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Frank works in New York but lives in Baltimore where he is a former member of my club, Woodholme CC. Working in the Wall Street world of finance Frank gets invited to play some of the courses clustered in the New York area from Westchester out to the tip of Long Island, which happen to be some of the best courses in the world. He never practices, but he is tired of not being able to play at a level that would produce a decent score on a difficult track. He decided he wanted to get better, so he contacted me about taking a series of lessons. In his first visit I could see that this would be a project, but the good news was that he is an athletic guy and had a good feel for the general motion of the swing. I saw right away that his major problem was the common issue of right arm folding and pulling behind him in the backswing, which made it impossible for him to get his hands far enough forward at P6 to forward lean the club on an iron shot. When I told him that he needed to make a better upper trunk turn in the backswing and keep his hands wider at the top with space under his right arm, he pointed out that his left shoulder had an impingement that made it hurt when it stretched to a certain point. I knew right then that for Frank to have his right arm stay more in front of him his swing would have to be radically shorter, and if we were able to accomplish that he would then have to train his hands to feel the lag of the club and to square the face as they passed in front of the ball. I referred him to my M.A.T specialist who is working on his shoulder, and we have consistently worked on gaining space with the right arm while keeping it from over bending. Thus, stop and go swings are a staple of the lesson, after which we switch over to impact drills to train his hands what to do were he to get them as forward as we were hoping.
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