Lesson of the Week: John Hughes

John is a website member who happened to be traveling through Florida at the same time I was teaching in Boca, so he took advantage and came over for a couple hours. John is a big, athletic guy with a nice looking motion but had been really struggling with his ball striking. As usual it was not immediately apparent in a full speed swing what the issues were, but when we slowed it down and looked more closely it was easy to see a common pattern that is produced when the right arm stays too “pinched” in front of the chest in the backswing. From face on John had the appearance of width in his takeaway as his hands moved well away from his right hip at shaft parallel, but from down the line we could see that his upper arm had gained very little depth. This right arm movement is quite common and almost always produces the same pattern: the right arm and shoulder (because they feel like they haven’t turned enough) try to gain that turn late in the backswing. Because the right shoulder is trying to help complete the turn (it should never do that) it jams itself backwards when it really needs to be free to move forward. In John’s case the pull- back actually initiates his downswing by leaning his upper trunk over his lower, which as we know is out of sequence and will almost always steepen the shaft instead of shallowing it. The right arm is now out of position to deliver and effective strike and impact will be flippy at best. John really got the idea when he figured out that he would never move that way if he were trying to throw a ball with a low sidearm motion. Our goal is to first get the right arm to move better going back, then to sequence the swing by initiating from the lower body to get the upper right arm to tip to more vertical so that the club can flatten instead of steepen. Once he gets better at that he will really have to work on his lower body rotation as he is used to being slow with the legs to allow the steep approach to drop in and not come completely over the top.
 

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