Every golfer I know works on their golf swing. They try different aspects or make small changes in order to gain the advantage they need to lower their golf score. Well, I am no different. Over the past six months of playing (about a year due to our winter layoff) I have tried to change my golf swing. I can honestly tell you that it my efforts have not produced the changes expected, so it is time to change back and start fresh. It has been a fun, frustrating and fruitful adventure and I will explain how my journey produced all three, yet differing results.

I guess the first step is to explain the original change in order to add context to my post today. The original change I made was with my stance. I narrowed my stance in varying degrees in order to produce better control on my approach shots. The shorter the iron, the somewhat narrower stance I tried. The idea was to produce better control and stability. Well, neither really occurred. I had way less control on distance and direction and my stability did not really improve. Overall, I was missing more greens in regulation than before, so it is now time to revert back to my old style and see what happens.

My journey resulted in three things that I will take away from my journey. The first was frustration. I missed more simple shots that should have produced birdie putts. I would mostly pull the ball, but added some pushes in there just for good measure. I was inconsistent and could not provide the consistency I needed or expected. For some reason I could not produce a repeatable swing. My guess is that all my old habits were too hard to break and as a result, my attempts at a narrower stance failed.

My change was fruitful. I learned a great deal about my game. I to not always take a full swing at every approach shot. I learned that how to avoid an over the top swing. I found out that cannot put backspin on my ball on approach shots very often and finally, I learned how to draw the ball slightly with my 5 and 6 iron. I realize that these things were in my game prior to my change, however the efforts of going trying a narrower stance really accentuated these swing points. I sure there are many other things I learn – like too narrow of stance is not a good thing 😉 – but these things stand out at this time.

It was fun trying to make the changes. Yes I experienced some frustration along the way. However, it was fun. I enjoy working on my game and trying different things in order to improve my score. As I reach an age where I try to take every advantage I can to lower my score, the journey of trying new things is always fun. Even though I am reverting back to my old style, I learned a bunch of things, therefore my time was not wasted.

As you can tell, I am not adverse to working on my golf game. After six months of effort, I am willing to admit the change did not improve my game enough to keep going forward. I am confident that I will take some of what I learned forward, but it is time to change…..again.

I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!