No More Shanks

A range session, using an empty package box, confirmed it was the outside-in swing path that caused my shanks.

For temporary fixes, I found addressing the ball with the toe of iron face would work most times. I also found using 10-finger grip (baseball) would also work, maybe a little more reliably. Then I used these 2 temporary fixes on the course for a couple of rounds, more often with the 10-finger grip than the other, and I managed to reduce shanks to only 1 or 2 during an entire round of 18 holes.

After a couple of rounds, I started to pull/hook with the 10-finger grip. So I changed back to interlock gripping. At the same time, I noticed one blog post of my own posted last year about ball position and fully extending my arms. I realized maybe I forgot to fully extend my arms. So I tried that, and it worked! I think the reason is that I can extend the impact, i.e., to have a more square and solid impact, by extending my arms during back swing. Since then, I have played several rounds without any shank.

Now I can say I have finally fixed my shank problem. A by-product of this ordeal is that I find a good approach to play a draw -- using 10-finger grip.