Online Lesson: Jamie Kilmer, PGA Part 3

Jamie, the Head Professional at the Wheatley Hills Golf Club on Long Island, started working with me this January in Florida where he came to see me three times before heading back to his job in March, with the idea of improving his ball striking so he could be competitive in his local section PGA events. (You can watch Jamie’s past lessons on the website). Since then we have done a few online lessons, but as Jamie got into the busy part of his season we didn’t connect for about 5 months. Recently he sent me some swings after having poor tournament results, which is what you see analyzed here. Jamie tends to be flippy at impact with his hands approaching wide and quite high, and as usual I go back to the beginning of the swing to look at how the backswing affects everything else. The first thing I notice is that Jamie is constantly closed at address and triggers his swing by adding more knee and hip flex while loading down into the right hip. I believe that this overly early loading and flexing of the right hip causes him to run out of motion in the lower body by P3, and to lift his arms from P3 to P4. In addition to the arm lift is right upper arm and shoulder pull back, which causes the shaft to cross the line at the top. As he finishes his backswing his arm lift leans his upper body prematurely forward, which coincides with a lift and spin of the entire pelvis. He is then unable to lower his arms in the forward swing and get his right arm in front of his chest, and thus approaches impact with high and wide hands. I would like to see Jamie open his stance a bit at address and start his swing with less trigger from a taller position. I use Rory McIlroy’s swing to demonstrate a takeaway with delayed hip rotation and a maintenance of hip flexion to a point further along in the backswing. That would leave Jamie with the opportunity to create more load as he reaches transition, which would then allow him to sequence his swing more efficiently and to synchronize his arms with his pivot so that he might come closer to the original shaft plane at impact with his right arm more in front of him and his hands more forward.
 
 

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