"You're not utilising your body only your arms but you're putting out a 100mph club head speed, which is great." - Interesting points to take away from your first lesson in a decade.
A concise summary given to me around 10minutes into my lesson with Matt. Up to this point I was struggling to hit a shot that didn't arc out right from the go. How do you rectify this? Aim left and hope you don't catch one and fire it hard left off the fairway? Or put in the practice hours with a new ball aproach, setup and swing just to make things interesting.
"Focus on the journey, not the destination.
Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it."
- Greg Anderson
Fully converted baseball grip. No pinky lock. Wow doesn't this feel more comfortable. (Now this wasn't anything I was advised to do but simply tried out whilst out on the course). This wasn't really a concern of Matt's, he checked it over but was rather satisfied. We pushed my bottom hand further round to encourage 'roll' through the shot. My bad shot is a slice, I can tell you that with confidence.
So Matt had me set up and hit some shots to warm up, dotted around filming me and snapping some photos. He also set up his GC2 with HMT, you can read up more about it here but if you've ever watched golf on Sky Sports it's the same device used to track the ball flight, spin, club head speed etc. Matt takes all this information and explains it to you using his iPad to assist him in his coaching.
This is where he started spouting statistics at me, I work as a Business Analyst... I love stats. I was swinging my 6iron at around 100mph at impact but was adding a lot of loft to the ball, no thanks to the incorrect flex in my shafts. My swing was relatively on centre but I was catching a lot of slices. Why?
Couple of reasons, one is "leaving the hands open", a huge contributing factor was I was not using my body or turning through the shot. So we worked on bringing my core and hips, shifting my weight through the ball. This is something I really have to focus on with every shot I make. Practice makes permanent after all.
Prior to this we actually adjusted my address. As you'll see below to the right, I'm squatting down low over the ball with an arched back. In the left, my hamstrings are poised and thoracic muscle engaged for a strong posture.
So now when hitting every shot I'm consciously making the effort to setup correctly, move through the ball with my body and hit down onto the ball.
I'm seeing Matt again this coming Saturday for another lesson now that 2weeks of practice has drilled the swing more into my body we can focus on the minutiae.
