Playing for Money: Derrick Sherard- Less use of Right Side in the Backswing and More Use of the Ground Through Impact

By Wayne | Videos: Playing For Money

Derrick is a professional living in West Palm Beach who works a couple of golf courses and would like to improve his game enough to compete in some mini-tour events and have a chance to earn some money. I usually see him a few times when I come down for the winter, but that hasn’t been enough to get his ball striking to where it needs to be. The swing Derrick brought to this lesson shows the patterns that we have seen for some time, and hopefully if I have improved my teaching, we can find ways to improve his stubborn tendencies. Derrick has always been an in to out swinger, and when he gets the clubhead behind him early in the swing it usually follows that he overturns his right side and gets his right upper arm and shoulder too far behind him. From there he can’t get the club back in front of him in the forward swing and approaches impact with the clubhead well behind his hands, causing a flippy, in to out impact. I start here trying to get Derrick’s backswing on plane and his right hip twisting less behind him, adding a bit of external rotation to the upper right arm to keep it more in front of his chest at the top. The stop and go swings definitely look better, but through impact his lower body still tends to collapse as he stays down in his forward bend too long. To help this issue we do an impact drill where he situates his lower body in a deep, left and rotated position with the shaft at P6, then with a pumping action builds to a delivery in which he uses the ground more effectively by pushing up with the left leg and driving the right side of the pelvis up into the left. This standing up to the left action extends the upper thoracic and helps the upper right side to drive into the follow through so the right wrist bend can be sustained past impact.