First of all, I am not a golf pro, but a very average level amateur, and at my old age I will not progress much. So I’m not giving any advice here, just a testimony. Maybe it will be used by others ? Or not ?

Why did I "punish" myself by depriving myself of a course for more than a month ?

Because for 2 years, following a very painful event outside of golf, I have completely lost my golf. Even if the causes were obviously psychological, I really lost my gestures.

Player as I said of medium level (best index 19.2) I was lucky for more than 20 years to never worry about my putting, and almost never practice it. I arrived on the greens, I quickly looked at the slope and distance, I put and I always had an average of putts between 1.6 and 2. How lucky !

2 years ago appearance of systematic hips and I went to an average above 3 !

I never found my gesture.

Added to this was a complete loss of regularity in contacts with the irons, with bullets that left very randomly. Result : over 2 years, I didn’t have any cards under 100. And more often around 110, or even more.

I thought I was improving things by buying (cautiously used to see) 2 woods, a 5 and a 3, when I had almost never played only irons. But it is impossible to properly contact a ball with these tools.

So I had to find solutions.

I could have gone to take classes, but for various reasons, it’s a little complicated for me here.

In short, I "inflicted" myself a month and a half of practice, at the rate of 2 to 3 hours/day, every day (mat + chipping + putting green).

But to do what ?

Today a common practice is to find training videos or courses on YouTube. I watch some sometimes but I am from a generation of readers.

I therefore prioritized rereading a book that revolutionized my "vision" of golf several years ago and which offers, among other things, training routines at the practice. For those who have not yet read it, I highly recommend this book (photo 1) written by the coaches of Annika Sörenstam, who for me remains the best player in history, in any case the most organized.

In addition, I refocused on the fundamentals of my beginnings :

I learned more than 20 years ago with 2 different teachers and also great one as the other :

– Stéphane Métais at the Seyssins golf course

And

– Colette (whose name I forgot) at the Charmeil golf course.

Every golf pro has his own swing techniques and preferences. I learned to play with a unique swing from SW to iron 2, and only a slightly different swing for the driver, since this is the only case where you hit the ball while going up.

To this are added 2 characteristics that are very personal to me :

– I use exactly the same very neutral grip REGARDLESS of the club.

– I almost always address the ball in the middle REGARDLESS OF THE CLUB except the driver

This is certainly not to be recommended in golf schools but I will not change now.

So I refocused on this by working every day in the following way :

– first a few strokes with my easiest club : for me it’s the PW. I play several moves with this club after a good physical warm-up in order to memorize my PW swing.

– Then an alternation of shots with different clubs in the following way (1 single shot with each club, never 2 in a row with the same club) :

– PW -> Iron 7 -> PW -> Wood 3 -> PW -> Iron 8 -> PW -> Wood 5... etc

– On each shot, regardless of the club used, I visualize myself hitting the ball with the PW.

Result of this training : On my last sessions let’s say all last week, I had 100% good contacts with irons and 90% with wood. You don’t see the trajectory and range on the video below that illustrates the sequence, so here’s some data :

PW : extremely high ball, range 120 yards (about 110 meters)

Iron 7 : very high ball, reached 150 yards (about 135 meters)

Wood 5 : fairly high ball but obviously more tense, range 180 yards (about 165 meters)

I am very happy with the result, especially with the regularity returned... on the carpet. It remains to be seen what it will be on fairway...

You can see this sequence on video. Obviously my swing is not to be shown in golf school, but that’s not the subject. At the end of this week, I will redo a course. This will be the test.

As for putting, given the inability to reproduce my initial gesture, I tested a very different technique that seems to suppress my hips.