I had my first early morning lesson with Patrick as I met him at 9:00 am this morning. I am going to Tampa with Mikaila next week so I wanted to get a second lessons in this week. Yesterday, I went to the UNC Finley range and worked on my transition and slowing down. Honestly, I had some of my best ball striking range sessions after talking to Patrick about slowing down and starting the downswing with my lower right side.
Whenever I hit a great shot or a bad shot, I told myself to slow down and get back to level. The higher or lower I get, the harder it is going to be to play good golf. If I hit a bad shot, I walked all the way back to the mats to gain my composure before hitting another shot. It was very nice to have this calm and cool demeanor while hitting balls solidly.
Today, Patrick twisted me up a few times and added the element that my right ankle needs to be below my left ankle as I make my transition. Once again, the transition needs to be very slow but I do need to practice my footwork and leg work. Unfortunately, when I do this, my transition starts to get quick again and I break down with some of the things I do with my upper body. I feel like I am not coming through with my right side any time I add a new element. I need to focus on coming through and under with my right side with I keep my right ankle under my left ankle.
I am playing in the Hasentree Member-Member with Gregg Bowler this weekend and I know I am going to have many ups and downs. There will be some great shots and some not so great shots. I want to work on making certain that I stay slow and keep myself in check. If I get fast, I am simply going to fall apart and start hitting the ball left or coming up and slicing the ball.
After each round I need to focus at least 40 minutes on making sure I am transitioning slowly and using my right side on the downswing. I also need to go back to keeping the backswing deep and coming from “under” meaning that I am using my lower right side to start the swing. I mentioned to Patrick today that my swing would be even better if I could get about another half inch on my backswing and he laughed when I realized the way to get deeper was to start even lower and more intensely with my lower left side and my left obliques.
Let’s just see how this weekend goes before I head to Tampa with Mikaila.
UPDATE: So, about that member-member with Gregg Bowler. I shot 94-80 and honestly, still to this day have no idea how I did it. I was completely in the dark about the overall golf swing back in May 2019, especially compared to today in September 2020 and over 150 lessons in. I had a handful of birdies and actually hit the fifth hole (par 5) in two. I had never done that before going to Patrick. That said, in July and August of 2020 I had to go through the change in my footwork and legs that was extremely difficult. You can read about that in later lessons.
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