Last Tuesday, I spent three hours on the range working on my transition. Hit 200 balls. Got my hands forward. Stopped early extending. Finally felt like I'd figured something out.
By ball 75, I was calling my shots. High draw, power fade, stinger, you name it. Googled "local qualifiers" while sitting in my car in the parking lot afterwards. Immediately booked a tee time for first thing Wednesday morning because, you know, you've got to take advantage when it's clicking like that.
Wednesday morning, first tee, 8:13 AM: Cold topped four shots in a row.
Not just topped. I'm talking "drop your pants if it doesn't pass the ladies' tees" topped. My buddy Mike suddenly became very interested in his yardage book. The starter who'd been chatting me up five minutes earlier now couldn't make eye contact. One of the randoms we got paired with mumbled "It's gonna be a long day" to his partner.
I spent the entire front nine in full-on crisis mode. Questioned everything. Listed my clubs on Facebook Marketplace while we were waiting for the green to clear on 4. It was a really dark time for me.
But after having gone through this cycle approximately 100 times in my golfing career, here's what I've learned:
Those bad shots might not mean what you think they mean. Your newer, better swing motion might only be a fraction of an inch off, but that's enough to make you look like a complete beginner. Meanwhile, your old swing - the one full of compensations and band-aids - probably wasn't as good as your scores suggested. You just knew how to make it work.
The hardest part isn't making the changes. It's staying patient when those changes are 95% there but the results don't match. Because that last 5% is the difference between a pure strike and a cold top.
Trust the process. Write that down. TRUST. THE. PROCESS.
Getting worse is actually a sign you're on the right track. It means you're building something new instead of recycling the same old flaws.
"You're Supposed to Get Worse" (Wait, What?)
I stumbled across this video a few days ago that completely changed how I think about lessons and improvement, in general.
It's worth watching the whole thing, but here's the gist: You don't take lessons to get instantly better. You get temporarily worse with the hope of eventually getting much better.
"Golfers have this fantasy about a magical 15-minute fix. That's just not the case." Getting better at golf isn't linear. It's plateaus, regressions, and breakthroughs.
The problem is, most of us quit during the regression phase, running back to our comfortable old habits. We'd rather shoot our familiar 88 with familiar misses than risk shooting 95 on the way to eventually shooting 82.
Trust the process.
A Little Something That Might Help
was thinking about all the ways I've screwed up trying to change my swing. The hours of YouTube videos that turned my gentle push slice into a hook that nearly killed a shih tzu (remind me to tell you about that)... but here's something that has worked for me.
During one of my "I've completely lost my swing" meltdowns, my pro recommended the Check Point Swing Laser. "You need to burn in the correct feelings," he explained. "But your brain is lying to you about what you're doing."
I was fighting a steep downswing and couldn't shallow the club to save my life. The laser shows you exactly where your club is throughout the swing - not where you think it is, where it actually is.
What surprised me most was discovering that the "right" positions felt completely foreign. The visual feedback has helped me burn in these strange-feeling (but correct) motions much, much quicker.
Once you feel the right positions a few dozen times with visual confirmation, it becomes so much easier to replicate them.
Give it a try. If you're trying to make a swing change stick, this will help. If not, it makes a great cat toy. Either way, you win.
Last week, Dave from the pro shop told me he fixed his slice by imagining he was trying to hit the ball with his right pocket. Made no sense. His "demonstration" made me uncomfortable. Worked perfectly.
See you on the first tee,
Ed
P.S. If you're currently in the "it gets worse before it gets better" phase, hang in there. We've all been there. Some of us are still there.
(It’s a phase, right? Right??)
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