Online Students: Francisco Gomez Paz

Here we see a familiar pattern where a lifting pivot in the backswing causes the club to lay off significantly at the top, which in turn causes the shaft to steepen immediately in transition. This flat to steep progression is a good thing if it happens where the flattening is caused by the initiation of the forward swing movement, and as the club leans back on the right index finger and tries to get stuck behind the player the arms and hands move outward in front of the chest and the pivot drives 45 degrees left, creating space for the arms and hands by adding posture and rotating enough to pull the club around and exit it leftward on the original shaft plane. However, when the flattening occurs in the backswing, and the corresponding steepening movement happens at the start of the forward swing, the right arm cannot move in front of the body (it stays stuck behind the right side) and the lower body tends to respond by driving to the right (out of the box) instead of transferring the weight toward the left heel. As the midsection fills the space that the arms need to pass by near the shaft plane the arms and hands move outward late in the downswing and are forced to release the club (flip) in order to square it and keep the ball from going to the right.
 
The root cause of the problem as I see it in Francisco’s swing is the lift in his pivot in the middle of the backswing. I compare him to Alvaro Quiros, whose swing shows that you don’t necessarily have to have a lot of hip depth in order to make a backswing that compresses into the ground and also has the shaft working from steeper to flatter. My prescription for Francisco is to load weight into his right heel more immediately upon moving his pivot to start the swing, and at the same time trying to work the hands under the club with the wrist cock to “stand it up”. The net result should be a steeper shoulder turn, more angle in the pivot at the waist, a slightly lowering head (instead of a lifting one), and a club that doesn’t lay off at the top. I am reasonably sure that once the club stays more on plane approaching transition that it will not be that difficult to reverse the steepening move he starts down with into an initial flattening move that will encourage his body to stay bent over and his hips to stay “in the box”. Using the stick between the feet on the knee line will be an important part of his practice, as will using a camera to see if he is actually getting the first part of the change accomplished.