So out to the first range after doing just indoor swing testing and out in the garden. For the indoor testing, I simply stacked up a pile of pillows together against the table leg and swung my pitching wedge with this new style.
It’s weird.
For 16 years of swinging from the right and shifting to the left…to stay stacked on left the whole way through is not natural to me and the tendency to shift and move the head is always there. But I do get the drift of it. The turning of the shoulders enable a really strong and firm whack into the pillows.
So to the first 100 balls – and it was an unequivocal…disaster!
Conceptually I understood some parts of it, just staying stacked on the left, so instead of putting my weight on the right, I mirrored it to put most of my weight on the left.
Now for short irons from 9-iron inwards, it was fine. Because naturally on shorter irons, I set up stable 50-50 or even leaning to the left side a bit like chipping and pitching. I didn’t see much difference there.
But come to the longer irons and the wood, hybrid and driver – nothing came out of it. I was chunking, clunking, bashing the ground. The ball was coming up left, right, high, low etc. It’s very frustrating to go back to the beginning, after this many years of golfing ‘experience’ down the drain.
Conclusion of first 100 balls: I may revert back to my right side and move to the left. Or maybe even do a bit of both – as in Stack left for short irons and longer irons/woods to favour my previous swing. The problem with this approach is that my body may not be able to adjust to both separate swings and might end up making its own decisions independent of my brains (which sometimes do happen). In this case, having two swings – I may not be smart enough to do this, so it’s a risk.
I may also be missing some parts of this stack and tilt thing and I need to back to the basics and read up more and learn more.
The only thing encouraging so far, is that for the short irons, I am hitting it crispier. I can sense that, as it comes off hotter on the clubface, because I am assuming, my weight is already shifted (or rather, stayed) on my left side and I am just hitting through the ball.
But overall – it’s discouraging. Very poor results and disappointing, after feeling really positive on those air swings at home and whacking those pillows (much to my wife’s utter annoyance).
Well, another good news is that, I am suddenly motivated to go to the range again, since now I have something to work on!