I started Lag’s program back in March with the intent of converting my inconsistent swinging motion into something more dependable. Although my swing had a decent “look” to it (which means nothing really), it never performed that well day in and day out, particularly under tournament pressure. I’ve always had a bit of a “loopy transition” onto a flatter plane which Lag thought was a really good thing, although I’d spent the best part of the last 20 years trying to eliminate it (unsuccessfully I might add), so I could be “more on plane”.
During the last 7 months of working the modules I’ve seen some really good things happen but I also had periods where it wasn’t all that great. (No surprise there as the first 3 modules do have an inter-relationship, and as most who are doing them will agree, it takes some time to get the body adjusted to some of the motions). Prior to ABS, if I’d been working on a swing change for more than a couple of months and wasn’t seeing improvement I’d scrap it and be on to something else. In this case, the steps “backwards” were easier to deal with because I could see where things were heading. (I think I was a “0” handicap when I started and am a “2” now).
I played my normal number of tournaments through the summer with no really good results, but my expectations weren’t too high either. The last big event of the year for me was this past weekend, a 3 day 4-ball event with some of the better players in the state participating. I tend to put more pressure on myself in 4-ball events… I think it’s that “don’t want to let my partner down” mentality, and I’ve really had my struggles in this event in past years. But, I’d been feeling a lot more comfortable with the ABS work in general over the last few weeks and saw this as a good test to see where things “were at”.
Well, this isn’t one of those “Cinderella stories”, where I can say we won, or even placed high for that matter, but I can say that I’ve never felt more in control of things as I did this weekend. I drove it well (hitting 35 of 42 fairways), and hit 40 of 54 greens. The GIR % was nice, but more important was how frequently I was able to hit it so close to were I was “trying” to hit it on the green! I tend to get quite mechanical with too many swing thoughts working when I play, and although I still had a key or 2 in my head I felt much more like I could get into a “play” mode and let the module work take over.
Still lots of work to do, but this was a nice acid test which only confirmed to me just how spot-on this stuff really is. It will make grinding hard on modules 2 and 3 over the fall and winter months easy to justify!
robbo