Hitting it fat

[Bill]

I am currently on Day 43, and I am finding a ton of positives. I played golf in college and used to be a 2-4 handicap golfer as recent as 10 years ago. I love the mental lessons, and teaching the swing from an athlete’s perspective. To date, I have seen compression of the ball unlike any time in the recent past. However, I feel my old swing move which resulted in me hanging back and getting stuck has created a problem for me in this transition to my new (and forever) swing. I seem to be hitting the ball chunky… Or fat… more often than I’d like. Is this due to surfing problems, or could it be ball position? I’ve also had trouble with blocking shots with my 3 wood for some odd reason. I’m guessing it is linked to the surfing motion as well.

What are your thoughts?

I want to say, Tathata has impacted my overall life in ways I never imagined. Even if my golf scores haven’t yet seen an improvement, greatness out front has been remarkable in other parts of my life.

[Tathata Staff]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for reaching out to us with this question and for sharing your feedback. It’s incredible to hear how the training how impacted your life beyond golf, we are honored to be a part of it.

You have asked a great question. We recommend that you review Chapter 2, the Hands and Arms Routine especially the baseball throw movement and moving energy to level. Also take a look at the Impact Routine from Chapter 3. Typically the hands and arms being stuck or late means that they are lacking strength and pressure coming in and out of impact. Focusing your attention in these areas should allow the arms to move in front of the body.

Thank you Bill, we are thankful that you are a part of the Tathata family and we look forward to what’s ahead for you.

[Cassi]

I’ve only finished lesson 7 of chapter 1 and feel confident that I am doing the movements correctly. I’m enjoying the lessons and especially like the concept of “knowing who I am” as a golfer. At first it didn’t make sense but the second time I heard it with the driving-the-car example, I got it 100%.

I have had an amazing session at the driving range with longer distance that usual and have had some improvement, but, I’m not consistent – and I’ve always been fairly consistent, albeit high handicapped. My problem is I am more frequently hitting fat now and wonder if the set up I was taught is the problem.

I was taught to place the ball forward for all clubs and hood the club head to “balance” it and prevent hitting right since the club head strikes the ball forward of center. This has worked in the past.

Also, I have always limited my back swing to left arm about level with the ground because if I take my arms back further I tend to start the down swing with my arms instead of using my torso, then I hit fat. I can retain the torso turn to that point (which I think is about a 1/4 turn) but once my arms move independently from my torso, which occurs past that level point, I lose the tension and I start down with an arm swing that causes me to hit the ground first.

So I guess there are two issues here: one perhaps being ball placement and the other being my back swing. I realize I have a long way to go in the lessons, but until I progress further in the lessons, I need to know if I’m placing the ball too far forward or if it should be centered in my stance. I hope this makes sense! Thanks in advance for your help.

[Tathata Staff]

Hi Cassi,

Ball position actually gets discussed in Day 11 coming up. We will see if we can help sort out some of your questions though. You will come to learn that we want to setup with the ball even with our front ear. This will put the ball a couple of inches ahead of our center. If the ball gets too forward it can be hard to make contact with the ball before the ground and the shoulders can get too open causing the club to swing from right to left across the ball and produce a slicing motion. I would imagine moving the ball closer to your center and off of your front ear may help some of the struggles you are having. Even if the ball is further back in your stance than you are used to, be sure you are still surfing down and toward the target on the downswing.

I would not be as concerned about your arms swinging back to far as you might be. You will notice in the hand and arm movements that the arms may feel a bit more active on the downswing than you may have previously been used to. Rather than turning our body to start the downswing, we want to surf to the target and keep our body relatively square coming into impact rather than quite a bit open like what is taught in typical golf instruction. Feel free to find out for yourself what works as you move through the next chapter of the program.

If you have a problem squaring the club face up, consider your performance of Hand & Arm Movement 12: Club Through Impact that you will learn on Day 13. To insure the club face is not left open, feel free to practice this movement holding the grip with the club right-side up. As you finish the movement with the club shaft parallel to the ground and parallel to the target line just after impact, be sure that the leading edge is facing straight up and down. We don’t want the club face aiming up at the sky or down at the ground here. You may feel like you need to rotate your hands counter clockwise to achieve this alignment as you get to this movement in the program. This can be a great checkpoint to make sure you are doing the movement correctly and a great way to avoid and open the club face through impact that would cause shots curving to the right.

[Cassi]

I am now on day 26 and something has gone terribly wrong. I’m hitting the ball fat and I’ve lost all power. The best striking is with my wedge! All other clubs seem to go about the same distance. Whereas a few lessons ago I could do much better. I have no questions about training – everything feels right and the pressure part made so much sense, but for some reason taking it to the course or the range is not working. I’m totally discouraged and not sure what to do except just keep taking the lessons I guess and hope that it self-corrects. I can’t even go back to my old swing because that doesn’t work either. help!