Helping a Tour Pro Differentiate Real from Feel

We recently had the opportunity to work with PGA TOUR and KFT veteran Anders Albertson. Anders turned pro in 2015 after a decorated career at Georgia Tech. He’s won multiple times on the Korn Ferry Tour, but has recently taken a medical extension after he started to experience lower back pain.

Anders offers a good example of how golfers can develop multiple strategies for working around physical limitations, the importance of distinguishing real vs feel and how feedback can be a powerful tool in directing swing changes.

Full article: https://www.mytpi.com/articles/swing/helping-a-tour-pro-differentiate-real-from-feel-in-his-swing

all right so we got Andrew Albertson here at TPI today he’s a journeyman out there on tours played corn faery and PGA Tour started getting some things going on in 2022 that led to him taking a medical I haven’t seen him much lately but he’s starting to bring his game back after dealing with these injuries anytime you’ve got somebody who’s been off the game for a while you never know different motor patterns can creep in you want to make sure that when you go out there there’s no weaknesses you can’t have weaknesses when you go back on the PJ tour now go ahead and rotate that as far as you can I’ll feel your left one different world right come back down just this arm tell me if there’s any difference it’s more work right one’s harder again so it’s becoming pretty evident here looking at Andre that he’s two different humans the right side and the left side when we’re testing his left side things are moving really well when I get to the right side it’s a whole different story we’ve got limitations not only from the lower quarter but from the trunk even in the shoulder which side’s better prob that yeah it’s a lot better I’m worried about that back swing man I’m starting to build a picture here we noticed everything going to the right which is his back swing was restricted okay I want you to see something turn this way if I put a line across the front of your pelvis see that white line M see how you get to that white line mhm okay go right leg can you get your pelvis to that white line with the right leg NOP interesting is you have better range than that on the table than you’re showing me here so when you’re weight bearing your body’s kind of protecting it when you take that club away if you’ve got restrictions on that right side then there could be potential for sway you could go into something we call reverse spine angle you could lose your posture you could have early extension what do you need help with I think I could hit it straighter and higher I I think I get uh stuff on my right it’s really hard for me to get into my left soon enough so when we ask Andrew how can we help it was very evident he’s a fantastic short game number one with inside 10 ft in putting for a long time a great bunker player but he said in his long game he tends to get a little stuck on his right side gets a little long in his back swing and has a hard time getting to his left side that’s kind of his perception of what his golf swing does wrong we got a strong guess on what we’re going to see over here but let’s let’s do it let’s go hit that’s kind of what I show up to the course with every day if I don’t have my stuff together yep just go to this higher right and I really get focused and not how to get high R dou PL ready you’re completely avoiding your right side and your back swing um you you thought you were going too much on your right what’s kind of interesting with players is feel versus real a lot of times when a player tells me what they feel is going wrong the re could be completely different look at that up there there’s the top of your back which leg are you on 100% at least the force plate showing that what he would do is he would load left and then as he went down because he was left too early he would go back to the right so that’s why he was feeling like he was hanging back on his right side and he couldn’t get to the left it was because he was loading left when guys push from their right leg to go to the left they usually push with about 23% of their body weight you’re pushing with 12% right I mean it’s almost half that might work with like a shorter iron or like a flighted iron but the minute you start to lengthen the club if you load left we get a breakdown in the kinetics and the kinematic sequence you’re not on your right leg that’s why it’s hard to push from your right leg it’s hard to get left if you’re already left this is what I would feel like if I go to a ter like I got to really drop it in disted it straight driver tack angles I do not like this that lateral driver that push from your right foot starts the momentum towards the left leg that we then turn into rotational speed very important for creating power in the golf sign from here can you push into me okay now go to your right side can you push into me no do you feel like you’re outside your right foot there yeah what would be the best place to push into me inide right I agree let me see you go there is that where you are on your back swing no I agree but that would be the best place to get left right yeah with Anders not only did we have this physical limitation creating the bad pattern well now we have a bad pattern we got to break again it’s basically learning a new skill double PL ready say that’s the center of your St stance if I drop a plum Bob down from your zipper and it comes down where is that in relationship to the center of your stance in front so the zipper’s in front yeah okay best drivers in the world what do you think it is probably opposite it’s about that far behind so anytime we see an improper weight shift in the golf swing one of the first things we’re going to look at is setup with the driver most players are just a little bit behind the center of their stance that allows for them to almost preset load into their Trail leg how could you do this and keep your pelvis level more flexion yeah right knee is probably have to flex a little bit more okay now go to the top of your back Swing From Here do you feel like it’s still behind there yeah maybe I’d like to do something I call Finish where you start you’re going to start with it slightly behind and you’re going to finish the back swing with it lightly behind and then you can do your normal swing you start slightly loaded on your back leg and as you take your back swing you stay there this allows you to aggressively weight shift forward what I’m hoping is that position helps you get left harder on the down swing can we try one like that yeah stay there in the backwing double plate ready now what you might notice on something like this is you might hang back because now you got to go left before you never had to go left cuz you were already there okay remember it was 12 it’s at 15.6 now you can still do more more is keeping it over here longer or pushing more yes but okay the minute we started to get him to load onto that trail side you could see the results in the for Sur pressure and you could kind of see the bright light go on in his head I want you to see something set up like you’re going to hit okay now turn your right foot in okay now try and stay there in the back swing there’s no chance right like turn your foot out now watch this is freedom your natural tendency might not be the best thing for your golf swing all right that a 16.6 we’re good we’re good there right so we start with 12 went to 15 now we’re almost at 17 you’re now starting to push harder left so you’re getting left like at least we get weight shift going things are going to get better hit a couple without the force play just get used to it a couple times the first thing you’ll see with good players when you actually get their movement right and you get you change their loading patent is they’ve developed a release mechanism based on the old pattern you might now have changed their swing but they still have that old release so now we’ve got a shift to controlling Club face wait notice what that ball did you hit the ground harder the ground hits back harder and it actually makes you twist and open more as your body opens what happens to the club face op it opens so if you get aggressive and start Weight shifting if you don’t release it the ball’s going right great so let’s do the exact same thing just release the crap out of it if you don’t do lateral and the club’s not in the right position it’s kind of hard to sequence everything else cuz you have to compensate aggressive weight shift aggressive release so once we got him loaded better into the Trail side the first few swings he actually blocked it to the right now he had to actually release the club release good and the harder you turn the less turn that Ball’s going to have your whole thought she just I’m going to go as aggressive as I can so I better release where the ball’s going right yeah this feels like five times the time on the right you are but notice you’re pushing with 40% more so stay over there on the back swing but now on the down swing step into the pitch go after it that’s going to turn into something really good the minute he did that you could see the ball starting to righten out he actually started to get more of a draw patent yeah there now looks like you can launch it oh dude put that in the box and what you’re trying to do is wind yourself up into your back swing so that you can unwind into your down swing if I’m this way how am I winding myself up because to unwind I’m going to go this way right I think it’s totally about might be this de you couldn’t fill yourself going left so you’re trying to go left early but going left early was your problem you had to go right to go left it’s been years years that double plate ready it’s almost an avoidance pattern anytime we see this it leads to the things that he’s he’s complaining of the high right shot the the miss it really affects power and consistency dude do that look how much better that setup looks there dude yeah it’s way better double plate ready good players they have great intuition they have great feel they can start to really quickly figure out what they need to do to square that club face at impact look where we’re at 18 started 12 by 123 we’re at 18 now and by the way the other numbers are going higher too and we didn’t even talk about them but 218% vertical you just had it backwards in your head three AR is it weird to hit a three arm from like there let’s just feel this way until to the left okay and back hurts now watch do that again notice I call that a fake Turn come back now just turn just rotate golf should be rotation yeah okay it should not be leaning towards the target okay better way better pushing right to your left is what does this going left early kills the left pressure point does that make sense that’s been the frustration that I’ve had because no matter how much work I put in it was inv Val it didn’t matter see how you go left there yeah I didn’t have you go left you go left and now you can push and deliver the club so much better so you’re a little closer finish where you start and be aggressive left and aggressive release and see the spine angle looks great yeah then watch the shift notice he’s rocking now before he’s twisting which is great when you move into that trail side you’re staying wider CU when you’re left already you’re narrow and then you’re like oh I got to get angle out so then you’re backing up to get angle out so you have width now before when he came in his feel and real were not the same once the feel and real match and now it all makes sense and sometimes now you just need to get out of the way you just need to go hit balls now and you’re going to figure this out we need to attack to make this easier for you right we want to be able to get more range on the right like I need you on your right side I need you to be able to rotate in your right hip turn in your right spine shoulder build actually rotate it’ll just make this easier for you and you’ll be able to go longer and hit the ball farther right there looks good stay there to the top lower body is actually your superpower that’s where you’re the strongest but you were killing your lower body and your go the concept of position what I start you know like that to me clears up a lot and it doesn’t hurt good 20 swings it went from 12 to 18 in a month you’ll probably be over 20 awesome thank you guys so I was really excited to be here Welly we’re excited to have you here feel and real are very different dude it’s hard to coach yourself it’ll be nice to work on these as I’m some important lessons here feeling real we talked about you know here’s a player classic example comes in tells you they’re getting stuck on their right side can’t get off the right side when we go look at the data not even go to the right side right so it’s important don’t assume make sure you test probably around 60% of the players that come in here what they think they’re doing is completely opposite of what they’re really doing the important thing here is once the field and real match that’s where the light bul moments occur for not only the players but also the coaches