By Wayne | Videos: Pro Tip of the Week
Start each shot by committing to developing something that every good player utilizes: a consistent pre-shot routine that doesn’t take too long. Doing the same things just before you hit the ball helps to focus your mind on the task at hand and distracts you from the possible penalties you face for hitting a poor shot.
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I was on vacation in Park City with my website partner Rick, and we were supposed to play golf on Sunday. As it was, I got a stomach virus and was confined to the couch the entire weekend, which turned out to be entirely fortuitous. It was one of the few times that I would rather have been inside watching than outside practicing.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Videos: Online Students
I’ve been working with John for just over a year now and he has made great strides improving his swing and his ball striking. John’s backswing and pivot movement has improved tremendously, and in this lesson I focus on a few details that I think could help his swing retain width as it gets to the top and consequently allow his left arm to respond to his pivot rotation and move his hands more out toward the ball instead of behind him.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Improvement
Peter is a fellow PGA professional who played the South American tour (Tour De Las Americas) for 5 years and Golden Bear Tour (Mini Tour) 5 years 1997-2001. In this lesson I’d like to see a stronger right hand grip with Peter rotating the face of the club more open in the backswing with the palms and clubface more on plane. I want to see the right shoulder externally rotating a bit faster helping keep the right arm from going behind and causing the crossed position at the top.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money
Derek was playing the mini-tours a couple years ago when he found me down in Florida, and we worked a few times to try to improve his ball striking, which was pretty good but not good enough to shoot the kinds of scores needed to make money playing. After this is posted I expect Derek to post on the forum what he has done to accomplish such major changes.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis
This is a great companion to the Jimmy Walker high soft bunker shot video I did a few weeks ago. Here Castro takes his Pitching Wedge and hits what amounts to an open face punch shot from the sand that finishes about 6 feet from the cup. In contrast to Walker’s shot (wide open stance, out to in cut across swing), Castro plays this from an almost dead square stance, then makes an on plane backswing and flattens the shaft on the way down while keeping his left wrist cupped and the face open. He cuts off the finish at waist high, producing a shallow but driving strike.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Videos: Lesson of the Week
Peter is a very good player (he has qualified for the U.S. Mid-Am) who works a lot and doesn’t have time to practice a whole lot. He enjoys working on his swing (he sees a teacher in Chicago) and is a willing student. He is quite strong and has a nice, fluid motion, and I have concentrated in the few times we have worked on helping him improve his grip, stance and posture while going over how I would like to see him simplify his swing. His tendency is to trigger his swing with a sitting back movement and then bow his left wrist while moving his arms and hands away from his body.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Articles: Becoming a Better Player
It would be nice if one swing would work fine for every shot. Certainly, every swing has elements that are similar or even exactly the same, but if you are going to drive the ball well and hit your irons well you are going to have to make adjustments. The key factor here is that with an iron the ball is on the ground (if you’re on a par 3 and can use a tee you should still tee it up low enough to simulate a very good lie in the fairway) while the driver is teed about halfway above the top of the face of the driver, a good inch and a half off the ground.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Improvement
We start this lesson with an idea and to get that idea across I use a face-on driver swing of Ben Hogan as an example of what I want Peter to try and do. Peter’s right hip is returning to where it started causing a lift in transition. I want him to keep his right hip deep and drive it forward towards the target like the Hogan example including the snapping the left leg behind.
Continue readingBy Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis
This is a quick update on my progress utilizing the “drag, flare, and open” takeaway I came up with recently while studying Hogan for the millionth time. It is helping to accomplish a bunch of things I have trying to do with my backswing: get the shaft up on the plane from the beginning of the takeaway (instead of cutting under), keep my upper right arm spaced away from me and higher at left arm parallel, and keep the club on plane and not crossing the line at the top (rotating the wrists and keeping the left wrist cupped externally rotates the right shoulder sooner which in turn stops the lifting of the elbow and lays the shaft off more to the left).
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