Well, I've had a marvelous breakthrough.
I've struggled a lot this year with my distances. Let me qualify that. I know what my distances were with each club, but for a swing that felt smooth and efficient, I didn't seem to be getting much distance (pulling 7i from 150 yards).
I made one small change to my setup, and one change to my swing, and now I've gained 2
clubs across the board, and fantastic accuracy.
The setup change has to do with my right arm. At address, I often gave no thought to my right side, specifically my right hand and arm. Now I pay attention to it. I spent an afternoon at golfdigest.com looking at swing sequences, and noticing where the pros set their arms. Invariably their forearm and hand are pretty much straight. I used to have a bit of a cupping going on - and I've learned that I was subtracting loft because of this. After some time in front of the mirror and the video camera, I've now got a relatively flat right wrist. Oddly enough, it feels better, too.
So I take that and compound it to the following:
I now conciously set my wrists (contrary to my pro's advice) early in the swing, and conciously fire them during the swing. I will add that this approach is probably not for everyone. I only need to do it while warming up, and I seem to do it automatically from there on in. I'm sure that this forced late release is the other reason that I've gained some distance.
Viewing high-speed video of myself, I had a fairly late release (better than the average amateur), but now I've got power and accuracy (a wonderfully cupped right wrist at impact). There are times when I can sense my right hand fine-tuning the swing at impact. It's neat, because I don't normally 'feel' much during the swing.
I was really wary of trying to manipulate my hands during the swing (being a big believer in passive hands and arms) - and my biggest fear was having to 'time the swat', as Greg puts it. But either I'm doing something right, and I just
think I'm controlling my wrists, or I've got incredible timing.