As my time of being a golf enthusiast goes on, I am beginning to realize more and more that I am not as young as I used to be and my life experiences have taken a toll on my abilities.
My wrists for example are wrecked due to years of skating and after one event in particular where I dislocated and fractured my left wrist. It has left me with a strange pressure in my wrist if it makes an awkward movement that it perhaps used to be able to do with ease. This has been noticeable in my golfing and can flare up after playing for a continued period of time. There's not really much I can do about it to be honest, apart from grin and bear it.
I have also been experiencing a bit of discomfort under my left shoulder blade, but put it down to incorrect swings in my first few weeks and have inflamed the muscles around that area. The problem has all but gone now, but can show that if you're doing things incorrectly that you presume to be right then it can have an adverse effect on not only your golfing ability but your health in general.
This is why I booked my first lesson with the local PGA pro to assess my swing and hopefully rid me of some of my bad habits.
The lesson went extremely well with the coach pointing out that I have some very good points in my swing that could be built on. My main problem appeared to be my balance which was centred very much towards my toes, resulting in balance problems on follow through and one heck of a slice. This was corrected by positioning my body weight more evenly spread over by entire foot.
I also had the problem of having no flex in my right knee during my backswing. This resulted in my head moving all over the place and just generally wasn't something I wanted to have. The coach corrected this by ensuring that I had my right knee flexed during the swing. The drill used to sort this out was to keep my right heel from touching the ground throughout the whole movement, meaning that my leg was constantly flexed.
I have been practicing these movements religiously and have seen a massive improvement in my ball flight, from a fade/slice to a much straighter flight.
My problem now is my directionality. I seem to think I'm aiming directly at the target but the ball always ends up slightly left or slightly right of the target. Whether this is attributed to my swing path or just my general sense of direction I'm not sure.
I'll be saving those problems for the next time I see the coach, but for now, I can't recommend getting a golf lesson with your local pro if you are a relatively new golfer, or even if you're an experienced player looking to improve your game. It really is worth it.