Online Students: Jim Lungstrom

Ryan Lungstrom sent in his father’s (Jim’s) swings for an online lesson as a Father’s Day gift. I always tell people that it is very humbling to be given as a gift, so thank you Ryan. Here is Ryan’s email to me explaining his dad’s predicament:

Wayne- These swings were recently shot of my Dad, Jim Lungstrom. Jim is 57 years old and been golfing for around 30 years. His usga index is currently 11.9. Jim takes pretty good care of his body and is pretty athletic for his age. He can play well at times but is prone to losing a lot of swing speed in his full swings and struggles with inconsistent contact on the club face. Lately, many of his drives are a high short push, however, the majority of his iron swings tend to be a draw or pull draw. Some of his big misses are chunks, toe-shanks, heel (with his driver) and weak shots. I think he has a decent understanding of swing mechanics, but he struggles with making lasting swing improvements and can get a little overwhelmed with knowing how to make changes and the order of changes he should be making.

Video note- the 7 iron swings were taken from a mounted tripod, the driver swings were taken on the course and secured to my head cover but there is a very tiny bit of movement.

As you will see, Jim has some areas to work on that, if he makes some necessary changes, should really help him strike the ball better. Most of what he needs to do has to do with tightening up and shortening a swing with too much movement just about everywhere. Keeping the hips in the box in the face on view will be a great start. Then increasing his grip pressure and trying to shorten the backswing by keeping the hands to the right of his head for greater width at the top will also be a big improvement. Going back to the setup you can see that Jim is leaning well left, so if he centers his weight and braces his right leg and foot his backswing should tighten up considerably. After that I think it is a good bet that his forward swing will be better right away, and he will certainly be more able to work on his forward swing at that point.