in 2010 spent three days with a teacher that coached a lot of tour pros and still has some guys on tour. Went home, worked at it (and dropped from an 8 to a 4. Shot even a few times and anything more than four or five over seemed almost impossible. Played well for three years until...
I spend a weekend hooking my driver to the point that I'm out of every hole right from the start.
Make a special trip for three more days with the instructor. Hooking, hooking, hooking. I ask about my grip. "Looks great" he says. Eventually, half way trough the first day he tells me that he doesn't understand it and that there is nothing he can do for me and that we wouldn't be proceeding. This threw me into a tailspin. This guy is a legend.
I go home and start taking lessons from everyone I can find. No one can help me. I start compounding the problem with all the new moves they were teaching me and up hurting my back but I stay at it. Everywhere I go, I ask about my grip and everyone tells me that it looks great.
This goes on for years (Joe Bausch witnessed some of it). I eventually go all the way up to 24 hdcp. I was essentially laying three off the tee on every hole. I get so demoralized that I stop taking lessons and stopped hitting balls on the range at my club. Then I stop going to the local muni range and am reduced to hitting balls in a field where no one can watch me. I spent about a year doing that before I reached rock bottom with a smooth 115 at my home course. I was so afflicted that very few people would play with me for fear of contagion.
Once I reached rock bottom I asked my father if he would come out and watch me (he was a 22 at the time so you can sense the desperation). I am ready to give up at this stage but he comes along to the field and watches a few swings. He then gets a funny look on his face and asks, "What's with the right hand? Seems kind of strong." I argue a bit because every pro in eastern PA has told me that my grip is good. Finally, he says, just take your right hand off the club and when you put it back come in from the side and just rest it lightly. Don't even hold on really and just use your left side." High draw, high draw, high draw, high draw . . . my right hand had been essentially underneath the club the entire time...not one pro picked up on it. Hard to even imagine now many years later.
Some of the folks on this board know my father and he's a legend for a variety of reasons but definitely not his golf game but he diagnosed the problem and brought me back from the dead on the strength of zero pedigree.
The guy that I now work with saw me a few years later [I had clawed back to an 8] and he took one look at my grip and said, "you'll never get back to 4 with that grip"
