Date: 26 Nov 2006 19:29:24
From: Dave Lee
Subject: On Improving Lag (continued)
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This is kind of a continuation of the thread with the same Subject first
posted on 10/5/06. http://tinyurl.com/yf5efm
FWIW, the timing of this post is perfect as I'll have some time to think
about this vs. work on it. Last Sunday evening I caught the little toe of my
right foot on a bedframe. When it happened I wondered 'did I break that
thing?'. Swelling and the beginning of blood pooling in my foot tentatively
confirmed that suspicion the next morning. But there really isn't much to be
done about that.
Then yesterday I was doing some painting in the house and using a standard
fold-up (two-step) stepstool. I took my usual foot pointing out, weight on
the inside step up to keep weight off the toe, and the stepstool went
sideways, I went sideways, and I torque'ed my knee severely aggravating an
old (and quite frankly forgotten) knee injury while simultaneously banging
the injured toe. It'll be a few days before I'm swinging the club.
The toe event actually happened in a motel room while making my annual visit
with my teaching pro. We had agreed ahead of time that working on improving
my lag would be the goal of this year's trip.
My pro's philosophy toward making swing changes is very similar to Dr. Carey
Mumford's "Clear Key" perspective on things. In a nutshell it is drill based
mixing 'doing it right' however that might be achieved (customized teaching
aids, slow motion movement, break the swing into pieces, etc) and full
swings. I find it to be a sound approach to the problem, in general.
The drill that he has me doing is something that he calls the 'dagger
drill'. It is similar to 'the pump drill' which I think is fairly
well-known. You take your backswing and then downswing to roughly where your
hands are even with the ball being VERY careful to hold your wrist angle.
You then pump back/forth between this position and the top of the backswing
a few times before actually hitting the ball.
I've been quite surprised to find that I can't even hold my lag properly
when hitting the ball in the dagger drill, although there is a definite
improvement in coming into the ball from the inside. My next step (after
some recovery time) will be to start taking smaller and smaller swings with
the dagger drill (probably with a SW or LW) until I find something that
(from a lag perspective) I can do correctly when hitting the ball in the
dagger drill.
My teaching pro doesn't object to this, but his first choice would be to
have me stick with the full swing dagger drill swings.
Thoughts or opinions on this specific question or the general question of
improving lag? BTW I continue to be fascinated by the fact that my normal
practice swing has very good lag and I assume that this has been the case
for many years. Some time ago I gave up on taking the approach (directly) of
just making my 'practice swing' at the ball.
Thanks.
dave
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