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This week’s lesson is a long time student, former major league pitcher Rick Wagener. Rick only plays a few times a month, but as an accomplished athlete he still expects to perform decently and hates hitting the ball with the glancing, cut-across action that his swing tends to produce. Rick’s main headache is that he is a lefty playing righty, which means that his throwing arm is now switched to the right, which even for someone who understands the basics of throwing as well as Rick does is still his uncoordinated side. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen transitions and downswings look like Rick’s, only to find that the player is left handed.
In Rick’s case, and in all the cases of players switching sides (I taught two Canadian brothers who played lefty even though they were right handed because their hockey coach needed left wingers and taught them to hit their slap shots left handed, which carried over into golf) I have to essentially teach them to throw side-arm with the opposite arm, not such an easy task. However, in Rick’s case we have been at this for a number of years, and in this lesson I only had to remind him of the importance of proper sequence (starting the lower body forward 45 degrees before the backswing was finished) and the feeling of the club lagging against his right index finger with the shaft laying back more behind him while he opened up his body. He soon transformed his cuts and shanks into solid draws, and left the lesson a very happy camper.
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