Nearly two years have passed and I’m itching. Itching to get back out there. Itching to compete. The 8th of July can’t come soon enough.
To be blunt, I merely made up the numbers in my first two disabled golf events. I was still searching, searching for that repeatable and reliable swing. A golfer’s Holy Grail. While I may not have necessarily found it yet, my game has come on in leaps and bounds since an awful showing at the 2016 SADGA Provincial Day at King David Mowbray.
My game has never felt this good. Thanks to the input of the professional at Plettenberg Bay Country Club, Cliff Barnard, the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place. By tweaking my setup with my driver so that I aim up the left-half of the fairway, I am hitting it straighter far more often. And further, too. Well for me anyway…
Cliff has also corrected a major flaw in my grip that had, unbeknownst to me, been the root cause of many of my struggles for as long as I have played the game. In a nutshell, due to my overly-strong right-hand grip, my clubface at address was closed. In my naivety, I had always just maniupulated the face in my hands at address to open it. But as Cliff pointed out this didn’t ensure a square clubface at impact. He explained that the clubface will always revert back to its initial position. In other words, if the face is set shut at address and opened in the hands it will be shut at the top of the swing and even more so at impact. I had never had so much clarity about why my bad shot had always been a low, duck-hook smear before. By adjusting the way I grip the club and showing me what a square clubface looks like, Cliff instilled a confidence and consistency in my ball-striking that I have never had before.
The changes made that fateful March afternoon bore fruit almost immediately. I broke 50 for nine-holes on six consecutive occasions which was unprecedented for me. I had also managed to take the entire left-hand side of the golf course out of play, my miss now was high and right. Put mildly, the man has been a game-changer.
Yet there was still something missing. A half-decent short-game. Cue a trip up to Plett for the April/May long-weekend and Cliff swiftly dealt with that. Chipping is a facet of the game that is often over=complicated. Everybody has a theory ── some will say you’ve got to take the club outside of the line, hinge your elbow on the takeaway and drop the club on the ball. I had never wholeheartedly endorsed this philosophy, however and still lacked consistency. Cliff had a simpler, more natural approach: Set the ball back in the stance, hit it like a putt and let the loft of the club do the rest. Simple. This is something I’ve bought into without questioning it, because I’ve seen the results. I now scare the hole with chips around the green more often than not, something I have never done. The man has been a game-changer.
As well as I’m hitting and chipping the ball, it’s with putter in hand that I am most dangerous nowadays. By taking my stance slightly right of the ball, I am hitting far more putts on-line. More putts on line mean more chances of holing the putt. The very next round after this adjustment was made I had 14 putts. My first ever round without a three-putt.
My game has never felt this good. The 8th of July can’t come soon enough.
Photo: Cliff Barnard/ Plettenberg Bay Golf Club
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