I come to you with a confession:
I can’t hit or swing a golf ball to save my life.
This has been a lifelong problem. While some people struggle with putting yps or a bad slice off the tee, my last bugaboo has been in pieces.
I’d rather go to the dentist than deal with a grainy lie with a bunker to hold (and I hate the dentist).
There have been a wide variety of issues over the years. Stretches of hitting my chips very thin. Stretches of hitting my very fat chips. Way below the face. Too high from the face.
Most humiliating, however, is the mental breakdown of barely accelerating to the ball and leaving a chip shot with only my feet in front of me.
I’ve changed my technique a million times. Hands forward, hands farther back. Play the ball in my position with a more open face. Play the ball with my right foot. Use the jump or climb the leading edge.
During a round, I pray that I find my ball in a bunker or sitting in a fluffy hole. Anything where the margin of error widens.
When I find myself somewhere around the green with a tight lie—or, heck, even just a standard layup on a fairway—I immediately see if I can make it. While the prospect of using an 8-iron or any club with a lower height alleviates some of my painful experience in the short game, I think judging distance with these clubs is still a nightmare.
On top of that, scratching problems can be genetic. My dad hates this part of the game so much that he will take a putt from anywhere possible, even 30 yards from the green.
Am I incurable?
Maybe. But maybe I just found a solution.
I started chopping by hand
It’s kind of annoying that I didn’t think of this years ago.
I am almost 34 years old and have been playing golf since I was eight. That’s about 26 years worth of awesome shredding and lifting.
In high school I started cross-arm shooting and immediately felt better. My shot became less useful. While I could never claim to be an outstanding marksman, I’ve always felt unreasonably confident standing over marksmanship.
And it’s also worth noting that I’m not a 100 percent right-wing dominant person. Growing up, I swung left-handed at baseball and also shot a hockey puck left-handed. I’m not sure I’d call myself bisexual in the full sense of the word, but I’m somewhere in between.
If I could put myself in positions where every putt wasn’t a 15-footer for the same level…
With our Tennessee weather finally turning from ice storm to pleasant, I’m off to start my golf season.
Naturally, I start my range sessions with a few easy steps. The normal gunfight ensues.
During one of my recent sessions, the thought occurred to me that I could literally try everything and that, at least, wouldn’t hurt my short game. No possible solution was off the table.
I tried to hit pitches with just my left arm. No. I didn’t control the face of the club.
I tried to hit pitches with just my right arm. Woah, that worked. The ball was coming up cleaner and higher. The only problem was that the remote control was too far away.
I wish there was a way to get the same feel with both hands on the club, I thought to myself.
At that moment I came up with the idea of ​​using a cross handle. After all, I had seen a lot of it on TV lately. Matthew Fitzpatrick – who has been using the strategy for years now – almost won The Players and then won the Valspar.
Unconventional? yes. Crazy? a little.
But it’s good enough for him, so maybe it would be good enough for me.
There was only one way to find out.
Feeling of tearing in the crossed hand
It seems a little wrong to swing a golf club with crossed arms, even if it’s for a short fairway.
My first two attempts at the experiment went wrong. I thinly hit both shots.
But once I got this new feeling, everything started to click. The only right hand feel I had before was transferring to the cross hand match – but now I had the stability to control my distance better than before.
The face just isn’t moving as much. It feels more like hitting a tennis ball with a racket, keeping everything at the same angle.
It’s still not a perfect system just because it’s still uncomfortable. But suddenly I’m hitting a much higher percentage of chip shots and hard putts.
I’m not entirely sure of the technical reason, but it feels like the sole is flatter to the ground and the heel isn’t digging as much. There is more predictability in impact.
Call me wild, but I will continue to use this. There may be a learning curve to getting into the groove, but I’m starting to get excited about shredding for the first time in, well, forever.
Have you tried shredding with crossed arms? Am I crazy? Let me know below in the comments.
