Thursday, June 12, 2008

Tying swing plane to club length

I was going to write a full post on how I'm smoking the driver at the moment but I figured I'd mention that only in passing as I move onto a related subject.

At the end of last season I decided to cancel my PDP membership with Indian Creek, due to them raising the monthly membership price and the per-round charge, and since I wasn't playing all that often it just wasn't worth it. It's a shame because I really like that club: two great courses, friendly staff and (formerly) good prices.

So I went there for one last time, after which I would cancel. I went alone, but got put into a group of three other guys who really welcomed me into their game. They claimed to shoot in the 90's with the occasional round the in 80's. Well, for one of them I can't really see that being the case as he had a worse slice than I've ever had. He aimed 45 degrees to the left on every hole and still ended up in the trees on the right pretty frequently.

I out-drove all of them, which is where the smoking the driver part comes in. I'm really pleased with how that part of my game has come along. I actually free confident stepping up with the long stick that I'm going to crush it straight down the middle. I did pretty well with the 3-wood too, reaching one par-5 green in two strokes.

As usual, with me the problem starts as the club gets shorter, which is odd since I always hear that people tend to find the shorter clubs easier.

Just after I failed with a short club shot, one of my playing partners pointed out that I was swinging it like a wood, and that I should be hitting down on the ball when playing the irons.

This is something that I knew already, but had forgotten. There are so many things to remember in golf, it is all too easy to forget the things that you thought you'd already got figured out.

This was close to the end of the round, so I didn't get too much opportunity to try things out, but I did find myself in the trees on the left with a nice looking hole in the canopy above me in line with the flag. I took the 8-iron and really concentrated on hitting down with a steeper swing plane, and was delighted to see the ball flying up straight through the gap. I was well short of the flag, but a longer club wouldn't have had the loft required to make it over the trees. In the end, this was a far better result than chipping out sideways, so I was very happy with that.

From this I took away the lesson that the angle of your swing plane should be tied to the length of the club you are using. It has served me well since as I will post on later.

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