PerpetualNewbie
Birdie Member
In my long and illustrious 10-month career playing this game (/sarcasm) I have had a lot of ups and downs.
Several times while playing rounds or doing field work, my form would fall into place and I was instantly hitting an effortless 425'. This might last a couple hours or even span across a few days, but I would eventually lose "it" and would be back to the maddeningly frustrating "strong-arming" again.
Each time I found "it" I would do my best to analyze and write down what I thought was making the difference and work on that. At one time I thought it was adding a pronounced "hop" to my x-step, most recently it was "keeping my weight back". I think I even posted another thread on here about a previous apparent breakthrough I'd had in my form. I knew there was a key timing element somewhere that was making this difference, but every time I thought I had it figured out it disappeared again and no amount of intentional coaxing could bring it back, but it would randomly reappear to my continued befuddlement.
This happened as recently as this past week even... I was throwing really well during all my recreational rounds last week, really enjoying the flight of some new molds I had picked up, and then played in my first two tournaments of 2014 this weekend and just lost "it" until the last few holes of the last round in tournament #2.
The first round of the first tournament I ended with my all-time worst score ever (72) and I thought there was no way I could ever top that...until the first round of the second tournament, where I shot 8 strokes worse than that (80, but it was a huge course with lots of OB - best 2-round score for Open division was 115). I was seriously thinking about going back to Rec division for a while this year.
The last few holes of the last round this weekend I found "it" however, and am now confident that I have figured out the key timing element to my drive: not turning my hips back too soon. The way I've articulated this to myself is "resist turning the lower body during the run-up/x-step until you absolutely have to"... boom, instant consistent distance and accuracy, on demand. From where I usually "tee off" to practice field-work at home to the back fence of my property is 430', and I just threw a Westside Sorcerer over that fence. I now "feel" my form and that consistent pull from my core that is generating the power, and better yet I can make myself do it instead of just accidentally stumbling into it occasionally.
In retrospect I can now see how I mis-interpreted a lot of what I was feeling/experiencing, but I'm confident that I've found the last major piece of the puzzle to of backhand driving form that had been eluding me.
My goal is to now put up some slo-mo recordings of my drive and hopefully get some further feedback on what I can clean up in order to reach my goal of 450' this summer.
Sorry for the long anecdotal post, but hopefully this might help provide a clue to someone else who has been struggling with this as I have.
Several times while playing rounds or doing field work, my form would fall into place and I was instantly hitting an effortless 425'. This might last a couple hours or even span across a few days, but I would eventually lose "it" and would be back to the maddeningly frustrating "strong-arming" again.
Each time I found "it" I would do my best to analyze and write down what I thought was making the difference and work on that. At one time I thought it was adding a pronounced "hop" to my x-step, most recently it was "keeping my weight back". I think I even posted another thread on here about a previous apparent breakthrough I'd had in my form. I knew there was a key timing element somewhere that was making this difference, but every time I thought I had it figured out it disappeared again and no amount of intentional coaxing could bring it back, but it would randomly reappear to my continued befuddlement.
This happened as recently as this past week even... I was throwing really well during all my recreational rounds last week, really enjoying the flight of some new molds I had picked up, and then played in my first two tournaments of 2014 this weekend and just lost "it" until the last few holes of the last round in tournament #2.
The first round of the first tournament I ended with my all-time worst score ever (72) and I thought there was no way I could ever top that...until the first round of the second tournament, where I shot 8 strokes worse than that (80, but it was a huge course with lots of OB - best 2-round score for Open division was 115). I was seriously thinking about going back to Rec division for a while this year.
The last few holes of the last round this weekend I found "it" however, and am now confident that I have figured out the key timing element to my drive: not turning my hips back too soon. The way I've articulated this to myself is "resist turning the lower body during the run-up/x-step until you absolutely have to"... boom, instant consistent distance and accuracy, on demand. From where I usually "tee off" to practice field-work at home to the back fence of my property is 430', and I just threw a Westside Sorcerer over that fence. I now "feel" my form and that consistent pull from my core that is generating the power, and better yet I can make myself do it instead of just accidentally stumbling into it occasionally.
In retrospect I can now see how I mis-interpreted a lot of what I was feeling/experiencing, but I'm confident that I've found the last major piece of the puzzle to of backhand driving form that had been eluding me.
My goal is to now put up some slo-mo recordings of my drive and hopefully get some further feedback on what I can clean up in order to reach my goal of 450' this summer.
Sorry for the long anecdotal post, but hopefully this might help provide a clue to someone else who has been struggling with this as I have.