First Lesson Ever: Can Justin Parsons Help a 10 Handicap Break 80?

TGJ Content Producer Alec Yoder has competed in the Olympics, but he’s never had a golf lesson. In his pursuit of breaking 80 for the first time, Yoder spent a day with top swing coach Justin Parsons (Harris English, Brian Harman, Blades Brown, Louis Oosthuizen) at the Sea Island Golf Performance Center and transformed his swing. In this lesson presented by @titleist, Parsons breaks down every aspect of Yoder’s swing, from his setup position to trail leg action to impact position. It’s an authentic look at a real lesson with a world-class coach. The only question is: has Yoder broken 80 since?

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Made in partnership with @titleist

Timestamps:
0:48 – Introductions
4:28 – Physical fitness screening
8:52 – Warm up & swing assessment
14:48 – Head movement & setup position
28:14 – Reverse spine tilt
36:49 – Trail leg loading
54:20 – Debrief

They’ll be shaking in their shoes if they see some of those. Alec, let’s make a little bit more of a habit of that, Justin, shall we? My name is Alec Yoder. I work for the Golfer Journal, and I have never broken 80. I’m a 10 handicap golfer who tends to float around 82 to 85, and I just can’t quite seem to get over that hump. Today I’ll be getting my first ever lesson with Justin Parsons, master instructor at Sea Island Golf Performance Center. He’s the coach of some amazing swings on tour like Harris English, Brian Harmon. I’m not really sure I have any idea what to expect today, but the goal today would be to get myself one step closer to breaking 80. [Music] Alec, welcome to Sea Island. Thank you, sir. Performance Center. Um, thanks for spending some time with us today. We’re going to see if we can uh we can go through some steps to take your golf to the next level. I’m looking forward to to getting stuck in. I notice here at the very bottom you have a zero golf instruction and you would love to break 80. So, that would be where we’re moving towards. And and growing up, did you play any other sports other than golf? You know, when you were out there with your with your brother and your dad, was it uh was it other um athletic sports in school and stuff? Uh gymnastics was really my life growing up. Um, so I did gymnastics all the way up till uh college. Went to college at Ohio State for gymnastics. Um, competed really well. Luckily made my way up to the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. Wow. You’re going to show me how to move today how to move. Okay. Unfortunately, that uh didn’t translate to my golf game. What was your what was your uh discipline when you were doing the gymnastics stuff? What did you wind up doing? Yeah, palm horse uh ended up being my specialty near the end of my career. Um, I did all the events. Um, but Palm Horse was really the one that I excelled the most at and um had a couple injuries in college that uh kind of pushed me away from uh really doing all six of the events for the rest of my career. From from there, I mean, it says you’ve had no instruction, but knowing your you know, your history, you know, the creative slant. Um, also the fact that you’re now involved in in golf to some degree, how would you say you’ve kind of like learned it? What what would you say you’ve done with with regards to learning it? I think I’ve always felt like I was I wanted to be a field player. I think with gymnastics it was you could I could very much feel what I was doing and when I was making mistakes and with golf I really wanted to feel like I had a swing that I was comfortable with. I like to watch a lot of swings. I watch a lot of golf. Um now working at the Golfer Journal there’s a lot of co-workers that I work with that are insanely good at golf and so I will kind of grab bits of information here and there and watch their swings and they’ve been kind enough to help me when I’m shooting high 80s out on the course. They’ve been nice. But you feel like you’ve got a lot of like tips and a lot of like ideas, but not a great deal of direction. Totally. I I think it’s like hand-me-down swing tips. Um, and little bits here and there, but never something that was kind of geared exactly towards my golf swing. I got you. Feel like your driving is adequately like long and accurate enough to to break 80? Not quite. Um, definitely long enough. Um, but my problem is is slicing it. Okay. Um, or sometimes I’ll just push it, but then I’m in the rough and then I’m kind of in a tough spot. Um, but a big miss would be a big slice. And long irons, long irons into mid irons. Decent. Okay. Decent, I think, is I think decent is a very good word. Um, right now I’m struggling with a slight pole. Mhm. And then down into your short irons and your wedges again. Okay. I think okay. Hit the green most of the time from like 140, 130. Yeah, most of the time. I would say a lot of times I always think with with somebody young and athletic like you who’s, you know, who’s putting the club on the ball reasonably well and and has good good dexterity, a lot of times if you’re failing to break 80, you’re making doubles or you’re making triples and you’re putting yourself into difficult situations, which from our chat so far this morning sounds like it’s more long fairway shots, full swing stuff. If we can start to like bring our work into some sort of targeted area where we would say, okay, a goal might be to, you know, if you’re going to try and hit 14 fairways, you don’t hit one ball, it’s out of play. You don’t hit one into a water hazard, you don’t hit one out of bounds. I mean, I think that would be a good way to do it. And refining perhaps some of the swing techniques. Um, it sounds like that might be a a way forward. You know, certainly what we had planned this morning with the physical screens going to match that match that right up. And I certainly appreciate you taking the time and uh we’ll uh we’ll get stuck in from there. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you, sir. Cheers. Okay, Alec, with it being such a beautiful day, we’re going to do your physical screen outside. Um Randy Meyers, Alec Yod, how you doing? Great to meet you, Alec. Welcome to Sea Island. Pleasure. Randy is our director of golf fitness here. He’s uh you’ve been around this game for many years, Randy. I know he’s worked with Gary Player and Lee Trovino and Dustin Johnson and you know, a bunch of people. So Randy really understands the the physical side of our sport. So historically you’re you’re with an Olympic athlete here. Um hasn’t broken 80 yet and we really want to see him do that and and and feels I haven’t watched him hit too many yet. I’ve seen a couple of videos. Feels like his golf swing gets too loose. He feels like he gets too flexible. Struggles a little bit off the tea. Um so anything you can, you know, bring to our attention to help us to to build into his program things that can help to build him a more efficient golf swing would be would be great. So I’m going to go down, get the studio prepared, and let you guys get to work. He’ll be able to talk in a minute. All right, Pete. Cheers. Thanks so much. Yeah. So, I think the most important thing that I would stress is that most amateur golfers do not warm up properly. And and a warm-up could be two or three things or it could be 20 things. And if you look at the best players in the world, they spend probably at least 30 minutes getting loose before they play. Um, if flexibility is your area of expertise, we will go more into probably balance and stability. So, I’m going to grab a golf club here. Yeah. From your bag. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Yeah. So, so a couple good things for him. You know, obviously he knew the shoulder flexibility was going to be really good and he’s done a great job with that. But I would say more importantly, go ahead and get in your setup. this area particularly in the uh middle of the back he does not have as much rotation. So here here’s one of the things I was thinking about because of the pommel horse being and forgive me because I don’t know an awful lot about like the the intricacies of it but it appears to be that you’re really quite locked in with your core and your chest and you’re almost in like a um how would you say in in yoga terms you’re your your legs are elevated. So everything from here is locked and then you have a huge amount of mobility going on with your shoulders. Totally. So it it would appear that maybe there’s less going on from here than there needs to be in his golf. And you know, thinking about the the the way that that might transpire in his golf swing, would that make him like more armsy and less rotary? Absolutely. I would say he’s a he’s a shoulder swinger right at this point. So when you just use your arms effectively, you can hit the golf ball that way, but you’re not going to be able to utili utilize the ground as efficiently, right? So a lot of the things that we looked at from um the ground up on the squats wasn’t quite deep enough. Um, posturally he has a tendency, particularly on this drill, where he kind of gets that club off his back. So, you can see as soon as you stop turning, the club wants to rotate instead of really making sure you get that full turn. Also, I would say more importantly for him is how he covers the ball at impact. Um, and and understanding impact and through is going to be really important for him. You mentioned that a little bit like that’s one of your good swing thoughts with an iron is to try and be able to kind of cover the ball, compress the ball, but you don’t feel like you can do that with a driver. And it’s for me, Ronnie, it’s always interesting. You got a really good athlete, but he’s been a very specific kind of athlete. And obviously that’s going to develop some swing traits that uh we might need to we might need to break into a we bit. We’ve had everyone here from Ken Griffy Jr. who by the way is an amazing athlete, Jerome Bettis, who is not quite a great athlete. So, you’re going to fit somewhere in there athletically in a in a great position. I think learning some specific skill sets in your training would really be beneficial for you. And you can take this right from the golf course to the gym. And many of the drills that we work on, particularly with the speed aspect of it and the symmetry, would help you a lot. Awesome. Cool. Randini, thank you very much, man. Thank you. We’re gonna go We’re going to go get your warm-up done and we’ll Let’s go play. Let’s do it. Love to do it. All right. Take care. Now, thanks for mentioning me in the same sentence as Ken Griffy in the bus. Never thought that would happen. All right, Alec, ready to get uh to get stuck into some things? I’m going to let you go through your own little warm-up. You know, what whatever you normally do. Always interesting to me. Um Tom Watson started a warm-up with a three iron. Freddy Couples starts it with a hybrid these days. So, there’s no specific way to be perfect, but ordinarily, you know, wedges up through the bag. And as I as I look at your bag, you look as if you’ve got some um some well fitted equipment. So, I actually just got fitted about six months ago. Um so, I have SM10 Voki wedges. My irons are the Titus T200s. Yep. This is my favorite club that has ever graced my uh my presence, which is a 7wood. Okay. Which I just absolutely love the look of this thing. Love how it hits. Love the sound. How far does that go for you? About 235, I would say. Boom. That’s useful. And the driver, which most people uh don’t have the GT4, um, but I like the way I just like the way that it sits. I like the way that it lies when I look down at it. We’re going to be looking at the full swing and looking at what this guy’s doing. So, you go ahead and start with whatever you normally start with. I’m going to observe a little bit and, you know, maybe we’ll keep your attention on that red flag. You can just go down that kind of line so uh I know what you’re trying to aim at when you’re getting into it. Perfect. I’ll just start with a couple wedges here. Yeah. Very nice. Got that smooth rhythm that we’re talking about there. The golf swings that I really enjoy really have that tempo, right? Um, Harris English, super underrated swing on tour. Okay. I really like Max. Max Hom’s move is is very good. Yeah. Jake Knap is pretty incredible. So, from these kind co-workers of yours, do you have many swing thoughts going on in your head whenever you’re going through a little warm-up like this? Are you kind of thinking about much when you’re standing over the ball, or you just trying to put a nice pace on it? I’m thinking about kind of a a free motion. I really try and think of bringing it up um back up through here, but I I just don’t have as much technical golf knowledge. Y so it’s it really is mainly on on feel. What you got next? Nine. Um I’ll go pitching wedge. Okay. And with you feeling like you like to fade it, would you tend to, you know, start seeing a little bit of shape with with a short club or do you feel like it sort sort of starts to shape a little bit more with some of your longer clubs? With I think that I get more in trouble with kind of losing control of the ball with my long irons. Okay. With wedges, I have a little bit more confidence that I can go kind of right at it, but I would mainly try and set up just left of the target. Very nice. So, I think that would kind of be my ideal shot. Yeah. So, when I’m going to just play a normal round on Saturday with some buddies, when I go to the range, is that kind of focused practice where I’m thinking about tentacle things or is this kind of a free flowing just get warmed up for the day? And you know, in an ideal world, it should just be free flowing, getting warmed up for the day ahead. You know, you’re you’re obviously observing your shot patterns and you’re sort of preparing yourself for what you’ve got going on in front of you. you know, if you if you suddenly started drawing the golf ball for whatever reason, it wouldn’t be the time to to start to get into a load of detail about trying to do something completely different. The only time I will technically intervene in a tour players warm-up is when it’s just going dreadfully wrong. And that happens sometimes. I mean, if it’s going dreadfully wrong, a lot of times what I’ll try to do is I’ll try and get them to hit some sort of shot that they’re comfortable with. that might be a a punch shot or it might be a a 20 yard slice or something like something that they can go out with knowing what they’re going to get for the day. So you you know you certainly don’t want to reinvent the wheel or get too technical. You don’t want to go out there with a load of different thoughts in your head. And in an ideal world, you’re getting loosened up. You’re getting relaxed. You’re feeling the the ball on the club face and you’re starting to say, “All right, I’m ready to go.” Okay. Couple of couple of those heavy shots, Alec. Is that is that kind of normal for you? Unfortunately, I think that’s pretty on brand. Um, coming on the Does that happen on the golf course much or does that happen more just when you’re kind of clipping them like this? I would like to say it happens when I’m clipping it like this, but I think a couple of my co-workers would say that happens out on the course. I got you. U, but sometimes I can feel that I come too steep. Mhm. Okay. Length isn’t really the issue with regards to you breaking 80. It’s not about trying to build a program where you’re going to hit the golf ball 20 yards further. It’s more the control of the strike and the control of the driver. We see a couple of these GT4s. Can I give you a tea? Broken tea. So, ideally, the driver does what in your in your ey line. Does it would it start kind of at the checkered flag that’s about what 12 15 steps left of the red one that we’re going at? Would you would you aim that far left? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I would if I let’s say I’m going for the this red flag on the right, I would aim it at the left checker flag. Yeah. And try and try and bring it off of it. Just let it move off it. Yeah. So, that would be one where you’d be kind of comfortable because you kind of got away with it. Hit it a little bit out of the heel down the middle of the fairway. Didn’t hit it that far, but no trouble, right? Mhm. And there’s one that gets away from you. Yep. So that’s that’s kind of what I’m talking about where I just lose it. All we really need is a sixiron and the driver. So we’ll go down. We’re going to capture some in the studio and then we’ll get to work. Okay. One of the things I would like to know from you would be do you have any idea of what the head should do during the golf swing? Should your head be very still? Should it move? Or what what should your head be doing? Ideally, it stays still. Okay. It looks down at the ball. So, when I’ve been doing this for quite a long time and um I I thought whenever I watch you, I thought to myself, he may have this concept of his head trying to stay too still. So, we need to kind of clean that up. And there’s one of the best athletes that we have in in golf. And you know, like like you, somebody who’s flexible and somebody who can who can who can move well. This is uh Rory Maroy. Little video of Rory. Here’s a box around his head. So, we’ve got a nice little shift, you can see, to the right. Then we’ve got a further little shift to the right. Little rotation. And in Rory’s case, kind of a unique kind of movement back down and to the right with his neck. So, I would say if you have the concept of trying to keep your head really still in your golf swing. We have to get rid of that. Okay? That is not correct. None of the best golfers in the world keep their head completely static during the golf swing. And if if your head’s trying to stay completely static, it’s going to it’s nine times out of 10 or maybe 99 times out of 100, it’s it’s going to it’s going to mean that you’re going to have some of the incorrect movements that maybe we’ve seen, especially with your fuller swing. Because if you can imagine, if you lock down your neck completely, it gets very very difficult for you to move your T-spine. And if your T-spine doesn’t move, then your rotations are going to be limited. And if your rotations are going to be limited, that’s going to have a big impact on your on especially your fuller shots. Alec, I’ve I’ve flicked up your face on swing video, and there’s a lot there’s an awful lot of other data that we can look at, but let’s just keep it really simple at that so far. And obviously, when one of these concepts are sort of embedded in you, it’ll it’ll show up in different different times in your in your setup and in your golf swing, etc. So, what I’d want to draw your attention to would be we we assessed your eye dominance when we went through our little history and we can almost see you peering quite hard at the golf ball out of your right eye to a point where we could probably say that your your overall the mass of your head is quite well in front of the golf ball whenever you’re standing over the over the ball there. Um, I would also like to to bring your attention to the fact that when you’re standing to the ball, if I put a circle around the base of your pelvis here or the the center of your pelvis and a base around the center of your chest, you can see the center of the chest quite well ahead of the center of the pelvis at a dress. And that’s with a long enough club that would suggest that we need to, you know, certainly look into that and see whether that whether that would be best practice. when we look at the best players in the world and certainly I look at a lot of different little examples here. This would be Tiger Woods back in Butch Harmon studio in Las Vegas and we can see uh Tiger is a left eye dominant player I believe. I’ve never spent enough time with him but I’ve heard that he’s a left eye dominant player. So his head position might be slightly different to yours but we can see the center of the pelvis here. The center of the chest a little bit away from the target based on where the center of the of the pelvis would be and the head position. And if I dropped a straight line from the the uh the the the left edge of his head um and dropped that straight down on the angle of his head, you can see how that sits a little bit more behind the golf ball. So for you as a as a right eye dominant player um and you can swap places with me for a second. As a right eye dominant player who’s in a situation where he’s almost already a little bit like sight locked on the golf ball, it’s kind of easy for you to start to get a little bit like that. So now we’re in a position where the center of the chest is kind of in front of the center of the pelvis. The right eyes on the golf ball looking at the golf ball quite hard and that makes it very difficult to rotate. Now what I noticed as well with your longer clubs with your driver as the as the stance got wider and the ball position migrated further and further forward, you then moved into even more of an exaggerated position in that regard. So that puts a lot of pressure on you being able to rotate properly. It puts an awful lot of pressure on any any alilenated swing length you’re trying to get. And it also puts the path of your driver far too far across the golf ball. If we think of where the center of your pelvis would be, I would like the center of your pelvis to be this side of this rod. So I want you to slide your left hip towards this grip. Good. Without moving your feet, move that foot back. So just slide your left hip towards there. There you go. Good. So you can now feel the center of your chest is behind this alignment rod which is in the center of your stance and the center of your pelvis is in front of it. Okay, that would be more the kind of starting position. Go ahead and flex your knees and get in there. That’ be more the sort of starting position that we’d want. And from there I would say that your head position like what we we looked at Tiger Woods head position would be in a position where a straight line from the from the peak of your cap would come in behind where the golf ball would be. So in terms of where your actual vision would be, I would have perceived that your right eye would be actually looking somewhere like that. So we always be looking into the back of the golf ball rather than kind of looking right up on top of it. But from an athletic perspective, you think of hitting a tennis ball or, you know, releasing a javelin or throwing a football. There’s really no time where the release of the object or the strike of the object would be done behind the player’s spine or vision. It’s almost always we’re moving and rotating onto the object. So that you know if you think about if uh turn your club upside down, think of me as a tree, which is quite easy for you to think about. And if you were going to try and chop this tree down as hard as you could, there’s no way you would ever move out in front here. You would stand up and hit the tree that way. So there’s there’s no time we really want your vision to be up in front of the golf ball. There are some players who move almost up onto the ball, but they never really ever get in front of it. And my preference, one of my own preferences, especially with someone who wants to drive the ball better like you, would be that your vision stays to the trail side of the golf ball. So, when we look at what’s happened to the to the starting position here, look at how much better balanced this player is. Look at how well he’s looks he’s able to load and start to move. And certainly with it on once I get a driver in your hand, it’s going to probably feel a little bit more than that. But one of the primary things that we need to do, we need to build into your training system, is to have you in a position where you’re able to rotate away from the ball correctly, your vision’s in the right place, and I would say with your athleticism, you’ll start to move on to the ball quite well. Any questions on that? It I mean, it’s such a small difference, but it’s so obvious. Yeah. You know, um it kind of looks like a big difference when you look at it, doesn’t it? Yeah. And because I’m not used to that, it it feels different, but when you look at it on the screen, like it’s it’s very obvious. It looks better, doesn’t it? Oh, a million times better. So, we got to get you set up in there and then just get you starting to get comfortable hitting balls. So, when we talk about the training side of things, I’ve got an my eight iron in my hand. I mean, you you’re welcome to hit a six, you can hit an eight, you can hit a nine. I don’t particularly love training people swings with drivers, but if you feel like they want you want to stick to a six, that’s absolutely fine. It’s this. I I need some help on the six. So, let’s stick with the six. Okay, we’ll stick with the six. And it’ll feel a little weird and you’ll feel like you you’re you’re going to have to kind of time it up a little bit, but given some time, we’ll get there. Good. I feel like I have w with this new posture, I feel like I have less, I don’t know, flexibility or ability to really feel like I’m getting back into the swing. Okay. In the back swing. Yes. Left hip here. Chest away. Head away a little. I like you go ahead and hit this one harder. Good. Okay. So, lower center in front of the alignment rod, upper center behind it, head a little behind it, and nice and athletic, good acceleration. So, there’s a lot of things changing at the moment, like the perception of where you are is changing. The ability for you to use your body is changing a little bit. Some of your grip probably feels a little bit different. That’s all okay. Eyes a little more behind it. There you go. Very nice. So notice on a few of these the flight’s starting to change a little bit. You know, you’re starting to turn the ball over a touch more. So, you know, we want to get into a little bit more detail of like you you you can see that there’s certainly been a visual thing. I’ve I’ve flicked up a a face on of Rory Maroy with um this is 2014 before he went to go win the Open Championship. And I remember the session well in in Dubai. He was absolutely I mean he gets to a point where he flushes it all the time, but this was a a memorable uh ball striking kind of uh a notable afternoon watching him hit shots. And you can see again the the ey line if I drop a if I drop a line from that from the left side of the visor down and even though Rory is a right eye dominant player unlike Tiger, you can see a slightly different arrangement with with where his visor is, but the left side of the visor over the top of the golf ball and you can see what’s right out in front of that line is his hand position. So, we’ll see with with a lot of players what they’re doing is they’re getting themselves organized to a point where they’re ready to really wind up and they’re able to rotate. So, I’ve brought my little friend here to for you to have a go with. Um, you can swap places with me for a moment. We’ll we’ll have a look at this. This club, you know, we’ve we’ve seen these quite a lot on tour. There’s a there’s a distinctive bend in the shaft. There’s a little bit of a wider sole. Um, and what it does for me, especially relating to your golf swing and what’s going on with your your golf swing currently, it allows you to get into a starting position which really puts your hands in the right place or maybe exaggerates your hand position a little bit. Puts your shoulders in the right place, starts to put your ey line in the right place and gets you into that nice athletic position. So, if you could sort of slide around in front of me. I’ll move this back just a fraction. So if we were then getting into position with this ball position would be again just forward of center because this is an eight iron. Hand position would be in front of the golf ball. So we’d have a little bit of handle lean. And your ey line would be a little bit behind the golf ball. So again, when you do that, I’m just facing on to you. When you do that, notice how that puts you into that little position that we’re talking about. So yours would have almost been the opposite. You would almost have been starting to get over the golf ball this way. So exaggerating that feel for you. You look a bit horrified. This is quite exaggerating that feel for you is just going to be helpful. So this time with an eight iron, we’re going to have the the the imaginary ball this time just in front of the alignment rod. Good. Your hands are going to be in front of the club head. Good. Your left hip. Good boy. That’s beautiful there. Very good. So, what the tour players are doing, you know, certainly with an eight iron, they’re starting with a degree of pressure on their front leg and and and that’s there’s there’s nothing wrong with that because what’s going to happen, we’re going to load the trail leg by pushing pressure off the front leg. So, that’s why that left hip bumps forward a little bit more. We’re going to see a little bit of foot flare with that left side. So, we’re nice and strong through that left leg. The right leg, I think you’re setting it really quite nicely with that little bump, that upper body back a touch. and certainly a feeling that that you’re letting that right arm and right shoulder to kind of soften in there. If anything in your case, we would probably want the grip to kind of correspond with what you’re doing. I’d like to see that left thumb on the top right hand side of the handle. Good. And your right thumb covering your left thumb. So, we can feel like there’s a little bit of pressure through here. And again, that’s a much much more athletic kind of starting position. So, if you think about how that might be progressing to your impact position, if you hold the club position for me and then from there at impact, give me a little bit of pressure against my hand. I hold that position now and then turn the left hip towards the target. Good. Up into position and that’s where that would correspond to impact. Because really, really good players with good sequencing, the lower body is arriving at impact first, the upper body is then covering second. We’ve got that nice bit of shaft lean and we’re we’re allowing the the body to arrive into that position. So, let’s bring it back to the start. So, your setup position when you get that right, it’s almost mimicking a little bit how you’re going to progress to impact. That make sense? So, another little thing I’ve done, I’ve introduced that this little mirror in front of you just for your for your sight line so that you can check that. That might be something, you know, going back to your warm-ups and going back to your training plan, it could be something for you to kind of police this face on starting position quite a lot. So in this situation here, if that red line is right in the center of your stance, your ey line should be a little bit to the right of that as you look at it. So just trying to get comfortable with that. This is a difficult club to hit straight. Don’t worry about it. But it’s getting you into the right sort of starting position. Good try. But think of getting that ey line a little bit to the trail side of the red line. Your handle position is going to be in front. That looks fantastic. Very good. That felt a lot more natural than the first one did. That was excellent there. So, what would you say, Alec, would be the easiest way to change a golf swing? I’ll I’ll give you the answer. Introduce pain. Oh, so if we introduce pain to somebody, they would change, right? Second thing would be to change the concept. So, in your situation, this idea that your head position should be very still, you should be looking at the ball all the time, that’s going to change your golf swing over a period of time. You’re going to get a positive change to your golf swing because you had that concept which was incorrect. We good with that? Good with that. The next thing really would be to make sure the player’s starting position is correct. Like, we know you can move pretty well. And when we draw your attention now to the starting position with the bendy club compared to the starting position that we saw at the outset, you know, we can see just what what a what a much more athletic looking position you’re into. From that starting position, what I can see is you’re in a situation where you’re ready to you’re ready to wind up some pressure into your right side and then you’re ready to move across into your lead side. And what I’d like to do now is just go through the initial golf swing, show you how the head position thing coupled with the starting position thing was making the golf swing misfire so that you kind of just have a little frame of reference to that. So, we’ll get rid of the excellent work you’ve done and we’ll go back to old. We’ll call him old Alec. I remember him well. You remember him well. So, we’ve got we’ve got kind of everything kind of lined up in the in the in in the in the corresponding direction that would put you out of balance. You got your head a little bit more in front of the golf ball. We’ve got your hands a little bit more behind the golf ball. You can see your, you know, whenever I look at that, you can see your pelvis looks like looks like a bit twisted this way, you know, and as a as an athlete, that’s probably not the way you want to you want to look at look at yourself as well. And if I take that if I take that to the top of your back swing from there, you know, straight up to the top of your back swing, if I was to make a an estimated guess about where the center of your chest is, and if you remember, we looked at this before. and then the center of your pelvis. You can see if I line those two lines up with a with an arrow. Notice how where the arrow is leaning. It’s leaning towards the target. So from Ry’s perspective when he did his physical screen with you this morning, we look at some of the great work that guys at the Titus Performance Institute have done. And that’s basically referred to at the top of your back swing as a reverse spine angle. So when you think of that, you think, okay, spine angle, okay, that’s the angle from the top of my spine to the bottom of my spine. And reverse, that means it’s going in the wrong direction. So effectively, at the top of your back swing, your spine is angled in the wrong direction. So at the top of your back swing, if your spine was angled in the wrong direction, would you say that it’s going to go in the wrong direction on the way through as well? Certainly. Right. So, what we’re going to see when we have a lot of players who get into this reverse spine angle, and in your case, I think it’s a little bit concept and setup is your spine has to kind of back out of the shot. Now, when your spine backs out of the shot, you eventually lose the pressure on the club on the way through. So if I were to kind of demonstrate that movement. So if I was to get into to Alex world, kind of handle back, pelvis to the right, eyes to the eyes towards the target, and now at the top of the back swing, he’s kind of aligned towards the target, reverse spine. Now he has to respond to that in order to try and hit a good shot. But now the spine’s moving in the wrong direction. Now he’s losing this angle. So, if you lose this angle too hard, what’s going to happen to your irons? We’re going to chunk it. Going to hit it fat because we’ve seen that. And when you’re moving backwards and you’re losing angle with your driver, you’re going to get an arrangement of different sha different swing directions and swing planes. So from my training through tight list, one of the things I always stuck in my mind would be if a player’s getting into reverse spine, we’re going to get inconsistent swing directions, inconsistent swing planes, because there’s always this adjustment as you’re moving through the ball. So from a from a perspective then of you trying to start to digest what your starting position should do, well, your starting position should allow you to start to wind your body up better. And from there, you should then be able to cover the golf ball better through impact. So, let’s we’ll have a little live look at what your impact position would have been there where you can see, you know, for me, and I know I’ve been doing this um a lot of years, so I kind of see things maybe a little differently, but for me, I can see your your body looks like it’s gone kind of vertical. Your chest looks like it’s gone up and backwards, and you’re just starting to lose the golf club on the way through impact. So, if we look at that again, Try and speed that on a little bit. So, body’s kind of going up. You see it up and back. Club heads kind of getting lost passing your hands. Looks kind of a little bit weak through this area. So, Alec, I’m unfairly uh comparing you to one of the best ball strikers in the world, but when we look at a and I hate to think of the impact position because it’s not a position, it’s motion, you know, but when we look at where you are at impact, you can see your body starting to raise up and back a little bit. you’re kind of losing the club head as it passes your hands. Whereas Rory Maroy there looks like he’s staying in his posture, rotating. He’s got that nice amount of shaft lean there with the with that the four or five iron he’s hitting. So he’s moving through the ball creating pressure. But if as an athlete, if your energy and your motion is going the wrong direction, it’s very very diff. It’s impossible really to maintain that good strong line of pressure on the way through. So for you as somebody who’s getting into that reverse spine, what we have to do is again clear up this concept of the head position because as soon as I try and stay too still, I’m going to tend to go this way as I get into motion. So head position is going to be improved. Starting position is going to be improved. And you know, you probably noticed whenever you hit some shots, I said, “Go ahead, Alec. Hit it hard because I want you to move like an athlete. I want you to move hard with it. And I want you to try and go on and get down and through the ball.” You’ll already be starting to move back better. your setup position and your concepts going to dictate that. We might need to to get into that a little bit, but we want to start to see you moving nice and athletically on the way through it. Good. Your pelvis is in front of the line. Upper body’s back. So on the way through, remember, where are you going to be at impact? Show me where impact’s going to be. No back swing. So we got pressure here. Good. Lower body’s moving. Good. Left leg straightening. Left leg straightening. Good. So you’re really moving on through the shot like that. You’re moving up onto that left side. you’ll feel like you’re turning forward onto your left side better. Any of those heavy shots you hit outside earlier, they were and and any of the shank shots, I mean, a shank shot, interestingly, comes from a club face that’s kind of rapidly closing as opposed to a lot of people think it’s a club face that’s open. It’s not really, but your heavy shots, a lot of that’s coming from you being in this reverse predicament, responding by going backwards, losing the club head. low point moves too far back. Club head starts to swing over. It’s easy to get it out there on the shank. Good. Good. Very good. Nice and athletic. Clean through it. Try. Does the mirror help you? It does. It just It kind of confirms what I’m feeling. Okay. So, I think it’s I think it’s helpful. Very good. Try getting closer to it. more like it. Is there something specifically I’m not doing that I you would like to see me do? You’re not having solid. So have a look at that. Think of think of this. That broke my heart, Jason. That broke my heart. If you think of this, come here for me a second. If you think of um really good players like they’re given golf clinics, good golf coaches, they’re hold the golf club like this. And if they’re ever even standing around with a golf, I mean, you look at good gymnasts, they probably do a similar thing. They stand around, they’ll put the club up in their right shoulder like that. So they’ll almost always have the club in a situation where it’s like that with them, which would be I would similar style to kind of where where a baseball player would go with things. So from there, it’s you getting into the right type of shoulder position all the time. That’s that’s your motion. Look at the amount of good players. If you watch, you know, great players like Adam Scott, they’ll go in with the the left hand on the club. And if you notice where the golf club is, the golf club’s always like across their body a little bit. So they’re taking the golf club like that. you will almost never see a good player coming to the golf club this way. So, it’s always moving it into that sort of position. So, again, with the the same sort of setup position, maybe a little bit more of a three/arter swing just to get your timing, when you’re set up like that, would you say your your set would you say your balance feels more on this type of line or would you say your balance feels more on that type of line? Would you say you’re the the swing would want to be moving more in this direction or would it want to be moving more in this direction? More in this direction. Okay. What we want to try to do with this movement is start to get you feeling like you’re able to load up your right hip a little bit better. So from that that left side start, you’re able to push and load back into your right side a little better. So the pressure that you’re putting into the floor should be quite kind of like balanced. Of course, we’re on the front front of that the left. We’re on the front foot just a little bit, but the pressure would be fairly balanced. And then from there, as we’re moving, we’re loading up on this sort of line. It’s almost impossible to do that if we were in this direction. Mhm. Let’s see it again. Good. Good. Knock this in a little bit. Good. Show me a little back swing. Load it back. No, no shot. Good. Load that back there. Good. Let’s go again. So, you asked me what what you weren’t doing. This is basically what you’re not doing. We need to load that right let that right hip go backwards a little more. Okay. Let’s go one more time. So, we’re going to make it a little simpler. We’re going to get rid of this bendy club for a moment. Going to put the this club across your chest and I’d like you to cradle it. Just like that. Okay. We’ll see if we can get into the same starting position. Very good. Good. I’d like to see this knee knocked a little bit. Good. So, a little bit of a ductor, a little bit of strength through that right leg. Okay. And this is what this back swing should feel like. That a different feeling? Mhm. How’s that different? Feels like I’m moving kind of. I can feel my hip getting involved. Okay. I think historically, let’s go again. So, if we think of where your your initial posture was, you were kind of over here. So, I’m going to make the most logical back swing that you would have been making before from here. Right? And I want you in your brain to say, “Okay, that’s incorrect.” Okay, let’s get into the corrected posture. So, you’ll feel now like your spine is tipped away a little bit. And from there, as we load it, that would be correct. That a different feeling? Mhm. Show me. Very good. Again. Go ahead. This can release. Good. Again. There you go. Good. This releases. Good. So, you definitely load and you you rotate back into that trail leg to be able to move forwards. So, you know, any reason anytime you’re ever, you know, hitting the ball out of the socket of the club or anything like that, one of the reasons you can see during the process of you swinging the golf club, this is your this is where your pressure is on both feet and this little line that traces between these two these two feet. That’s that’s where your kind of your line of pressure is moving as you’re swinging the golf club, right? So, you can notice how if we go to here, this is way out in front of your left toe. So there’s a lot of balance kind of being lost forward. And when you think about your your old starting position, there’s a lot of reasons why you would start to lose balance. And there’s really not much coming into the rear of your feet here. So if we look at where that was kind of moving out towards, we have a situation where around about impact, you were right out in front of that front of that left foot. And by that point in the golf swing, a lot of times the the best players are really they’ve already moved that left hip around the corner. So the reason that that’s been happening with you because you weren’t really able to load that trail side properly and really push off it, that’s why you would have been stuck in that type of pattern. Before you hit this one, let’s make a couple of practice swings. Good. Again. Good. So when that’s when that’s happening, you’ll probably feel if you make another one, you’re kind of losing that right foot a little bit and that right right leg’s kind of slurping around a wee bit. What should be happening with that right leg, you should be almost feeling like you’re you’re sitting onto your right leg. It’s not like you sit down, but you definitely want to feel like you’re getting onto your right leg. Pop the club back up across your chest for me for a second. So we’ve got the we’ve got the culprit of your ball striking now. So now we just need to fix it. Good. Good. Load it. Step down onto that right foot. Get it strong. That feel okay there? Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it again. Just you. Good. Not bad. One more time. There you go. Good. Good. you know, this is this is the we’re right in the nucleus of it right here. The ability for you to load this trail leg um clearly as somebody who struggled with a little bit and being in that reverse spine, that’s been a wee bit tricky. And once we get I’m pretty confident once we get you to load this trail leg, you’re going to start to be able to really move onto the ball and use your athleticism. So, in in showing you this exercise, let’s swap places with me for a second again. In showing you this exercise, it was a little difficult. Like there was a couple of times where whenever you try to to load it like that where and exactly what’s happening for me, we talked about this a little bit during your your uh fit the fitness side of things. The your right side of your rib cage, your right oblique, it’s stretching up and back around the corner. Your right leg’s not like flexing more and it’s not just straightening, but it is being pulled upwards a little bit and that right foot would be staying pretty stable. So, we want you to be able to do, we want you to be able to get to that point where you can feel that. Now, if I was to exaggerate that and kind of let the left side release from there, I could probably do something like this. I could get myself to a point where I’m rotating. That right side of that rib cage is going up around behind me. Rotating. Release the left leg. Let the left knee come almost up to the right knee. And then step back down onto it. You got it? Yeah, I think so. Let’s have plenty of knee flex here. In my experience, sometimes when people flex their knees just a little bit more thoroughly with these exercises, it becomes a little more easy. Let’s see if we can do the load the right hip drill first. Good. Okay. Good. How’s that feel? Different. So, that’s that’s fantastic. Okay. Not too much different. I can just feel like my knees are not flared out like they were. Okay. Let’s bring it back again. So, there’s a bit of there’s a little bit of squeeze of your abductor adductors, and that’s going to help you to rotate your hips. There you go. Good. Good. This knee gets softer for a moment or two before you push back onto it. Let’s go again. Rotate that right hip back around the corner. Good. Good. And then after a couple more of those, let’s see if we can start to just do the little one where we can we can glide into that and plant the left foot. So, that one would have been a bit more like this. Okay. So, we didn’t have the the system going back around the corner to step it. Excellent. Different feeling. Yeah. Let’s clip a couple like that and make a couple practice swings first. Then like just little half swings from the wide stance. Good. Where you feel like you can load and move like that. Good. Even a smaller swing than that. Feel it. That was a big difference. Okay. So, you’ve I’ve dropped my little friend in here. This impact bag. When if you just go ahead and take that good starting position again. So, we’ve got that nice little bit of shaft. That looks fantastic, Alex. So this time, rather than using me to help you with the pressure, you can actually push your hands against the impact bag a little bit. Good. And give it a couple of taps just to feel it. It’s not it’s it’s definitely not light. It’s not too heavy. You’re going to end up hitting it a couple of times. So with that sort of pressure to create a really really solid contact on the golf ball, you’re turning that left hip out of the way. You’re extending that left leg a little bit. And feel how much more pressure you could put on it now. Right? So you could really start to use your hands to put pressure on that. you’d be loaded up onto that side. You could help your torso could help you to put more and more pressure on it. So that’s the kind of the arrangement that we want to have at impact. So if you bring it back to your starting position and in talking about this this trail side, we want to be able to load up here to be able to explode down here. So let’s see you make a nice little back swing and then hit the bag and stop. Very good. Let’s go again. So however you can manage to get yourself into that spot. Show me where impact’s going to be again. Good. Left hip turned up to the shot. There you go. Beautiful. Let’s bring it back. And let’s load it up and stop. Good. So, let’s hit a couple of shots with that sort of feeling. Kind of like punch shots. Great shots for you to practice to develop that sort of stability in it. Good. Good. Good. Very nice. So remembering everything we’re doing is to help you to get down through the golf ball into that sort of area. Very nice. So we want to get those those three things as part of your plan. I think we should go back out to the grass and let’s knock some work out and we’ll uh we’ll see if we can get you hammering it before you we we get a bite of lunch. Let’s do it. All right. So we got out of the the the studio in there and up onto the range here. I think one of the clear things is that your whatever pattern you were using before wasn’t providing you with the most consistent results. And as we moved our way through there, we could see that, you know, as we we went into the concept of this head motion and making sure that you were in a position where your your upper body and lower body and ey line were aligned for you to help for you to rotate. It was hard for you to load that trail leg. And that’s a real skill. like when we look at all of the the elite level golfers, how many people will have trail hip issues and lower back issues on that right hand side. So, it’s a real big skill part of our part of our journey here. And as you mentioned, um you know, being a gymnast, being an athlete who kind of had to almost like lock down the lower body rather than use it. I think being able to use it something we’ve we’ve seen it’s a little bit more of a challenge to you. So, I want to give you two or three of the little exercises that we can film and then put into your uh little platform so that you can kind of remember what it should feel like to to load your trail side. So, let me your club and let’s swap places for a moment. Um, this would have been, you know, this is also like a reverse spine drill. If we put a golf club underneath the inside of the right hip joint, and let’s say we’re going to you, you’ve got a nine iron, I think, there, but let’s say we’re around about six iron stance width. put another club across your chest and then from there just you learning to try and load this shaft over the top of the one on the floor. So in doing that you’re turning your your upper body over the top of the shaft, moving your upper body a little more to the right. Remember when you were doing that before from your old setup position, things were starting to move a little bit more like that. So that would be a really really good way to introduce a little we would call that like a little body preparation for you to do it. Um, another one that came to mind, which for you might be quite helpful, is to get yourself set up, lock your your left hand over the outside of your right thigh, and then from there, we can make some back swings where you load that trail side properly. That’s another really really nice way for you to to start to get the sensation of you loading it properly. And I think if you can if you can look at those couple of exercises, let’s put you through those real quick and we’ll we’ll see what those feel like. So, if you go ahead and get into position, we’ll put that club up across your chest. Good. So, again, inside of the right hip, so your upper body, so your your right hip’s going to be turning around behind you. Remember that feeling of the rib cage moving around behind you, loading that up. Very good. At that point, that left knee would just release a little bit. There you go. And that’s the feeling of what your body should be feeling the top of around about the top of your back swing. So, it’s a good body preparation exercise. Much better. Very good. And then the other one, let’s lose the clubs. It was getting into a sixiron stance and putting your left hand over the outside of your right thigh. Good. And then sitting down into your legs, nice and strong. And then let’s make a back swing with that right arm. Good. Loading that right side. So you feel the the whole outside your right oblique and your your lat kind of turning up around behind you. Let’s go again. little bit like one of Ry’s exercises early on that gets you rotating well. So into that starting position, let’s move it back just as strong as you can and go ahead and accelerate through it. Very nice. So feel how much more powerful that would be. Mhm. The the funny thing like teaching tour players, one of my little things that I try and say is I don’t say anything technical after lunchtime on a Tuesday. So, if you can imagine, we go to the event, we get all the technical stuff done on the Monday. If there still needs to be technical stuff, we try and get it done by lunchtime on a Tuesday. After Tuesday, it’s all about how the golf course is playing, playing with the shot pattern, trying to create some shots. So, even the best players in the world, they can’t they can’t perform the skill really well when they’re thinking about it a lot. And I’ve been doing this long enough to know that, you know, if if if these tour players are given more and more thoughts and more the more of this technique, by Wednesday, they’re in panic mode. So for you, just be bear that in mind, you know, when you’re, you know, I know you’re pretty hard on yourself trying to make sure you do it all perfect, but if you can get into that little flow, pelvis in front, chest behind, nice free movement to it. So again, see how you’re now able to turn your five over five iron over a little bit. Mhm. Just think if we can do that with the driver. Just think of how these work colleagues will be shaking in their shoes if you’re They’re going to watch this and they’re going to be nervous for me. Good. So, get the setup right. Load it and then release it. Very good. Feel how hard you’re able to hit it from there. Yeah. And that’s one of the things, you know, we talked about that at the start, you know, as a as a as a gymnastic athlete because you’re so well trained in like positions and control and things like that. Golf’s very difficult to play like that. It’s very hard to play golf when you’re thinking about positions a lot. It’s very hard to play golf when you’re trying to control things too much, you know, and as you’ve now started to go from like the studio where it all felt kind of, you know, like analyzing everything and controlling everything and now you’re out here in the sunshine with a nice view in front of you. if I can ever move out of the way. You’re beginning to free it up and let it let it go a little bit. So, you’re starting to kind of engage a different a different side of your brain. Just those two little keys get set up. Nice big strong load and go. I would say, you know, a few moments ago, you were getting into that kind of more freewhey kind of feel where you weren’t thinking just as much about it. And a lot of golfers like when they when they play really well, they’ll say to me like I I got this into this mindset of like one, two, eyes back, one two, you know, like a mantra more than like controlling everything. So certainly with your five iron, want to just, you know, set up with your eyes behind it, turn right, and and smash it very close. Let’s see what the same kind of swing direction does. Driver or 3-wood? Uh, driver. Let’s go. Again, I think from your background with with your athletic kind of knowledge and things like that and the way you see things, it’s so important for you not to to to try now that we’re hitting driver not to think about too many things to be nice and free. Maybe one or two little keys like setup position, chest a little behind it, eyes behind it, turn and hit it. We’ve definitely changed the shape of it. Yeah, it’s not slicing. We’re gaining on it. They’ll be shaking in their shoes if they see some of those. Alec, let’s make a little bit more of a habit of that, Justin, shall we? Well, we’ve So, we’ve seen we’ve seen a different shape to things up here. We’ve seen some real proper golf shots with your five iron. What I’d like to do is take you back in the studio, give you a little recap, give you an idea as to how we might want to practice that. I’ll embed that on that little app that I let you download. And you’ve done great. I appreciate you, sir. Good luck. All right, Alec, coming to the uh to the kind of review side of this adventure. I think you’ve done really, really well. We can see this was the initial kind of starting position. And you know, we talked about this a little bit, but we talked about the fact that your chest was a little bit in front of your pelvis, your head was rotated to the left towards the target, and it was quite well out in front of where the where the golf ball would have been. So, we’re, you know, we’re in a position from there where we said, okay, the the head has to move a little bit. Is that one of the reasons why he gets so kind of static with it? And from this place, we were aware that it was going to be very very difficult for you to load your trail side properly. And we took it up to the top of the back swing. And again, we kind of would surmise that the center of your chest would be here. Center of your pelvis would be here. And this would be in that if you can remember that little kind of reverse spine pattern. So that was arriving, you know, really from your from your starting position. And from there, as you accelerate, you kind of have to stand your chest back up and you lose the club face just a little bit on the way through. So some some different swing planes and different swing directions from there. the shot that you just hit. I’m going to put it up on the on the right hand screen. And you can see here a much more athletic start to your work. The handle position is a little bit better. Your pelvis position is a lot more, let’s say, neutral, a little bit squarer looking. Um, and I would say that from here, you’re in a in a situation where you’re able to start to rotate and able to start to load your trail side. Now, you know, we’ve talked about like what zero out of 10 looked like and what 10 out of 10 look like. You know, from here it looks like you’ve almost stood up to the right into your trail side. And from this side, you can see you’re starting to load your trail side. Your upper body is starting to wind up around your center a little bit more as opposed to kind of you leaning. And although we were in a situation where we we could we were were seeing some um I would say some certain improvements in your golf shots that the improvement really was mainly coming from the fact that things were getting an awful lot more rotary. So from the uh from the from the trail side that you when you started to load up into it, what you’re able to do from there is you’re starting to move forward and you’re starting to deliver the club a lot better rather than having to kind of stand up out of the way of the shot. So, I think as we, you know, as we kind of navigate our way back through the the the journey today, making sure that you’re aware that the improvement in the starting position is going to allow you to start to load that trail side. That was a wee bit of a challenge for a while, but I mean, it is what it is. It’s it’s one of, you know, as I said, it’s one of the biggest challenges in our sport is to load the right leg or the right hip properly in order to move through the golf ball properly. We can see a notable improvement of you starting to do that. And then from there, I would say, as you can see, you’re you’re pivoting, rotating, reentering a little bit better. And then from there, you’re going to be able to put the club on the ball with with all of your clubs rather than feeling like, okay, I’m comfortable with a pitching wedge where I’m leaning on my my lead side and kind of pressing it, but I kind of don’t know what I’m doing with the driver. The full swing for all of your clubs should be a um you like, let’s call it a little bit more of a consistent type of animal. And I know it’s different feeling like you’re hitting a low eight iron when you’re hitting a driver off the top of a tea, but to to create a movement that you can have as more consistent with your with your longer shots off the floor, I think was your was your goal today. And I think if you if you have a little look at this video, make sure that we’re in a situation where we get into that better setup position, we can practice and work on loading the trail leg a little bit better. And then as we stay in communication, we can know what step three is in order for you to get around the corner. because I mean these are better golf shots. They’re probably over hooking a little bit, but I would say that’s that’s progress from where you were. Totally. Well, I appreciate you uh giving me all the information. I mean, this is I’ve never had a golf lesson in my entire life. And so um to be able to come here and and to be able to learn from you is awesome. And um obviously it’s not going to be an immediate or a quick fix, but now I I finally have something that I can have as a as a north star, something that I can chase. Um and I’ve never really had that before. Well, the good news is that you, you know, you’ve done a really, really good job to get to a 10 handicapper without really being in a balanced setup position or really having that much control over your full swing with with anything from a sixiron upwards. So, I think once we break 80, you’re going to go a long way. Well, man, if I when I break 80, you’re going to be the guy. Love it. That’s for sure. Cheers. I appreciate it. After spending the day with Justin, I learned an insane amount. Um, a lot of this I had really no clue going into it. Uh this is my first lesson and so I was kind of figuring it out on the fly. We quickly learned that uh I’m not quite loading my trail leg. Um so there’s a lot of little things um that I need to work on moving forward uh so that I can get closer to eventually breaking 80. His expertise today was out of this world. I mean it’s no surprise that he has a handful of athletes that are out on tour right now. Never in my life have I ever really had something that I knew what I was working towards in golf. I was just kind of going with the flow and grabbing tips and tricks from different friends here and there. So, for me to finally have a plan uh that Justin set up that I can go home um attack and get better, it just makes me even more excited to hit the range and and continue to play as many golf rounds as I can um and eventually hopefully break 80. [Music] [Music]