[DaveLeeNC]

I have done many things athletic my entire life. I have played baseball into my adult years in a men's league. The thing I have noticed is that when I am playing well, whether it is fielding a ground ball or swinging at a pitch, it is like the action is in slow motion. When things are not going well, I realize that I am not even aware of the ball from about 10 feet in. I just react to where the ball last was and it's path of motion.

I have noticed the same thing in my golf swing. Sometimes it is fine, but sometimes I am not even aware of the downswing. It just seems to happen so quickly that I have no control over it. This may one of the reasons that I can shoot 73 one round and 93 the next. I have been aware of this problem for some time, but have never heard it mentioned until I read the term "downswing blackout" in another post in this forum.

I would be interested in others comments and/or personal experiences on this plus drills, solutions etc.

Thanks.

An ancient thread, I know. But I'm a TGM dropout who is going to give this another shot(maybe seriously, maybe not - have to wait and see) so I started here reading this forum backwards.

I am very aware of a 'downswing blackout' often on the downswing. I just lose my connection with what is happening. Sometimes it is more extreme than otheres, and I have never noticed a strong correlation between degree of blackout and results although I believe that there is a weak correlation here.

'Clear Key Golf' suggests tieing your swing to a verbal phrase and a key element of that is to make impact happen on a specific syllable of your clear key phrase. I've found that approach helpful, but I have also had problems in that there are some fatal flaws in my swing that come back when I focus strictly on my clear key (maybe should have been more diligent with 32 ball drills, but these weren't ignored). I believe that this would result in much better results if I didn't have this ongoing battle with too flat/too far inside going back.

Fred Shoemaker in his interesting book 'Extraordinary Golf' talks about how hard it was for him to focus on the ball, and only the ball, for an entire golf swing.

I am also curious as to whether others are very aware of this phenomenon. To me this stands out REALLY strong in my mind, but I am guessing it does not in others or you would hear more about it.

dave (now back to more reading)