This week I hit the range hard to get my irons and wedges working. I hit 600+ balls over the last three afternoons (plus some putts and chips).
The first 500 of those balls were fairly unproductive, although I did make some posture improvements and ingrain the grip change from last week. I felt like I was swinging better, but my contact still sucked.
Then I went back to a classic fallback drill: Swinging with a glove under my right arm to be more “connected”. It’s so cliché, but it’s good enough for Tiger and Rory, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. I also made sure to swing out to right field and worked a little on turning, rather than swaying in my backswing.
My ballstriking got dramatically better instantly. My balls weren’t going far because I lost some swing speed, but the contact and ball-flight was great. After practicing the drill for a half hour or so, I got my swing speed up a little and started to hit at least wedges at my normal carry distance. The highlight was a beautiful 113 yard high draw with my pitching wedge.
I also took a few normal shots in between rounds of the drill to see if the results were translating, and thankfully they were. My backswing was shorter, more consistent, and less steep (see images below).
Drives with the drill were significantly shorter (190ish vs 205-220 carry), but once again the efficiency/contact quality was up. Hopefully I can bring speed back into the improved swing as I did with my wedges after some more practice
My game plan from here is to keep practicing this drill on the range to ingrain whatever element of my swing it’s fixing. Hopefully it continues to work.
For the amount of balls I’ve hit this week, I feel surprisingly good. My hands and back are a tad sore, but I have nice calluses and no blisters, and my problematic left wrist isn’t bothering me too much. It’s raining all day tomorrow, so Mother Nature prescribed me some rest. Here’s to getting better and staying healthy 🍻
Michael Golfs 