Menu
Anyone watching Jeff’s swing at regular speed would be challenged to come up with any obvious errors to work on. Jeff’s weakness is at impact, and as we all know impact happens too fast to see without the use of video to slow down the movement. When we do slow it down, though, it becomes apparent why Jeff’s club/ball contact might be a bit erratic, and his ability to control trajectory could be compromised by his weakness in the impact area. Certainly it is easy to see that the left wrist has broken down directly after he hits the ball, and if we go a click back we see that when the club is parallel to the ground approaching impact his hands are well back from the vertical ball line, which means that there will be less forward lean when the hands reach the ball than the vast majority of high level ball strikers. It is interesting to note that originally Jeff sent a video that was shot without shutter speed, and it was not possible to see any of what I am now focusing on. And it wasn’t that I was sure of what I would see when the swing was filmed so that the slow motion would be clear: on the contrary, I really have little idea what is happening at the ball when the picture is a blur. It always makes me wonder about teachers who don’t use video to slow down the areas of the swing that can’t be seen otherwise.
My prescription here is simple to understand but hard to accomplish. Jeff needs to retain more angle between the hands and the shaft in the downswing, and since his top of the swing position has enough wrist cock his focus needs to be on the feeling of the club dragging back on his right index finger in transition. I suggest impact drills down by impact to get familiar with the feeling and look of the hands being well ahead of the ball before impact, as well as trying to create more drag in transition by using right hand and arm extensor action (pushing the right palm into the left thumb while cocking the wrists) to help create a sharper angle in the start down and then all the way down to where the hands might get even with the ball when the shaft is parallel to the ground. Jeff’s swing is so good in other areas that it may be that by simply focusing more on getting the hands forward at impact he might just be able to accomplish it.
Join the forum discussion on this post