Being inspired by the TV series featuring Hank Haney in the Golf Channel I have decided to do my own mini version. The videos featured in this blog are of Stuart, the Marketing guy at Chartridge Park Golf Club. Stuart is a self confessed hacker. He is my version of Charles Barkley (featured in the Haney Project, check out his swing here), he currently struggles to break 100, often shooting scores towards 120. He has broken 100 in the past, but right now has trouble hitting the ball consistently. My goal is to get him breaking 90 in six months.
First lesson I asked Stuart what he thought he was doing wrong. I like to ask this to my new clients just to get some idea of how their movements and their feelings are related. Often swing faults are exacerbated by people working on the wring fixes. He described his problem as coming over the top and he felt his problem was his weight falling forward on his downswing. He had been shown a drill to put golf balls under his toes in his setup to prevent this from happening.
Now my philosophy in my coaching has been to always get to the root of the problem in the swing. This is always based in the setup first.
As you can see in the top video, Stuart is bent over with a lot of curvature in his upper back, he also has quite straight legs. Stuarts has quite a longer body with shorter legs, this means poor posture will result in him This is not an athletic posture. The majority of the lesson was dedicated to fixing this. I got Stuart to get his spine into the correct straight back position with the muscles of his core and his upper back engaged. We also worked on getting Stuarts' thigh muscles engaged, holding him strong and balanced. As you see below this is a much more athletic position. All he needs to do now is practice so that he can actually relax into this position as lose some of the unwanted tension you can see.
The other thought I wanted Stuart to work on was to improve the transition from backswing to forward swing. Stuart has a common problem amongst amateur golfers in that he starts his downswing with a turn back at the target. There is so much talk about turn in golf magazines and books that people often think the downswing should start this way. In fact the real important move before turn is the lateral movement of the hips towards the target. This lateral move allows weight to shift to left foot and also to get the club started in the correct plane for the movement through the ball.
Stuarts original swing
The results of these changes were immediate. He has begun striking the ball better and hitting his woods with a nice draw. Obviously this is just a start and we have plenty of work to do to break 90. Keep in touch for more videos and lesson information.
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