Here's something I've been learning about my golf swing: I hold on. Through impact, I hold on. I hold the club off, I hold the face, I hold the release — and I've been doing it so long it feels like the right thing to do. Every lesson for the past year has had some version of "keep the club more left of the hands" or "hold off the finish." And those cues worked, for a while. They fixed the pull-draw. They fixed the heel miss. They got me to 4.8.
But then the holding off became the problem.
It showed up in two places at once — the driver and the putter — and it took two lessons with Dave Theise, two weeks apart, to see that they were the same problem. The instruction in both cases was the same: let the clubhead release through impact. Stop holding it off. Let it go.
The Qualifier: 85 From the Tips
August 16. Club Championship Qualifier at Patterson. Black tees — 7,140 yards, 74.5/133. Every putt holed, no gimmes, no max doubles. This is the round where the card tells the truth.
I shot 85. Fourteen over. But the scorecard doesn't tell the story. Here's what the numbers say:
| Category | Strokes Gained | Handicap Level |
|---|---|---|
| Driving | —3.3 | 11-HCP |
| Approach | +1.5 | +3 HCP |
| Short Game | +0.2 | +4 HCP |
| Putting | —7.7 | 30-HCP |
Look at those numbers. Approach shots at a +3 handicap level — that's better than scratch. From 7,140 yards. Twelve of eighteen greens in regulation. The iron play is real. Short game is fine. The round was killed by two things: the driver and the putter. And the margin from the tips is unforgiving — a lost ball left on 4 becomes a triple, a topped 3-wood on 7 becomes a double, and suddenly you're looking at 85 instead of 76.
Only two or three bad swings all day. The big numbers came from compounding — bad drive, longer approach, miss the green, scramble. From the blues (6,416 yards), those same swings cost a stroke. From the tips, they cost three.
But the real story was the putting. Five three-putts. Forty putts total. A 15-foot birdie putt on 18 that became a bogey. The fear of putting the ball past the hole was so loud that I couldn't start the ball on line. The handle would stall through impact, the speed would die, the ball would come up short and leak left.
15-foot birdie putt. Three-putt bogey. That's the round in microcosm — the ball-striking gave me a look, and the putting took it away. The fear of going past turned a birdie into a bogey.
The Putting Lesson: August 3
Thirteen days before the qualifier, I had a putting lesson with Dave. The diagnosis was a setup problem, not a stroke problem. My eyes were too far over the ball — I was looking down from above, not directly at it. That skewed my perception of the line, and my body would subconsciously compensate, producing inconsistent misses both directions.
The fix was two-fold: get the eyes directly over the ball, and keep the handle moving through impact. The handle leads — but it doesn't stall. It keeps moving, letting the putter head release through. Like a one-touch pass in hockey: the bottom hand leads the handle through, and the putter head catches up naturally.
I practiced the putting mirror work for two weeks. The misses tightened. But in the qualifier, under pressure, the old pattern came back. Adrenaline in the hands. The handle stalled. The ball died short.
I thought the putting lesson was about putting. I was wrong.
The Driver Lesson: August 17
The day after the qualifier, I went to Dave for a full-swing lesson. The driver was the issue — launching too low, missing too much to the left. From the tips, where you need every yard of carry, a low-launching driver that leaks left is a round-killer.
Here's what Dave found: too much shaft lean at impact. I was delofting the club so aggressively that the ball couldn't get in the air. And because the face was de-lofted and the path was too steep — the left hip wasn't pulling back in the backswing — the ball started left and stayed low.
The fix was the opposite of everything I'd been told for the past year. Not "hold off the release." Not "keep the club left of the hands." The fix was:
- Let the clubhead catch up to the hands before impact. Allow the release. Give the ball some dynamic loft. Let the clubhead go — not flippy, not hands-flipping-over, but the natural catch-up where the clubhead reaches the ball with a usable amount of loft.
- Keep the left hip pulling back in the backswing. This keeps the path from getting too steep, which was compounding the low-left miss.
I stood on the range for 45 minutes after the lesson. Driver, irons, wedges. And at some point in that session, the ball started launching differently. Higher. Carrying further. Not leaking left.
My driver is launching like never before. I think I've unlocked a new capability.
The Connection: Both Lessons Were the Same Lesson
It took me a day to see it, but the putting lesson and the driver lesson were the same lesson. Both were about the same thing: the handle leads, but the clubhead has to be allowed to catch up.
With the putter, I was stalling the handle through impact — the clubhead never released, the ball died short and leaked. With the driver, I was holding off the release so hard that the dynamic loft disappeared — the ball launched low and left. In both cases, the fix was the same: let the clubhead go.
The handle leads but doesn't stall. The clubhead catches up. That's not flipping — that's the release. Lesson Notes, August 17, 2026
This is a hard thing to learn because holding off feels correct. It feels controlled. It feels like you're protecting the face, keeping the ball from going left (I'm a lefty, so "left" is my miss). And for months, it was correct — the pull-draw needed to be held off, the heel miss needed a more stable face through impact. But there's a tipping point where the cure becomes the disease. You hold off so long that the club never releases at all, and you're left with a de-lofted face, a low launch, and a ball that starts left and stays there.
The feel I'm working on now is different from anything I've practiced before. It's not "hold off." It's not "punch finish." It's: let the clubhead catch up to the hands. Trust the face. Trust the loft. Let it go.
What This Means for the Game
Here's why this matters beyond the range. The approach shots are already there — +1.5 SG from the tips, 12/18 GIR, +3 handicap level. The short game is fine. If the driver starts launching properly — higher, longer, not leaking left — I'm playing shorter clubs into greens from better positions. And if the putter starts releasing through impact instead of stalling, those 15-foot birdie putts on 18 become two-putt pars instead of three-putt bogeys.
The gap between the 71 I shot on August 7 and the 85 I shot on August 16 was not ball-striking. It was the driver and the putter. Same root cause. Same fix.
Next test: Thursday afternoon qualifying round. The range session after the lesson was the best driving I've ever produced. If it translates to the course — if the clubhead catches up, if the ball launches, if the left hip stays back — then the gap between 85 and 76 closes. Not because I'm hitting better iron shots. Because I'm letting the club do what it's supposed to do.
Sometimes the instruction isn't "do more." It's "stop doing so much." The hardest thing in golf is trusting that the club will do its job if you let it. The face doesn't need to be held. The release doesn't need to be stopped. The clubhead doesn't need to be kept left of the hands forever — just long enough to get the face stable, and then you let it go.
Let it go.