Looks like we made it!

Welcome to 2014 everyone! I hope you all had a safe and happy start to the New Year.

The time for lollygagging has come to an end and the days of excuses are over. It’s time to get back to work and get ready for the 2014 golf season.

As I mentioned before in my Goals for 2014 post the number one item on my agenda this year is fixing my swing flaw that still has me swinging with an Over the Top move from time to time. I spoke with Wade briefly via text and let him know that I just wanted to chat about the swing in regards to the over the top move and the mechanics involved in remedying it.

Before we talked I sent Wade a video of my swing back when I felt I was playing the best which was near the end of October right after I had played Boulder Creek and Southern Highlands.

Technology is so awesome. I use the SwingPlane app on my iPhone (plug) to record my swings and with a quick edit I can email it off to Wade where he can take a look and then structure a lesson around what he sees we need to focus on.

My Over the Top move has been a round wrecker for a while now but as I’ve gained more knowledge about the golf swing and my overall game play has gotten better I decided enough is enough and this flaw has to go. Wade has been fully on board with my wished to get rid of the Over the Top and our chat the other night was a great start to the year.

In the video I sent to Wade he noticed a few things taking place that was preventing me from getting back to the ball square. I’m sure there was more than just a few but we decided to focus on a couple of the bad ones and work on getting those corrected and go forward from there.

He let me know that my address was right where he wanted it and the take away was looking very good. Considering that’s was a tough obstacle for me to overcome that was music to my ears. It was near the top where I started to break down and the muscle memory of bad swings over the past 20 years steps in and tries to take over. Some days it not as bad as other and then there’s the rounds where it’s like I’m fighting internally with my body from 1995.

The first issue is I’m still getting in a reverse pivot at the top. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was dating back to 2012 but it’s still there a tad and it seems to be exaggerated when I allow my backswing to go too far and not end where it should. Fixing this is more mental than anything else for me. I’ll be at the range warming up before a round taking half swing after half swing with my 7i hitting some of the prettiest ball you’ll ever see but once I step up to that first Par 3 with the exact same shot I was hitting at the range my inner John Daly shows up and I go at it like I’m never going to hit a ball again. It’s just silly.

I’m getting better at handling those situations for the most part. I still get distracted more than I like to admit and tend to forget about getting myself in the right frame of mind to execute a shot, but it’s getting better and I think the more I play the better it will get.

I was feeling somewhat relieved when Wade told me about the reverse pivot, it’s something I overcame earlier last year and I’m confident with more practice I’ll be able to get my weight transfer back where it’s supposed to be and the reverse pivot will go bye-bye.

The next issue is my Grand Daddy of them all and it’s all about my hips.

Wade explained that in the Video I’m not getting my right hip to come through the swing and because it’s hanging back I’m  pretty much forcing the rest of my body to cast out the club and come over the top.

For the next twenty minutes or so of our conversation we talked about drills to help get my right hip to initiate the swing and continue to move throughout it. One of Wade’s favorite drills for this is the Walk through drill where as you swing you basically take a step forward with your right foot and walk.

We discussed a few other drills for me to work on but it wasn’t until Wade asked me to take my swing to the top and deliberately perform a casting move that I really began to understand what I’ve been doing wrong.

Me being the know it all student that I am I retaliated back with a “Hell no, I’m not doing that! That’s the last thing that I want to do.” I’ve been haunted by my prior casting flaw since I finally understood what it meant to cast a club several years ago so the last thing I wanted to do was go back down that road and let my mind and muscles remember those days. Wade assured me that nothing bad was going to happen and had me get into the position right before a casting swing takes place.

With the other drills we talked about (I was acting them out with a club shaft in my living room) I was starting to get a feeling for how I hadn’t been letting my hip get through the swing and it became night and day when Wade had me cast the shaft I was holding.

With no hip rotation, let me rephrase that, without initiating the swing with my hips and lower body I was instantly starting the down swing by moving my arms out and away from my body. It was in all essence a casting move just not as bad as I’ve done in the past.

Previously my position at address my taking away and full backswing was the perfect recipe for a casting, weak ass swing. Since Wade has gotten me into much better positions throughout my swing the flaw has been dramatically diminished and that showed to be true with several of the good rounds I had last year.

Feeling that casting move though after working on the proper hip rotation was such an eye opener I couldn’t believe how different the two moves felt.

So I think I have a good plan in place to start the process of eliminating the Over the Top from my swing. I know it’s going to take a while and I have to get off my ass and starting practicing every night! Hopefully with some hard work put in over the next 10 days I can play some decent golf on my Florida trip and have some fun while doing it!