My Journey 2 Scratch

Over the past 5 months since my tournament win, my golf game could be accurately described as a roller coaster ride…the ups and downs interchanging about every 2-3 weeks with only one half of my game playing well at any given time.  If my driving and iron play was descent one round, my short game and putting would be terrible, the next round the opposite would be true.  I have tried months where I only focus on the mental game, visualization and not swing mechanics with variable success.  My confidence could be at an all time high after ball striking well for a week, but if I hit a few bad shots in a row, my confidence drops close to 0% and before you know it, I’m lost.   It had been over 5 months since I last went in for a lesson with my coach and I could feel that I was falling back into my old habits.  I tried to go at this alone for the past few months thinking I could keep building on my successes and that was mistake.  I had no basis for what I was doing correctly or wrong in my swing, if I started to lose my swing, I had nothing to revert back to that I knew was correct.  I was essentially playing blindly these past few months with no stable base, so I was much over due for a lesson and boy I’m glad I went and did it.

Took the lesson with my teacher Justin Hicks over at Stadium Golf Center in San Diego yesterday the 31^st and my improvement was almost immediate.  We found that I had indeed reverted back to my old habits of setting up with my feet and shoulders open to the target with my club faced closed.  The ball position was slightly too far back and was one of the causes to my ball starting out left (I’m lefty) of my intended target line.  Also I was back to shifting my body too far forward in the downswing.  It is funny how to me setting up square to the target line feels extremely closed at address because I’m so used to thinking my old stance (that was actually open) was square.  This is going to take a few range sessions to get used to, but soon it will become normal.  I am already hitting the ball so much better and I’m really excited to have a foundation now that I can build and improve upon.  I’m eager to get out and play with my new swing, but it will have to wait a few days because the forecast here is calling for rain the next 2 days, so won’t be able to get out and play until Tuesday/Wednesday.   My teacher made a video recap of my lesson with him that you can watch here below.  I have also linked his website under his name for anybody who would like to check out his site, I highly recommend him as a teacher if you are in the San Diego area.