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Austin Lyons is fascinated by the golf swing. He doesn’t get to play as much as he would like, but the attempt to master the technique that only a few are capable of drives him to practice, and to explore means of improving. Austin has been to other, more well- known instructors, but has found his way to my site and is happy to drive the 4 hours from New York City to come down for a face to face. Austin’s problems stem from a fairly typical pattern of movement wherein he keeps his upper right arm up and back with his right forearm tipping to more horizontal in transition, the combination of which almost guarantees a steepening shaft in transition. A shaft that steepens early has to flatten late, and the result many times is that the shaft will be well inside the hands (stuck) at parallel to the ground in the downswing. My focus in these cases is right out of The Five Lessons, the combination sidearm/underhand throwing motion that Hogan perceived as the true fundamental motion of the golf swing. I asked Austin if he could throw a ball sidearm if he used the same technique as he did when he swung the club. He thought about it for a second and then said “no”. The good news is that Austin can throw an effective low sidearm pitch and he can angle it downward 10 yards in front of him (like an iron shot) or up in the air about the trajectory of a Stephen Curry jump shot (like the driver swing). After some hands on work he started to get the feel, and he left feeling very good about what he had just learned.
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