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Basement Tapes: Takeaway Variations (Video 1 of 5)

By Wayne | Videos: Basement Tapes

I’m down in the basement again and this time I’ve created a short five-video lecture series. The information in each lecture builds upon what is presented in the previous video so make certain to watch them in order. The series begins here with “Takeaway Variations”. In this lecture I discuss two variations of the “one piece takeaway” where the whole upper trunk moves in unison and the “Right Forearm Takeaway” where the right forearm, rather than staying straight like in the one piece takeaway, bends as the club-face rotates to toe up at P2. I discuss how the various takeaways affect what happens after P2 and things you’ll want to both avoid and achieve with each variation. Tomorrow’s “Basement Tapes” lecture is: “Loading in the Backswing”.

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Swing Analysis: Abraham Ancer

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

Ancer came out of Oklahoma in 2013 and qualified for the Web.Com Tour in 2015. He finished 35th in the Web.Com Qualifying Final Stage and then finished 11th on the Web.Com money list to earn his PGA Tour card in 2016. He failed to keep his card, then played the Web.Com again in 2017, this time playing even better and finishing 3rd on the money list. This year he has 5 top 10’s on the PGA Tour and has won 1.65 million dollars. These swings are from the Dell Technologies Championship, the 2nd Fed Ex Cup tournament. His 7th place finish got him into the BMW Championship with a ranking of 56. He will need a stellar tournament to make it to the Tour Championship, but he has to be happy with his success this year. He has an interesting swing with a pronounced trigger and very high hands at the top of the swing, something which obviously works as he averages 296 off the tee while weighing in at 155 pounds at 5’7”. His putting stats are not the greatest, and he gains most of his stroke advantage off the tee and with his general ball striking. He has a truly sidearm motion with his hips staying deep in the box and his right arm coming in quite high with his right arm staying bent well past impact. If he gets the putter going he could be a force on the Tour going forward.

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Lesson of the Week: Frank Goldman 2- Deeper Hips, More Width

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

Frank has come a long way in a few months of lessons (around 15 hours), especially since he almost never has a chance to practice. He does play a few times a week, however, usually with business clients at great golf courses such as Deepdale and Maidstone on Long Island. In this video I contrast Frank’s first swings with his latest, and while his signature issues remain the same he has made some headway in creating a more controlled backswing, which has made his ball striking more consistent.

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Bryson DeChambeau: One-Plane No More

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

In this video I focus on the swing changes of Bryson DeChambeau which have moved him away from the truly single plane swing he incorporated 3 years ago. I doubt that he would change anything unless he thought there was a better way to do it, so I find it extremely interesting that he would introduce more shifting into his swing instead of keeping it more aesthetically pleasing. You would have to ask him why he has changed it so radically, but I think it’s fairly obvious how he has changed it. I see him setting up with his weight more out over the balls of his feet than before, and the new swing is definitely more bent over at impact than the one from 2015. The backswing is pretty much the same to P3, and it’s from P3 to P4 that we see the biggest differences. It appears to me that he in incorporating less forearm rotation and rotating his upper thoracic more than he used to, which turns his upper right arm and shoulder area more behind him and points the shaft off the original plane to one that is much more across the line. That requires him to make a more dynamic transition move to get the upper right arm back in front of him (which gives him more secondary stretch between the upper and lower trunks and thus more potential for power) while the less rotated forearms eventually require less left forearm supination to square the clubface. He excels at returning the shaft to the original shaft plane at impact, so I’m guessing that he dispensed with the obsession to swing on one plane and decided to see what worked better. I’m sure we will see more changes in the future, all of them well thought out and more than likely effective, which is scary.

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Lesson of the Week: Alan Grabush- Working on a Quirky Backswing

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

I’ve been working with Alan off and on for over 4 years now, and while we have made significant progress at times with his ball striking we have never been able to rid him of the hitch in his backswing. The biggest issue is that Alan doesn’t feel what he is doing, which means he is not aware of it unless he sees it on video. He can perfectly position the club in the mirror, and he can perform reasonable stop and go drills from different starting points, but in a full swing there is a pattern of movement that causes his hands to move toward his head in transition, which creates a steeper plane than he would like while also making difficult the task of getting the upper right arm in front of the ribcage in the forward swing and the hands further forward on the approach and at impact. In the past I have failed to account for his body motion in assessing why the arms should move the way they do, but in this lesson, I do a bit of hands on holding of his head during the swing, and the results are very encouraging.

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Swing Analysis: David Lingmerth

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

These swings were filmed at the Ohio State Scarlet Course the practice round Tuesday before the first of the final four Web.Com Tour events. I was out with Willy Wilcox and we were joined by Lingmerth and David Hearn for 9 holes in the afternoon. It was a windy day on a long and difficult course, and as I like to do for practice rounds I took my camera and tripod, taking film of Willy to look at after the round (I will sneak a peek during) and taking advantage of the opportunity to film the group. David has had a nice career but has slipped since his best year in 2015, going from 2.7 million to 1.7 in 2016, one million in 2017, and just over $600,000 in 2018, which left him 142nd on the money list and a spot in the Web.Com finals to secure a Tour card for next season. David is a strong, stocky guy, which might partially explain his trigger motion and the flatness of his shoulder turn, which to me gets his right arm well behind him at the top. It is obvious that David pulls his upper body back away from the ball, making him immediately more erect and flattening his shoulder turn angle significantly. His right arm is low at P3 with a lot of wrist cock, and by the time he gets into transition the upper right arm is snug to his body and well behind him. He does a great job sequencing his body movement and with his hip and pelvic action in the downswing, but his backswing trigger and upper body pull- back inevitably trap his right arm behind him in transition. He brings the hands back out in front of him as best he can from the top, but I don’t think he can quite get the quality strike he is looking for with his arm as behind him as it is. If I were working with him I would certainly try to get him to quiet down his trigger and get wider at the top so that the upper right arm could move more in front of him in the forward swing.

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Lesson of the Week: Frank Goldman- Overcoming Shoulder Mobility Problems

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

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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Lesson of the Week: Ben Skowronski- Proper Sequence and Lag

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

This is my 3rd lesson with Ben, and as you will see, he is really a problem case. This is where a teacher really must know what he or she is doing to get this guy to actually compress the golf ball. Luckily, Ben’s backswing has no serious flaws, although I would like him to load deeper into his right hip and cock his wrists a bit more. This is nitpicking, however, and there are much greater priorities than perfecting his backswing. Ben has no sense of athletic sequence when it comes to the golf swing, while he can throw a ball sidearm with good form. Ben literally must build a totally new perception of the downswing and the strike of the ball if he is ever going to be able to tap into his innate athletic ability. I always start these projects with less than full shots, either a punch shot or a pitch shot, as it is much more likely that a player can feel the delay of the upper body and the club in a shorter swing. The idea is to get the hands in front of the ball at impact, and I could put a guy like Ben in a perfect approach position, ask him if he could hit it from there, and he would say “no”. The clubhead is moving so much faster than the hands at the bottom of the swing that if you have never hit a ball with forward shaft lean you just can’t figure out how the club would ever reach the ball, much less close to square, when your hands are even with the ball and the shaft is parallel to the ground. In this lesson we achieved success with the pivot sequence. Now we must deal with how the hands accept the weight of the clubhead and bend back instead of pushing the club forward.

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