So close and yet so far...

So as you have read, I've made some swing changes to get it flattened out a bit and to get rid of the past parallel over the line move. I've been hitting balls every day at lunch (when I'm not traveling) and it's been slow going, as expected. The guy who runs the course where I practice stopped by me yesterday and told me to show up today at 1 PM so he could tweak a thing or two with my takeaway. He explained about getting it back straight to get the club behind me and online at the top. Makes sense, and sure feels a lot better. Had my wife check my position at the top last night and it looked perfect. Yeah, don't let 2 instructors work on you at once, but he knows what I'm doing and I trust his judgement.

We went to work on the takeaway, which as I said is still going outside thanks to years of me attempting to fix my across the line move by myself (unsuccessfully I might add). A few drills and I was in position. I hit a few 5 irons really well, but then the heat set in. Mike had me hit a few drivers and besides looking like I'd never played before, I hit that really bad. All in all, fun times with the driver. So we went back to the 5 iron, hit a few more fairly well, but I was spent. 109 degrees with a black shirt on will do that to a man. I hounded Mike to ensure that I was on line, he took the club out of my hands several times and had me look at the position, all was well.

After a Gatorade (Orange of course, because Ben Hogan always drank Orange Gatorade before the US Open) I cooled down and went home feeling pretty proud of my new move that put me in great position. What better to do than to go hit some more balls once it cooled down to 103 degrees? Took the video camera and hit a few shots to warm up again. Things didn't feel as crisp as earlier, but surely I was still on track. On went the camera and I took turns hitting a shot, then reviewing the footage on the camera. And wouldn't you know it, I'm back across the line again. I hit quite a few balls, each time really really bearing down on keeping the club behind me and it sure felt like earlier, but reviewing the footage, I can promise you it wasn't.

So now I'm a bit frustrated as I not only am still dealing with the club going across the line, but my 5 iron is traveling about 160 yards in the air, about 30 yards short of normal. I'm sure that's all due to the changes and the fact that I'm not really attacking the ball, but I feel really pent up, like my body is wrapped in Saran Wrap trying to keep my elbow in and my swing on plane. Headed to ASU Karsten again tomorrow to meet up with Jeff Ritter for lesson #2, so we'll talk about where I'm at now (which is 1,000 times better than I was a week ago by the way) and how this all feels. I tell you, I could live with the distance loss and the weird feelings if I had the club on line at the top and stopped it at parallel. I've been fighting that for so long, that it's pretty much my success indicator at this point.