Lesson 4 with Mike - Old habits die hard

Date of lesson: 12/1/24 - very cold!

The first half of this session was a general conversation about my Vision54 golf project and Senior Open challenge. Mike will put some thoughts together for me and then we will work out a training schedule and lesson plan for the season ahead so I can make the best use of my practice time. More to come on this.

For the second half, I wanted a general check-over to make sure I'm keeping on top of the fundamentals (that's the Hogan influence!). Have I slipped back into old habits with my grip, posture, ball position, swing plane etc. During recent rounds, I believed there was one issue definitely creeping back in, and I was interested to see if Mike agreed.

I was swaying my hips even before Hipsway!

First the good news. Grip, posture, ball position and backswing plane all remain good and what we wanted to see after the previous lessons. However, most frustratingly, I've been swaying again rather than turning my hips properly. This issue has dogged me for longer than I care to remember and bugs me even more than three putting. It goes even further back than my lessons with Henry Wong at Wellsgreen. If he's reading this he will be shaking his head that I'm still doing it. It's quite easy to know when it happens as it manifests most clearly through topping my driver. There are other signs too; fatting my irons or an associated early extension that causes me to hit the ball high, right and short. Mike agreed, the hip sway was back and it's a lot worse than The Honey Thief!

Much discussion and video analysis followed, then a new routine, similar to this one on X by Ryan Mouque. https://x.com/ryanmouquegolf/status/1745533793195450458?s=20 It's a bizarre coincidence that he posted this the day before my lesson. Through the session, we figured out that my issues were more pronounced as I moved up to the longer clubs. This suggested that my other life-long bad habit was also creeping back in. Too wide a stance, especially with the driver - a classic cause of hip sway, but one that's much easier to resolve.

By the end of the session, I was striking the ball well again and despite feeling like I was swinging slower, I was actually picking up speed and distance. The ball flight was much better too, more penetrating and less ballooning. I took away some drills to work on and have been trying them at the range and on the course since. Something else I noticed when practising is a tendency to lose the flex in my right knee, effectively "locking" that leg in the backswing which is an additional impediment to rotation. Focusing on keeping that knee flexed seems to help considerably though. As if there weren't enough things swimming around in my head! A bit of block practice at the range or in the garden beckons while I work this through.

So its a bit like "two steps forward, one step back", but it's good to nip this issue in the bud. Just like life, the journey of golf improvement is rarely smooth.