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Been Working On It?

© Bill Howard

So you spent a week of intensive practice with the Split Grip Drill. By religiously doing the drill, all the fundamental truths of the golf swing have been revealed to you in piercing clarity, right?

Of course not, but even if you only tried the exercise once or twice, you realize there is work to do on your golf swing. Simply put, working on your golf swing means dealing with its deficiencies one at a time. I repeat, one at a time. There is nothing more hopeless and pitiful than a golfer attempting to change three things at once.

If you have actually performed the drill, you have endured a multitude of outlandish and puzzling feels. Your mission is to pick the strangest of them and investigate its origin. I have already stated that by doing the Split Grip Drill you will swing the club perfectly. If the swing that the drill produces feels odd to you, it because your normal golf swing deviates from what is correct at that particular point. The only reason you everyday swing doesn't feel awkward to you is that you have used it on tens of thousands of occasions and gotten used to it. This is the cross we golfers bear.

The most efficient way to improve a swing is to pick the biggest, ugliest flaw and work on it relentlessly. Changing this defect, whatever it might be, should be uppermost in your mind every single time you hold a golf club in your hand. The process does take time. It's akin to housebreaking a puppy, consistency is the key.

The oddities and differences unearthed by the Split Grip Drill will give you a clear place to begin. What was the most bizarre feel that occurred to you when you swang the club with your hands apart? Start there.

For example:

If your right side and right arm feel strong, long, quick, dominant, overwhelming, aggressive, powerful, omnipotent, or any combination or variation of these; this is a very good thing. This is no more than the Split Grip Drill telling you that you've got to involve your right side in the golf swing. You were talked out of it at some point. You've been had. The right side has an equal role to play in swinging the golf club. Keep swinging with your hands apart, and find yourself a simple right side thought and/or feel for actually hitting the golf ball.