All Posts by Wayne

Tiger Woods in the Fairway Bunker: No, Peter, He Doesn’t “Maintain his Height”

By Wayne | Videos: As Seen On TV and Extras

When CBS slowed down Tiger’s beautiful pitching wedge shot from the fairway bunker on the first hole of the final round of the PGA Championship, I had an immediate feeling that I knew what the commentary would be. Of course, as everyone knows, you can’t hit a fairway bunker shot if you “dip”, another synonym for lowering during the swing, because you will always hit behind it. I’ve seen this movie before, watching Butch Harmon explain how Jay Haas was “staying tall” and “keeping his levels” while hitting an iron out of a fairway bunker, when right in front of him the guy he was talking about was lowering going back and in transition like he does on every shot. I knew Tiger has never hit a full shot he didn’t lower on, so it was no surprise when a) Peter Kostis states that the reason Tiger made such ball first contact was that he “was not losing his heighth (sic) (the word is “height”) with his head”, and that he was “keeping his level really, really well”. This is a perfect example of a logical conclusion that is not backed up by the evidence presented by the video of the shot. So, I blow up the swing, put a line on top of Tiger’s head (the camera angle isn’t perfect, but the camera is fixed which makes the exercise valid), and watch Tiger lower in the backswing and then lower more on the downswing, exactly how he hits every shot. I cringe when I think of the players who will go out and try to stay extra tall on their fairway bunker shots, not realizing that when they hit the ball fat out of the sand it’s because of poor sequence or clubhead throwaway, the same reasons they never get good contact from the fairway either. After all these years I thought these guys (Nick and Pete) might have learned their lesson on this point, but it doesn’t seem that that’s the case.

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Lesson of the Week: John Shmerler-So Hard to Change a Pattern

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

Here is a 3 handicapper with what would be considered a good swing but one he would like to change for the better. We have identified the issues, and they are stubborn to say the least. John tends to get the shaft flat at P3 and heading to P4 he always stuffs his right upper arm in close to his side, finishing the backswing with some right shoulder blade pull-back. This not only affects his sequence (the right shoulder pull-back actually initiates his downswing by leaning the upper body over the lower before the lower can get started) but keeps his right arm from getting into any kind of “pitch” position where the upper arm would be in front of the rib cage with the right elbow leading. It’s obvious that John has an excellent idea of what he would like to do, as shown by his spot-on slow-motion demonstration of his desired positions. After identifying the differences between his real swing and his demonstration, john does his best to stand the shaft up at P3, which would not seem to be the hardest thing to do. However, with a ball in front of the club for a full shot the best we could do was to go from 12 degrees flat off plane to 6 degrees, while the right arm still resisted getting wider and higher. The lesson ended on a positive note, but there is no denying the difficulty in changing baked in patterns when trying to hit a ball to a target with a full speed swing. In my opinion your “natural swing”, the one you don’t think about, doesn’t really have a “feel” to it; rather, it just “happens”. It’s like you don’t notice a body part unless it hurts. If you are aware of a swing flaw and can do it properly in a segmented (stop and go) drill, then you must be able to develop an awareness of how it feels when you do what you normally do. If you have nothing to compare your everyday move to, why would it change? The real “aha” moment is when you do what you always do and say “oh, I felt that”. Only then can you try to feel something different.

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TP&C: Willy Wilcox- Going Back to the Old Swing

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

I did a video of Willy in 2015 when he was on TV and playing great, noticing right away how open his stance was in relation to his target line. I have an affection for open stances as I’ve always been a Trevino fan and I played that way myself for many years. I felt that with the open stance I could clear my hips much faster and easier, and since I have always been prone to flatten the shaft, be slow with my hips, and thus get the club stuck behind me on the approach, dropping my left foot back made a big difference. One of the reasons I went away from it was due to the problems with teaching all day talking about alignment and swing plane, items which are much easier to visualize and explain when all the lines are parallel and perpendicular. Anyway, when Willy got in touch with me and came to my club the first time we worked mainly on short game, but when we did hit some full shots I was surprised to see a dead square stance. I didn’t really have time to go over much in that 2-hour session as far as the full swing was concerned, but when he came up again the next week I made it my mission to get him back to what had worked so well back in 2015. I suggested he go back to the open stance and pull the hands in deeper on the backswing while opening the face a bit. From there it was all familiar to him and he started hitting it nicely right away. He has had some nice results in the past month (22nd, 8th, 3rd) on the Web.Com Tour, and is in position to regain his Tour card.

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Online Lesson: Matt Shevland- Lower Body Stability, Sequence, and Right Arm Positioning

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

While Matt pinpoints his biggest problem as his release, I see some things that make releasing the club properly problematical, especially the instability of the lower body in the backswing. Matt has a large amount of hip slide to the right from P2 to P4, enough so that his pelvis is not in position to initiate the forward swing properly with the rotation of the right -side hip rotator muscles. Because his pelvis has so far to go just to get back where they started it is no surprise that his upper body leans to the left to begin transferring pressure from right to left. In addition, from an on -plane position at P3 Matt stops rotation his forearms and pulls his right upper arm and shoulder back behind him, causing the shaft to cross the line and pushing the upper body to the left before the hips have a chance to lead the movement. I suggest to Matt that he work hard on keeping his hips in the face-on box in the backswing by first concentrating on keeping pressure on the inside of the right foot by pronating the arch of the foot against the ground, and then by placing something heavy like a bag stand or a chair on either his left hip or his right hip to try to feel what it is like to not slide the hips. If the hips stay more in the box Matt can improve his backswing plane and not cross the line by supinating his right forearm (rotating it clockwise) continuously from P3 to P4, which will cause the right shoulder to begin external rotation and the upper arm to stay more in front of the chest. Another benefit of stabilizing the hips is that it would make keeping them deeper in the forward swing much easier to work on since they wouldn’t be so busy trying to slide back to the left after losing so much ground with the slide.

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Online Lesson: Phil Pfeiffer – Problems with Posture, Right Arm Movement, and Pelvic Movement

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Phil certainly knows what’s going on by now, and he is exactly correct, his old habits are still in there causing problems. For anyone with tendencies to early extend and hump out from under themselves in transition it is death to set up with any appearance of sitting back in the heels. Phil needs to exaggerate the feeling of being up and out over the ball with less knee flex, flare the right arm more in the backswing, and concentrate on creating more tilt in the pelvis in transition.

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Swing Analysis: Francesco Molinari-A Picture of Consistency

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

Francesco Molinari has been around a long time (turned pro in 2004) and has been one of the most consistently successful players in the last 14 years, compiling over 30 million dollars in earnings and playing on two Ryder Cups. Recently he has been on an incredible roll, with 3 wins and 2 seconds in the last two months, topped off by his stirring victory in the Open Championship. His ball striking stats are uniformly good, and as his short game and putting have gelled recently he is practically unbeatable. As we look at his swing we see a solid, unremarkable action that has picked up 20 yards in distance off the tee in the last 3 years. Interesting items in his motion are the small lift in his trigger, the lifted left heel in the backswing, and the compressing move he makes in transition. He exhibits a neutral grip, neutral left wrist at the top, a slight shallowing of the shaft in transition, and saves all his lowering for the early downswing, after which he uses the ground for added force through impact.

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Swing Analysis: Xander Schauffele

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

Last year’s Rookie of the Year is having another excellent year with high finishes in three of the season’s biggest events, the U.S. Open (6th), the Players (3rd), and the British Open (2nd). He has a solid all-around game and is quite long off the tee for his size (5’ 10”, 175 lbs.) with a simple looking swing that is interesting to look at more closely. Xander sets up with more knee flex than most and his balance more in the middle of his feet than on the front, but he manages to lower in both the backswing and forward swing in spite of the fact that he is well bent over at address. Usually this kind of set up leads normal players into all sorts of problems with early extension and general loss of posture, but Schauffele is a strong kid who creates more space while staying nicely out over the ball. He has a neutral to weak grip that gives his left wrist a solid, flat look at the top, and when he transitions with aggressive lateral and rotational pelvic movement he bends the wrist down almost immediately. He looks great on the approach and it is obvious that he is squaring the face with the left hand, wrist and forearm, and he exits nicely to the left on every shot. The face on view of his driver swing reminds one of Tiger, Fowler, DJ, Koepka and several other longer hitters as his sequencing produces a large amount of secondary stretch in the left side lat and oblique muscles. While his play has been somewhat hit and miss he appears to save his best for the big events, always a plus for any player.

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Online Lesson: Tyler McAdams- Keys to Stop Lifting in the Backswing

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Tyler only had a down the line view for me to analyze but he wanted to see what I said anyway, so I gave it a shot. My suggestions here are to stand up taller at address with more weight toward the balls of the feet and less knee flex to feel like he would want to create space for the right arm in transition, which means he wouldn’t be losing angle in the mid-section as he moves from P2 to P4. Instead, he could try to create more hip flexion (mostly concentrating on the right hip, which would take the left hip with it) once the swing gets started and especially as he gets to the top of the swing. Also, I suggest that he try to open the face a bit more with forearm rotation almost immediately after the club starts moving so that the right arm might stay in front of him and take some of the stress out of his upper trunk turn. The feeling of adding hip flexion and tilting the pelvis more downward (anterior tilt) while changing direction against the brace of the right foot and leg should cause his head to lower a bit more as he starts down.

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Lesson of the Week: Will Levy- Stability and Perception of Swing Plane

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

Will is mostly a baseball player whose grandfather would like him to learn how to play golf, and since he’s very good at baseball you might figure golf would come easier to him than most. As it turns out for whatever reason instead of swinging the club around him in the forward swing he always drops it way inside and swings exaggeratedly in to out with his legs driving out from under him to the right. This is exactly unlike a sidearm throwing motion or even a batting motion. Will is a strong but gangly kid who doesn’t control his body very well, so my focus with him is to stabilize his right leg in the backswing so that he has a brace to move forward from, and then to do anything to get him to swing more out and around to the left. The difficulty for the brain (anyone’s) is to process how a left miss (Will tends to hook the ball wildly more so than blocking it to the right due to his strong grip) can be rectified by swinging more left. As much as he swings in to out you can be sure he has the face closing rapidly by impact, so we must make sure his grip is weaker so that the face will be more open as the clubhead approaches the ball on a more proper path. His hips need to learn how to stay deeper as he aims his hip drive way more to the left, another item for the next lessons. Unfortunately, you can only do so much in an hour, but I think this is a good start.

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Online Lesson: Corey Stepanek-Early Extension Due to Posture Issues and Lack of Mid-section Control

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

In this video I explain to Corey how I believe his loss of posture during the swing is mostly due to his posture at address. It’s rare that I see a non-tour player set up back in the heels with a lot of knee flex and not move the pelvis toward the ball during the swing. I suggest to Corey that he set up more like Adam Scott (more out over the ball) and then work on keeping his pelvis deeper in transition. The good news is that Corey does a great job of keeping his head out over the ball all during the swing, so if he uses the stick between his feet to get feedback on his right leg thrusting out to the right in transition I think he could make some real quick progress on getting his right arm room to get more in front of him and further forward at impact.

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