In all of the time I have played golf, I have only ever played with off the shelf clubs, and never once had a proper lesson. If I am to ever reach my potential, it is important that I seek professional help. With that in mind, I made a few enquiries around the traps to see who would be worthwhile engaging in my local area. Ultimately, for proximity and value, I ended up seeing Warren Young down at Frankston Centenary golf club.

I am not particularly flush with cash, so it is important to make the most of what lessons I have and put the changes into practice. With that in mind, my irons are the main area in need of improvement, and Warren and I focussed on that.

I was keen to spend as much time hitting and tweaking my swing rather that on warm ups, so I arrived 15mins early and hit a small buck of balls on the range. The warmup wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either, so I was very hopeful that my lesson could find me some quick improvements.

As is typical of iron fittings, I made some swings with my 7 iron to get a base to work from. It was not more than 3 or 4 swings and coach had me make some quick changes. In essence, my swing and tempo were ok, but I lacked stability in my base. So a quick tweak to the setup, legs more upright, feet closer together, and my swing was transformed.

In this image you can see my setup changes. The left is before, and the right is after the tweaks. On the left I am low down, my legs are wide and knees bent far too much. On the right I am standing more upright, in a narrower stance.

With these changes, the top of my swing is far more compact and stable. I have turned more or less in position, without swaying and am much more balanced overall, putting me in a much easier position to transition into the downswing.

Given these 2 small changes, I was able to start striking the ball more consistently, so we moved on to fitting some new irons. The process for that was quite simple. A small device was fitted to a standard spec Mizuno 7-iron and I made 5 (good) swings with it. Once that was done, the spec came out. 2 degrees upright, stiff flex, either a C-taper Lite or AMT Black. After this, we tried a number of combos with heads and shafts. In the end we settled on the Mizuno Pro 243 or the Titleist T200 heads.

I left the lesson with a spec for irons and a new swing to keep me going until I could get my hands on a new set. Exciting times and much to think about.