Well That Was A Lot Harder Than I Thought

Not long after my last post, My Brain Is The Real Hazard, I took my smooth swing project and my trusty 7 iron to the range.

A little background on that 7… About a year ago, I took a lesson at the PGA Tour Superstore and brought my full set of clubs. I hit my irons terribly, got a few suggestions, and then asked the instructor if we could work on my driver. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “You have no business swinging a driver until you can hit a 7 iron consistently.”

That both pissed me off and challenged me. Since then, I have primarily “practiced” with my 7. And by “practiced,” I mean I spent hundreds of missed swings reinforcing bad muscle memory. But now that I’m taking a more methodical approach, I’m making progress. No divots yet, but more contact and less self-loathing over my body’s reluctance to just do what I tell it to do.

Taking My Smooth Swing Project to the Range

But back to this smooth swing business… I went to the range with one goal: make my actual swings feel as smooth and easy as my practice swings. So that’s what I did: practice swing, step up, and swing-swing, keeping the smooth and easy mantra throughout. Rinse and repeat.

I didn’t focus much on mechanics beyond setup and takeaway, nor did I try the breathing exercises or closing my eyes. It took nearly 30 minutes before my swing-swing actually felt smooth and easy, but eventually, it did. My timing was terrible, my club face was open, and the balls went right, right, right. But ball flight wasn’t the goal. Not looking like Mick Jagger when I swing was.

Naturally, My Body Said Nope!

Of course, just as I am fired up to practice this new feeling, the crud I was dealing with a couple of weeks ago said, sit down, you. And now I have what appears to be an intercostal muscle strain. Apparently, coughing counts as some sadistic form of exercise. 🙄

I asked AI if I could play golf with this, and it said yes, I could, but really I shouldn’t. It suggested I stick to putting, which is good timing because I had already been messing around with that.

A Putting Detour

Last week, a friend told me about Eric Kaplan’s Four Locks Method of Putting. This Kaplan guy is basically a walking infomercial, but I watched one of his teaser videos and decided to try out his “locks” the last few times I went out. I did feel like I had more control over my putter. So, in the spirit of distracting myself while I heal, I downloaded his ebook and plan to take a deep dive into his methodology over the next few days. Gosh, hopefully it’s only a few days. My season here is almost over!

So there you have it. Getting my swing to feel smooth and easy is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. And it’s not just that my body rebels against me… throw in old(ish)-woman injuries and my ADHD brain’s constant chase for shiny new swing fixes, and it feels like a full-on conspiracy against progress. But hey, if golf was easy, everyone would do it, and I’d have to find something else to complain about.