All Posts by Wayne

Tiger Woods Hand Path in Transition: 2000 to 2018

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

I’ve been accumulating Tiger swings since I’ve had a laptop and I can run through just about every year between 1994 to present. In Tiger’s recent years I noticed a significant change: about 2009 his hands and arms began to drop straight down from the top in transition, totally different than the “hands out” movement he had utilized for a decade. His right arm, instead of moving back out in front of his chest like it used to, began to move back more behind his right rib cage, not only jamming his arm but discouraging rotation in the upper body at the same time. With his arm more behind him and his entire body opening slower he began to make more and more swings that were “stuck”, with the club at P6 well behind his hands, leading to blocks and hooks. In these swings from the 2018 Memorial Tiger appears to have returned to his previous technique in which his hands move out toward the ball in transition, his upper body opens sooner, and his hips are encouraged by the overall motion to rotate more freely. Watch where his left arm is at P5: way more in front of him and less across his chest. This is very reminiscent of his older swings, although the backswing is not as “away” from him as it was in 2000. It looks more natural and fluid to me, more like an athletic hitting or sidearm throwing motion. I think he’s all the way back with this swing.

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Playing for Money: Willy Wilcox Part Two: Short game Simplification

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

When Willy and I first spoke, I was surprised to hear that what he thought he needed the most was to get a better idea of what to do with his short game, especially his short pitching and putting. I gave him my usual opinions on pitch shots, explaining that I view it as a mini full -swing and that most players that develop trouble are making the process too complicated. If you are a good ball striker, and every Tour player is, you should have no trouble hitting the ball short distances, unless you try to reinvent the wheel and make it a whole different exercise. In both Willy’s pitching and putting there was excess finish, and when I got him to finish more down and to hold it both improved greatly. There is a discipline to holding the finish on short shots that any good player can forget about, and if they do they need to be reminded.

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Tiger 2018: Best it’s Been in 12 Years

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

Tiger is back with a swing that I think rivals any he has ever made. I like everything about it, but the biggest difference I see and the one thing I was hoping he would change was his hand path in transition. Looking at swings up to 2006 Tiger’s hands always worked out toward the ball as his left arm responded more passively to his trunk rotation. For the next 12 years his hands would start the downswing by dropping straight down, sometimes even pulling back behind him, jamming his right arm and making it difficult for him to rotate and “get around” on the ball, leading to too many off line drives. It would appear now that he has gone back to a more natural transition, one that reminds me of the starting motion for baseball hitting or throwing. He now has way more freedom for his right arm, with the added bonus of the fact that aiming the hands out toward or above the ball in transition encourages aggressive lower body rotation and makes it easier to accomplish. By moving the hands and arms downward in transition the rotation of the body is slowed by a fraction while the right arm attaches to the side too soon, enough to cause major problems at high speed. It doesn’t look like that anymore. I think he can get back to #1 with this action.
 

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TP&C: Willy Wilcox- Part One, Full Swing

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

When I first saw Willy’s swing on television in 2015 I was happy that I was recording the tournament. They showed him several times and I did a video analysis of his swing. I loved it. It was certainly unconventional with the ultra-open stance and whippy-fast action, but it just looked like (without the aid of slow motion) it was producing an extra high-level strike on the ball. When I did slow it down it looked even better. He kind of disappeared for a few years and from out of the blue he contacted me through Messenger and expressed interest in chatting about his swing and his game and perhaps coming up to Baltimore to see me since he was going to be fairly close by anyway. The first lesson was 95% short game (I did a video on that as well), but in the second we had twice as much time so after another round of short game work we went out onto the course where I filmed him hitting various shots. With his conventional (square) set up he wasn’t opening his upper body enough to keep his hard flattening action from getting the club stuck behind him, so I suggested that he go back to opening his stance, which agreed with him as it was quite familiar. He went away from it while searching for answers to his suddenly erratic ball striking, while at the same time making his backswing far less deep. I suggested he also go back to pulling his arms across him in the backswing, and he had no problem with that either. I really wasn’t doing anything except having him go back to what at one point hit the ball as well as anyone in the world. If you look at his stats for that period (11 events) it might as well be Henrik Stenson, it was that good. He has played well since I saw him, and I look for great things in the future.

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Swing Analysis: Babe Didrikson Zaharias- Greatest Woman Golfer Ever?

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

I confess I didn’t know a whole lot about the Babe until I read up on her, and I think anyone would admit that her story is pretty incredible. I forgot to mention it in the video, but she is the only woman ever to make a cut in a men’s Tour event, and she did it 3 straight times in 1945, and is also still the only woman to ever qualify for a PGA Tour event as opposed to receiving a sponsor’s exemption. Her record as an amateur includes winning 17 straight events, a feat never matched, and won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1946 and the British Women’s Amateur in 1947, this after winning the Women’s Western Open (a major 3 times from 1942 to She turned pro in 1948 and added to her 4 majors she won as an amateur by winning the U.S. Women’s Open. She would win 5 more majors and a total of 48 professional wins before succumbing to cancer in 1956 at age 45. She won the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open wearing a colostomy bag. Think about that for a moment.

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Lesson of the Week: Scott Wingrat- Laid Off Backswing Leads to Steepening Shaft

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

Scott has a nice athletic move, but his flawed takeaway has the shaft extremely behind him at P2 and laid off at P3 and P4, which he can only fix by steepening the shaft in transition. As we have seen before, the tendency when the shaft tips steeper is for the lower body to try to help the shaft lay back later in the downswing by pushing out toward the ball. Scott had a good grasp of what was going on in our first lesson, but when he came back for the second we found that his takeaway had not changed much at all, another example of how difficult it is to execute a change no matter how simple it seems. Scott can correct this with practice as he shows in his stop and go, which gives him the time to think about and feel the takeaway keeping the shaft more on plane. His sequencing is good, and he demonstrates that when he does the backswing better he has a chance to shallow the club in transition, which, along with work toward keeping his hips deeper, will make him a more consistent ball striker.

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Lesson of the Week: Richard Kress- Shallowing the Shaft in Transition

By Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week

I’ve known and worked with Richard for over 30 years, and the one thing we have never been able to conquer is his tendency to steepen the shaft in transition. In this video I go over the important elements of the swing that I believe lead to better shaft movement during the swing. Transition is the most complex part of the golf swing, and in order for Richard to get the club to flatten he is going to have to improve his pivot movement (stop getting more vertical in the downswing by adding pelvic tilt), achieve more width at the top (stop folding the right arm and focus more on extensor action), and work on actively moving the right upper arm and elbow inward while the left arm is being pulled by the body. I would expect Richard’s swing to get a bit shorter as the right arm bends less and the hands stay away from the head. He is now in his early 70’s and while he can still move athletically it is not really possible to maintain a full- length backswing without making multiple errors.

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Online Lesson: Trent Tessler 3- Still Working on Sequence

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

We have identified Trent’s #1 problem, his leaning toward the target with his upper body at the same time the legs are shifting, but, as is evident by the swings he sent me, he hasn’t figured out why he does it and how to stop doing it. That’s where I come in, of course. After studying his swings and trying to imitate them in the mirror I found that when I held my left leg to the left and tightened my left hip flexor I had a hard time loading onto my right side and feeling like I could start the downswing by counter rotating the right-side hip muscles against the right foot’s brace into the ground. My suggestion to Trent is simple enough: pinch the left leg inward at address so that the foot feels a bit to the inside, the knee feels knocked toward the right, and the inside of the leg feels activated. When the upper body triggers the backswing, the hips will respond by swiveling more freely as the left leg will be rotating instead of trying to hold its position. This will allow the right hip to deepen as it rotates, and the right side will feel loaded enough into the ground to be able to initiate the forward swing with both lateral and rotational pelvic movement while the head stays relatively still. Producing secondary axis tilt while retaining or gaining posture is essential if the upper right arm is going to be able to drive inward instead of tipping over, and when the sequence is better the lag will increase as well. The lower body must pull the upper body into the forward swing. When the sequence is good the hands can get much more in front of the ball at impact.

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Short Game Work with John Lamendola

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Wayne D! Apologies if this email gets long. Tee to green I haven’t played with anyone all year who has hit it as good as me. My ball striking has become really really good. What’s been really holding me back is my chipping and pitching from 30 and in. I think it gets a little flippy and the follow through gets long. My miss is thin not fat. Shot 79/75 NYC am both rounds could have easily been in the 60’s. If I can sort this shot out I am very confident I can start winning. Thanks, as always. You have transformed my golf swing!!!!

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Swing Analysis: Peter Thomson

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

One of the most underrated players in history (behind Gary Player), Thomson won 5 British Opens, including one in 1965 against Americans Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Tony Lema. He won 28 times on the European Tour, 33 times on the Australasian Tour, and to prove a point came over to the States to play on the Senior Tour in 1985 and won 9 times. The swings you see here are evidence of Thomson’s stellar technique. Starting with a strong grip, especially in the right hand, Thomson planed the club beautifully and transitioned with perfect sequence. As did most players of his era he employed a slightly lifted left heel and a significant amount of lateral movement in transition and into the forward swing while keeping his hips deep and perfectly “in the box”. One interesting note is his tendency to move his hips to the right in the backswing, what would be called a “sway” by most of today’s instructors (including me) but made up for it by maintaining a braced right foot and by recovering immediately by planting the left heel and sliding laterally to the left while turning the pelvis counter-clockwise. Thomson’s footwork is exemplary, and the overall rhythm and efficiency of his swing would be great for anyone to try to emulate.

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