Wow, I got a lot of great responses. First and foremost, thanks to Slater170, MR3856a, Jamesh and Bill Reed for their responses.

It is apparent to me now that I posted my original message while in a bad mood - thus, the pessimistic tone.

I had another lesson today. Both the pro and I had come to the same conclusion independently - start over with the fundamentals. So we did. The lesson was held on a windy day with the wind blowing left to right so even a straight shot would curve right. The pro had me practice many drills and ended up by showing me how to hit a hook so that the wind would straighten it out. I was successful about half the time. He told me that my swing plane is OK but for some reason I have an open face at impact - even though grip and stance, etc. look fine. With an intentionally over closed clubface, I hit the ball straight or hooked.

He also told me that his wife took about two years to get a decent swing. This agrees with Slater’s experience.

Mike, I agree with you about the Penick book. I have already read it twice.
Regarding club length, I got my information from the club fitting wizard at the pinemeadowgolf website. When I put in my info, they recommended standard length. Since I am able to hit some shots well, I tend to agree. However, poking around online, I saw that I could get my entire set lengthened for less than US$50, or I could do it myself for about half that. Is there a downside to getting clubs lengthened? If the pro recommends one inch, can I get them done two inches just in case and choke up if needed?

The reason I thought my 8 weeks should have been enough was that I went to the range almost every day, sometimes twice a day, so I crammed about 40 practice sessions into the last two months. Put that together with the fact that I hit straight after my first week and I think you can see why I thought that a couple of lessons would get me to some minor level of skill. I now see that it may take years.

Bill, thanks for sharing your experiences so I feel better that it is not just me.

In hindsight I think my instructor was fooled by my original swing that gave fairly good results, so he approached me as needing minor tweaking. Now, I think he sees that I need the complete overhaul.

The crazy thing about this game is that earlier this week I played the same par 3 course and was happy with my game. I had poor scores but this was due to under-swinging and coming up short, or over-swinging and going past the green, or missed 6 foot putts. All of this was interesting and challenging to me. I could imagine how I could get better with time by developing a better feel for distance, better reading of the greens, etc. My game yesterday with alternate slices and grounders was just plain annoying - bad scores with no idea how to get better -thus, the pessimistic post. Of course, the part I did not put in my first message was that two months ago I signed up for a business golf outing on Oct 4 with some business people I really want to meet. I was planning on playing just well enough to be unnoticeably bad. Now, I am worried that I will make a complete fool of myself.



Anyway, thanks again for all the info and support.



Ken