Category Archives for "Videos: Playing For Money"

Playing for Money: Derrick Sherard- Less use of Right Side in the Backswing and More Use of the Ground Through Impact

By Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money

Derrick is a professional living in West Palm Beach who works a couple of golf courses and would like to improve his game enough to compete in some mini-tour events and have a chance to earn some money. I usually see him a few times when I come down for the winter, but that hasn’t been enough to get his ball striking to where it needs to be. The swing Derrick brought to this lesson shows the patterns that we have seen for some time, and hopefully if I have improved my teaching, we can find ways to improve his stubborn tendencies. Derrick has always been an in to out swinger, and when he gets the clubhead behind him early in the swing it usually follows that he overturns his right side and gets his right upper arm and shoulder too far behind him. From there he can’t get the club back in front of him in the forward swing and approaches impact with the clubhead well behind his hands, causing a flippy, in to out impact. I start here trying to get Derrick’s backswing on plane and his right hip twisting less behind him, adding a bit of external rotation to the upper right arm to keep it more in front of his chest at the top. The stop and go swings definitely look better, but through impact his lower body still tends to collapse as he stays down in his forward bend too long. To help this issue we do an impact drill where he situates his lower body in a deep, left and rotated position with the shaft at P6, then with a pumping action builds to a delivery in which he uses the ground more effectively by pushing up with the left leg and driving the right side of the pelvis up into the left. This standing up to the left action extends the upper thoracic and helps the upper right side to drive into the follow through so the right wrist bend can be sustained past impact.

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Playing for Money: Matt Shubley 3- Right Arm Issues Causing Stuck Approach

By Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money

I’ve been working with Matt for just over a year now and after graduating from college he has turned professional with his eye on next year’s Web.Com Q-School. Matt won his first event as a pro but has struggled a bit since with a 2 way miss. He has incorporated more lateral left movement into his iron game (he had little or none when we started) and improved his impact alignments significantly, but he always slips back into a pattern he has had long before I met him where he overturns his right arm and shoulder in the backswing and then drops his hands and arms straight down or even behind him in transition, which almost guarantees a “stuck” approach position with the clubhead heading toward impact from well behind his hands, leading to an overly in to out attack that precludes any sort of left to right shot and requires more face rotation through impact than we would like. My suggestions here are pretty standard for the issues: try to keep the upper right arm more in front of the chest in the backswing by encouraging more external rotation of the right shoulder along with more forearm rotation, then concentrating on moving the hands out toward the ball (or even above it) while leaning the shaft back on the right index finger in order to keep the shaft approaching from above the right forearm from P5 to P6. Matt has been successful at fixing this before, and the fact that the problem continues to reemerge goes to show how stubborn such patterns are.

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Playing for Money: Derek Gillespie- Hip Depth and Pelvic Movement in Transition

By Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money

Derek has been somewhat inconsistent in his play on the Latin American Tour this year, and since he has U.S. Open Sectionals at my old club Woodmont in Maryland he stopped by Woodholme for a look. Derek’s issues usually start with a sitting trigger and a shut clubface in the takeaway which winds up having the club across the line at the top, and to help uncross the club in transition he tends to push his lower body out from underneath him. His backswing has improved quite a bit, but I still see some early addition of knee flex without adding any right hip depth. I suggest that we move the ball slightly back in his stance and try to maintain height in the takeaway instead of lowering immediately, while moving the upper right leg back so that the leg movement is more balanced and not moving out into the left hip as he gets to the top. He accomplishes this nicely with the iron, but with the 3-wood he still wants to drive both knees toward the ball in transition. When we see that we talk about trying to increase pelvic tilt in transition by twisting the right hip more inward and driving the upper leg what feels to be behind the left leg. He has a good chance to do this now that his right leg is deeper, and the club is not crossed at the top, and when he manages to keep his pelvis deeper while staying out over the ball he achieves more space for his right arm and more right lateral side bend on his approach, which affects his path and makes it less of a swipe across the ball. We go back to check the iron, which looks and feels good, then end with a few more 3-woods which also look and feel better.

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Playing for Money: Derek Gillespie and Why He Struck the Ball Poorly at 2nd Stage

By Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money

I probably shouldn’t use the word “poorly” in the title of this short paragraph as for most people the way Derek hits the ball would be other worldly, but in trying to qualify for the Web.Com at 2nd stage you either have to have your ball striking in order or you must get it up and down constantly and make every putt, which doesn’t happen very often. Derek’s own assessment of his performance was that he just didn’t hit the ball at a high enough level, so we did pretty much what we always do, which is look at the swing he brings with him and try to figure out what it’s doing, why it’s not working as well as it needs to, and get it to improve.

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