Trusting the Change
Why the hardest part of a swing change isn't learning, it's trust.
Learning the Change
For a long time, I've fought the dreaded slice. Over the last year or two I've worked incredibly hard on improving my swing plane and path to be more neutral. Then came pull hooks from an incredibly strong grip; brought that back to neutral/slightly strong and the most recent issue has been blocks and even push slices. If I do manage to get the face shut, it's a snap hook from flipping during the release. Just constantly playing whack-a-mole with new issues. That brings me to the latest change, my club face rolling open in the takeaway. One thing that's helped me more than I expected has been filming my swing. Face on and down the line. Every time I'm convinced I know what I'm doing, the video usually tells a different story. As we all know, feel isn't necessarily real.
Expectations
With that new information, I headed to the range with one simple intention: change my takeaway. It wasn't a massive overhaul, but it affected every part of the swing that came after. Ultimately, I left the range feeling solid about my newfound swing and feels; with a round coming up on the weekend, excited for low scores and bombed drives, my expectations were high.
Reality
I arrive at the course, no time to warm up (don't ask me why I do this to myself sometimes), doing our best to keep focus on the new change. First few holes are alright, but then a new miss creeps in; thins. I've never been one to thin the ball, usually I actually hit it chunky, especially on those shorter approach shots. Supposedly they're caused by the same thing, but I'm no PGA pro, so don't ask me. But this is becoming an issue; I'm mid round, ball flight is straight but all my mid and long irons are thin, flying over my target. Hitting a par 3 or a GIR is starting to feel impossible. By the 7th hole, it's like I'm not even playing golf anymore. I'm standing over my shot, 7-iron in hand, running through a checklist of all the things I need to do to hit this green. How can we be athletic and swing freely with all these thoughts running rampant?
Trust
The change itself wasn't the hard part. But the follow on effects were becoming quite detrimental to my game. I think we've all heard it before, that swing changes often come in pairs or triples; however, being on the course isn't the time to change that. I sometimes think that while we hear the phrase 'it will get worse before it gets better', we either have the expectation that it won't be us, or we just flat out don't believe it.
Maybe it's time we let go of that expectation.
Sure, my thin shots were actually more frustrating than my slice.
But guess what?
They were at least straight.
In the moment, I at least decided to trust the change, keep leaning into it and fix my contact later.
Moving Forward
I'm not saying I've got it figured out, in fact, I'm far from it. But I am committed to improving and sometimes that comes with discomfort. There's going to be bad rounds after a change, we can't hold on to the expectation that there won't be; but we have to keep showing up.
Growth and learning often feel awkward.
Confidence comes from repetitions.
Trust has to come before results.
The hardest part of a change isn't the movement itself.
It's the trust that it'll eventually work out, even when you haven't seen the results.
Golf is hard.
Enjoy it anyway.
-- Jack