Online Lesson: Ken Thayer- Wonderful Technique but Could Benefit from Less Right Load and Left Wrist Flexion

“I am in the business and recently opened up an indoor golf place.  I have been making a ton of changes to my swing and have periods of great ball striking and then periods when fighting it especially with the driver. Last year I was hitting a little cut, I knew where it was going but felt I left lots of distance on the table. This year changed to more of a draw but have issues with solid contact and consistency. I am curious what you see in my swing. In these videos my wrist is in pain, so I am swinging a bit slower than normal. Usually my driver is 110-113.”

As you will see in the video Ken’s swing is excellent, and I only have two major suggestions for him: One, he could move less off the ball in the backswing with his driver. I’m all for right loading, but when the head moves more than half a head out of its original position at address (given that the head is not already overly leaned to the right, which Ken’s is not) it tends to pull the lower body to the right along with it, and unless there is a large amount of lateral movement back to the left with both upper and lower the hips tend not to get forward enough at impact. I’d like to see Ken try to cut down the right movement to no more than half a head, and at the same time try to keep his hips more in the face on box. The second suggestion has to do with his left wrist. Ken has a strong grip with lots of extension in the wrist (which I am fine with) but he maintains that extension (also called “cup”) all the way to P6, which does not give him much time to square the face and promotes more of a throw or flip type release than a player of his caliber would want. I don’t think the wrist should move into flexion immediately at the start of the downswing as that promotes the handle dropping too straight downward, but after the lower body “catches” the backswing and the left arm is pulled into the forward swing the hands will travel 6 inches to a foot before the wrist should begin to turn down, or “bow” into flexion, so right around P5, maybe a hair before or a little after.

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