Years ago, when I was about 24 years old, I lost my swing for the first time. It was very frustrating because it was just a year after I had played pretty well. At the time, I attributed it to the yips I had developed the season before.
I ended up giving up the game for a few years. In my late 20’s, I was somehow able to find a swing that seemed to work, after much trial and error, but then I took some time off again as I was married and had young children.
Fast forward to around 2003. I wasn’t playing much golf, and a client of mine asked me to play in a local four-ball tournament. I hesitated, but played, and I was dreadful.
This caused me to give up the game again, and it wasn’t until 2009, when I decided to start teaching, that I started playing again. However, I still had major issues with my game.
It was then that I headed down to Lewisville, Texas to attend Hank Haney’s annual teaching seminar. Somehow, I lucked into receiving a lesson from Hank in front of the other instructors who attended the seminar. It was only then that I learned about my primary swing flaw.
The previous day we all hit some balls on the range, and we were all videotaped. Hank picked out my swing video because I had a particular swing flaw he wanted to work on in front of the other instructors.
That swing flaw was somewhat similar to the “stuck” flaw that Tiger Woods has battled now and then. In other words, I was attacking the ball from too far inside. This lead me to hit either big pull hooks or big push slices.
When I was really playing poorly, it was the push slice that just killed me. But, I never knew what was causing the issue.
Back then, whenever I’d get a lesson, my local pro just had me work on my grip or set up. He never discussed ball flight or swing plane. In other words, he never addressed my primary golf swing flaw.
Within a couple years of this lesson with Hank Haney, and after conducting my own further research, I was able to develop a swing that was much more reliable than ever, and my ball striking was better than it had ever been.
This is why it is so critical to learn of your primary swing flaw, and how to correct it. If you never address your primary flaw, you’ll have no chance at becoming the best golfer you can be, and zero chance at becoming a scratch golfer.
The best way to do this is to get a video lesson from a reputable teaching pro. You’ll need to do some research to find out who the top instructors are in your area.
Once your teaching pro shows you your primary swing flaw, he or she be able to provide you with the proper correction, and some swing drills to ingrain that correction.
The following links address some of these primary swing flaws…
I also highly recommend that you learn how to take video of your own swing, and get some analysis software. Actually seeing your swing and learning how to make improvements will help you take your game to another level so much more quickly.
I discussed how to to that here… How to analyze your own golf swing with video.
Thanks for reading!
