It turns out the golf tip my buddy gave me a couple of weeks ago wasn’t so great after all. Focusing on a feeling of keeping the club face closed going back caused my swing plane to get really vertical. A steep swing is especially bad as you get into the longer clubs which are meant to be swung with a sweeping attack at the ball.

A few months ago, before I came to Phoenix, I bought a golf lesson package on Groupon. It was $179 for 3 one hour lessons and a 90 minute playing lesson with a pro at one of the Troon golf courses in Scottsdale. The pro’s name in Ken Carpenter and he has some game to back up his teaching. He played in the Phoenix Open, which is one of the top tournaments on the PGA Tour, and was once an instructor for Golf Digest. It’s safe to say I’ve never worked with anyone that has more knowledge of the game than Ken. His normal lesson rate is $140/hour, so the Groupon was a hell of a deal.

During the lesson, we worked outside at the range, but Ken had a camera and laptop setup there. After warming up he had me take a few swings and then showed them to me on the computer. I had the golf club nearly straight up and down at the top of the back swing. Not good. It’s difficult to make solid contact from that position and even harder to have any consistency.

He talked to me about the swing plane and helped me feel what the correct position was instead of only telling me, showing me in his swing, or showing me on a video. As I took my stance he guided my club and arms back into the correct position. I’ve worked on my swing plane before, so it wasn’t very difficult to understand and get a feel for.

A new thing I’d never realized was where my hands should be in relation to the shaft of the club and where they should stop. If I look back, it should feel as if my hands are stopping out there to my right. I’ve always swung my arms more around my body to change the swing plane, which brings a lot of unnecessary shoulder movement and causes other issues. When GolfTEC worked with me on shortening my swing it was always about my arms and we never talked about the position of the hands.

It didn’t take me long to get a good feel for the swing plane and I started hitting consistent shots. It was really nice to be taking lessons on the range where you can instantly see the results in each shot. When I didn’t make solid contact, the misses were still pretty damn good. You always hear people say that better players have better misses.

Correcting the swing plane should prevent a lot of slicing because a vertical swing tends to come over the top. A swing on the correct plane is hard get going on the wrong path to and through the ball.

My next lesson is in a week and a half so I’m going to spend some quality time on the range before then. In fact, I’m headed to the range now, before I play a round with the guys. I’m excited to see where my swing goes with the rest of the lessons.