Wayne DeFrancesco | Wayne DeFrancesco Golf Instruction

Getting Ready for the Senior PNC

I used to play in just about every tournament that was on the schedule for club pros in my section (Middle Atlantic), but now, at 56 and coming off 5 years of mediocre play, I am much more selective and tend to play in the ones that would merit a spot on the resume’ if I should happen to win. The Senior Professional National Championship (formally the Senior CPC before some genius changed the name) is one of those events, as in addition to being the biggest tournament a senior club pro can play in that’s not a Tour event…

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Online Student: Nicholas Sheppard

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Nick is an 8 handicap who is dissatisfied with his ball striking, suffering from general inconsistency with pull hooks and weak block fades being the most prevalent bad shots. We see here a solid set up and a pretty good looking move, but the first thing that jumps out is the slow backswing tempo. I count the swing out (to 40/8) and suggest using the metronome to add pace to the backswing. One of the reasons that the 3/1 rhythm is so common amongst good players is that it encourages an athletic transition, and that means that the lower body…

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Steve Stricker: Soling the Putter Lightly

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

This is a short video in which Steve Stricker, one of the best putters of his generation, demonstrates how lightly he soles the putter on the ground before he starts his backstroke. You can easily see Stricker lifting and bouncing the putter as he sets up, trying to get the weight of the putter in his hands and not pressing down into the grass. He still maintains contact with the ground, but only minimally, which allows him to stabilize the putter (hovering the putter off the ground is difficult to do without it wobbling around) and to start his stroke…

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Online Student: John Mannion Part 2

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

If you watched John’s first online lesson you can readily see that he has made great improvements in his swing simply by normalizing his setup, which was pretty radically tilted back and to the right initially. Here he looks nice and square and centered, and it makes a huge difference in the overall path of his swing. Now we can move on to other important items, namely his tendency to overswing and to spin his hips rather than driving them laterally. The concepts I go over here are the “early catch”, wherein I encourage John to experiment with trying to…

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Online Students: Tom Richards Part 6

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Tom has taken more online lessons than anyone, and has also come to see me face to face at least twice. I am proud of the improvement he has made in his swing, as it is obviously apparent that he makes a much better overall move than he used to, and he is getting better all the time. Of course, there are always things to work on, and in this lesson we focus on improving his leg work in order to get the hands to continue to move more out toward the ball and less down, and eventually more forward…

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Online Students: Neil Aitkin

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Here we see how a poor start to the swing affects everything that follows. Neil sets up fairly well, although I do suggest that he stand up a bit taller, a feeling that would be made much easier if he aimed the grip end of the club at or above his belt buckle as opposed to well below it as we see here. This would also give him more room away from his legs at address which will help him move the hands and the grip closer to his right leg as he takes the club back. Neil has a…

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Swing Analysis: Bruce Lietzke

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

Lietzke was renowned for his ability to fade the ball in any and every circumstance, and he made quite a nice career out of it, winning 13 times on the PGA Tour over a 17 year span, and another 7 victories on the Senior Tour, including the U.S. Senior Open in 2003. He wasn’t one to grind too much, and played in far less tournaments per year than his compatriots, never playing in more than 25 in a single year. One famous story has it that after his last tournament of one year his caddy put a banana under the…

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Online Students: Derrick Bracewell

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

This lesson continues the pattern of having swings sent in from good players seeking to improve a swing that is already way better than the vast majority of golfers. It just goes to show you how difficult it is to identify flaws in a nicely sequenced swing and to figure out just what can be done to make things better. Derrick’s swing has tons of good stuff in it: great sequence with a “hard catch”, good lines with the club not really varying much from being “on plane”, and plenty of lag with a nice looking impact. Most of the…

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TP&C: Brad Faxon

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

A couple weeks ago Kevin Streelman called Brad to ask him for some help with his putting, and Brad, knowing that I had done a swing analysis on Kevin, gave me a call to see if I had spent any time with him. I hadn’t, but we began to discuss teaching in general and eventually I asked Brad how his game was going. We had worked together for a day back in 2010 up in New York, but subsequently Brad decided to work with Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer and has been doing so up until last month. He remembered…

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Online Students: Ted Haley

By Wayne | Videos: Online Students

Here we have another exceptional swing with excellent rhythm and tempo and seemingly spot on mechanics that under closer scrutiny reveals some key issues that has its owner seeking help. Many times I do these swing analysis’ and through laziness or just procrastination don’t write the copy for a while and then am forced to watch the whole video over again in order to come up with a coherent summary of what the swing was doing and what I thought would be good ideas to help it out. What strikes me as I watch is the subtlety of problems that…

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