Another several hundreds swings and we were still trying to learn how to correctly hit the ball. It seemed that I hit the ball terrible at the range but when I went to see Patrick he fixed everything. Obviously, I was not swinging correctly, but I was definitely getting closer. It was nice to feel the middle of the club face hitting the ball one in every 15 or 20 swings. The goal was to get that closer to 8 out of 10. We would see what Patrick could do.
As Patrick has encouraged from the very first lesson, any training technique should be done slowly. We can always go faster, but it is much harder to go slowly. Training the full swing should be done at a very slow pace because, as amateurs, we do not understand where speed is generated in the full swing. If we try to go fast, we are going to pull with the hands, arms and shoulders. The speed is generated with the hips and core.
Remember, we were still not even working on hands at all. We were 10 lessons in and we didn’t addressed what the hands do in the golf swing. This tells you the importance of the core and the lack of importance in the hands.
UPDATE: Well, we are now 109 lessons in (March 2020) and we are still not talking about the hands. How crazy is that? Every once in awhile Patrick will put my hands in the correct spot at the top of the backswing and at impact, but other than that, we never talk about hands. As we approach my “release date” of May 2020, I am only now able to understand speed in the golf swing. It is all core and very little hands and arms.
It is crazy to think how far I’ve come as I am slowly approaching the point in which I can get the club to the top of the backswing without using my hands and arms at all.
