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This one should really give you hope that you can change an overall swing pattern in a relatively short period of time. Bret came to see me about a year ago and I had him work on some of the same things you will see here, but nothing really changed and we were again at a point where the swing pattern was so in-to-out that all he could hit were hooks that started well right, with the added attraction of the random fat and thin shot thrown in. He does manage to get his hands nicely up to the ball with the shaft parallel to the ground in the downswing, but the path is so far from the inside that he can still hit the ground first. One thing is for sure: you can’t swing out and left if the face is closed throughout the swing and especially heading to impact.
One thing I may have missed in our first lesson was the fact that his left hand grip was masquerading as neutral, when actually there was a gap between the top of his palm and the grip, which meant that when he squeezed the club to take it back the top of the hand pressed downward and over and the grip became extra strong. This was obvious from the easily seen comparison of the back of the left wrist at the top with the clubface angle. A normal grip will have the clubface match up somewhat with the wrist angle, while a super strong grip can have a cupped wrist produce a clubface that points up to the sky at the top. From there the face shuts even more coming down, and the only way not to hit a massive pull hook is to swing from inside to out. So, once we fixed his grip and got the clubface more open he hit a few shots way right, it was easy to get him to change the pattern because the pattern change straightened out his shots and allowed him to swing left and take a divot. Everything he had been trying to do with the swing became not only possible to do but desirable.
I also noticed that his tempo was way off, way too slow, so I showed him how to use the metronome and we sped his swing up a bunch. It still has a ways to go to look fluid but the change in pace and rhythm made the swing look much better.
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