Golf - Just When You Think it is Over

This is the third in my trilogy of golf articles from What Do You Call The Game You Are Playing about U.S.G.A. rules and my foursome to The Day My Golf Game Died concerning the disembodiment of my golf game to Golf - Just When You Think it is Over describing the miraculous rebirth of my game just as I had laid it to rest.

All of this took place within the last four days. If you are going through a truly dark passage with your game and you can not see your way out, please bear with me for a possible answer. You may want to read the first two articles first to understand what I am referring to.

If you prefer not to go to the previous articles, here is the quick version of the scenario. A fairly good golfer that has tremendous knowledge of the golf swing and makes poor decisions of changing his swing constantly to continue to improve suddenly finds himself taken over by the golf demons in his brain. When he tries to swing down the target line and up the demons take control and make him swing around his waist like someone picking up a club for the very first time and swinging like they would with a baseball bat while standing straight up.

He tries and tries in vain to battle these demons and his scores plummet while his insecurity swells to enormous heights. He writes in his second article of the burial of his game simply because he can not continue to play this way. He is not a quitter, but a realist and this problem just would not go away. After four weeks of misery it was time to lay the clubs aside and move on.

The very next day, I was at a birthday party and my stepson attended. I told him of my plight and he said that I just needed to do something that would not physically allow the brain to take over. His idea was for me to keep my back foot grounded through impact. That would prevent the wrap-around swing that had taken possession of me.

That made a lot of sense. The second thing he said to me was that he had read an article about tour pros telling how they do not have pre-contact swing thoughts standing over the ball, but instead they have post-contact swing thoughts. This eliminates all the trouble that can arise during the back swing and downswing. He told me to only think of extending the forearms down the target line after impact with the ball letting them roll over each other naturally.

I went to the course the very next day and after some difficulty of actually stopping just past impact because my back foot was planted, I finally realized that I needed to let the foot come away from the ground after impact. Now I was hitting the ball down the fairway again just like in the past. No more swings around my waist promoting a huge pull and no more tremendous slices only going 150 yards off the tee. I was back!

Now, the really strange part of this story. See the two photos to the right? Those are Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland. I returned home from the course and found my wife watching the PGA Tour on television. After sitting for a few moments, one of the commentators said, "If you want good footwork to copy, it doesn't get much better than this." He was showing McIlroy in slow motion. Guess what? Just as the photos here show, his back foot stayed grounded during impact and lifted after impact. I was astonished by how ironic this was. Here is probably the next greatest player in the world and he is doing exactly what my stepson told me.

Kudos to Bart.