strong "hit" problem

Hi Guys,

I try hard not to really smash the ball but that is exactly what I do most of the tme. It seems to me that my swing just goes ballistic as soon as the downswing starts no matter how hard I try to have a nice controlled sweep through the ball.
At the moment lots of topped shots and heaps of frustration!!

Any help would be appreciated

I'm sure you'll get more technically qualified responses than this but I had a lesson last week which I'm still struggling to come to terms with where the problem was that I'm losing control of the club in the downswing giving completely inconsistent results. I won't go through the technical side of the lesson which closely follows this lesson which was from a link in one of yesterday's posts ... http://www.golfpro-online.com/tuition/lking/ten.html

In the meantime a good 'swing thought' is to just think of completing the swing and not hitting the ball. I find this is a correction that helps when things are going badly wrong on the course. The 2nd simple 'swing thought' is to hit the ball with your hands. A big problem for me is losing control of the club in my hands.

The more astute of you will no doubt notice that not thinking of hitting the ball and then thinking of hitting it with your hands is a paradox. This is true and of course you shouldn't be thinking of anything when you're swinging the club other than visualising the ball reaching the desired target. However, if you go to the range and try both of these thoughts (maybe on alternate shots or practice swings), I think you'll get closer to what a good downswing should feel like before you're ready to get into the more technical aspects of it.

If you are having troubles with keeping from killing the ball, try this. Go to the range on a quiet night (no one around) and hit balls with your eyes closed. This will keep you from trying to smash the ball and get you to swing through the impact zone. It may take a while, but once you get the feeling, you will see much more consistant results.

One thing I like to try and do is imagine hitting a 4-iron out of the cabbage. Because you're just swinging to a general area (near where your ball is buried) and not trying to hit it clean (like you would if you were on the fairway/tee, etc.) you might not have as much tendency to hit "at" the ball and much more a tendency to hit "through" it.

Works for me. My description of the concept might be piss-poor, though - do let me know if I'm not making sense.

MTR

Trying to relate this to another thread. I realise that I hit the most consistently when I try to keep my left hand straight (and it hardly gets as straight as I imagine), and using the left hand to swing down/round. I think perhaps this helps me to have a nice round swing down. Result is a fast downswing which seems to take control of itself, but I am able to hit the ball sweetly in most cases when I do this. If I let my right hand take control, or try to "hit" the ball, then all sorts of problems appear...