Self Taught Swing That's Ugly as Heck

Have you ever recorded yourself talking or singing, play it back and realize you don’t like your own voice? I have and I learned similarly that when I view a video of my own swing, it’s down-right UGLY! Body parts are flailing everywhere and it’s totally amazing I can even hit the ball with the swing I see in the video.

One of the pro golfers I like to watch is Bubba Watson. His swing is “interesting” and I was heartened to learn that his swing is self-taught. When I learned that, I thought, “there’s hope for me!” However, he started playing at 6 years old according to his web site. I started at 30 years old so he does have that learning young advantage. Now I know I’ll never get to his level, but I know within my skills and age that I can achieve my golfing goals of getting to single digit handicap within four years.

Not Entirely Self Taught - Lessons

I started playing golf as a requirement for a pair of Physical Education credits at Lamar University in Beaumont Texas in 1990. I vaguely recall the classes were taught by a woman coach and she that she effectively taught some elements of swing because with her lessons I’ve never had a problem hitting the ball in general. From that time until sometime last year though I always hit the ball with an almost purely arm swing. I just used my arms and shoulders to muscle through the ball. However, I’m not a muscle bound person so I’ve always been a short hitter. After my five year, “damnit I quit!”, break from 2008-2013, I took two lessons from a local pro. I recall he wanted me to bow my wrist at the top of my backswing in both lessons. It was very much a “get into this position” lesson style. For some reason, I didn’t feel comfortable with this type of lesson because to me the swing is so dynamic that putting the body or hands or arms into static positions doesn’t mentally equate well for me.

What Happened to the AHA Moment!?!

When I started playing in Beaumont courses I played several rounds with a fellow engineering student who carried a 3 handicap. Man, could that guy hit the ball! He would give me tips and I recall at one point him telling me that one day I would have an aha moment and start hitting the ball better. I took that to mean I would have the moment and start immediately smoking the driver 250 yards down the middle of the fairway. It hasn’t happened that way but last year I found the “gravity genius” swing from the Shawn Clement “Wisdom in Golf” youtube channel and started applying his concepts to my swing. I immediately started hitting longer with a lot less effort. If you’ve ever played golf, you have encountered that aha moment feeling. The swing feels so effortless and the contact so pure accompanied with a very distinctive sound. You then bask in the pure joy of watching the ball fly straighter and further by far than the usual shot.  Those rare shots cement a love for the game in me.  Once I learned a sequenced momentum swing that works from the body’s core turning through and pulling the arms through I started hitting more and more of those sweet shots. However, even though I have the aha, it is taking a lot of work to unlearn the arm swing. If I get off focus or tense in any way, I revert to the arm swing with inconsistent results directionally and much shorter results overall.

So the aha moment is there and I understand what needs to be done but the work isn’t done until I can perform a sequenced swing for virtually every shot during a round of golf. To get there requires constant drills and practice as well as working to improve my mental focus in rounds to incorporate the correct swing in all shots.

Observed Fault Tendencies in Rounds

At a 24 handicap, I obviously have some swing faults that keep my handicap high. Given my putting is better than average for my handicap, the fault must lie in either my tee and approach shots, or in my short game. I have been working on the short game a great deal lately and can attribute a good deal of my five point HC drop to improved short game and applying The Scoring Method  course strategy to my game.

Over the course of 18 holes of golf, my poor score is primarily due to three to five “blow-up” holes – which I define as triple bogey or worse. Most often, the cause of the blow-up holes is a very poor tee or approach shot that ends up racking up a penalty – either an out of bounds or unplayable lie or lost ball or hazard bound ball. I have noticed the following issues that result in these piss-poor results.

My most common fault is the dead straight pull. I spent years teaching myself not to slice apparently by getting my hands to turn over more quickly. But when I combine quick hand action with an outside-in swing I tend to hit a straight pull. Interestingly, I almost always hit this with excellent center of face contact with the result that the pulls are way longer than my average straight shot. As a prime example, I hit my longest drive 254 yards with a 3-wood off the tee, but into the next fairway. To compare, my average 3-wood drive is 194 yards. I usually hit these shots most often early in a round when I swing “naturally”. I usually have to consciously think and visualize to hit straight shots rather than the pull. As I get better with the sequenced momentum target focused swing, the number of pulls per round has decreased significantly which is why I’ve broke 100 most games recently.

When I get a bit tired later in the round I start hitting weak, short, push-fades with most irons and hybrids, and it becomes a push-slice with the 3-wood. The feeling is that my hips wrench around too quickly leaving my hands and the club face behind. I started recognizing this pattern a few rounds ago and when I see it happening I switch to an easier 3/4 swing so that I sacrifice some distance in order to keep the ball straight and in play.

Finally, on some number of shots per round, I try really hard to hit the ball with a hybrid or wood and end up topping it. In the past I would try to rescue the short shot top results with a heroic 3-wood off the deck shot with disastrous results leading to a triple. However, I learned with the scoring method that I can recover from these short shots and usually that results in a double bogey at worst and on par 5’s I’ve even salvaged a few bogeys. Bad shots tend to come in groups which is a mental issue of tension and loosing focus. Although I can hit the pull or push faults in back-to-back shots, I seldom top balls back-to-back because I usually follow up a wood/hybrid top with an iron and hit it easy to prevent recurrence.

The Three Most Influential Videos on My Swing

My swing improvement in the last year can be attributed to a lot of factors. Probably the most important factor is being able to devote more time to practice combined with making sure I practice very specific tasks with measurable goals nearly every time I go to the range. What I practice on I gather from books and youtube videos. As mentioned earlier “Wisdom in Golf” videos play a major part in my swing improvement but I found I still hit pulls with his methods. I kept exploring and found two additional sources that, when added to Clement’s body of work, have lead to an improvement in my swing, contact, and ball flight. Each of these channels have numerous very useful videos (one paid) but I have selected one from each which most imparts the concepts I found most important to my learning. In order of when I encountered them these three videos (as links) are (I put my own interpretations for titles):

Shawn Clements – “Dynamic Swing Concepts” (Oldie but goodie – audio quality not great, but acceptable)

Adam Young Golf – “Importance of Impact” (This is an advertisement for his paid Strike Plan content but the concept is well stated here.)

Malaska Golf – “The Malaska Move” (This pivot move was the final piece that improved club path control for me.)

Each of these teachers have multiple videos that cover more aspects of their teaching. If you find these three helpful, continue exploring their channels for more insights.

Other influential youtube channels I watch are,

Static Technical Learning Versus Dynamic Skills Development Learning

As much fun as it is to see the shot sequence photos of pros in various golf magazines, it has always seemed hard to me to be able to tell where my arms and body are at any point in the swing because the swing happens so fast. But I can feel a lot in the swing and as I learn more I learn to trust the feel that results in good ball striking. It is this realization that I enjoy feel based feedback that lead me to gravitate to those online sources that emphasize learning how to control the dynamic aspects of the golf swing.

But the key that really added to the dynamic feel based swing is to develop the skill to recognize impact on every swing. The Adam Young paradigm is to develop skills with drills – for example, hit N shots to deliberately hit off the toe, then hit N shots to hit off the heel, then hit N shots to hit the sweet spot without changing how you address the ball. Working on these drills has improved my ability to hit the sweet spot because the feel for that shot is unique and exaggerating hitting faults helps develop feel for what it takes to hit the good shots. He has similar drills to help the ball-then-ground contact and so on.

My practice sessions therefore, are always guided by developing the feel for good shots. Whether it’s my 3-hybrid off the tee, or my 7-iron layup shot, or 3/4 wedge, I am always working on the feel of good shots. I also work on the feel of shaping shots – a topic I will write about in its own upcoming blog.

The State of My Swing

My swing is a work in progress but I really like the direction its going. The main concepts of concentrating to develop the skill to consistently hit the sweet spot with ball-then-ground impact, with effortless core turn sequence momentum swing mentally works for me and is well within my physical capabilities. I have seen great progress and a future blog will describe a particular recurring example that’s been a joy to observe on the golf course. The state of my swing gives me joy because I know it’s on a great path that will help (along with mental game and course strategy) me reach the goal of single digit handicap in the not to distant future.