Man when a golf swing goes bad, IT REALLY GOES BAD.   Somewhere a couple months ago, I completely lost it.  No not my mind, my golf swing, which had been so solid for so long.  I started tinkering with every little thing I could think of and nothing was fixing it.  It wasn't that I couldn't shoot decent scores, because my short game and putting were still decent, but my ball striking was so poor I couldn't make contact on the center of the club face to save my life.

I didn't have a "go-to" club in my bag.  At least nothing below a sand wedge.  Driver, irons, hybrid,  I couldn't make solid contact with anything.  I know, I should have just dropped everything and gotten a lesson, but I just couldn't justify spending the money.  I've broken down before, and I've fixed myself more than once, so this was nothing different.  It was just taking longer than I had expected.  Posture, stance, alignment, grip, balance, all of the fundamentals seemed intact..so what was the issue?

I ended up playing last Saturday, by myself, in the afternoon and it clicked.  I had been hitting everything off the toe now for months and couldn't figure out why.  Finally I realized that I just wasn't extending my arms completely at impact.  I was "short arming" it, hence the resulting non-solid, toe shots.  I made a conscious effort to fully extend my right arm (I'm a lefty) at impact and the results were instant.  Center contact on all clubs.  I had forgotten what it was like to hit my driver on the sweet spot, and the tee shots were just booming, and splitting the fairways.   I finally got it back.  It hit me that it's always one little, simple thing that can completely derail a perfectly good golf swing.

Now if I can just remember to keep my head down.