It boosted my ego a lot when the instructor told me that I have a beautiful swing. My plane is perfect. My tempo is just right.

And then he said "here is what you're doing wrong".

It seems I wasn't turning towards my target enough at impace. He also helped to fix my grip, which I was extremely nervous about. These were my biggest problem with my irons. He let me hit a couple before showing me what I was doing wrong. Then, after doing a few practice swings the right way, I lined up with my six iron, barely swung, and sent the ball flying about 180 yards. It was perfectly straight. I shot about 20 just like that without any mishits. I was very impressed with that slight modification.

Then came my driver. My fairway percentage is pretty good, but my distance is severely lacking. That's about to change.

I was doing a lot wrong with my driver. My grip was a good place to start. He also tried to emphasize how I want to have the shaft pointed at my left leg at address. That way, my wrists stay pretty straight on the backswing. My impace and follow through were way off. He said I really need to learn to exaggerate these actions. I need to learn to move my body through the impact, pushing off with my left foot so that all of my weight ends up on my right foot. He said it was like I was going to take a step towards the target on my follow through. It should be like I'm trying to pull the ball to the left with my wrists at impact. My body is having a heckuva time at the moment keeping up with my swing because it feels so uncomfortable. The result is a lot of pushes and slices. The distance? While I was on the range with him, I was hitting the ball close to 300 yards, but very few of them were straight.

I had to hit the course after this grueling hour on the range. On the par 3's, I teed up one club higher than what I'm used to with mixed results. What I noticed was the most obvious was that my wedges were playing longer than normal. This was easy to compensate for inside of 40 yards, which is my max distance with an easy swing with my lob wedge. I was hitting my other wedges long, though. However, I hit the green on all of my approach shots where my approach game from outside of 100 yards was extremely inconsistent before. My chipping and putting were off, which was the difference overall.

The drives on the course? I hit one dead straight, but I hit turf first. The result was about a 230 yards shot into a slight wind. I hit two heavy slices that I was able to recover from with only one lost stroke. And then there was the huge sweeping slice that I hit on the very forgiving hole number 8. The drive went about 280, and it left me in great shape to go for the green...except the fact that I was in a sand trap.

I can't golf today, unfortunately, but I most certainly can't wait to hit the links tomorrow.

Sounds like you had an effective lesson. Are you planning on taking more lessons?

I hope your scores will reflect your changes to your grip and swing. It would be interesting for you to take a snapshot of your "my game" page and see how much it improves from this point forward.

The biggest thing is about repitition and muscle memory. Eliminating mishits is the name of the game. However, I have found that when I swing the club correctly, a mishit still tends to be a fair shot.

I have a pretty good idea of where my game is now because I'm about to break into the rhealm of having a true handicap (below 36.4).

I do plan on taking future lessons, but I think one a month or so is adequate at this point.

I've shot 36 holes since the lesson, which is actually down a bit from the usual over a 5 day stretch. My impression is....I'm mis-hitting the ball a lot. I was told to expect it, but it's frustrating. My putting is the only thing holding my game together at the moment. However, I have found that when I do make good contact, I can tell where the ball is going to land without looking up. The problem is, in 28 non-putting and non-chipping strokes on the course tonight, I made good contact on about 8 of those strokes.

I don't think there can be any doubt that this lesson has helped my game.

http://oobgolf.com/golfers/handicap.php?id=49923

bjohn13 wrote:

I've shot 36 holes since the lesson, which is actually down a bit from the usual over a 5 day stretch. My impression is....I'm mis-hitting the ball a lot. I was told to expect it, but it's frustrating. My putting is the only thing holding my game together at the moment. However, I have found that when I do make good contact, I can tell where the ball is going to land without looking up. The problem is, in 28 non-putting and non-chipping strokes on the course tonight, I made good contact on about 8 of those strokes.

this can be the worst thing about having a lesson and changing things. When I took my first lesson I couldn't play until a couple days later and it was a mess... I was really fighting with myself about the things that he wanted me to fix and how they felt. It's just going to take you a little time to get comfortable again. Don't worry, you will get back in the swing of things

pardon the pun

99% of the time swing and grip changes will feel strange. Whenever I make a change, even though I know its for the best I still feel like I am going to shank the ball.

Trust it.

Practice.

Do not play until you have spent a significant amount of time working on the change. If you don't, you will revert back to old habits on the course to get by and that kind of defeats the whole purpose right?