Lesson of the Week: Justin Duffie Part 5

As you may know, Justin is a great athlete (offensive tackle for the U. of MD and an AAU caliber basketball player) who tackled golf after football was done with and who spent his first few years developing a swing so technically challenged that even his athletic talent couldn’t overcome the difficulty he created at impact. He has worked as hard to change his swing as anyone I have ever worked with, and I always show his original swings side by side with the newer ones so that the obvious results are there for all to see. He still struggles on the course hitting his irons off of tight lies, and we are constantly working toward getting him to build his swing so that he can approach impact with the club more behind him and open, but steepening late in the downswing so that he can move aggressively to the left with his entire body and enable the hands to get more in front of the ball and release around to the left as well.
 
Our main focus in this lesson is to deepen the backswing and to keep that depth in transition, and then to open up both the upper and lower body with the right arm staying bent longer in the impact area so that it straightens more to the left. Our drills are stop and go’s to feel that he is “sticking” the top position and keeping the left arm pinned to the chest instead of lessening the compression between the arm and the upper left pec muscle (allowing the hands to raise up and move outward excessively), punch shots to take that feeling into continuous motion swing, and split hand punch shots to get the feel for opening up the chest through impact. We also do some pre-set punch shots with the right upper arm driven in front of the right hip and the thought of keeping the arm moving with the trunk and staying bent longer past impact instead of straightening early and releasing the hands more out toward the target. My goal is to get Justin to be able to swing aggressively down and left without the fear of the hook, so that he can take the ball off of tight lies with a descending blow.
 

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