Lesson of the Week: Arthur Slaven

This series of lessons is an example of the difficulties of making wholesale changes to a swing that has been formulated over many years of play and practice. Arthur is a decent player (an 8 handicap) but plays to that via a nice short game and good putting. He considers his ball striking to be substandard, and has not been able to improve much in spite of real effort with practice and lesson taking. He came to me at the suggestion of one of my long time students, Alan Appelbaum, who went from a 12 handicap to a 2 under my guidance. Arthur, as you will see in the video, possesses the ability to move his body and create enough speed that even at a relatively advanced age (mid-60’s) he is perfectly capable of improving his ball striking. The phrases “old habits die hard” or “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” come to mind here, but I really only agree with the first, and as you will see the progress we make here is tangible but not everything we would hope for. However, what most students find is that an improved knowledge of what they do when they swing and then knowing more precisely what they are trying to do instead is a great help, mostly because it allows them to focus their practice on things that will actually help them instead of just randomly hitting balls and waiting for the next shot to feel good. As you will see here Arthur succeeds in loading more effectively to the right in the backswing, but unless he is completely focused, catching the club sooner and limiting the lift of his right arm is problematical. Another issue is the lack of forward drive with the hips, which is to be expected considering how much he twisted his hip towards the target in the backswing when he showed up for his first lesson. Obviously there are too many things to change that can be thought about in one swing, so it is to be expected that transforming this action into something better will take time. Arthur is a smart guy, however, and when I show him what is going on with the video he can see the problems and is willing to work on them.
 

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