The Axe

Well I suffered through another sub par (not literally, unfortunately) round on Sunday. Once again my swing was off and no matter how much I searched for it I was unable to find the magic of a couple of weeks ago.

So upon arriving back home I grabbed a quick bite and headed for the driving range near my house. I bought a bucket of 62 balls and set to work to find whatever it was that I had lost.

After about 50 balls I had made no appreciable headway and sat down to rest. I was tired. My pre-swing routine is now to take two or three practice swings, so including the golf, the warmups on the range prior to playing, and the 50 balls at the range I must have swung the club four or five hundred times. That, added to an extra morning workout made me one tired puppy.

After a brief rest I went back to the stall and, well, a funny thing happened. I can best describe it this way...

As I stood over the next ball my body took control from my brain. My body was tired, and it said to my brain; "Look here. If we're going to hit these last dozen balls we're going to do it in the most efficient manner possible. No wasted energy here dude, 'cause we're damn tired."

So that's what I did, with my 8 iron. I watched the ball sail high and land just in front of the 150 yard marker I was aiming at. A second shot sailed along the same arc and landed within a few feet of the prior one.

As I contemplated what had just happened, I came upon a swing thought that perfectly captured the feel of the prior two swings.

I imagined that the club in my hand was actually an axe, and that I was swinging the axe into a log perpendicular to my line of flight and just in front of the golf ball. I was swinging at the exact speed, and in the most efficient way possible, in order to cut the log as deeply as I could while still maintaining the control necessary to place the blade in the exact same cut as the prior swing. I estimate that I was swinging at somewhere between 80% and 90% of maximum. But I was doing so almost effortlessly. My lower body was involved in adding power to the swing, as were my arms, but the real speed of the swing came from the centrifugal force of the club head (axe head) as I released the club head to do it's job on the log.

With this swing thought I proceeded to hit 10 perfect golf shots in a row. All of my shots were high, long, and straight. I estimate that I must have added nearly 10 mph to my swing speed.

The coup de grace was the final shot, made with my three hybrid, a high draw that landed three feet left of my target 200 yards away.

I can't wait to play again!