Fighting the hook
I’ve spent the last two days trying to get the hook out of my swing, and really, it comes down to two things:
- I’m releasing the club too early, resulting in a closed clubface at impact.
- My swing is too inside-to-outside, and I’m tending to hit the toe of the club instead of the sweet spot, as the club lengths get longer.
Hooking the ball has gotten so bad that even the short irons are affected. I never thought I could hook a 9-iron 30 degrees, but, yes, I can.
To combat these problems, I’m standing a bit closer to the ball and setting the ball a little back in my stance. We’ll see how it goes this week. I’ve also put the Big Bertha 2004 irons back in my bag until straighten out my hooking problem.
I had planned on Saturday to determine my distances for all my clubs, but due to my extreme issues of hooking the ball and striking the toe of the clubface on the longer clubs, didn’t get time to determine my distances. I had earlier determined that I’d been striking the toe of the longer clubs, but still hadn’t quite figured out how to fix it. Alan saw me hitting balls and stopped by, and we worked on my swing quite a bit. He had me adjust my stance, open and closed, and the ball back a bit. Only closing my stance really helped at all, so I need to figure out how to get my swing inside-to-square again and to hit the sweet spot on the face of the clubs.
P.S. Earlier this week, I’d received my NEC 500g rangefinder. One evening this past week, I ventured out onto the Coyote Ridge Golf Course and took many distance measurements and compared them to markers on the course. The device works extremely well and is very quick with a measurement. I’m pleased with my purchase.