Lesson of the Week: Darren Dobbs – The “One-Armed Bandit”

You have heard me talk about the importance of right arm action in the swing, and in this case it’s especially important because that’s all Darren has. He has earned an 11 handicap by shooting between 82 and 86 20 times in a row, prompting a call from the USGA. Turns out that no one with that handicap shoots scores with so little variation, so they were prompted to give a call (someone who lost in a handicap event probably complained). When they were apprised of the fact that Darren plays with one arm they quickly dropped the inquiry. As it turns out, Darren was an All –American field goal kicker in college, but wasn’t drafted in the pros because he couldn’t tackle on special teams. So that gives you some idea of his athletic ability. You can see from the first swings that Darren has done a nice job figuring out how to get it done. But his goal, as is the goal of everyone serious about the game, is to get better, so he took his friend’s offer and came out to Top Golf for a lesson.
 
I look at Darren’s lesson as being the same as any other, although a bit more interesting and challenging simply due to the fact that I haven’t worked with anyone who played that way in my entire teaching career. What stood out right away was Darren’s grip and the way that it forced the face to be fairly closed throughout the entire swing. Darren really couldn’t fully release the clubface through impact and had to hang onto it somewhat to keep the ball from going left. My thought was to have him try a conventional right hand position on the club (Darren wouldn’t know conventional from unconventional because he never played with a two handed grip), which in this case would be much weaker and would allow him to rotate his body more aggressively while being able to turn the club over through impact, a couple of nice sources of power. He took to the change right away and hit some nice shots, so I am hopeful that this will help him bump his game up to another level.
 
 
Darren and I played Pebble and Cypress Point last week using your swing
tips.

He shot 84 and 79.

I shot 77 and 75.

Cypress is amazing.

Here is a picture of Darren hitting driver on Cypress #16 to the center of
green at 230 yards.

Thanks,
Stuart Lloyd
 

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