I hit the most embarrassing golf shot of my life. Now I’m trying to learn from it
Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers is on a one-year mission to see how good he can get at golf through daily training, practice and playing. Read more from his “Late Scratch?” series here.
On a recent Friday, I was the talk of the town in Rye, NY—but not in a positive way. Despite an overall solid round earlier that day at Rye Golf Club that included three birdies, my performance had been boiled down to one bad shot. And for good reason.
It’s hard to describe what happened on the fifth tee when I nearly whiffed with a driver while playing with three Golf Digest colleagues. It was jarring. It was hideous. And it was embarrassing. Even worse? Ben Walton happened to video it. In slow-motion.
My initial reaction was to delete the video and, possibly, destroy Ben’s phone. But then I realized this could be a learning moment. So, instead, I took my personal experience—even one so shameful—and turned it into content. Here’s what I found out in the hope of avoiding such an occurrence again.
‘The Shot heard ‘round Rye’
The fifth hole at RGC is never a fun one (that’s being kind), but I had great visions of hitting a perfect drive there on my previous trip and good vibes after making a birdie on No. 4. It didn’t matter.
A lack of confidence that’s plagued me with the driver was lurking. And that only gets exacerbated when facing a difficult tee shot, causing my head to be filled with unhealthy swing thoughts. As I turned to the top of my swing, a sudden feeling of panic hit me and I knew I was headed for disaster well before my driver made contact with the ball. For educational purposes, let's have a look:
Told you it was hideous. That's a golfer battling some demons right there. I’m actually surprised I made contact with the ball at all. And I was even more surprised when a playing partner said the ball had traveled far enough right to hit a house owned by one of my colleague’s friends, hence, why I, unfortunately, became such a hot topic of conversation at a high school football game that night.
Minutes later, that colleague showed me a text he received with a picture of my ill-fated Titleist and a message saying it’s the first time his house has ever been hit. Fortunately, there was no damage. Other than to my ego, of course.
The problem
I’d like to say this shot came completely out of nowhere, but that would be a lie. Since earlier in the summer I had developed a habit of producing similar shots a couple times a round. Swings so bad that, as my friends can attest, I sometimes start laughing before I even make impact.
These are not your typical blocks or slices. They are so grotesque they’d be impossible to replicate on the range. And, unfortunately, I had a long history with them, especially with my driver under pressure (usually on my annual golf trip). But while I’ve always thought this form of yips was all in my head, Quaker Ridge head pro Mario Guerra, one of Golf Digest's Best In State instructors for New York, gave me a different diagnosis.
After hitting a few good 9-irons on the range in front of him, I completely quit on the downswing of one, producing a huge chunk. Guerra called it “crashing out” and immediately pinpointed the problem as me having too much vertical force in my swing and not enough horizontal force. And on certain swings like this one, I get so steep that my body instinctively knows it's in a poor position and just, well, crashes out in a desparate—but ultimately futile—attempt to save it.
At least I didn’t hit anyone’s house with that one.
The solution(s)
Mario had me try swinging more horizontally around my body by exaggerating the move. I would try to keep the club as low and as parallel to the ground as possible in both the backswing and downswing. Almost like making a baseball swing, but while in golf posture. It felt really awkward, but it didn’t take long to produce shots like this:
As weird as it felt—especially because it seemed like I wasn’t making even close to a full swing—I couldn’t believe how much better it looked on video than my normal move. Mario added a line to show the swing plane and the results were jarring. Here’s the crash out on the downswing:
And here’s a good one where you can see the shaft is more in line with my trail arm halfway between the top of the backswing and impact, or what the Mustard Golf app calls the "moment of truth" in the swing:
Just a crazy difference in terms of how much more horizontal I was coming down to the ball and it produced a much lower, better ball flight as well. I now had some very specific homework to do on the range. And on the course, with the goal being to ultimately find a blend between that exaggerated motion and my normal swing when I play. But I wasn’t done, because I also wanted to hear what my mental coach, Josh Nichols, had to say. Like many, I’m guilty of having too many swing thoughts at the same time and I believed that was part of the problem. He agreed.
“ There is an absolute connection between the physical and mental side,” Nichols said. “So working on your swing and ingraining a better feeling of your swing will help you to not feel like you have to make an adjustment mid-swing.”
Nichols says that feeling of having to make an adjustment mid-swing is quite common and the one that happened to me—being too steep/open at the top and trying to flip things back on track during the downswing to square the club up—is the one he hears most. So how do you rid yourself of the flurry of thoughts that can tie your brain and swing in knots?
One method is to work on your breathing like I did a few years back with sports psychologist Dr. Josh Brant at the Golf Performance Center. I got into a habit of continually taking a deep breath in for three counts and then exhaling for three counts around hitting shots during a round and it really worked for me as I claimed my buddy trip’s green jacket that year and played some of my best golf ever.
Why did I stop focusing on breathing? Good question! I will have to start doing that more again. But in the meantime, Nichols also suggested tweaking how I practice.
“The range is a place to get technical, but you’ve also got to take time to not think about your swing . . . and that's a trained skill,” Nichols said. “Then you're not out of nowhere trying to flip off the technical switch because you’ve been training that. So you'll get better at having fewer thoughts in your head. You can’t just do a ton of reps one way and then expect yourself to show up and do something totally different when it actually matters.”
No matter what issue you’re battling with on the course, every golfer can learn from that last part. I’ve got a lot to work on—including how I work on those things. Hopefully, I'll never hit a shot quite as bad as that one again. And, fingers crossed, the next time people I don’t know are discussing my golf game it will be for a better reason.