from heavy wet rough.

Again, it added up to a level handicap thirty six points and I am conscious that the two birdies (four points each) masked a lot of poor holes. I seemed to lose my tempo completely on the back nine today. It was in and out yesterday and today and so the work I've been doing isn't there yet. It is better than it was though.

The season is beginning to build towards a climax. It is a bank holiday next weekend and it's the Longhurst Cup, a medal event, where you play two rounds but can choose which two of the three days of the long weekend to compete. It is a major at Royal Ascot and an event I won way back in 2000. The following week, it is the Masters, an invite only event, thirty six holes of medal on the one day. It is only open to competition winners over the last twelve months and I'm in courtesy of my win in the June stableford.

The moral of this yarn is simple. Your narrator had been struggling and couldn't find a fix. A simple lesson and I am back enjoying the golf again, and in swathes playing some good and consistent golf again. There are still issues as my hooks today show but I feel I've not really put too much work into the game over the last week as the club was closed and practice was protracted. I have a full week of practice scheduled this week to work hard on the take away and tempo. The session last week showed me what I can achieve and that with the benefit of lessons and a regular look at the fundamentals, the swing is moving on, baby step by baby step and I am building something that will work more often, get my scores and handicap down and get me to single figures. If that could start next week it would be nice.