Lessons and Fitting

I am going to start taking lessons in the next week or two I hope. The instructor is USGTF Certified at Level 3. I like hime and we get along really well. At his suggestion we are going to play 9 holes together first so he can evaluate my game (or lack thereof). Going forward he will perform video analysis, and spend lesson time with me on the range as well as just talking things over.

I have never been properly fitted for my irons. Should I get fitted before/during/after lessons?

At the start of the season I purchased a stock set of Callaway X18R irons. I have them gripped with GP Tour Velvets midsize plus three wraps.

I am 6'3", wrist to floor is +/-35.75", wrist to finger is 8.75", finger is 3.75. Are the stock clubs close?

These clubs are going to be a bit short and the lie will be a touch flat. Talk with your instructor. See if the clubs are affecting your ability to get setup proper. Be upfront with your goals and be honest with how you feel about different parts of the game. Let me know how things go.

I played a round with my new instructor yesterday, and then we spent some time on the range afterward. We did not go into any fitting aspects yesterday... I forgot to ask about it, but will next time I see him.

What I found strange was how nervous I was to play the round with him. He went out of his way to make me comfortable, but still I was nervous that I was going to make a complete a$$ of myself in front of him. I topped two 3W tee shots in a row on the first hole. I NEVER top the ball, EVER. My miss is fat, fat and a little more FAT!

I settled down after a few holes, and he patiently waited for my normal swing to "come in". He didn't offer much as we played. A small tip here and there about finishing the shot, swinging through and "posing" at the top. Then on one hole he came up on the tee box with me, and had me swing while he was holding my head. THAT was weird but it produced a awful pretty shot. I have a lot of up/down in my spine angle.

After the round we went to the range so we could work on some specifics. Maintaining spine angle, was the primary attack point. He change my body position slightly at address, shifting my weight back slightly to my heels, and adding a very slight tilt behind the ball. After working on that for some time, I was consistently hitting my 8i straight or with a little draw carrying about 140-145. To say I was happily amazed would be an understatement.

We spent a fair amount of time on the range just talking about a crap load of different things. When he had me add the tilt behind the ball, I just could not get my head wrapped around it. I explained to him that I had been playing around with the Stack&Tilt method a little and I was pretty comfortable with it, but that made the feeling of that tilt counter-intuitive. I was expecting a snort of disgust at the mention of the S&T method, but he just listened to me. Then he re-explained the tilt, and demonstrated it by hitting a ball while standing on one foot. After a little work I was able to get the little tilt at address that he was looking for and the results were there.

Lastly, we talked about my grip. I know, everyone is going to think that should have been the first thing we talked about. But, he said my grip was 'OK'. I have a pretty week left hand (grip wise) seeing only one knuckle, but that wasn't the issue he wanted to discuss. He talked with me about my right hand. I have always pretty much just rested my right hand on the club, trying to not allow it to come into play. My thumb sort of just rests on top of the grip almost perpendicular to the grip, while my forefinger does the same thing on the underside. He entered the conversation saying that he wasn't really concerned about my grip, but that as my swing progresses, we may want to change it slightly to get my right hand positioned correctly.

This was probably a 15 minute conversation. He showed me how he would "like" to see my right hand on the club, but did not make a big deal out of it. His point was that the way I was gripping the club could allow a little extra movement at the top, but he could not see anything that made him think the change HAD to happen. I made the change, took a few swings with it, and rather liked it.

In the end it was a great experience, and I look forward to taking it back to the range, and out on to the course. Fortunately for me, there were no big changes that had to be made, just a handful of little tweaks. If I can remember to implement them, and groove them into my game I think I can make my sub-90 goal in pretty short order.

Not surprised he wanted a little tilt of the spine in order to get your head behind the ball.
I am sure he held onto your head because that is the most convenient place to gain some leverage against a sway or a lean. In reality your head follows the rest of your body back and is usually more a manifestation of the spine angle ups and downs you mentioned earlier.

This helped me and might help you get used to the tilt. I think the feeling you are looking for is your butt and lower half lilted a little forward and your spine and upper body and head tilted a little backwards. If you try to get that feeling when getting into your “sitting on the edge of the stool” address position, you might find that the tilt thing comes a little more naturally to you.

I managed to get the tilt into the address, and was starting to get comfortable. I was just surprised at how little (and few) changes made such a dramatic difference to my swing and thus ball contact. I'm just waiting for it to warm up a tad before I head back out this morning for another practice session and round.

I think the fact that little changes seem to have a big impact is likely because the whole issue of spine tilt has such a huge impact on your ability to make solid contact. Also the feeling you are looking for is much more subtle than you are led to believe by the way we verbalize it. In other words we are looking for some really noticeable feeling that we can easily pick up relative to whether or not we are keeping our spine tilt constant through the whole swing and it turns out to be a much more subtle feeling that is very easy to miss when you first start realizing it is an issue you have to resolve. In large part I think it is responsible for the amount of attention we give to our heads because it is a little easier to pick out the fact that our visual angle on the ball is changing as our heads are moving. However as I said earlier if you think about it since it is unlikely that you are turning or canting your head on your shoulders it is more likely that you head is following the rest of your upper body, not the other way round.

It was so subtle in my case that initially I had to look at the result (topped the ball or hitting the ground behind the ball) and tell myself that this is the result I get when I do not keep my spine angle constant until I finally found the feeling for keeping my spine angle constant.

Here is something else that I found in looking for the right feeling. We talk a good deal about tempo also. Tempo probably gets as much attention as “keeping the head still” gets. Watch for how much your tempo improves when your spine angle is constant. Tempo at least in my case turned out to be at least as much one of those things that was a result as opposed to a targeted swing component. If my spine angle is not constant, parts of my body end up chasing after other parts of my body in an effort to get back to where I need to be at impact. So another qui in the issue of spine angle is noticing how much better your tempo is when your spine angle is constant and how much more on-balance you feel throughout the swing. You will find yourself saying “wow did that ever feel right”!!