Axiom brought me to the Holy Grail!
Axiom brought me to the Holy Grail!
Now that I’ve got your attention, a bit of backstory. I’m a former touring professional who never made it to The Show because my ball striking never quite measured up but I had an unbelievable short game. Combine those two and I was able to stay out there for a while but never get over the hump. Then, when I got the yips at the top it was over. I don’t mean Charles Barkley half way down yips and I don’t mean Kevin Na can’t pull it back yips…I just got to the top and had no idea what to move to swing down, how to do it, or where it was going. Flash forward 20+ years and I found RST. It appealed to me because this was finally a biomechanical explanation of what muscles are doing what I’m the swing. I’ve been a member about 3-4 years and even did the inaugural Dead Drill Boot Camp. I was fortunate to start this whole pandemic quarantining in a community with two golf courses. Despite practicing and playing for 3 months straight I still struggles with moving from chunking the Dead Drill to a dynamic, fluid swing. Sure, I got closer as evidenced by the 61 and 62 I shot in my last week there. But after laying off for a few weeks it was gone…and it didn’t seem to want to come back.
Flash forward again to February 27 when I had my Axiom lesson with Chuck. Sure enough, in 10 minutes Chuck solved all my woes. So I went to the course the next day, played awfully, sent some video to Chuck, and promptly learned I was doing the exact opposite of Axiom! Ugh! To make matters worse I learned the same day that my Club Championship was that weekend, not a month later as I thought. And I was playing horribly with a 4-way miss: fat, thin, left, right! This was not good. But, I worked hard (4-6 hours per day) for a few days and things started to turn around. How much? Well this is already longer than most want to read so I’ll skip to the prototypical result for me in the Club Championship…
Not only did I put Axiom to the test of competition, I ended up in a playoff on 3/7 with the utmost of pressure. How’d it work for me? Let me put it this way: there’s good ball striking, there’s pure ball striking, and then there’s the epitome that is the Holy Grail. That’s when you hit the ball so flush and pure that it’s not influenced by the wind even if that wind is blowing straight across at 20+ mph. And, you don’t have to cut or draw the ball to hold it in that wind; she just flies dead straight. Friends, I had my hands on the Holy Grail. After lipping out for birdies on the first two playoff holes (downwind), we turned to play the 3rd in a hard right-to-left wind at 20 mph. I ripped my drive at my normal target, it wasn’t moved an inch by the wind, but it flew 30 yards farther than normal…straight into a dead position in a bunker from which I had nothing but a pitch out. After doing so I had 158 to a back pin with a backstop behind. Previously this would have been a cut 7 in that right-to-left wind. But, striking it as I now was I decided to aim straight at the pin…with a 9! Two clubs less?! Yup, and I dare say I hit it too good. The ball flew straight as an arrow, unmoved by the wind, but airmailed everything ending up on the next tee. I found my pitch mark at one foot past 169 (only because I knew the yardage to the back fringe and the top of the backstop behind). Are you kidding me? I hit it too good? With two clubs less than before? Wow!
I should tell you, I’ve had this kind of ball striking only a few times in my career before. And each of those times was 20+ years ago. Heck, I’m regularly around current tour pros and major champions at my club and this Holy Grail of ball striking does come up in conversation periodically. I can tell you each of them will admit it’s not something they achieve very often. And what is more impressive is that I went from a 4-way miss to this kind of ball striking in 7 days! Heck, probably even shorter because I was doing the exact opposite of Axiom for a couple days. Sorry if I may have bored you with the brief blow-by-blow but when you achieve a level of ball striking you’ve only had a handful of times in your career it’s hard not to tell anyone and everyone. Axiom is the real deal!
