Menu
Hello Wayne! Greetings from Myrtle Beach. I’d like to do a video lesson.
A bit of background for you first. Overall I’m a decent player and my handicap is usually in the 1-3 range. I’ve qualified for my State Am several times and won a couple of club championships and small local amateur tournaments. However, I’ve always fought my golf swing. If I could bring my long game up to the standard of my short game I think it would allow me to reach my goal of being a true scratch.
I miss in both directions a lot and I lack a consistent shot pattern. That said, the most common, destructive, scorecard-wrecking miss is a big pull to the left. I also mishit way too many shots for someone in my handicap range. My most common mishit is in the heel but I also hit them heavy and thin a lot as well. Sometimes I can get it going and hit some good shots, but when it goes bad it goes REALLY bad.
One thing I would really appreciate is if you’re going to tell me more than one thing, please tell me the PRIORITIES so I know what order to work on things and what to be concerned about most.
As you can see from Phil’s email he is an accomplished player. From the video it is easy to see why: he has excellent control of the shaft both in the backswing and forward swing, never getting stuck or overly out with the shaft, and arcs the club quite nicely through impact. What he lacks is a more involved pivot, and since this is the “pivot compression” golf swing website, he has come to the right place. His address is somewhat erect, but that is not a problem in itself as we see many great players start off standing quite upright. Most of these players, however, create more flex and posture in the backswing by loading into the ground and deepening the right hip, something that Phil does not do. My suggestions here start at address as I encourage Phil to bend his arms and take on the “home plate” look. I want him to start his swing by turning the entire upper trunk instead of starting with his hands, and if he does this he will find that his bent right arm will have way more space away from his body throughout the backswing. Along with this greater use of the entire upper trunk (chest, back, lats, obliques) Phil needs to emphasize loading back and down into his right hip. These things are easy to feel when someone cranks you into the proper positions, but not so easy to do on your own. Once he has lowered into the backswing and loaded into his right side he needs to feel that low sidearm motion that Hogan talked about and that I discuss regularly on the website. He will feel way lower to ground approaching impact, which can be disconcerting at first but will eventually be much better as the hands find that they can get more forward with the iron shots when the pivot is more bent over, more driven laterally, and more open to the target at impact. Thus, the priority is the backswing, so stop-and-go drills would be a good drill to use in practice.
Join the forum discussion on this post