Menu
If you didn’t think that changing swing patterns was difficult just watch this video. John is a good player and an avid practicer, and after his last online lesson at the beginning of the summer he had a good idea of what I wanted him to work on. When he sent in his swing again last week I expected to see something quite different, but it didn’t turn out that way. The issue of dropping the hands back and down in transition, which pins the right arm back against the right side and usually leads to a certain amount of flippiness through impact is simply a hugely difficult tendency to change. The sensation of having the hands move out toward the ball while the club leans back is such a different feeling that it is even hard to do on the range or in drills. I figure that players who ask me for help are doing so because they are not satisfied with their ball striking, and when I see swings with lots of good stuff happening but the hands are dropping back and down I am going to address that issue first and foremost. It will take a tremendous amount of work and focus to fix this. The idea will be to do stop and go drills, slow motion drills, one arm drills (and anything else the teacher or student can think of) while filming both the drills and full swings right after, to see what thought or combination of thoughts produces a better pattern. I have seen this work over time with Kevin Streelman, and Connor Kumpula made the change with only online lessons, while other lesser players have accomplished this to some degree as well, so it can be done. Of course it is always up to the student whether or not to continue to try after finding how difficult the change is to achieve, but for my part I will encourage any player to keep after it, and if I can get them to at least stop dropping the hands backwards or straight down I know they will have improved.
Join the forum discussion on this post