Taking care of one last swing glitch

Sat, Jul 26, 2008

It turns out I'm a fast learner when it comes to golf. That's good, because I have a lot to learn over the next several weeks.

After my abysmal showing during my Red Zone Challenge a week ago, I figured my third meeting with Scott Janus, director of the Janus Golf Academy at Grand Haven Golf Club, would center around pitching and chipping.

Instead, we reviewed what we worked on in my first lesson, and began tackling the most glaring glitch in my swing, which I never new I had.

"The good news is, you've retained about 100 percent of what we worked on previously," Janus said after a few warm-up shots. "The usual retention rate is about 70 percent. Most of the time, we'll brush up on the 30 percent that fell to the side, then move into something new.

"You've perfected your hand position, which is now neutral, and you've widened your base. As a whole, your address is very fundamentally sound.

"What we're going to work on today is swing path."

Like 90 percent of the golfing population, my golf swing has a tendency to come from outside the ball in. To put it in baseball terms, my swing travels down the left-field line. That's a no-no, and in order to improve my ball flight, I need to learn to swing down the right-field line, taking the club inside-out.

"Through the downswing, when you're striking the ball, you swing down the left-field line, and that's why most of your shots go left," Janus said.

OK, that makes sense.

"What most tour players do," Janus continued, "is they swing out toward right field. Most tour players, and most effective golfers, have an inside-out swing."

Without bogging me down with too many crazy drills, Janus' instructions for fixing the problem was simple.

"Just get up there and concentrate on trying to swing toward right field," he said.

Which I did, and for a few swings, it felt very awkward, but slowly, I began to pick up on it. However, that exposed another issue, which I had created in an attempt to compensate for my outside-in swing.

Instead of letting my hands roll over through impact, I was doing what's called blocking, or keeping the club face too square through impact.

As if trying to swing inside-out wasn't enough, now I had to do the same thing while rolling my top hand, in my case my right hand, overtop of my gloved left hand.

After a dozen more swings, I was able to swing inside out or roll my hands, but I had a hard time doing both at the same time.

Eventually, I began to catch on, and the result was a much more efficient swing with a subtle right-to-left ball flight.

"Right off the bat, you're able to perform the move, which is not easy to do," Janus said after watching a few swings, then letting my take a look on his computer, which displays images sent over from a pair of video cameras. "What that means is, the athletic ability is there, since you're able to learn this quite quickly.

"Coming down inside the ball and hitting it while extending it out will produce a draw, if you allow the club to release. Before, you had a block, which means you would leave the club open through impact and not allow the gloved hand to get below the right hand."

With a little more practice, I've already greatly increased my consistency of rolling my hands while swinging toward right field. It's extremely gratifying to see a little bit of work pay off so quickly.

Hopefully I can say the same thing after working on my short game next week.