The swing doctor

Sat, Jul 5, 2008    to del.icio.us

I can still remember my first round of golf.

It was during a family reunion when I was maybe 14 or 15 years old. We played a best ball, and I was paired up with two uncles and a great-uncle. Since I had never played before, I used my grandma's hand-me-down clubs.

I can't recall all the details, but I do remember playing a shot out of the woods and bending the shaft of my grandma's 6-iron around a tree on my follow-through.

Not much has changed over the past decade and a half.

OK, so I don't still use my grandmother's clubs, although I did buy my irons from a friend back in college for $30.

And while I still hit plenty of shots from the woods, I haven't broken a club since that time. And my average score still borders around 100 for 18 holes, which is about 15 strokes higher than I'd really like my average score to be.

There was a time a few years back, in the BK (before kids) era, when I would play golf at least once a week. My wife, my dad, and several of my friends all liked to play, which made it easier. I worked at Terra Verde Golf Course in Nunica for a summer, and a friend worked at Fruitport, so we were on the golf course constantly.

Those days are long gone. Now, I'm lucky to play once a month during the summer.

The best word to describe my golf game is inconsistent. I can shoot a 43 one day and a 53 the next. Sometimes I boom my drives, but more often, I can't get off the tee to save my life. I like to think my short game's pretty good, but so far this year, my wedges have been my worst clubs.

I've often wondered what would happen to my game if I took the next step and sought professional help, but I've never really had the desire, or the opportunity, to take that step.

Until now.

During the Fallen Heroes Golf Outing at Grand Haven Golf Club last month, I had the privilege of sitting next to GHGC owner John Rooney, who introduced me to Scott Janus, the director of instruction of the Janus Golf Academy at Grand Haven.

"You should get together with Scott, take some lessons and do some stories," Rooney urged.

Well, if you insist.

So after 15 years of mediocre golf, I've placed the future of my game in the hands of Janus, a 30-year-old PGA teaching professional who has taught golf across the country and around the world. Over the next several weeks, Scott and I will get together and try to iron out some of the kinks in my swing, and I'll post a column each week detailing our progress.

Good luck, Scott. You're going to need it.

———

Lesson No. 1:

Swing Analysis

I had never taken a golf lesson before, so going into my one-hour swing analysis with Scott Janus of the Janus Golf Academy, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive.

Would I have to pull out each club in my bag and demonstrate my ineptitude with each one? Would Janus measure the distance of my drives and the accuracy of my irons? Good Lord, I hope not.

Turns out, I only pulled one club out of my bag.

"Grab your 6-iron and go take some warm-up swings," Janus said as we got things started at The Amphitheater, the nickname of the new practice range situated among the towering trees at GHCG. "Then start hitting some balls."

I warmed up, then hit a stroked a few decent shots before yanking one into the woods on the left.

"Is that your typical miss?" Janus asked casually.

"One of them," I replied.

But after a few more swings, it became pretty clear that yes, the snap hooks to the left was my biggest issue.

"OK, come over here and let's look at a few things," Janus said.

I hadn't paid much attention the two video cameras recording my every move, but as I sat down on the bench under the Janus Golf Academy tent, I saw the elaborate set-up Janus uses to dissect his students' golf swing. The cameras feed into a laptop computer, which uses a program that can compare various aspects of your swing with the swing of a PGA professional.

When Janus pulled up a picture of me addressing the ball and placed it next to a photo of tour pro Tommy Armour III, it took about half a second to realize that I had some serious issues. The first, and most noticeable, was the position of my hands.

As Janus describes it, the vital first step to a clean golf swing is to be in the proper position before you even begin to swing, so all of our work on Day 1 with my set-up.

First, I moved my hands from a very aggressive forward position to a more neutral position, basically lined up with the zipper on my shorts.

I widened my stance to create better balance, and loosened my grip slightly.

"Grab the club as hard as you possibly can," Janus said. "On a scale of 1-10, that's a 10. Now hold it as loosely as you possibly can. That's a one. You want about a five."

It seems my grip was more in the 8-9 range. Who knew?

Then we worked on balance.

"You'll see professional golfers, before they swing, rock back and forth on their feet," said Janus, who explained that on a golf course, you almost never have a perfectly flat spot on which to stand. "When you lean too far forward, it puts a lot of stress on your calves. When you lean too far back, it puts stress on your quads. You want to rock slowly back and forth until you feel that balance in the center of your feet."

Janus explained that I placed too much of my weight forward onto my toes, which is a very good way to help push your shots off to the left.

These all sound like pretty easy fixes, and for the most part, they were. The most difficult adjustment was the position of my hands. Without realizing it, having my hands well forward of the ball had allowed me to develop a flawed backswing, so the simple task of moving my hands back into a neutral spot made my entire swing, especially the beginning of my take-back, feel extremely awkward.

Janus said it typically takes hitting about 100 golf balls to get used to each adjustment. That's OK, I take about 100 shots (not including mulligans) each time out on the course. But the practice range? I guess that's a new habit I'll have to pick up.