Ubertechnologist- Paul D. Robertson’s Blog

I’m about to start my third year of golfing. I finally got to the point where I couldn’t figure out how to progress with my swing on my own. I tried to “fix” things to add some hip turn at the beginning of the season last year, with not so good results. Since my swing was all upper body arm strength, I was only getting 220 or so yards out of my best drives, and I was topping the ball a lot- I had real trouble adjusting to hit down on the ball, so I decided to try a swing lesson to see how things would work out.

Leonard, one of the marshals at the course where my weekly league plays had shown me a business card last year for a Scranton-area swing coach whom he’d recommended. After looking at their Website, with trepidation I emailed to book a lesson. The site’s navigation looked very dated, but there was a fair amount of information, and I decided to try one lesson, and if that didn’t work out, then I wouldn’t be out much and I could decide my next step with more care.

So, ultimately I booked my first lesson with Scotty McAlearny of http://www.aswingforlife.com. The first thing Scotty asked me was how I leaned the best- by being told, or shown- I said I was pretty happy either way- I’m always analyzing things and for me, understanding how things work is probably more important than how I’m introduced to things.

Scotty used a high-speed video camera to record me hitting a pitching wedge with my “normal” golf swing. Then he started to give me tips on how to improve it. He showed me slow-motion video of various professional golfers hitting the ball and pointed out the similarities to the point of impact, then what they did after the swing- good or bad. We worked on my swing and at the end of the lesson, he again recorded my swing on the high-speed camera. Finally, he showed me a side-by-side comparison of my first swing with my evolving half-swing. The difference was immediately obvious- while I still had some points to work on (as well as some drills to use at home to do so,) the difference was night and day- he asked me to think about taking another lesson and get back to him- but the difference as well as the highly effective nature of his teaching made me decide to book another lesson on the spot.

My second lesson was working on the rest of my swing- full backswing following almost all the way through. At the end of it, I was naturally hitting down on the ball- one of the biggest problems I had with my driving range experience a few weeks before that I just couldn’t seem to correct on my own. Probably more importantly it was happening naturally as a part of my swing- no special need to concentrate on it at all! I was hitting the ball with the sweet spot of the club almost every time now, and I could feel the difference.

As I’m writing this, I’ve just completed my third lesson. Today I spent a lot of the day on the launch monitor working on my full swing. While I shanked a few, and got out of whack for a series of four or five balls in a row, I was very pleased with my progress. I’d say that 90% of my balls were at least good, and lots of them were in the zone where they need to be, with a slight pro draw! I still have things to work on, and since I’m going to try to hit a course this weekend, Scotty gave me a couple of drills to work on at the driving range before I go out for a round. When I was hitting shots 1-3% off the target line with a slight draw back in, I could feel how in the zone my swing was. We started to work a bit on my turn and club-head speed. Frankly, I’m amazed that after just three lessons we’re at the point where we are- that’s a serious credit to Scotty’s practiced eye- he can immediately spot what I’m doing and says just the right things to have me correct it on the very next swing almost every time! I’ve known people who were still doing half-swings after three lessons- and I know I’ve got a lot of swinging to do to ingrain everything in my muscle memory, but I feel pretty confident that I’m going to have at least the same distance I had before (that should increase as we work on clubhead speed and I get more of a turn in) with hopefully much, much better accuracy. I can say that so far since I’ve started with modifying my swing, I haven’t topped a ball yet- that’s going to really improve my game, as it’s the difference between my average game and my best games almost every time.

I’ve already booked my next lesson- going in, I was, with my usual skepticism, expecting to spend lots of time repeating things over and over- I really can’t express how surprised I am at the pace of improvement and I’m actually going to have to spend lots of time practicing at the driving range to groove things in- because Scotty’s kept me progressing at a pace that I can just keep up with. It’s probably the absolute best pace too- there’s so much to pay attention to that if it were slower, I’d spend much more time overthinking things rather than doing them!

After three lessons, I now have an actual golf swing- it’s not perfect, and it needs work- but I know where it needs work, and I can feel a lot of it when I don’t get it right- amazingly my ability to diagnose my own swing problems is light-years ahead of where it was just one month ago.

Truly, even at my level of play, I feel a lot more like I have a swing coach than a golf instructor- and I think that’s very empowering- not only does it not feel like I’m being babied into things, I hit a shot, and Scotty tells me what I can do to improve, then I hit another shot and it’s almost always immediately better- other than the string of four to five shots today where I just got myself a bit out of whack (hey, I’ve seen Tiger shank them- I can hardly feel bad about it!) I just continue to feel improvement.

Quite a few people in the last couple of years have recommended that I take some lessons. I didn’t feel I was really ready up until this year- and I think I was correct- I can adjust myself now because I’ve played enough to know mechanically what’s going on, and with Scotty’s excellent teaching and in-depth knowledge of what different mistakes do to the ball flight, I can adjust now much more quickly than I think I’d have even been able to do last year. I’m usually pretty big on going it on my own- but after watching a few DVDs and reading a few books, I simply couldn’t get myself to the right place on my own. Now I’m there, and as I continue to improve, I know I’ll have more accuracy and in time more distance- it just can’t happen any other way. More importantly, I have honestly one of the best swing coaches in the business- who understands the physics and physiology enough to help me achieve my absolute best. Now I have the foundation, I could go back to working on it by myself, but I know how inefficient that would be- I can make much quicker/better progress with someone who can take a quick look and tell me what to adjust before my very next ball.

I’m stoked to start getting out on the course, and more importantly I now feel that time at the driving range will be much, much more productive- something that really hasn’t been there for me before now.