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Seth has been a website fan for some time and traveled all the way from Texas to pay me a visit here in Boca Raton. After watching his first few swings produce less than stellar shots I could see right away that we needed to focus our attention on the takeaway (which whipped way behind him) and his alignment and weight distribution at address, as he was aiming to the right (even with an alignment stick between his feet and the ball) and had his weight back into his heels. As usual with this type of setup for non-tour players, the general pivot movement during the swing works toward the ball, which, along with having the lower body closed, does not allow for timely rotation of the pelvis and encourages right leg thrusting and early extension. Once we fixed the posture and alignment I set up a shaft that would catch the clubhead as it moved to P2 if it stayed too low to the ground. This worked right away and gave his swing an entirely different shape. Seth still tends to move both knees toward the ball in transition, but my choice of what to focus on next was the downswing path of the hands. As you will see I set up a long shaft just to the side of the right shoulder at address, which forces the left arm to swing more across the chest both in the backswing and the forward swing, with the emphasis on the forward swing. The final piece of this practice “station” would be the short shaft between the legs to keep his hips deeper, but we really didn’t have time to go through the whole thing. He started making much better contact, and I felt like we made some real progress on a few very important items.
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