AGCP member and PGA pro tells us about swing mechanics and clubfitting at the 2010 AGCP RT Dana Conference in Columbus GA. If you want to take your clubfitting to the next level, join the AGCP as a Golf member. Take advantage of our member only email forum available 24/7/365. Most member will tell you their membership pays for itself in the first week after they join.
Uh thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk to you today again my name is Eric hog I am a PGA certified member I have the distinction of actually working for the organization of which I am a member which is a little bit different um working for the PGA is
A wonderful experience I I get to play with a lot of new toys uh just just wonderful Jerry says he wants to get into my Jerry LEL says he wants to get into my throwaway closet so uh it’s wonderful I do get to work on some of the greatest
And brightest Minds I do get to to be around some of the greatest and brightest people uh when Mr Nick and and Jerry invited me to talk today um about teaching I wanted to do a couple of different things I want to go through
This and I want to tell you a little bit about how I am trained as a PGA member for instruction I want to talk a little bit about how that instruction can be used for fitting and has to be used in fitting and I want to take you through
Some of the things that we do at the PGA Center um before I get started I was uh I was told when you give a speech that one of the things you ought to do is that you ought to Envision the audience in their underwear and I can tell you from my
Perspective it’s uh pretty all inspiring that’s I’ll just put it right there so all right but again my name is Eric we swing mechanics used in professional Club fitting and let me go ahead and start here uh the best lesson some of the things that happen in a golf swing
Are pretty dramatic some of the things that happen in a golf swing should not be discussed with your student this is one of my favorite see if I can get this to work here hold on this is JC Anderson Daniel hold on here still should come up with a picture
Shouldn’t what is you know what are what are the secrets what are the secrets of golf that Pros know well I heard this one time and I I remembered and it’s really if you’d write this down it really help what I try to
Do I try to Flat load my feet so I can snapload my power package that way I can amplify both lag and drag pressure through impact fix as long as my number two power accumulator doesn’t break down I can reach maximum cental force with minimum pivotal resistance you see the
Pivot is utilization of multiple centers to produce a circular motion for generating centrifugal force on an adjusted plane plus the maintenance and balance necessary to two line delivery path see golf is geometrically oriented layer force it involves a physical muscular thrust and a geometry of the circle you can divide the golf swing
Into 24 basic components each having between 12 and 15 variations now when you think of all this and you get it all set hopefully you’ll hit shots like this [Applause] sometimes golf instruction does feel that way doesn’t it I was I’ve been very fortunate in my career I I somebody told
Me early in my teaching career they said these are words you can you can go by you can really write this down uh instead of what JC Anderson just said whatever that was uh you to tell your student half what you think they need because that’s usually twice as much as
They can handle and I think true a words have never been spoken I appreciated Fred this morning talking about simplistic things and I think that’s very true it’s a lot of times so many teachers that I see and that I’ve been around want to tell you what they know
Not necessarily what you need and so uh to me I as we go through here golf instruction and professional Club fitting are we Partners or are we pugilists okay I hope partners for the betterment of all i’ I’ve had so many students that come to me with clubs that are way too
Long way too heavy and way too upright and I know what they’re going to be doing before I see them make a golf swing by looking in their bag but I think that can work the other way around too if we are teaching in an incorrect
Way we can’t fit you for what you need to do to me this is the central question of what I want to discuss today are we Partners or are we pugilists are we’re going to be fighting against each other I want to go through a little bit again
About how I’m trained and Dane this will probably be fairly familiar I think you know somebody who might have written some of this stuff but uh danne’s father Dr Gary ryron is a wonderful wonderful golf professional wrote a lot of the training manuals that we have used in
The PGA for a number of years but really golf instruction can be boiled down into three key components which are laws principles and preferences laws are absolutes and they are simply reserved for ball flight there are only five of them we’ll get to them in just a minute
Everything that we deal with when we’re instructing people when we’re instructing our students is trying to get these five laws to work out principles or subjective judgments related to the golf swing which again we’ll discuss here in a minute and then finally preferences are where teachers work this is descriptions of style and
Choice uh it’s interesting you go to One Professional and he tells you that your swing’s too upright you go to another professional he tells you your swing’s too flat well you know what both are correct for their system for what they’re trying to accomplish so laws let’s take a look
At those there are again only five of them and I bet we’ve heard of most of these speed centeredness of hit path to the golf club face orientation and angle of approach these are the five laws that we’re instructed that control ball flight these have to do with the 14
Major principles that we are taught as golf professionals and probably some of these look fairly familiar as well grip aims setup plane position dynamic balance which we’re going to talk about a little bit later swing centers connection impact right and then last but not least are preferences and these again is where teachers
Work I’m very fortunate where I work I get to robbles with the likes of Mike Bennett who was one of the co-inventors of the stack and Tilt swing method well you know what Jimmy Ballard might be around next week too it’d be interesting to get those two in a conversation but
Uh yeah again everyone is correct in their own system but is that system correct for you is really where we need to be spending our time so laws principles and preferences laws principles and preferences the game of golf is divided into 35% full shots 25% shorter shots pitches chips bunker shots 40%
Putting 100% frustrating okay it is interesting to me that these percentages do not change dramatically regardless of the ability level Okay Tiger Wood’s percentages are just about the same as the ranked beginners so it is interesting if you look at those numbers we spend so much time teaching and so much time fitting
For full swing particularly driver 35% of the game I don’t know how else I can try to convince my students that we do not need to work on your driver today there are other parts of the game that we need to be spending some time well we actually have some pretty interesting
Machines at the center link tracker.com that is a a website that you should write down link tracker.com is one of our product Partners they are a statistical shot making a statistical gamekeeping system it is a wonderful tool to convince your students that yes that driver is
Wonderful and I might be able to glean you another six or seven feet out of that distance with that driver if we spend some time together but why don’t we work on putting no no no no we we got to work on my driver my my budd’s out
Hitting me by three or four steps well if I help you 10% with 35% of the game I help you four shots if I help you 10% with 65% of the game you can do the math link tracker.com It’s a Wonderful resource for you all right I want to
Break some of this down into some of the teaching styles that we have uh method teaching and cause and effect teaching are the two styles that I deal with with my students and also some of the teachers that we uh that we see stack tilt one plane two plane Jimmy Ballard’s
System David Le most of us have a system that we prefer I think the great teachers can modify their systems to fit the student student-led lessons method teaching basically says that there is a best way to swing a golf club and that is to move players into a more structured program of Swing
Mechanics I always like to say that if you’re really good with a hammer everything in life begins to look a little bit like a nail okay right if you have long limbs if you have short limbs I think that there are different methods that you can
Use but myself at 5 foot n with relatively long arms for my height might prefer a different style of play might prefer a different style of Swing than somebody who is say 5 foot4 with shorter arms who’s A Little Bit Stronger Than I am methods work but I don’t think they
Work for everyone cause and effect teaching is dealing with other things they are dealing with Dynamic swing relationships with limitation of correct and incorrect analysis efficiency of motion with player preferences are emphasized um I personally when I give a lesson I feel like I know where I’m
Going in the lesson before I ever see a player hit a shot the player interview actually how they’re walking to the tea what hand did they reach into their pocket to grab the wallet to pay for the lesson of they’re playing right-handed but they sign the check left-handed okay
A lot of things that you can glean just by watching somebody walk watching somebody move and I think if we can understand some of those aspects of teach teaching again student Le lessons then I think we can have a student Le lesson instead of a teacher-led lesson okay teaching and fitting
Styles again quick fix or simply building neuromuscular Pathways for long-term Player Development now that’s a long- winded way of saying is this are we in this for the long haul or is the Club Championship next week okay these are two very distinct different types of lessons the first one quick fix I think
Emphasis on Club performance and Club fitting can be very very strong indicator very very strong I don’t know how many times I’ve had some statement like that coming to the lesson te gosh you know I haven’t played in two years but the company outings on Tuesday can you help
Me well yeah I can help you okay we’re going to go through a different lesson than I would if you said the club championship starts in 2013 can you help me we’re going to have a very different lesson okay okay I call this triage or microwave mentality I am not really
Necessarily teaching long-term Player Development in this type of lesson I am trying to get you through the weekend now there is nothing wrong with that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with teaching someone in this mentality in fact a significant percentage of my lessons are this mentality unfortunately okay takes a long term
Long time to develop actual neuromuscular Pathways which is the way my brain tells my muscles to move in the simplest terms it’s hard to do over a weekend there’s all kinds of studies that I’ve seen I’m sure you have too it takes somewhere around 10,000 repetitions to change a motor skill I
Doubt you are going to have 10,000 repetitions before tomorrow’s Club Championship so what do we can what can we do in this quick fix mentality well I think it comes down to balancing the cart and this is a teaching philosophy that I think is not taught enough I
Appreciate Jim Hardy if anybody has spent some time with Mr hardy or read any of his books he does this wonderfully I get students that come to me that slice the golf ball anybody else get that besides me yeah about 93% of all students right what’s the primary cause of a
Slice simplest terms isn’t an open Club face all right if I’m a player and have any kind of ability and I am slicing the golf ball because of my open Faith where am I going to swing the club to the right of the Target or to the left of the target as a
Right-hander I’m going to try to swing it to the left of the target to compensate for the open face does that help well I can I guess you know there’s a relationship between how the face works and how the path works but it is a complimentary or compens compensatory
Activity so here’s me as a student okay I’m going to fix this guy he’s got an open Club face I’m going to look at his grip ah his grip’s open I’m going to fix that open grip I fix his open grip now I get the club face more neutral where
Does he hit the golf ball did I help him or hurt him okay now he’s lining up left because he slices the ball I fix his Club face and he pull hooks everything for three weeks right I’m correct I did fix his Club face but I didn’t balance the cart okay this is
Where teaching and I think fitting and I think instruction fails 90% of the time is we yes you know what I read a magazine last week that says you’re if you play the ball position too far forward you’re going to do X Y or Z well maybe he’s moving the ball forward
Because he’s doing a and c and that compensates for his problem always got to look one step deeper especially in the Quick Fix mentality what I like about balancing the card here or excuse me what I like about building Pathways for long-term development and it is not necessarily tomorrow afternoon reference
I can work on one thing at a time on the bottom of the screen instead of at least two things at a time on the top of the screen commitment to new fields and Concepts process oriented learning and teaching now here’s the problem that I
Face I get a student that comes to me me Mr Smith are you going to be um in this for the long haul or are you trying to make something happen this afternoon oh I’m in this for the Long Haul 97% of all my students tell me they’re in this for the
Long Haul and three swings later when the ball flight is not of their liking how come this isn’t working bro this isn’t working okay that’s kind of frustrating so to me you can ask that question and I still do I kind of get a chuckle out of it sometimes
You can ask a question are you in this for the long haul or is this a quick fix that we’re after everybody’s going to tell you that they’re in this for the Long Haul but it’s our job as Fitters and teachers to ask the next question at
Least internally is this guy telling me the truth is this really what happens is this a true story okay very important I think deciding where you’re going to be teaching in these in these situations I do want to go through again just a couple of uh actually I’ve got three in
The in your packets but I’m only going to put two on the screen here for time there are a lot of instruction myths out there and this one to me is absolutely right on top has anybody ever said this or been taught this is this a great thought no I
Personally think this individual thought is going to put all of my children through college okay whoever came up with this thought I want to send them a thank you card with a gift card in it okay keep your head down to me is absolutely the worst piece of advice you could ever
Give a student it is not an athletic Mo motion if you want to compare it to a different sport let’s compare it to baseball I want the pitcher to never stop looking at the third Baseline and throw a home plate does that work very well in fact
There are only two players that I’ve ever said that do pick their head up here’s one of them she did pretty well the other one by the way would be David Duval the head as part of the the spine and as the spine rotates it again
Let me back up half step this is pretty interesting most people call this shoulder turn do the shoulders have anything to do with this motion what is this should this be called spine turn or thoracic or or trunk turn or core turn something along those lines I like spine turn actually
Is the head part of the spine if the spine is turning should the head turn with it okay if the head stays down we are limiting rotation forward which usually limits power if we keep the head in the ground I am stressing the cervical vertebrae in my spine as we
Go forward I usually stop flip pull do all kinds of things I don’t want to do through the golf swing the absolute number one piece of poor advice or in my perspective the greatest piece of advice ever invented in the history of golf instruction keep your head down
Okay instruction myth number two keep your left arm straight good piece of advice bad piece of advice all right I think it’s a bad piece of advice and the reason is is the arms are the link from the chest to the golf club okay just like a rope if was linked
From my hand to the end of that rope or a towel snap a towel in a boy’s locker room when you’re a kid you want that towel tight or you want that towel loose and pliable okay as I swing I want that club to be roping or or throwing with my arms
Not tensed with my arms I do think the left arm stays relatively straight for a right-handed player but I don’t keep it straight I have all the extension I need at the address position I don’t need to create anymore anybody remember this player has not changed in 40 years five
Time British Open Champion eight Majors one of the greatest players that ever lived probably the greatest wi player that ever lived is that left arm perfectly straight especially for our students that are a little bit Limited in their rotary capacity let them have the freedom to let use that left elbow let
Them have the freedom to lose use that left elbow okay pre- swing instruction can be boiled down into three different aspects posture grip and Alignment PGA all right very good little little promotion there it’s right posture grip and Alignment I tell my students my beginning students if we can nail these
Three elements and I’m going to quickly go through some of these elements but if we can nail these three elements of the preswing conditions then it’s going to be a whole lot easier to do all these things that you read about in Golf Magazine a posture grip and Alignment by the way
Guess what I teach the tour level players that I teach guess which three things I’m interested in talking about right away okay it does not change one of my favorite quotes is from Arnold Palmer when he said golf is not difficult excuse me golf is not complicated it’s
Just difficult okay the Great players need is much help if not more help in these three areas than the average player does do not discount the fact that I gosh I’ve got this single digit handicapper comes in we’re going to have to be talking about something besides
Posture grip and Alignment if I give 500 lessons a year 494 of them have something to do with one of these three topics if not multiple okay posture grip and Alignment let’s take a look at posture first primary angle primary angle in a golf swing is the Tilt from the hip
Joints forward into the golf ball how much primary tilt should we have well kind of goes back to those preferences if you look at a one plane type golf swing you want more primary tilt if you want a two-lane golf swing like a David Toms or a Davis Love II thiri you are
Going to want less primary tilt but it’s basically forward tilting from the hip sockets interestingly enough when I tilt forward where does my weight go do I want my weight on my toes not in my world not in my world I don’t like weight on the toes how do I
Counterbalance weight going forward by tilting forward God gave us a nice god-given counterbalance didn’t he right I need to push my hips backwards as much as my hips go forward if you look at one of my basic looks one one of the first things I look at with my students is the back
Edge of the hips if you drop a plum Bob off the tailbone of every just about every good ball Striker at least every swing that I respect you’ll find a spot somewhere between five and seven in behind the heels five and seven inch behind the heels right there okay that keeps the
Weight on the center of my feet now we’re going to talk a little bit about balance here in a little bit later but primary angle very important okay is it different with different clubs well what’s the LI angle on a driver is it the same as a li angle on a sand
Wedge well I think those would require different body angles to match different L angles land lengths for that matter so no it is different for different clubs six iron or assum me a driver is going to be 58 or so degrees Sand Wedge is going to be 64 65 degrees there’s going
To be somewhere between 5 and seven degrees of body angle change between the shortest and the longest golf clubs okay what about shape and motion should the spine angle be flat how many times have you heard the spine angle should be flat well as I’m standing here is my spine
Flat no it’s not isn’t it there’s a little inward curvature in the low spine there’s a little ex or out outside curvature little kyphosis in the top of the spine okay basically what I tell my students is I want normal standing posture tilted to a new angle what I see
So often is that somebody comes for a lesson and they’re coming to the PGA gosh I’m really going to make this perfect and they hyperextend their lower back to the point where they can’t move normal standing posture tilted to a new axis okay how many of you have seen this as well
I like what Fred was saying this morning about reaching for the golf ball usually rounds the top of the spine which wrong with a rounded spine or a hyperextended lordotic area back here right absolutely you cannot move each individual vertebrae especially in the thoracic area of your spine has
About 5 degrees of rotary capacity to it you multiply that by 10 discs you’ve got about 50° of independent torso rotation unless your spine is tilted or rounded if we round the top edge of the spine or hyper extend the low end of the spine then we’re taking away the
Flexibility of each of those little vertebrae so let’s just say instead of 5 degrees I rounded my spine now I’ve only got two degrees well I just limited myself 20° in that those 10 disc areas 20 degrees of rotation uh limitation on is that a lack of strength in thee or is there
Or what yes all the above all the above great question all of the above go ahead speak it a little louder limitation on turn is that caused by a weakness in the all the yeah I think the answer to that question is you’ll have as many different answers to that question as as
You do for as many different players as you have it can be a a dis issue and one of my pre- swing lesson questions is always have you had any phys do you have any physical limitations no no I don’t and then I watch them hit balls and they have a 12
Degree shoulder rotation I said you know your sh’s a little short well you know my shoulder last year I had a rotator cuff surgery oh really no physical limitations so always continue to probe those questions gosh you know you’re sliding a little bit off the golf well
You know last year I blew out my knee right yes they are physical limitations even when they tell you students will not tell you the truth they’re there to impress you you have to delve deeper to get them to tell you the truth right all right secondary angle secondary angle is
Sideways tilt this again goes back to preferences should there be sideways tilt in a golf swing well to me the answer I think at least from a physiognomy standpoint is yes which hands for a right-handed player which hands lower on the golf club right hand so which shoulder is
Lower right now God built the body here shoulders across spine up and down perpendicular right so if my shoulders are offline I guess I could just do this with my shoulder blades here my scap I guess I could just try to stick one left left shoulder in my ear but I don’t want
To do anything athletic from that position so I think the best thing to do is that I think there should be a little sideways tilt by the way would you have more sideways tilt with a wedge or a driver yeah ball position would be more forward with a driver wouldn’t
It so I think driver may be slightly more forward tilt now again talk to a stock and tilt guys and they would hate that discussion right there it’s not right or wrong it’s just preference it’s just preference I personally think there should be some sideways tilt because I
Don’t want my my shoulders offline from my spine here okay with the feet how wide should your feet be I I think that’s a pretty good rule of thought but again your feet can fool you what if you got a guy that’s got a lot of toe flare in fact I’ve got toe
Flare up here might as well put it up here I get this to work there we go back up there we go foot flare yeah what if you got a lot of foot flare in a student he comes to he looks like Donald Duck here he’s got a little little toe
Flare how do you know what feet shoulder width is which part of your foot which part of your shoulder are you looking for I I kind of like ankle joints and shoulder joints okay look at the ankle joints the back of the heel not the toes toes can
Fool you and the shoulder joints and by the way should it be the same width with every Club no I don’t think it should either I like that that slide this morning with David Leed better having three different irons three different stances of golf club make the stance commencer it with
The length of the shot shorter shots shorter swings shorter base what is wrong with having feet too wide okay you are always fighting mobility and flexibility The Wider you are the larger the base of support but the limitation of motion starts to come in there narrow stance maximum Flex
Ibility limitation of base of support why would Michelle we have a wider stance than normal okay she’s tall 6’3 yeah do you think she lacks flexibility that female and 22 years old and 6’3 yeah so probably a little basic report might not be bad for her right
How about uh Craig Statler have you seen the width of his stance doubt oh that’s probably true probably hasn’t seen his feet l so he probably does not lack for AAS of support but maybe needs some flexibility so that is malleable depending on your student okay grip difficult is a quick
Fix a grip is the first thing I look at for my student and the last thing I change typically 40% of your body’s nerve endings end in your hands simply put if in the first 10 minutes of a lesson I change your grip the lesson is over because I have just altered your
Universe okay I’m not saying I never work on grip I do but be very careful when you change somebody’s grip you are going to make them feel extremely uncomfortable in a very short period of time in a very short period of time I’ll go through these quickly there are some
Some Basics The Usual Suspects of the grips here the Varden or the half Varden Hogan actually used a half Varden which means the pinky of the of the right hand for Hogan was actually draped across the back of his knuckle where most people will actually put it in the crease
Between the left index finger and the the middle finger I think both are acceptable um interlocking Tiger Woods Jack Nicholas there’s been a number of great players that have used that one and this one the 10 finger or the baseball grip does anyone teach away from the 10 finger or baseball
Grip good nobody does uh some of the greatest players that ever lived had a 10 finger grip Mo Norman comes to mind wonderful ball Striker actually got to see him once when I was in Canada but but yes especially with my younger players especially for my players with
Limited of forearm strength love the 10 finger grip love the 10 finger grip for it makes them feel more comfortable they get more meat on the golf club there’s nothing wrong with either with any of these three goups yes probably the majority of tour players or I should say
That the most popular group on tour would be the Varden or the overlapping grip but it is simply not uh not a mandate for me you can hit any shot you want with any three of those grips any three of those grips what about pressure has anyone hor been told hold
The club like a baby bird old Sam Sneed quote anybody teach that well when you swing a golf club let’s just say you swing a driver driver had about 200 gram let’s say you got a 65 gam sha 50 g grip a little bit here and there add all those numbers up when
You’re swinging at a 100 miles an hour how much does that Golf Club weigh yeah a lot somewhere between 60 and 80 pounds is is what I would basically if you do the math that’s what it comes out to how tightly would you hold something that weighs 60 to 80 PBS
Would you hold it like a baby bird okay so let me ask you this question if you start like a baby bird and you finish without the club flying out of your hands what happened to your grip pressure during the swing okay so be very careful with hold
That like a baby bird either that or they broke your your mirror in the shop right as they threw the club out of their hands which we don’t want either on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being extremely tight my grip pressure is
About a five my grip pressure is about a five but what’s my arm pressure again very very light so my fingers my encircling fingers are holding on to the golf club my arms are not my arms are not always like what Hogan said about the five fingers that hold the golf club
The last three of the left hand for a right-handed player and the middle two of the bottom hand those are the five fingers that really hold the golf club um closed and open strong and weak all of us were taught as kids strong grips and weak grips can you play with a strong
Grip Palmer would say yes can you play with a weak grip well Ben Hogan would say yes grip is not a mandate there is a zone of success to borrow that term from Jim mlan there is a zone of success with the grip i’ be honestly I’d prefer to use
The terms open and closed instead of strong and weak when I think strong and weak it tends to speak more to pressure in the hands and not to Direction in the hands okay a Clos grip would be defined as which side let me borrow this for a
Second would this be a strong or an open grip strong okay I would call that close the way this works just to let you know at speed at centrifugal force at that 85 pounds of pull in the golf club centrifugal force Isaac Newton here wants to straighten the left shoulder
Joint the left elbow joint the left wrist joint all in a straight line with the shaft okay so here I got some clubs back here thanks all right so if I have this left hand and I everybody agree Clos position or a strong position as soon as I swing it at speed
As soon as this arm stretches what happens to the golf club well it’ll shut down won’t it this grip would be considered a okay and as soon as I straighten my arm what happens to the club face okay now here’s the deal I’m strong
Enough to lift 60 to 80 PB so guess what I’m tired of hitting it right so I’ll fix it okay open it impact no it isn’t well it’s square and impact but I just turned a six iron into a nine iron hit it fat probably tired of hitting it fat I’ll fix that
Too okay and so now we’ve got this series of dominoes stacked up here but it’s all related to the club phas you know sobody anybody anybody know what this is called Flying Wing flying wings chicken wing right like yeah anybody want to get that out of your student
Swings you better fix the club face first that club face or that that chicken wing is not the problem it’s the fix for the problem it’s the fix for the problem right open Club face no it isn’t oh but I just hit it fat because my heads are behind impact I’ll fix that
Too right and you can follow these little Dynamics these little a plus b equal C type formulas to really start to see what’s going on in your golf swing okay so be careful what you want to fix you might just again unbalance that cart be careful what you want to fix
First okay paly grip is this the largest era that you see in your students because it is for me what is wrong with a palmy left-hand grip for a right-handed player anybody know what I’m everybody know what I mean by a pal me grip yeah I like that picture of Hogan I
Saw this morning right underneath the little heel pad back here the hypothe back here paly grip what’s wrong with the paly grip well that sure does right that’s as far as I can hinge that wrist with a palmy grip get it down in the pad underneath
That heel pad I get about 35° more hinging capacity and it’s more secure right remember that 80 lbs of pull Mr upshot you want to pull that away from me hey wait a minute he can’t pull that away from me because I have that heel pad as a counter
Wave right if I put it in the palm of my hand and he tried to do that I don’t have nearly the control of it that I would have stealing my club right so yes pal me grip I think is the absolute number one problem that I see particularly with beginners the
Easiest way to tell what your student is doing when they’re in your shop is ask them to pull out their glove right and you will see where they are wearing their glove pattern is it back here on the lifeline is it underneath the pad is it down in the
Fingers is it up on the thumb I really like to look at my students grips or gloves excuse me right the absolute number one problem pal me grip alignment do you try and take them away from a glove no I I question was do you try to take a student away from a
Glove I personally think it’s an absolute individual decision if they have sweaty hands if if they can’t hold on the golf club I might encourage them to but no I don’t think it I don’t think it’s a necessity Fred Couples does not play with a grip or with a glove they
Asked him why one day he said when I was a kid I couldn’t afford it so we just learned to play without a glove I think it’s total personal decision total personal decision I want to run through a linan here okay upper body should the upper
Body be on the Target or parallel to the Target parallel to the Target should the lower body be on the target parallel to the Target or does it matter the textbook says parallel well why did the greatest ball Striker that ever lived have his lower body about 20° open Jack
Nicholas so he restricts his back swing and also encourages his down swing and follow through Nicholas was so big and bulky he couldn’t finish his golf swing so Jack gr allowed him to move the left foot back a little bit what about Gary Player uhuh both both you know Fred brings up a
Great point I I I think that when we look at alignment especially in the lower body look at the back of the heels instead of the toes toes again can fool you look at the back edge of the heels and is it parallel to the Target line
Right Gary Player pulled his right foot back why because he wanted to try to hit it as far as Jack did right he wanted a bigger bigger turn so yeah lower body can be influencing the golf swing but it is not a mandated by the way both Nicholas and Gary Player had upper
Bodies were dead Square you Jack was slightly left I’ll be honest with you all right is it going to be different with different golf clubs do you want to hit a ascending on a driver or descending on a driver is it easier to hit ascending on
A driver from a steep path or a shallow path shallow is it encouraging of a shallower path with a closed stance or an open stance it’s encouraging more with the closed stance isn’t it to be a little more ascending so you’ll see I love that if anybody has not read that Five
Lessons modern fundamentals of golf by Hogan he’s got a little diagram in there about how he moved his right foot for further away from his left foot and also deeper or more close closed as he got longer into the longer into the sets so yes I think that’s specific to player
But it’s also specific to Club parallel are on target we’ve already covered ball position same for all golf clubs now again as sending with the driver descending with the wedges we’re going to move the ball around I typically do not like to see a student with a ball position behind their
Sternum okay when I do that I think the fast ball just went by me and I can’t quite catch up and I usually miss that to right field so be careful and by the way I don’t like using feet and it’s a personal thing I don’t like using feet
For ball position discussions I think the Feet Again can fool you if my stance is open or closed or narrow or duck footed or or pigeon toad I I think that canol you use something in the upper body sternums left ear shoulder joints something along those lines I like using
The upper body that’s a personal thing player vision and pre-shot routine I am extremely right eye dominant you can take my left eye out and I probably wouldn’t notice it until about Thanksgiving okay so guess what my habit is if I’m right ey dominant and I’ve got
This big Irish nose would I have a tendency to line up to the right or to the left well to the left right because my right eye wants to see down the target line so I have a tendency to open the body it’s not good it’s not bad it’s
Just an indicator so be careful if you when when you when you close somebody’s uh body be careful that they can still see what they want to see you got to work with your student on an individual basis with that that’s why I think pre-shot routines are so important okay
Practice versus play is that going to be different with regard to alignment I see so many of my students out there and they will be slicing the golf ball and I come back and I’m driving by the range and I see them practicing and they’re hitting it right at their target
They’re just lined up 30 yards to the left okay hey I’m hitting it On Target that’s great well yeah but you’re compensating an open Club face by adjusting your alignment so I think when you practice I think every single shot you hit should have a pre-shot routine
Attached to it because you will work yourself into a compensation alignment position to work on your ball flight every single shot you hit should have a pre-shot routine attached to it plus you’ll hit fewer balls but get more work done you won’t be so tired at the end of
The night right first looks in Concepts now that’s that’s basically how I see the golf swing and I want to spend a few minutes and I want to talk about great machine that we have first looks in Concepts these are the things that I think as Fitters and as teachers we
Should be looking for first grip Direction and angle to the body we already talked about open and closed or again most people call it um strong and weak but I want to talk to you about angle to the body and let me uh let me change directions here for just a
Second and I will call up hold on just a second if you would well that’s not the posture we were looking for is it this is uh Ben Crane Good ball Striker and hold on just a minute let me get back here can’t get to my drawing tools all
Right I personally like to see spine angles and shaft angles at roughly perpendicular angles if you draw a line from his tailbone to the base of his head and then draw a line up the shaft of the golf club you will form approximately a 90° Angle now if you’re a two plane
Swinger you can have a little taller posture if you’re a one plan swinger maybe a little less than that but I tend to one of the first things I look for is from that angle from the tailbone to the back of the head and then is that roughly perpendicular to the angle of
The shaft okay the second thing I want to look for and it’s uh it’s a little hard to tell here on this elongated screen but if you look at the butt end of the shaft where is it pointing belt right at the belt line if you have
A student with a palmy left hand grip what are you going to see where’s that button of the shaft going to be poined well it’s going to be higher isn’t it more up into the sternum area yeah it’s one of my first indicators um by the way
You this is that’s that’s kind of a general rule what if your body is like David Leb better who is about 6’4 and has about 6′ one in of legs and has this little tiny torso okay where is his where the butt end of his shaft going to point well
That’s going to point into his mid thigh right so it’s not a whole true statement but if you can get the body proportions approximately the same on your students right if if they’re approximately the same you’re going to point somewhere around the butt end of the shaft pointing to the Belt Line somewhere
Around that angle okay one of the first things that I look for again is that angle of the arm hang and the angle of the shaft itself okay all right let me jump back in here well hold on here hey Daniel I can’t get to my uh my ex out
Here can’t get to my screen over here do close all right sorry about that guys all right original Body Lines I love drawing original Body Lines my favorites are again tailbone forehead and top of the head if you draw those three lines I think you can uh you can you can really
See what your body first of all is doing it a dress but then my I always like to see what they’re doing at Impact versus their original Body Lines Martin Hall national teacher of the year calls it his stability house he wants to see where this house started and where the
House finished draw original Body Lines if you have the software capabilities of doing so and again the ones that I like to draw are feet hips knees shoulders and forearms by the way how do you as a student how do you as a player tell if
You’re if you’re um upper body is online or not it’s kind of hard to tell where my shoulders are because we got one on each side of my head well how about looking at your forearms if your shoulders are open your forearms will probably be open too if
Your shoulders are closed your forearms probably will be too right eyeline I very much appreciate listen to Mr Upshaw on the first day talking about eyeline how many of you pay attention to the eyeline line we follow our eyes all day long every day it’s our central nervous
System that’s what we do that’s how we’re trained if I have a student and their eyes are this direction guess where their swing is going to go out to in and steep if their eyes are this way their their clubs going to come from underneath or shallow and then uh
And then out to the right watch your eyelines one of my first looks look where their eyes are in relation to the Target line in relation to the Target line delivery path Target arm Club face and body relationships well I don’t want to get back into to that but one of my favorite
Lines is I like to draw a line from the golf ball through the right elbow and you will see a path and a golf swing that pretty much follows that path all the way through the golf swing some people call it the shaft angle and and Hogan’s plane or the shoulder plane that
Wedge that some people draw you’ve seen that but draw a line right from the golf ball right through the right elbow if I get under that line I consider that’s shallower inside if you get over that line you’re going to get steeper from the outside it’s interesting we talk
About plain angles and you can do this let me uh let me get a club all right if uh we talked about one plane a little bit earlier one plane with Jim Hardy great book Again by the way um one plane would have more tilt from the body
And the arm plane would be roughly on the shoulder plane as we take it back in other words the shaft the golf CLA dictates where the plane of the golf swing goes but if you look at most players the shaft line will rise more into a two-
Plane position and then have to rejoin that original line somewhere into the downswing okay that happens when the right arm folds if the right arm never folded I would be on the same plane the whole time as soon as the right arm folds I get above that plane okay so the
Key is can I return to that plane or am I going to get outside or inside or whatever but draw some sort of a plane line again I personally like from the golf ball through the right elbow that’s the that’s the line I draw it does not
Matter to a certain extent as long as you know what you’re doing and it’s a consistent position as long as you know what you’re looking for some people again draw the shaft line and I want the club to return to the shaft Lan it’s pretty close I don’t mind that Hogan
Shoulder plane if you remember that plane of glass in that book that he wrote about he always wanted to be under the pl of grass that that works too but I like again the elbow plane uh body relationships again going back back to original Body Lines Impact versus
Original Body Lines now we’re going to get into a slide in just a second but when you look at original Body Lines versus physical fitness sometimes you’ll see different positions where you get a student that cannot hold on to the force that they’re creating remember that 60
To 80 pounds of thrust right if their body is not capable of holding on to that energy their body is going to move they’re going to get sucked into that Vortex of energy okay so sometimes physical fitness is the key for those types of issues all right make sense so so far
Here here it comes to me this is kind of the end result of what we what I wanted to talk about today if I fit the player for today and you teach the player for what you’d like to have this player in tomorrow we get players that look like
This okay we get frustrated players right I’ve seen a lot of Fitters try to fix ball flight by changing golf clubs okay this player comes over the top the marks on the toe bend the clubs upright and we’ll fix that well yes I think we can again going
Back to quick fixes versus long-term Player Development I think you can make a change for the better in a short period of time by matching the club to the swing but is that player ever going to reach their maximum poent potential unless we attach this to some sort of a
Biomechanical some sort of a lesson plan to get their motion better and to me the answer is no so I think again quick fixes can work if that’s what the student is after but long term I think this is the best way to do it Club fting
Should be conducted for the now but with an eye toward the future good friend of mine told me that and I like that I think that’s a pretty good quote okay it’s why I think the partnership of instruction and Club fitting is the future is the future are we Partners or are we
Pugilists okay this is something that the PGA is instituting we’ve been doing this for about a year at my PGA Center I just want to take you through this quickly but this is what we call our Tempo program and it stands for technique which stands for the
Instruction component what I do on most days I’m about 70% of the time I am a a a lesson Giver I’m an instructor more than I am a club fitter about 30% of my time I’m a club fitter but the instruction technique equipment you have to again match these two together but
There are three other components of what we’re doing with the first one being the mental aspect okay for every 1,000 golf swings that I like I’ll show you about five good players I’ll show you about five good players being able to swing a golf club
And be able to play the game of golf are very very different skills and you have to be able to compete on the mental plane okay the physical nature has anybody I I’ve actually been talking around the room talking about TPI or some sort of physical training program
Anybody interested in doing that right anybody doing that already in their programs and you’re going to see a swing here in a minute that I think will bear truth to that uh OnCourse instruction would be the last okay again you can be in perfect physical shape you can have a
Great mental Outlook you’re swing is right on plane and perfect with a lot of speed to it if you don’t know how to play the game you’re still not much of a player I think if you are going if we are going to build players for the
Future we have to be firing on all five of these heads if we’re going to actually improve golf swings if we’re actually going to improve play improve players right do you know that the average handicap in the United States has not gone down in the last 25 years
In spite of the fact that we have better equipment in spite of the fact that we’re fitting them better in fite of the fact that the the golf courses are in better condition our handicaps are not not going down why well I think it’s one of these five things that’s not firing
It has to be a holistic approach a complete approach if we’re actually going to improve players so we actually will take you through a program where we look at your Technique we talk about your equipment we give you some mental ex exams and and Concepts I’ll put you
In touch with David donatucci our director of fitness and then we’ll actually take you on down on the golf course and show you how play the game actually play the game okay all right let’s talk a little bit of this is the machine here and I
Know I’m running a little bit long but does anybody use Force plate technology when they teach or when they fit anybody heard of force plate technology or or or yes great outstanding uh basically what this is happened I’ve got one up here on the on the platform if you want to come
During lunch we can I can maybe show you some of the things on it but it is basically the machine that we use is called the dynamic balance system is invented by a guy named Dan Goldstein who is a physical therapist from West Palm Beach and he has partnered with the
PGA for a number number of years we actually presented at the teaching and coaching Summit about two years ago it basically is a machine that measures the pressure in your feet and also assumes a center of gravity based on your height okay so it’s not just simply pressure in
Your feet it’s actually triangulation off a height measurement okay it drops 100 dots per second during your golf swing and shows us where our center of gravity has moved throughout the golf swing if you look at this graph that we have up here the red dots that you’re
Seeing are anything that moves to the right is red and anything that is on this screen purple but in real life it’s blue is anything that moves to the left and then the circle is where my center of mass or my center of gravity was at the moment of ball
Impact okay the two horizontal black lines you see the bottom one is the heel joint and the top one is the metatarsal head or the ball of your foot I call this U stole this from Dan but he calls this the balance Zone I think golf spring should happen behind
The ball of the foot and in front of the heel joint otherwise no known as the arch of your foot if you look at the way the bones come off of your shin those five tarsel that come off of there those actually have some rotary capacity to
Them they can actually support and allow the body to move the way it wants to okay probably disagree with me over here doctor but thinking about that uhuh they actually have a little rotary Force where the tarsals are the metatarsals or the heel Dr really not the best place to
Be in my opinion right this would actually be a pretty good swing ball impact would be slightly left of Center and slightly more heel than toe and this is what he has found with the majority of the great players that he has seen this would be more of the pattern that
We have does everybody understand the graph and how it works 100 dots per second red dots go to the right blue dots go to the left okay High handicap players this is what I see these are some of the graphs of the high handicap players that I see Center gravity movement
Patterns anybody want to try to fit those golf swings not me those are my pictures those are yours I stole those from you didn’t I right yeah you can see the one on the top left pretty good back swing pretty much straight line progression to the
Right foot a little bit more toward the heel over here and then uh something happened right up in here in our weight position by the way this last line is 100% of the mass so if that impact position gets outside of that line then you need to call the
Ambulance because he just broke his nose on the pavement okay right so that one on the top left there how are you going to fit that position well gosh you’d have to give them very short very upright golf clubs right if you’re going to fit that position what you call system dynamic
Balance system I do have information about Dan if if you want to give me your card and write DBS on the back of it I can make I can have Dan call you it’s a great machine it’s actually relatively low price right so again I think you can
Fit that golf swing in the top left and make that guy a better player but is that really something something we’d be interested in doing well again does is he playing the Club Championship tomorrow afternoon well maybe maybe maybe all right um this is a this is a position
That’s actually filmed at the Learning Center here under the lights but you can see the gentleman standing on the on the balance plate and we’ve drawn some original Body Lines with the video and let’s see what he looks like at the moment of impact anything Chang
There okay you can see that our center of gravity has moved dramatically forward our hands have risen some and some of that’s natural your hands are going to rise some anyway but I wouldn’t put that in in the case of of a natural position I’m thinking we’re going to
Have a hard time being very consistent from that position right this is what the graph would look like on that golf swing right and you can see how the video ties into the balance plate very convincing to my students by the way if this is where my center of gravity is is
At the start of the address position or the start of the golf swing and it’s way up there at the impact position didn’t he just get closer to the golf ball and the golf swing well gosh if I got closer to the golf ball I’d better adjust
Something to fix it which he’s done if we had a face on view you’re exactly right Mr Marshall absolutely true so again we can definitely do that if you did a static libard test on this guy you see You’d Be marking it up on the toe
You you you’d fit him for 4 degrees upright and and he’d be happy today but I’m not sure that’s the position I’d want him to be in for the rest of his life will that make sense right pretty interesting graph here I love combining Technologies and I really do think that
Is the future when you combine video and force plate and launch data I think that is the future of where we’re going as an industry but I just love this graph you can see how the body moves forward and it’s represented dynamically there right all right player number one this is
Something I think is is is exactly where we need to be as fitters and teachers this is one player who h a pitching wedge a five iron and a driver anything you notice about those three graphs where is the circle where is the impact position with all three golf
Clubs okay we call this a contact cluster now to me as a fitter this is what I would be after okay well as an instructor too this is what I would be after I want to be able to make the same golf swing with my pitching wedge roughly as far as a
Balance position goes as I do with a five iron as I do with a driver okay that to me would be ideal here’s player number two with the pitching wedge went deep into the right heel into the back swing way up into the left toe in the
Downswing the five iron deep into the right heel and the back swing further up into the left toe and actually starting to back up a little bit you can see the moment of impact we are actually moving away from the target anybody see a reverse pivot as we went through through there
And then here we are with the driver okay now if you look at that swing if you look at all three of those isn’t that the same pattern it’s roughly the same pattern I would put that probably in video you’re probably going to say it’s the same golf
Swing okay but it’s not the same impact position okay here’s our contact cluster pitching wedge five iron and driver right we’re almost ready to call that Ambulance with the driver aren’t we right almost ready to call that again can you fit to that position or let me
Ask that question another way is it fitting the cause that position is it fitting that caused that position with the driver in our students everpresent desire for more speed I feel the need for speed wouldn’t that indicate maybe the driver’s too long if that driver’s too long I’ve got
To find a way to create some space or too heavy I buy that too right so is that a swing issue that the fitting is trying to compensate for or is that a fitting issue that the swing is trying to compensate for I don’t know the answer to that question but they’re
Obviously complimentary positions right if you compare these two players who’s going to be longer the longer who’s going to be the longer of these two players one on the right great question Jerry Who’s going to be more consistent one the one on the left who’s the tour pro one the left here’s the
Scary okay isn’t that interesting I’m going bet on one on the left I think you I would too because the one on the right is no longer a t player in fact the one on the right has actually hurt his back
