1st Lesson with Mike Murray
On Thursday after work, I had my first golf lesson with Mike Murray at Golf Galaxy in Lewisville. In addition to the change we made in my introductory lesson (getting my left hand grip more in my fingers), we worked on these things.
- Posture. He wanted better posture, as I had a little too much knee bend and not enough bend at the hips (in other words, stick my butt out more).
- Swaying. While I was not swaying on the backswing, there was significant swaying toward the left during the downswing, that would cause inconsistent contact on the ball, because the center of the swing was not always in the same spot. He had me work on turning my left side around and posting hard on my left leg.
- Swing path. As I suspected, my swing path was over the top. He had me change my swing path so that it was too much inside, knowing that I would naturally tend to move it to inside-to-square-to-inside. I spent much of the lesson hitting the ball right of the target, but was able to make the ball more down the target line as the lesson progressed.
- Backswing angle. My backswing is a little flatter than he wants, but not excessively so. I’m working on getting it slightly higher on the backswing to get it more on plane. He says I have a classic Jim Hardy type one-plane swing.
A very good lesson. I was able, within a few swings, to significantly improve my release angle with much less flip of the wrists at impact. I have a lot of work to do, but it was amazing to see on the video the improvement from one lesson. I know I’ll get worse before I get better, but I’m fine with that.