This is pretty nifty. I've never seen anything like the innovations that have come along in the sports world - and most especially, about golf - which is the sport I'm most familiar with, and certainly the most interested in. But there just seems to be no end to the new products that have appeared on the scene concerning golf, and it's amazing how one single sport, with a pretty obvious, and seemingly simple, action needed to accomplish it; namely swinging the club to hit the little white ball - is constantly being reworked and upgraded. I was a little skeptical about this, because it wasn't too clear just how a shortened version of a golf club could replicate the swing, but that's what the hype said, so I thought, "Why not try it?". But it does come very close to the feeling you get swinging an actual club, and that's what I was hoping it would do, because I really wanted something to be able to use indoors, in the cold winter months. I'd been using a cut-off shaft with the grip on it, and that's fine for experimenting with the grip, and refining various and sundry moves in the swing, but it doesn't do anything at all for the feel of the swing. In the final analysis, it's the overall feel you get in the swing which registers in your subconscious mind that determines how well you are able to execute the swing, and nothing really takes the place of an actual swing, to relay to your brain how it should feel. I finally broke down and brought a 7-iron in from my bag, to stand in the corner, and use it to remind myself how it feels to do the short-approach chip shots around the green, and sweep the surface without chili-dipping the club. However, even that is fraught with danger, because you always run the risk of getting careless and bashing the furniture - which would definitely make you feel like an idiot. This trainer lets you swing away with total abandon (in the full swing) without the fear that you will clobber a lamp or end table. (Or worse yet - a TV screen!) But it's still prudent to look around first, and make sure you have enough room, because this thing is heavy enough to do a serious number on anything it hits, and so you would be well advised to "look before you leap." At least you don't have to worry about hitting the ceiling; just look right and left, and behind you, to make sure you have enough room. We don't realize just how much room it takes to swing a golf club - which is no big deal outside, but most rooms in the house are simply not big enough to let us swing a club in them - even a shortened version, like this trainer, without being very careful. There are just too many fragile and very breakable things sitting around in close proximity inside the house to be able to swing freely without KOing something. Too bad for us snowbirds to have to lose such a big chunk of the year to the weather - just long enough for all of our hard-won expertise in the swing to disappear over the winter, and make us have to start all over in the spring. But this will at least let us keep our hand in, so to speak, and retain the feel of the swing, which is vitally important to be able to do, but which is virtually impossible in the winter, because we can't actually swing a club. Usually, by the time spring gets here, swinging a golf club feels like a totally alien thing to do, and we have to start from scratch. I really do think it will enable me to get a longer, fuller swing, because our muscles seem to shrink and tighten up as we get older, and we get almost afraid to attempt a full-out swing - possibly thinking that we might hurt ourselves, somehow. Our swing just sort of degenerates down to a feeble, half-hearted attempt, and we wonder why we have lost distance. Of course, when you're young and limber and don't know any better, you equate a hard, fast swing with big distance, but all you usually succeed in doing is driving it deeper into the woods, with a big banana-ball slice off to the right. Truth be told, I don't think I ever really developed a full, lusty swing - on a regular, continuing basis - and this seems to encourage learning to do that. In fact, even though this is the same hand position on the grip that I've been using all along, just swinging this made it seem very easy for me to do a full swing, and a very natural-feeling follow-through, and that has been the biggest problem I've always had, and suddenly it seems easy. For one thing, this is very heavy, and that is probably the reason it feels like swinging a real club. I don't know that it is actually any heavier than a full-size club; it could just be that because it is much shorter, and more compact than a regular club, it only seems heavier. At any rate, it's great, because it enables us to get virtually the same feeling we would get in swinging a full-sized club, and that is terrific to be able to do in the cold weather. But I'm very excited about that, because us old-school, self-taught golfers usually never learned to do a full follow-through, because our momentum was always going the wrong way. We were all arms and shoulders, and never learned to get our body into the swing. This really teaches us how simple it is to do a full swing, and a full follow-through, and just that alone should make up for a lot of the distance we may have lost, simply because we will be hitting with a much improved swing. Maybe by next spring, it'll be securely lodged in my muscle-memory subconscious. Golf is a very strange game, and we work hard to finally develop what we feel is the right swing, only to have it all go away (for reasons unknown) and we revert right back to the bad habits we have developed over a lifetime. That's why I'm pretty happy with this - because it will allow our brain to retain the feel of what the swing should feel like, instead of going for months without our "golf fix." But I think it's going to be a definite boon, and we do need something to fill the void in the cold winter months.
