My good friend and former golfing partner left the Midwest for the Carolinas some time back but we stay in touch and trade golf stories from time to time. He recently sent me a golf column that has some sage advice for when your swing suddenly goes awry.

The Pitch Trick

By Clay Barbour

Is it possible for a golf swing to simply disappear, for an action repeated hundreds of times to just vanish into the ether?

If you have played golf long enough to develop blisters, back aches and a healthy sense of self doubt then you know the answer is a resounding yes.

No other sport, save maybe baseball, offers such a frustrating situation. That’s probably because both pitching a baseball and swinging a club are skills that are equal parts mechanics and magic. No two people do them exactly the same and as such, there is a sense of mystery to the activity.

It happened to me recently. I had been playing three times a week and my ball striking was better than ever. Then during one round I hit a ball and an odd cut stroke popped.

The next round it happened a few more times. And by the third round, I was cutting every single iron on every single shot. I went to the range and hit bucket after bucket and could not shake the problem. The ball went far, high and started to fade to the right.

On a wedge, it’s no big deal. On a hybrid it can be fatal (unless you are a natural cut hitter).

Often these kinds of hiccups come and go and are never heard from again. But sometimes they lead to full-fledged slumps, which of course just bleed into every other aspect of the game.

Luckily I played with a friend about a month into the slump and he noticed that my swing was uncharacteristically steep (envision Furyk, without the success). But muscle memory being what it is, the simple knowledge of what I was doing wrong helped very little.

He suggested I try this trick at the driving range. It turned out to be the best golf tip I ever received. Not only did it cure my swing (making it flatter), but it raised my ball striking to another level. I highly recommend it even if you have no problem with your swing.

THE TRICK:

Address the ball with your feet together. Begin hitting the ball from this position, starting first with a quarter-swing, increasing it to a half and then two-thirds.

Essentially you are rebuilding a proper swing from the ground up, grooving it into muscle memory. Keeping your feet together forces you to make a more controlled and flatter swing. If you get too wild or too steep you will fall.

Keep in mind that just because your feet are close together, it doesn’t mean you stop shifting your weight. You’re not putting.

Do this for a while and you will find that your two-thirds swing is generating more distance than your full swing previously did.

When you get back to the course, you can stand normally, but I recommend that you do a few practice swings with your legs together, before addressing the ball. If you’ll notice, many PGA golfers do this (and now I know why).

Enjoy and remember, the short grass is for wimps.