Golf is such a mental game. I imagine if I simply focused and took my time on the course, I would improve my score significantly.
But even with mental preparation, I have some obvious limitations. In fact, my golf ball looks as blind as a bat after I drive it. If slices could kill, I’d be facing a long list of murder charges.
Put simply, my driving technique needs work — lots of it. But at the end of my last lesson with head golf pro Mark Strong, at the Richmond Country Club, I had a new grip and stance to take home — not too shabby, I’d say.
Before this week’s lesson, I did a bit of research on driving the ball well. I found much of the time I spent on the Internet was not very useful. For one, the golf jargon flew over my head, and when I did get to a useful article, it was all from a right-handed golfer’s perspective; sure, being left-handed gets the ladies but when it comes to visualizing instruction, it can be a challenge.
As Strong and I carried out our lesson on driving the ball at the club’s driving range, I always had to flip around Strong’s examples. I’m not very dexterous nor am I good at copying body movements, so I thought I was in deep only minutes in.
But Strong has a way of keeping it simple, and the lesson progressed only when I was comfortable.
We started off with setup.
I’m a hockey player, and you ideally want to take a slap shot with the puck positioned toward your back foot. In golf, the ball should be teed up at your front foot.
It seems like a minor fix, but already I was feeling out of my element.
After more than a few slices into the trees and slough (I’m told the club regularly picks them up, thankfully) Strong started on his next adjustment, the hips and shoulders.
Apparently I had been opening up my shoulders too much and was not tilted enough toward the ball.
When I moved my hips to my right and brought in my left shoulder I immediately started hitting the ball straight.
Now, don’t get too excited, like I did. I reverted back to my old ways about four or five shots later.
“The golf gods will do that to you,” explained Strong.
I’ve had enough to worry about with the hockey gods. There are golf gods!?
Another reason why I wasn’t getting a proper trajectory was because my club’s face was too open (leaning up).
So, we changed my grip. I brought my right thumb under my left hand and twisted the grip to the left (I hope right-handed golfers don’t get this). Strong said this made my grip “stronger,” meaning I closed my club’s face, relative to my swing.
“In your case, we packaged your tilting and grip strengthening into one motion, and it made a big difference in your ball flight,” said Strong.
Afterwards, I hit some more balls, and I really was hitting them better.
Strong says I don’t have to worry about power since I seemed to be getting enough out of my existing swing.
He said there’s still a lot of work to do (obviously) but this lesson was about assessing some fundamentals.
I found that my right thumb was fairly sore after adjusting my grip so it’s something I’ll have to get used to.
Strong also addressed the positioning of the tee.
“There is no optimal tee height for everybody, but having half of the ball above the top edge of the driver is a good start. After that, as you tee the ball higher, you may also want to address it more out towards the toe,” said Strong.
