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Message to Wayne: Hey Wayne, I’ve been a big fan of your page since 2010 when I was playing college golf down at New Mexico State. I won some big tournaments as a junior golfer and ended up getting a full scholarship, taking lessons from Jeff Coston up here in the Pacific Northwest.
Jeff was very keen on me drawing the ball, which I took to pretty well. I could come from the inside and hit a push draw consistently. Funny enough my swing looked a lot like Zach Johnson’s. But when I went down to New Mexico I could barely get the ball off the ground in the thin air. The low push draw wasn’t working, and I tried to adjust on my own. Unfortunately, I started getting way too steep early on the downswing and was stuck getting close to impact and was hitting my driver everywhere and not far. I basically got the full swing yips and had no idea what I was doing. I started watching your videos and was really trying to implement some of your ideas into my swing. But when you’re trying to shallow the club early in your downswing and get the handle to go left after impact when you have qualifying the next day when it’s blowing 30 mph, all the while your coach is making sure you “slow your backswing down” it makes the game pretty difficult. I embarrassed myself and should have redshirted.
I ended up transferring to Seattle university and basically was a headcase that hacked away for a couple of years. I quit the game afterwards but the past 2-3 years, I’ve slowly gotten back into it. I’m 29 now. I have some old v1 swings that I’d like to show you, I’ve come a long way since my hacking days and am playing some pretty solid golf now. I owe it to your videos. I actually like the way my swing looks, for the most part. I’d like to get a little closer to the original shaft plane without lowering more. I have some back issues that aren’t bad yet but are going to be if I lower like I used to. That combined with the face on view (where my head moves back) isn’t great for the body. I know you know all about that so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Will has good reason to like the way his swing looks. In the video you’ll see that I like it too, as it demonstrates much of what I like to teach. My suggestion to stand further away from the ball at address may seem overly simple but I think it will make a big difference in how Will’s pivot works in the downswing and through impact, where he would like to lower a bit less and certainly back his head and upper body less away from the target as he hits it. Standing so close to the driver (he could add some space for the irons as well but especially with the driver) leaves his right arm with little space to work with in the forward swing and perhaps makes the right shoulder want to drive down and under in order to keep the club from tipping too forward. It also makes it nearly impossible to return to the original shaft plane at impact if that is something you are shooting for. I would like to see what the follow up swing looks like after he starts with 5-6 inches between the grip end and the legs and with his weight more toward the balls of his feet (I forgot to mention the feeling of being “out over the ball” at address). As nicely as his transition works I think he would feel like he was coming more from the side into impact and thus could drive the right shoulder and chest more around instead of under and back, and hopefully his head would remain more in its original position (as far as being forward from face on) as he moves through impact.
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