Jimmy is an avid golfer and a long- time member of the website who has sent me his swing for analysis a number of times in the past as well as driven down from upstate NY to spend time with me at Woodmont. I recently went to South Florida to spend a couple days with Jimmy at his clubs in Jupiter, Jupiter Hills Golf Club and Tequesta Country Club. We played each day then worked on the range down in Boca, and as you will see Jimmy has worked hard and made some significant progress with his swing.
Jimmy’s major issue and the thing that attracted him to the website in the first place, is his lower body movement in transition and through impact, which by force of habit kicks up underneath him and causes him to stand up and pull back as he hits the ball. He has the ability to lag the club fairly well, thus his leg movement causes the hands to approach high and the clubface to remain open into impact, which kills him with the driver as he tends to hit big blocks on tight holes when he hangs on trying to steer the ball. We have worked hard on getting his initial movement forward to be more toward the 45 degree left move that I often talk about as a staple of a good swing, and we have combined the thought of having the hands move outward toward the ball as an adjunct to this move. Jimmy was prone to trying to hit from the inside in order to draw the ball, but this thought just exacerbated his tendency to get stuck with the shaft behind his hands and hit it even more to the right. When we played at Tequesta he hit the first 13 fairways (then started thinking about hitting all of them and of course blocked on 18) and shot and easy 80 from the back tees (he usually plays one up) without much of a short game to help the score. We will continue our work on the swing, add some needed pitching work, and he is looking forward to competing in his club tournaments in New York this summer.