(Yet Another) Golf Swing Epiphany

Surely anyone who's swung a club more than twice has had that same feeling: "Oh, THAT'S how it's done!" A range session one Sunday AM last year was like that; Swinging each club seemed effortless. The ball obeyed my every command. The 100, 150, and 200 yard signs could be hit - in fact, they were easy to hit - and each time I hit them, the loud clang reported to my range mates that I had found it! "Crap! If only I had played today!"

You know the story, though - the following week, teeing it up, 3 guys watch after my confident "I'll take us out" to see which way I'd be starting my day, and instead of the solid muted thwack of a Pro V being squashed on titanium before being propelled rocket-like downrange, the familiar clank-pull-hook, "I think I saw it near that tree." Yep, "the zone" was in another time zone, far from where I stood, in my out-of-balance finish, such as it was. Many trips to the range later, I had yet to find that feeling again... That feeling of effortlessness... That sudden ability to hit my P-Wedge where my 8-iron was normally used. That sudden ability to hit my driver straight, no matter how I chose to swing the thing.

Today, I took the weekend off from playing golf, visited the range to work on a few things. Today, I was back in that zone.

This is a rare occurrence. My being in "golf zone" is an event similar in frequency to UFO sightings over Manhattan, and as mystical as the image of Mother Mary appearing on the fogged window of a skyscraper. Like the aurora borealis, or a shooting star, it comes and goes without warning or announcement - it just appears.

I sensed it from my first swing, though it wasn't a good shot. A 6 iron, pull hooked, hit thin, but one that carried 180 yards. I did not consciously ponder how to correct that miss. The instructions seemed to flow, as if from The Force, directly to my shoulders, arms, and hands. Minor adjustments made themselves. The next swing was almost dreamlike - as I held my finish, watching the ball shoot missile-like straight away from me, I had no conscious memory of my back-swing. Impact sounded different - solid, muted. Wedge shots landed like darts near their destinations. My 3 wood carried to the top of the small hill near the fence at the far end of the range - that where I usually would hit my driver.

It has always been my goal to hit the fence at the far end with my driver. Today, I thought I was falling short before I realized that I was hitting the fence repeatedly, but this fence is a loose mesh that "caught" the ball, and allowed it to fall straight down - a bit of an optical illusion. That was the epiphany. The feeling of having arrived, that every golf-day of my life would be different from now on. I had progressed! I was at the Next Level.

Sure, I should've seen this coming; at a recent scramble, I crushed a drive 285 yards down the middle, and followed that with a pured 215 yd 3-wood to a par 5 green. I'd been playing a lot more short-iron approaches, and was starting to feel bad for my 5 and 6 iron lest their feelings be hurt for having to spend so much time in the bag. Something was happening. Here, at the range, under lab conditions, the truth was being revealed.

I called Golfflog Jr. over to my stall - "Watch this, I'm going to hit this ball over the fence." Jr. eyed me with that look that told me he was considering taking my car keys away.

It seemed simple enough - I wound up, and smoothly stroked. I felt the shaft load as I began the downswing. My one thought was an image of the ball being squashed against the clubface long enough to transfer all of the club-head momentum to the ball. I looked up to see the ball flight - it was moving straight away - almost a stationary point in the sky, not so much flying as getting smaller. It hit the fence near it's top third. Mind you, I could not hit that damn fence before today.

I teed up one more, this one struck harder and louder, but with a fade to it, hitting the fence, though, at about the same height. That was that - two tries, but failure never felt so sweet. I finished my last few balls with some short irons and chips. I gave Jr. a few pointers on his grip.

This COULD be the result of my having just read "The Impact Zone" by Bobby Clampett - Jr. and I talked about the swing dynamics described in the book as we rode in the car on the way to the range today.

Did those descriptions of swing dynamics somehow impose themselves into my muscle memory? They say that thinking about a golf swing has the same effect on muscle memory as actually swinging, you know... Of course, this could just be another "aurora borealis..."

I'm trying like hell to get to The Black on Monday by virtue of an extra day off from work. We'll see if The Zone and MY zone are anywhere near each other...

GF