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About this blog

I often say that I have an ocean of knowledge, but all a student needs in a lesson is a cup.

This blog is for droplets. Little things I see and notice while giving lessons that may or may not benefit you specifically, but which strike me enough to post here about it.

Entries in this blog

Droplets

Switcheroo

Game 1: PGA Tour Player Switcheroo Imagine a game in which you pair two average PGA Tour players with two average 80s golfers. Team A: the pro hits every shot that requires a Full Swing Motion (roughly every shot from 65+ yards), and the 80s golfer will play every short game shot and hit every putt. Team B: the 80s golfer hits every Full Swing Motion shot, and the pro plays every short game shot and hits every putt. On a typical 7000-yard golf course, what might you expect th
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Science

Dr. Sasho Mackenzie had a quote in the March issue of Golf magazine that I liked. Listen, there'll always be science-deniers and the belief that none of what I or other researchers do is necessary. They're going to be eroded away. There'll be fewer and fewer of these people once the community realizes that science and technology are simply about learning and understanding better ways to swing a golf club. I no longer feel bad for the instructors who fight it, because the information's out t
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Grrrrrrr… Practice Properly You Maggots!

If you do not practice properly, you probably won't get any better. You'll probably say "that instruction doesn't work" (even though you're not doing it). The worst culprits are often the better players. They make two swings slow motion and think they have it. I'm easy at first, gently reminding them. Then I get a little firmer. Then firmer yet. But ultimately I can't go full drill sergeant on them, and whether they practice properly after having the benefits, reasons, process, etc. ex
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Quality of Practice

Far too many people judge the quality of their practice by the quality of the shots they hit when they practice. I choose to judge the quality of my practice by how much I succeeded at learning and improving. I've had great range sessions where I didn't hit a single ball terribly solidly. I've had great range sessions where I didn't hit a ball, with a 6-iron, over 50 yards. I've had great range sessions where I know I'm going to hit a bunch of shanks, and when I do, take that as proof that
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Key #1 - It's Not About the Head

I worked with one of the college players today. His spine was around 31°, and he'd turn his shoulders at about that angle early on in his backswing, but by the time he got to the top it would be 18 or 19°. Predictably, his head drifted back a little, but up a fair amount. So, we worked on Key #1. I could have called it Key #4 (path) but it was a bit more of a secondary effect. Heck, even Key #5 was improved. But Key #1 is not about the head. I know, it's in the name, but we say this: t
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Give or Take 2-3 Degrees

There's a reason @david_wedzik and I trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard"®. https://thesandtrap.com/b/the_numbers_game/angles_of_error Here's a par three that is often a 7- or 8-iron (but can be a 6-iron). A driver on a par five. And another par three that plays from 190-220 yards. In all three cases, you have about +/- 2 or 3° in which to hit your shot, or else we deem the shot "a failure." Set your expectations properly, and give yourselves the credit you deserve whe
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"What Works" is not Always Better

I often see said here on the forum that people will "try things" and "if it works, they adopt it." While occasionally that's fine, more often than not it leads to a destructive path that hinders long-term growth. Things that work "right away" are often band-aids, or compensations. Take this golfer for example: On the left, "his swing." No lessons, just an athlete that "figured some stuff out" that let him at least hit the balls somewhat solidly. He started forward, stayed fo
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Exaggeration Necessary

This golfer is working on not delivering the clubhead AND his hands from so deep: Predictably, he often hit BIG pushes, BIG draws/hooks, and more than his fair share of shanks. Do I eventually want him to swing like the golfer on the right? Absolutely not. But he - like you - has made hundreds of thousands of swings like the one on the left. If he exaggerates in practice, and swings INward more than he eventually should, I'm good with it. I encourage it, in fact.
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The Last Moment of Truth

That comes from the behind-the-scenes peek from the famous Time interview with Tiger Woods: http://scoregolf.com/blog/lorne-rubenstein/the-goods-on-woods/ . Tiger, it turns out, is wrong. The golf swing is too fast. Even if you could instantly form a thought and direct your muscles to do something, it quite literally takes too long for the nerve impulse to travel from your brain to your muscles for it to do anything past about A5. That's right: if your brain hasn't told your muscl
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Finding the Ball

When we work with students, we often tell them that we don't expect them to hit the first 20 or 30 balls "better" or even as good as they were before, we just expect them to hit them "differently." Sometimes that "difference" is better, but often it's worse. The difference is often (not always… it depends very much on what the change is…) an insight into how good a golfer can ever expect to be. You see, some golfers are just better at what @david_wedzik and I call "finding the golf ball."
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I Gave a Bad Lesson Today

I am constantly critiquing myself. I give a lot of good lessons. Lessons about which I feel I did really well. Lessons I'd give myself an "A" for giving; not an A+, mind you, which almost never happens. But As and A-s. And I'm a pretty harsh grader. But today I gave a C+ lesson that I may have recovered and turned into a B+ lesson, if only by recognizing it early enough. The details are unimportant, but basically, I found myself talking about something that was probably priority #3 or
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A Tweet Regarding the Length of the Backswing

The point of the backswing is to turn your body and to slightly bend your trail elbow, to elevate your trail elbow (to varying degrees), and to hinge your wrists (to varying degrees). The first bit — what's commonly called "turning your shoulders" — is the most important. Getting the club to parallel is not even on the list.
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Work Required

Golf is hard™. Change is hard. If you want to get better at golf, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes motivation, and it takes a commitment. It's not something that's going to come easily. Now, I do encourage golfers to work smarter, not harder. There are a LOT of drills you can do hitting a cotton ball, or making swings against a wall, or in a mirror, in five or ten minutes a day at home or in your office. But you've gotta put in at least that much time. Golfers wh
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Small Things, Big Differences

Earlier today I fit a college player and a reasonably good putter with an Edel putter. His putter was a typical blade - the old PING/Cameron/Everyone-Has-a-Version classic blade putter with some heel/toe weighting. He could aim his putter, from about ten feet (bear in mind that the laser reflects back over the same ten feet, doubling the error), to about four inches outside the right edge of the cup. Not great, but not as bad as we've seen from many. His putter had a single, solitary thin l
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Attacking the Root Cause

Quick one today. Below, you'll see a player whose right arm stays pretty straight a long time. This leads to the right elbow getting a bit too far around/behind, and then it gets stuck there on the downswing. The player compensates by tipping the head back (as the right arm stays flexed a long time), and the left arm actually bends slightly too so she doesn't crash down into the ground. In the improved image, you'll note the right elbow flexes sooner. This limits the "late flexin
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The Big Number

I attended the Division III ECAC championship this past weekend. And I saw a lot of quadruple bogeys. On a relatively wide open golf course. It made no sense to me. None. This golf course was not that difficult, and the vast majority of the big scores were from two simple errors: Being far too aggressive at the wrong times. Making utterly horrible swings. For the first, I mean stuff like this: you hit the ball in a fairway bunker, and have a 4-iron left to the green.
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AMCC Championships All Came Down to GamePlanning

My men's golf team won the AMCC Championship this past weekend with a two-day score of 637 (keeping the best four out of five scores). That works out to 79.625 on a fairly difficult layout at Avalon Lakes Golf & Country Club. ALGCC is a Pete Dye course that, like many Pete Dye courses, is very target-golf oriented. Dye seems to love to use visual trickery to goad players into going for more than they can handle. Sure, it rewards the long drive into the very narrow alley way between wate
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I Fix a Lot of Setups

I know we've been talking lately about how setup is "automatic" (or it's not ), but I must say… I fix a lot of setup positions. I don't save out the images from all of my lessons. In fact, only a small percentage of the time do I feel I've done something I want to CC to myself for various reasons. But of those lessons, well, take a look: I'll often tell students: They'll answer "none" or "hardly any" or something like that, and I'll say "Great, you're right! You just have
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Go Back to Your First Lessons

I gave a lesson to a guy the other day who said he wanted to learn "how to play golf." He was being sarcastic, as he's played golf for 40 years or so, has made many nice changes and improvements to his golf swing, and is playing quite well for his age. Despite this, his texts from the day before were of the panicking type. I gave him a lesson. I wanted him to do two things. First, I wanted him to take his left shoulder down a bit more so his head didn't drift back and up during the bac
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We Didn't Work on his Downswing

We worked on his backswing. His pivot. Reducing the sway. And a little bit of setup work (the grip is quite a bit stronger - this player may need to reduce the strength eventually, but not now). This speaks to prioritization. That doesn't always mean fixing the first part of the swing that goes wrong, but often, that's kind of how it feels, because everything after that becomes a compensation.
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Small Change, Big Change

Fixing one thing like this fixed a lot of other things that come after. Proper prioritization is important. For this golfer, fixing this part of the backswing made a lot of later compensations unnecessary.
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JEP Video on "Keeping Your Arms In Front of You"

A video I recorded on a whim today for the two or three kids who missed their session this week in the Junior Elite Program. P.S. I know your hands/arms don't truly stay in front of your chest, but compared to how far to the side many/most people get their hands/arms, they stay a lot more toward the front than they're keeping them now.
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Justin Rose Drill (Hands Drop While You Remain Closed)

A good drill for a LOT of players to do. Note how he also shifts forward with the increased flex on his left knee as he drops the hands down. This is a bit of what I call "throwing" as well - you can feel it in the left arm OR the right arm. I generally prefer it in the right, but you may feel it differently than I or the majority.
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    • StuM
      Stage 5 - Time to Get Golfing

      By StuM · Posted

      Quick update. Foot felt better than in forever today.  Came home and did a full treadmill workout,  ok, it was beginner level, slow and virtually no incline, but I did it. For the first time in ages I hit all of my FitBit goals. Only time I felt any discomfort was while on a decline. I feel like I turned a corner, all thanks to my PT guy and some Kinesiology Tape. 😀 let’s hope I do not pay for it tomorrow.
    • StuM
      Stage 5 - Time to Get Golfing

      By StuM · Posted

      Well, I got insanely busy and fell behind on my Evolvr & 5 minute daily practice in less that 2 weeks. I even skipped my 1st week of league, that has never happened.   I need to be more disciplined! Therapist this morning decided to try something new.  He added some kinesiology tape on the foot & ankle.  That was about 8 am.  By 10am I was feeling a whole lot less pain. 😀  
    • StuM
      Stage 5 - Time to Get Golfing

      By StuM · Posted

      Met with the surgeon earlier today and he is happy and does not want to see me again unless I think something is wrong.  He said the pain is normal and will go away in time but cautioned it could be another 6 months or so.  He said he still sees inflammation and that may take another 6 months to go away as well.   He did give me some things to share with PT which should help. Now that I know to expect the inflation to last a while I need to figure out the golf shoes.  Maybe by a duplicate o
    • StuM
      Stage 5 - Time to Get Golfing

      By StuM · Posted

      Short update, still working on getting back into the full swing of golf (pun intended).  I'm now posting to My Swing page and 5-minute daily practice and will post more on the Stack Speed Training thread as that gets going so this thread my not include a lot of "Golf" but I am getting back into it. I have my 1st two golf trips in just over a month, First is Garland Resort then the TST Outing in Ohio and I really hoping my foot is up to a lot of golf.  I have 5 rounds in 7 days and I'm looki
    • StuM
      Stage 5 - Time to Get Golfing

      By StuM · Posted

      I feel I'm moving in the correct direction.  Did a range session a couple days ago and had no pain after that.  I started my Evolvr but will hold off on The Stack until I am more confident I can do "Maximum Effort" swings.  Right now I feel I am swinging somewhat normally but I'm just not confident enough to push it yet. On The Stack, I really wish I had held off ordering a little and gotten the newer blue-tooth enabled measuring device instead of the PRGR Monitor but oh well.  I'll live.
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