My mate Zach was an 11 handicap. I handed him the ball on the 4th tee. His first swing landed six feet from the pin. Nine weeks later he was a 5.8.

I need to tell you about my mate Zach, because what happened to him over the last two months is the single best argument for this product I could ever put in front of you. I didn't script it. I didn't pay him. I handed him a ball on a par 3 on a Friday afternoon and watched his entire game change in real time.

Zach had been an 11 handicap for four years. Not a beginner. Not a hack. An 11 is a decent club golfer. He plays twice a week, he's had lessons, he's tried the usual aids, and he'd accepted that he'd probably be an 11 forever. Most golfers reading this know that feeling. You reach a ceiling and you start to wonder if the problem is the game or if the problem is you.

Zach's a 5.8 now. Nine weeks later. And it started with one shot.

The round that changed everything.

It was a casual Friday. We were on the 4th, a 160 metre par 3. Zach had pulled driver on the first tee and sprayed it right. That was his miss. He'd get a bit quick on a shot, try to save it, and it would block out into the right rough. I'd watched him fight that miss for as long as I'd known him.

On the 4th he tried to hit a smooth 7-iron onto the green. Same shot. Right miss. Short right, in the greenside bunker.

He looked at the ball I'd been practising with — a weighted one with two metal rods on it — sitting in my golf bag and said:

I'd been waiting months for a friend to ask. I'd been using the Premium Performance Ball for about six weeks. I wasn't going to push it on him. I knew if he asked, he was already curious, and if he tried it, the ball would do the talking.

I handed it over. He clipped it between his forearms, adjusted the rods, took a practice swing — laughed at how restrictive it felt — and then stepped in for his provisional.

I will remember this shot for the rest of my life.

The swing.

I have never heard Zach's iron sound like that. Not once in the ten years I've played with him.

There is a specific noise a well-compressed iron makes off the face of a properly connected golf swing. Most amateurs have heard it maybe ten times in their life, and usually by accident. It's the noise a tour pro makes on every shot.

That's the noise that came off Zach's 7-iron on the 4th.

He didn't say much. Just stood there for a second and then went:

I knew what he'd just felt for the first time. He didn't have the vocabulary for it yet.

We finished the round. He sprayed most of his other shots because he didn't have the ball in his bag and was back to his normal swing. But he kept talking about the 4th all the way in.

What the ball actually does.

Quick primer, because the mechanism is the whole reason this worked for Zach and it'll probably work for you.

Every other arm-connection aid on the market — the inflatable balls, the soft foam versions, the Amazon generics — can be swung through with bad mechanics. You can still chicken wing with a soft ball. You just squeeze a bit harder. The Premium Performance Ball doesn't let you. The rods don't flex.

That's why Zach's first swing with it was pure. He'd been trying to hit a chicken-wing-free shot for a decade using his brain. The ball let him do it using his body. The feeling was so foreign to him that his brain couldn't override it. He just swung.

The text messages.

I didn't hear from Zach about the ball for six days. I assumed he'd forgotten about it.

Then my phone buzzed.

Zach had been trying to break 80 at The Pines for three years. It's his home course. Every time he got close, the back nine would blow up on him — a double, a triple, the old right miss showing up under pressure. He'd shot 80 exactly three times in his life and never cracked it.

That Friday he shot 79.

Five days later, two personal bests in one week, at two different courses, after four years of being stuck at the same number.

About two months in he sent me a screenshot of his handicap.

Five shots. Two months. No lessons. No new clubs. Ten minutes in the garage before every round with the Premium Performance Ball.

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Why it worked for Zach.

Zach's fault wasn't talent. It wasn't lack of practice. It wasn't equipment.

It was his arms coming apart through impact. Every swing, for every year he'd been playing, his lead arm would fold early and his trail elbow would fly. That's the chicken wing. That was his right miss. That was his 11 handicap ceiling.

His pro had told him about it. Videos had shown him. He knew. But he couldn't feel it, and you can't fix a motion you can't feel. Lessons faded. Swing thoughts didn't hold. The pattern was burned in and his brain couldn't override it in real time.

The ball doesn't ask his brain to override anything. It removes the option to make the bad motion at all. Ten minutes a day for nine weeks and the new pattern became automatic. He's not thinking about connection on the course. His arms just do it now.

If you recognise yourself in Zach's description — a right-side miss, a pull or a block, a chicken wing you can see on video but can't feel — you probably have the same fault he had. And this is probably the thing that'll fix it.

One thing Zach does that you should copy.

Here's the ritual he's built, because when I asked him what he'd been doing, he told me this:

Ten minutes in the garage before every round. Before every round. Not hours on the range. Not a full practice session. Just ten minutes with the ball, grooving the connected feeling, right before he drives to the course.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

He doesn't practise more than he used to. He practises correctly for ten minutes before he plays. And his handicap dropped five shots.

Who this is for (and who it isn't).

Zach fit the first list. You probably do too.