Menu
Ryan has been a faithful member of the website for quite some time, and he has done some very nice work on his swing, especially when it is viewed from down the line. He compresses nicely on the backswing, bring the club up smartly on the shaft plane, and gains depth with the hips while moving symmetrically with the legs and knees. His shoulder, arm, and wrist angles are all quite good as he approaches the top of the swing, but unfortunately the top doesn’t’ come soon enough and the swing goes back overly long, causing some sequence problems and hand path on the downswing that is much too vertical. My advice for Ryan centers on the attempt to control the length of his backswing through various mental tricks, firm wrists, and the use of his video camera. He needs to start his forward swing much sooner than he is doing here, so he is going to need to experiment with trying to start his hips moving into the downswing motion (“catching” the backswing) at different times, all earlier than he is used to. He won’t know which thought will produce the correct length until he tapes the attempt and views it on the camera. It is important that he doesn’t just try to shorten his swing, because the tendency with that kind of simplistic thought is to cut off the upper trunk movement and lose out on a large power source. He can still wind up fully early and “catch” the backswing movement if he learns to start forward sooner by driving off the ground from the inside of the right foot. He will also benefit by firming up his wrists as he gets to the end of his backswing, and hopefully will find that by doing so he will actually help them arrive into the impact area “later”. This is another counter-intuitive oddity in the swing in that overly cocked wrists tend to want to unwind (or “cast”) as they head to impact, while controlled wrists may bend into the downswing, “downloading” or lagging much more than wrists that seemed more cocked at the top.