The Eureka Moment

Can 1 bad shot ruin thousands of good ones?

The answer is yes! This may be my quickest blog follow up but I had to write this following what I tweeted as a #massiveeurekamoment and it relates nicely to the idea of ‘the path of least resistance’.

This relates to my golf swing of which I will give a very brief history. My swingpath into the ball has always been shallow and more in to out and my body movements have responded to that. For the last few months I have been working to try and steepen the club at impact and have a more in-square-in path. In short I have been working on swinging the butt end of the club left after impact and trying to find body movements that will make that happen.

Well I succeeded! Through improving my ability to maintain my spine angle and move my hips and pelvis differently I could achieve the desired result of nice crisp divots, the ball starting more on line and hitting it further too.

I might even go as far to say that it’s the best I’ve ever struck it! Anyway, what follows is a story of how one bad shot almost ruined all of that great work…

Monday 12th sept. Pro-am, 17th hole.
I had hit the ball well all day and found myself in the middle of a long par 4 with a slight dogleg left. 200 yards to the back of the green into a strong wind. I had 4 iron in hand with the intention of hitting a low drilled shot to the the middle of the green. The actual shot that turned up was a quick vicious pull hook left into the trees! Ouch! This led to a triple bogey and put a bit of a downer on the day. On the plus side I got my head back together to par the last (I did swing very hard at the tee shot!!!).

So I put Monday behind me a carried on.

I then played 9 holes on Wednesday and just couldn’t seem to get the same feel in my swing and the strike was not as solid. I didn’t think anything of it and I try not to react to one bad day.

Friday afternoon. I had the chance to play another 9 holes. Similar story to Wednesday, I wasn’t striking it as well and could hear myself questioning and looking for answers. So I decided to go straight to the range to work on it (I’m so glad that I did).

What followed was a range session that is typical to my entire career until the eureka moment.

I focussed on my swing thoughts and feels. After a few shots I started to hit a few good ones but similar to the course it was intermittent. This carried on with me feeling like I was going in circles and the question arose, what’s stopping me, what is getting in the way?

Simple answer….FEAR. But fear of what?

It was the shot I hit left on the 17th on Monday. In the last 2 times on the course I had also hit a couple of shots left (which is unusual for me), and some really off line shots right which are compensations.

So for someone who is wanting to feel the club swing left after impact a fear of the ball going left was starting to block the movement. All of this is sub-conscious too, like a protection mechanism.

I then set myself the task of intentionally making the ball go left of target……it didn’t, I flushed it straight at the target and immediately got the feelings back in my swing that had been there previously. Happy days!

I then started to hit the ball telling myself that I had no fear of the ball going left and this freed everything up so my body could now move the way I wanted it to. Safety mode had been turned off.

There has to be a positive relationship between your mental state and golf swing for it to work. The big lesson for me is that just working on the swing will never be enough if something mental is blocking the ability to move.