Patrick is very pleased with my usage of the body and the core on the backswing and downswing so now he is cleaning up little things to improve my ball striking. Today, we started with the practice chipping motion. He got down behind my clubface and said, “keep the club so low that you touch it to my hand on the ground”. I was shocked how hard this was. Clearly, in the past, I lifted the club straight up. After I did it a few times with my core, he then held my head behind the ball at setup and said, “do it again”. I wanted so badly to lean forward to keep my balance.
This showed me exactly how much I use my right side to lift and drop my head to the left to keep balance. If I really keep the club face low and keep my head stable and don’t let it fall towards the target, I can feel my core stretching out even more; especially my right side now.
I hit a couple chips and could feel myself wanting to lift the club straight up. If you can feel it, you can fix it. Then we worked on the three quarter swing with the same motion at take away. Wow, it is amazing how much more depth I can get and how my arms do not want to lift if I can keep the clubface lower to the ground longer. Patrick encouraged me to hit a few shots and I hit them extremely well.
I did hit one off the toe and Patrick explained that is me trying to drive with my right hip on the downswing rather than using my core and right side. I will do this every now and again, but with a good backswing and a super low and slow take away, we should start to eliminate that. It is amazing how one small thing can change so much. This is, once again, a reason that I feel as if a coach is necessary. I would have tried so many other things rather than keeping the club face low enough to touch Patrick’s hand on the take away with the chipping motion. Such an easy game.
