Issue No. 3: Before the Downswing

For as long as I can remember, I've dropped the club into the ball from the inside. When the timing was good, I could play that way. When it wasn't, I had both sides of the course available.

The club would get stuck behind me and my hands had to decide what happened next. Catch it up and I could over-draw it or hook it. Leave it there and I could block it completely off the right. Even wedges had a habit of starting right and leaking farther that way.

I assumed the fix belonged in the downswing. Video showed me the problem had already started before I got there.

My takeaway was going outside and up, and it was doing it quickly. Then my right arm would lift away from my body and my arms would keep traveling. From that position, they dropped sharply back to the inside. By impact, the club was stuck behind me, my lower body was overextended, and my hands were flipping to square the face.

TrackMan put the path around 3 to 5 degrees from the inside when that pattern showed up. The hook and block looked like opposite misses, but they came from the same place.

The useful change was not another move at the ball. It was giving myself less to rescue on the way down.

I borrowed two feels for that. The first came from Porzak Golf: squeeze the trail upper arm against the pec at address, like you're holding a glove or headcover under it. That gave me a repeatable distance from the ball, kept the arm connected, and stopped my arm swing from running as long.

The second came from Patrick Kelley Golf: imagine another ball sitting directly behind the clubhead and slowly push it away to begin the takeaway. That helped the club start back in a better direction, but the word slowly mattered just as much. It kept the first move from immediately wrecking the tempo work I wrote about in The Tempo Number.

These are not two magic positions. One organized my setup and arm swing. The other gave the first part of the takeaway a direction and pace. Together, they made the downswing less of a recovery.

I started with rehearsals and a pitching wedge, not a driver.

Put a glove or headcover under your trail upper arm and squeeze it against your pec. The object is feedback. It should stay put as you begin the backswing. Then picture a second ball touching the back of the clubhead and feel as if you're slowly pushing it away.

Hit a few wedges that way before changing clubs. The first question is not whether the shot is perfect. Watch whether contact, start line, and curve become more predictable. If they do, move through a few irons. I used the connected-arm feel with every club, especially driver, where my arms were most likely to overswing. With driver, I kept the intention of pushing the imaginary ball away instead of trying to make the drill overly literal.

This is not a cue to borrow just because it worked for me. It addressed a long, disconnected arm swing that rerouted too far inside and produced hooks and blocks. If that does not resemble your pattern, you have not diagnosed a reason to use it.

There is also a clear sign to back off. When I overdid the connected-arm feel, I hit a few shots that started on line and faded more than I expected. They were not my old blocks. I had simply pushed the correction too far. If your path and ball flight keep moving left, reduce the squeeze or stop the test. A new miss is not progress because it came from a better-looking drill.

The range test is only half of it. Take one ball, pick a real target, and change clubs instead of repeating the same comfortable shot. Run the cues in the same order every time: set your trail arm and squeeze, then picture pushing the ball away.

That was my thought sequence on every full swing for two rounds. Impact felt more consistent, the ball flight was straighter through the bag, and the wedges that had leaked right started flying much closer to the line I expected. I shot under par both rounds.

That last sentence needs a qualifier. I did not collect on-course dispersion or strokes-gained data, and two scores do not prove these cues caused them. When I committed to the feels on TrackMan, though, the path that had been 3 to 5 degrees from the inside moved much closer to neutral, usually around zero and sometimes half a degree to one degree left. That matched what I saw on the course: fewer swings that needed my hands to save them.

At first, the new delivery felt like I was coming over the top. It was unfamiliar because I had approached the ball too far from the inside for years. The result mattered more than whether the correction felt normal.

Issue No. 1 was about recognizing when a bad hole began with the decision rather than the swing. This test is for the other pile. If your miss really is mechanical, look for the earliest point where the rescue becomes necessary. It may be well before the part you've been trying to fix.

Hit reply and tell me your recurring two-way miss. If you have video, what happens in the first foot of the takeaway before the ball goes either direction?

Play well,
Connor