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I was surprised on Friday afternoon to see the name “Len Mattiace” in my book for an hour lesson Saturday, since most Tour players would probably call me directly first to see if I had extended time available, and probably wouldn’t schedule the lesson through the shop like a normal person would. As it turned out, Len showed up at 9:40 for his 10 am lesson, as nice and unassuming as could be. He had not been playing well for some time, and was not particularly happy with the things he was working on. He had heard my name around and had watched some of my internet stuff and decided that since he was driving from a missed cut on the Web.Com Tour in Pennsylvania to his home in Jacksonville he would stop in Rockville and see me.
Lenny won two Tour events in 2002 then lost the Masters in a playoff in 2003 to Mike Weir. He then had the unfortunate circumstance of tearing both of his ACL’s in a skiing fall, and subsequently returned to golf a lesser player. He would like to go to Q-School and eventually get back on the Tour, but his real interest is on becoming a better ball striker, after which success will take care of itself. He was looking for a new and different direction to head with his swing, and he liked some of the things that I tended to discuss regularly in my video swing analysis of various Tour stars and former greats. A lot of you are probably getting to the point where you are seeing the same things that I usually point out, and certainly here it’s not too hard to pick out the fact that he is not lowering much at all in the backswing (in fact it looks as though he lifts a bit), and that his hands drop straight down or even behind him in the start of the forward. The end result is a relatively weak approach to impact and some inconsistent ball striking.
The move to have the hands come out toward the ball in the forward swing is a radically different pattern for Len, but in a fortunate occurrence (it being the Labor Day weekend) I had plenty of time after lunch to keep working with him so we ended up putting in about 3 ½ hours, which gave us time to go through things in detail and to get him to eventually make some swings that really looked different. He liked the ideas I presented and when I showed him a number of players (many of whom he had played with in the past) who made the “out” move to start down he was encouraged and accepting of the information. He will send me some swings from Jacksonville as he begins to work on this, and I will keep you apprised of our progress.
Click to view more lessons with Len:
Playing for Money: Lenny Mattiace Part 2
Playing For Money: Len Mattiace Part 3
Playing For Money: Len Mattiace Part 4
Playing for Money: Len Mattiace Part 5