A Golfer I'm Helping

Here are two videos, both with a 5-iron: Face On , Down the Line .

This golfer regularly shoots mid-80s. He's fairly tall, albeit thin, and gets almost no power. Women could out-drive him. Old women. He relies on a scrappy if not always great short game and enough "odd" shots that I've taught him (8-irons from 90 yards, swoopy cut 5-irons from 130, etc.) to get around. Still, he has the potential to become a 3 handicapper rather than the 9 he is now.

First, too, let me say that these swings aren't indicative of his usual contact. He's working on some things that are VERY different than what his swing has become over the winter, and this was the first day of working at them.

That being said, he's working on:

1. More wrist in the takeaway. His hands get well outside of his right hip (face on view) before the club hits horizontal. He hits nearly the same position on the way back down, and thus effectively casts the club, losing tremendous power.
2. The extra, earlier wrist break on the takeaway should lead to the club being a bit more on plane (straight back from his hands when it reaches horizontal). He tends to get the club behind him rather than keeping it in front of him, and that leads to a very low "top of the backswing" position.
3. Once his club gets horizontal, I'd like him to focus on "lifting" the club up. You don't actually just "lift" it, but that's what it "feels" like for him. You do it by continuing to turn your shoulders.
4. Finally, we're working on firming up the left arm. It breaks down and bends quite a bit, leading to an overly long backswing and loss of clubhead control at the top. The "lift" move helps to stabilize that, and with the earlier wrist break, should lead to an almost-horizontal position at the top with firmer, more in-control arms and wrists.
5. The last thing we're working on: some tweaks to the setup. His stance gets too narrow and that restricts his weight shift. He has almost none going back. I like to pre-set the weight back, turn on top of the right leg, and then fire forward. I'd like his hands a teeny bit further forward, his front foot perhaps flared a bit, and his spine tilted just slightly to the right.

We've already addressed that by making the wrists hinge earlier in the backswing. When he does that, he tends to hold the angle longer. It's been my experience that it's true for a lot of players (within physical capacity).

I think I'm on top of it. Good response, and I hope you don't mind me adding a few extra thoughts.

Right, and we're attempting to correct that, for now, by setting the wrists earlier. It works (for lots of people) out of the rough and out of bunkers (set the wrists earlier to maintain the lag longer), so I think it might work for him there.

Weight shift isn't going to show up in that kind of image. Hip and shoulder turn will...

Nope. His course management and shot selection are the only reason he can get around the course 80-85 these days and with that swing. We've played rounds together (often from the red tees) where I tell him what to hit on every shot. Sometimes it's a high fade with a 5-iron from 120 to a front right flag. His course management we don't have to work on much - he's fine. And by fine I mean, like his shot selection, he's about 10x better than most people.

Yeah, that's next. I'm not going to worry about that now though - I want to fix the path of the golf club before we get into how wide his stance is (which I believe is part of the reason he's not got much weight shift - there's nowhere for it to go).

I've seen people hit the ball 280 on the fly sitting in a chair. Though I don't believe completely in the "X Factor," it says that power is the difference between shoulder and hip turn. Steve gets to 100 degrees of shoulder turn (but that's where he gets sloppy - so he may end up at about 90, which is fine) and very little hip turn.

It's Erik, and I'm not asking anyone else to critique the guy's swing. I might post some follow-up videos that show the results, or not, but at this point I'm explicitly ignoring (as is he) anyone else's take.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't believe I ever asked anyone. I'm not really interested in the theories of others, even if they agree with me.

17.

Please read that section again. He doesn't hit his 5-iron 130 yards. I sometimes make him hit 5-iron from 130 yards to a front pin in training rounds to help develop his sense of feel and heighten his shotmaking skills.

It's helped a little so far, but frankly, his lag is the last thing I'm going to worry about. It's obviously far more important to make solid, consistent contact with a predictable ball-flight. So we're working on that, then I'm going to make sure his "dip" (of his head) is gone and widen out his stance. Then probably towards early August, we'll see where his lag is.