It hasn't taken long after the resumption of play for me to realise that I'm not as young as I used to be. The extra aches and pains, the loss of flexibility, and the loss of strength and power have somehow become more obvious since the layoff. I probably have lost some fitness and flexibility during the past six months and it's really starting to show up in my swing - and scores.
What to do? Well, I've looked at some videos of guys talking about golf swings for older and less flexible golfers - that's me - and found a couple of beauties. In particular, Danny Maude has a video or two that promote a type of swing that might be right for me, as follows:
First of all, free up the arms and let gravity have a role. Forget about 'positions'. Makes a lot of sense. The difficulty being the challenge of letting go of control, finding a way to trust your swing; trust that the clubhead will come back to the ball consistently. It's not easy. And I suspect it revolves around giving yourself permission to hit some bad shots for a while. I find this particularly difficult to go along with.
The next thing is to change one's set up to facilitate this greater freedom, to give the hips, shoulders, neck, etc. more opportunity to turn into a full backswing. My backswing is short and rather rigid at the moment. Freedom is anathema to my concept of control and the idea of building up torque or tension on the backswing. When I had muscles like Jon Rahm, maybe this would work, but that ain't the way it is now. I need to accept that I need more length in my backswing and more fluidity to create decent clubhead speed.
The set up change is simple: take the rear foot back a few inches and open it 30 to 45 degrees, but keep the shoulders and hips square to the target line. The takeaway should be straight back with little initial wrist cock, avoiding an overly inside / behind takeaway. Nothing else really needs to change, except perhaps that the trail leg should be allowed to straighten and the front heel should be allowed to lift a little if necessary to facilitate this longer and freer backswing.
It should be noted, as it is in Maude's video, that the through swing or follow through will be slightly restricted because the foot alignment in the set up has freed up the backswing but made it more difficult to rotate after impact. It just has to be accepted that the release will be aligned slightly outward and probably a little shorter. It doesn't mean the hand release (whichever is usual for the player) has to change.
For me, all of this is likely to mean I will end up with a more vertical swing plane and until I find my groove and some decent timing, somewhat less consistency in my ball striking. However, I have played some shots in the past attempting to swing on a more vertical plane (basically using what is often called a two plane swing) and it has not been too problematic. As usual, I'm not really sure why I didn't stick to that swing.
One of the main benefits of this 'old man', let's call it 'senior' swing, is hopefully going to be a significant reduction in the strain on my joints, muscles and back that I am experiencing at the moment - now that old man time is catching up on me. I am after all supposed to be the effortless golfer.
PS. a bonus tip mainly from Nick Faldo. Always think of chips and pitches (especially) as being horizontal, not vertical. Focus on the target and alignment, and let whichever club is being used take most of the responsibility for the height of the shot. Also, stay centred over the ball, don't tilt or sway. Short game is still king or queen when it comes to better scoring.
