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Here goes for my first new thread post!

I have played quite a bit of golf in my life, but I always played pitch and putt courses (par 3) for fun without any focus on being a good golfer. My short game isn’t too bad from playing a lot of pitch and putt, but all my long shots are inconsistent and have little if no accuracy (anything with a driver or wood is horrible). My last few games were between 106 and 130.

This year I am starting to get serious about improving my game. I have taken a couple lessons while on vacation in Mexico this year, but as I don’t speak Spanish, I had no clue what the instructor was telling me. I had to rely on him physically showing me things. While not the best, for only $30 for an hour at the range with an instructor to warm up before a round, it was worth the cost.
Last week I signed up for lessons here in Edmonton. I bought a “player development” package from Golf Town (mainly in Canada) which consists of one 1 hour swing analysis and eight ½ hour follow up sessions for $449 plus tax.

Last night I had the 1 hour swing analysis. I started out taking a few swings followed by a review of the video with the instructor. It became apparent pretty quickly that I do not roll my wrists enough, I “de-loft” the club quite a bit in my swing and hook everything to the left! The instructor showed me how to change my grip, focus on rolling my wrists and line up to the ball a bit further back. I practiced for a bit with the instructor reinforcing each of the problem areas followed by a review of the video to see that the difference looked like in my swing.

After about 30 min of assessing my swing, we moved to a “virtual driving range” to hit some shots into a video screen that shows where the ball would have gone. I tried hitting some with my original swing and then focused on practicing the new concepts. It was easy to see that using the new concepts my good balls went dead straight and far (225 yards) and my bad ball with the new swing went about as good as my good balls using my old swing! The new concepts such as the grip feel pretty awkward at this point, but I’m planning on hitting the range a few times before my next lesson next week to get more comfortable with it.

Overall I felt the lesson was really good for me, as long as I have the commitment to go to the range a few times a week to practice. My brother (fairly better golfer) is visiting next weekend and I signed him up for the same swing analysis. We will have to see what his feedback is compared to mine as he is at a different level than me. I’ll update the post in a few days with my results on the range.

Craig