When I went to the Rochester LPGA in June, they were offering free 10 minute lessons. Fortunately they were booked solid that day, so instead I got option B: take a lesson with golf pro Darlene Sommer at Play Better Golf.

So a few weeks later I set up an appointment and went in.

It blew me away, quite frankly. I’m a very kinesthetic person. That helps with athletics because if I can “feel it” I can do it. But it also means it’s hard for me to learn how to do something physical — like correct my golf stance — by reading about it, or following verbal instructions. I may not be unusual in that, either. The whole premise behind Tim Gallwey’s “inner game” approach to sports — which he started with tennis but extended to golf when he took up that game after a 25-year hiatus, and which is the grandfather of modern sports instruction — is that our bodies don’t learn very well from verbal instruction.

Play Better Golf therefore uses a K-vest. You go in and strap on some sensors that feed data about everything from your pitch to your swing plane into a computer. The computer crunches the data, spits out some graphs and percentages — Darlene tells with mind-boggling precision exactly where your weaknesses are. But here’s the best part: as you make corrections — say, adjusting the angle of your hips at address — you’re able to get instant feedback: there’s a computer screen mounted at an angle on the floor right in front of you which uses visual and audio cues to let you know when your shoulders, hips, and hands are in an ideal position — as well as when you’ve started to drift.

So what you do is go in and “practice” on the system to help you develop the muscle memory you need to groove everything in.

Man oh man did that click for me. During my first lesson, Darlene was able to tell instantly that my worst problem was my grip. I was using the overlap grip I’d learned as a teenager, and it wasn’t giving me enough stability and control — probably because, at least in part, I have small hands. So she switched me to a 10 finger grip, and right away the curve tracking my hand position during my swing smoothed right out. And this affected everything else. Because I was no longer relying as much on my small muscles during my swing, I made better use of my core. And my swing felt so much better — it felt easier, less forced, smoother.

That, in turn, did two other things. One was increase my distance. The next time I went out on the course, I quickly realized that I had to go down two clubs for my iron shots — where I’d once needed a 7 iron, I now needed a 9, and so on. (Which wreaked temporary havoc with my short game, owing to my frequent “don’t know my own strength!” chips right past the hole, but Darlene’s promised we’ll get to that!)

It also helped my direction, although sure enough, I began to drift after a bit, as I “lost” that feel for the right address and grip that I’d picked up during the lesson.

Which brings us back to the need to develop muscle memory. Today I went back and signed up for a package, which includes three lessons plus a month of unlimited practice time with the vest. I can go over every day if I want to train.

For awhile, the only thing I’ll work on is address — meaning I’m going to do in, put on a vest, and stand there. Whoo hoo! But that first lesson made a convert out of me — set up right, and everything else just seems to fall into place.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, I’m teed up to play nine hole at Ravenwood and 18 at Twin Hills in Spencerport this weekend. Hopefully the work I did today to re-position my grip will help even my game out a bit — yeah, I’ve had my birdies, but I’ve also shot a couple 10s in my last few outings. I’m sure psyched to see!

Posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm, filed under Courses I've played, Rochester, New York, Working on my game, and . RSS 2.0 Subscribe. Reply, or trackback.