Golf mechanic

Another round of golf today. I shot 115, which is better than before. My woods were back, and towards the end of the round I was beginning to fix my swing.

Currently, I tend to swing like John Daly. Huge backswing, powerful downswing, full followthrough. However, when he does it, the ball goes 300+ yards perfectly straight. When I do it, the ball slices so far left it begins to come back towards me. Other times it gets no lift, something I refer to as "downspin". Sometimes it does both, landing in the woods on the left side of the hole, no more than 30 yards away from me.

I started to fix it with a combination of things people have said to me over the years. My mother constantly tells me to not swing back so far, and my brother constantly tells me to not come around on the ball. Until today I wasn't really able to do that last one without messing up the swing completely, but now I think I've done it.

With the new swing, I don't do nearly as much of a backswing. I only swing out until my arms are about level with my shoulders, then I force myself into my downswing. I have to force it because it just doesn't feel natural to be stopping at that point, but in time that'll change, I sure.

During my downswing I put in as much force as I can, while making sure the club head follows a straight path. I can't really describe how I do this, but it seems to come naturally with the extra power. I do a full followthrough still, because that's what you're supposed to do.

Preliminary results look good. I drove over the stream on the 17th at Riverbend, something I've never done before (it's a good 200 yards out, I think). In general my drives were infinitely better, and my fairway woods were a lot straighter.

Now I just need to fix my short game and putting.