Menu
Eric is a former high level baseball player who came to golf later in life and has made great strides since joining the staff at a local country club where he works as an assistant. His swing looked great to the eye due to his athletic fluidity, but the ball was curving quite a bit right to left, which is always a combination of face and path issues. With talented players like Eric the hook spin is commonly caused by an overly in-to-out path combined with a closing face to keep the ball from going directly to the right. The key to the lesson will be to figure out why the club is approaching impact in that manner, and after watching the swing in slow motion it was obvious to me that Eric’s upper right arm and shoulder were overturning and pulling behind him in the backswing and then falling further behind him in transition, causing the club to cross the line at the top, which meant that he had to flatten, or shallow, the shaft to get it onto a decent approach plane. When the right shoulder pulls back, and transition is in the correct sequence it becomes difficult to stop the club’s flattening soon enough to steepen it back onto plane heading toward impact. I had him hit some shots with the “stop and go” drill, focusing on keeping the right upper arm and shoulder externally rotated in front of him, which in turn caused the club to point more left, or “on plane” at the top, a position that would reduce the need for flattening the shaft and give him more time to use the left arm, forearm and wrist to move the club out onto the plane and close the face more gradually while exiting more left on the correct arc and less down the line.
Join the forum discussion on this post