Scratch By 50: Sticking The Finish

Graham Averill has turned 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now a 7.6. Welcome to his midlife crisis.

I’ve never been worried about how my swing looks. I know a lot of golfers obsess over the aesthetics of their move but as long as the ball goes more or less in the direction I intended, I didn’t see the harm in having a janky swing. As it turns out, I was wrong, especially when it comes to the finish. Having a pretty finish, something that looks like the LPGA logo, isn’t just about looking good. It’s a key part of playing good golf. 

“It’s not just about vanity,” Sam Hahn told me when we had the chance to play together at his home course in Oregon. “That finish is an indicator of what happened during the swing itself.” 

If you can stick your finish, and look like that LPGA logo, then there’s a solid chance that your swing was in sequence. 

Me? I have a terrible finish. I’m often off-balance and will either stumble a little backward or fall a little off to my left. I also have the habit of snapping my my arms and torso out of the follow-through. All of these problems are tell-tale signs that something is off during my swing. 

When I stumble backwards, it’s an indicator that I didn’t get my weight transferred to my front foot. When I fall to the left, it’s an indicator that I came over the top, my arms getting ahead of my chest and hips. When I snap my body out of the follow through, it’s a sign that I was too tense, and probably swinging too hard. 

Sam has me working on holding my finish which has helped clean up some of the issues that nag the swing leading up to that pose.  

Here are a few checkmarks I’ve been using to make sure I’m ending my swing in the correct position. 

1. Finish tall with my chest pointing at my target. 
2. Finish with my knees almost together, my back knee pushing towards my front knee. 
3. Finish with just the toes of my back foot on the ground, so you can see the sole of my back foot from behind, and most of my weight on the outside of my front foot (picture Scottie Scheffler rolling over the outside of his lead foot on his follow through).  
4. The club shaft should be behind my head. 

I don’t think about these checkmarks while I’m swinging but I do a mental checklist of these positions after I swing while I’m trying to hold the finish. It’s also handy to film a few swings so you can see what the “feels” in your head actually look like in real life. Spoiler alert: you never look like what you think you look like. 

You can work on your finish simply by holding the position for five seconds after each swing. I’ve found this to be pretty effective. But there are also a couple of drills you can incorporate to help drive home the right follow through positions. 

The “Feet Together” drill is pretty simple. Stand with your feet sandwiched together and take a full swing. If you’re off-balance, you’ll find out right away. This position forces you to slow your swing down and nail the sequence of movements, otherwise you’ll fall down. Remember to hold that finish after the swing. 

The other drill I like is just rolling a ball towards the target followed by an exaggerated the finish. Take an iron without much loft, and from your regular setup, roll a ball towards your target. No backswing, just sort of scoop the ball in the direction you want it to go. But make sure you finish really tall, with your weight transferred to your front foot and the club behind your head. Hold it and repeat. 

I’ve gotten pretty good at hitting most of the checkmarks of a good finish, but I still have the habit of snapping the club and my torso out of the follow through, so it’s a work in progress. But I like how focusing on my finish has helped clean up some of the issues with my swing. When I play a round, and tell myself to stick the finish and hold it for three seconds after every shot, I have clean, crisp contact with a relatively straight ball path.

Apparently, a little bit of vanity can be a good thing. 

Speaking of playing golf…I had a weird week with a lot of travel and family obligations so I didn’t have a chance to play many rounds. I practiced a bunch, hitting the range and walking a few holes four or five times, but I never had more than an hour or so to devote to my game. It happens. I played two nine-hole rounds at my home course, moving to the back tees for the first time for both rounds. I shot four over par one day, and one over par the next. Moving to the back tees doesn’t add too much yardage, but it does shift the landing zones and creates some narrow windows on a couple of longer holes. It’s definitely harder and it will take me some time to get used to it. But the handicap dropped a bit (from a 7.8 to a 7.6), and I’ll take any bit of progress I can get. 

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch by 50 where Graham wonders if it’s possible to play too much golf.