The Correct Set Up

Let’s start at address:  In order to move your swing plane to facilitate an in-to-out path drop your back foot and shoulder inside the target line - basically set up with a slightly closed stance. 

Face On Set Up

 Tee the ball high and make sure it is not too far back in your stance.  You should have a sense that you are behind the ball and are preparing to “swing uphill” as you get set.

Hitting Up and Out

 In the swing you will need to feel that you are staying behind the ball with your upper body as you aggressively drive the hips and weight over onto the front foot.  This is where the “uphill” sense comes from – as the hips drive the head stays back you create the body motion that allows for the clubhead to move up into the hit. I like to refer to this as body curve.

Hitting Up - Notice the Body Curve

Believe it or not when you hit 5 degrees from the inside, coupled with 5 degrees up on the ball the clubhead is travelling straight at the target at impact (assuming you aligned correctly of course)!  A fantastic recipe for long and efficient tee shots.

If you cannot seem to get the sense or feel for hitting up on the ball it could well be that your are working your body incorrectly through impact.  It is very common for golfers with tight hips or general flexibility problems to overuse the upper body and try to muscle the hit with their arms.  This will always result in a downward, spinny strike on the ball.  You may also need to consult with a golf specific fitness trainer to help you become more physically able to get your body into the correct position.

Hitting Down on the Driver

Remember – this can be overdone! We are only looking for the clubhead to be moving a few degrees from the inside and a few degrees up so take it easy and go slowly.  I have had startling results this summer just by getting golfers to execute these two simple keys with the driver.  One golfer actually gained over 50 yards! I’m sure we could all benefit from a few extra yards….not to mention 50!

A Loss of Angles leads too....

Have you ever struggled with shots that just don’t seem to go where they should? The ball always seems to leak right or hook left. Today’s post strives to get at the root cause of why your golf swing is so reliant on timing.

One of the more frequent mistakes I see golfers make is to stand up or lose their body angles through impact – the “stand and deliver” move! The loss of body angles or posture causes the body to stop rotating and as a result the hands now assume the responsibility of squaring the clubface. Remember – if the body does not rotate to clubface square, then the hands will help out. This move is very difficult to time, especially under pressure, and often leads to the hands overworking or flipping through impact. If the hands rotate the clubface too early the shot misses left and if they’re a touch late, then the shot misses right. 

...Overly Active Hands through Impact

Consistently straight shots are achievable only when the clubface is being squared via the rotation of the body through impact.

An indicator that you are losing your body angles through impact is that your divots (if you are even taking any) are always deeper on the outside than the inside. They are toe deep. (A big reason why an “active” fitting is not always the best way to go!)

A good method to ensure that the body continues it’s rotation through the hit is to work on maintaining your posture or spine angle that is established at address. Hit little pitch type shots with an eight iron trying to feel that your torso stays down over the ball while clearing through the strike. A good feel is to try and sense that the hands are low through impact – they should feel like they are actually lower at impact than they were at address. You may even have the sense that the toe of the club is higher at impact than the heel. Try this DRILL

Maintain Posture Angles through Impact

This is something that all of golf’s greatest ball strikers have in common – Nick Price, Lee Trevino and Ben Hogan all did a fantastic job of maintaining their posture through impact. This allowed them to take the hands, and timing, out of the equation – a recipe for consistently good golf shots.

Passive Hands

Body Angles | Andrew Rice Golf

Lee Westwood

Even though the current world  number one, Lee Westwood,  lost in the Match Play event today he remains a brilliant ball striker and a contender in  almost every major championship.

The interesting part about Lee’s swing, which many regard as somewhat unique, is his impact position. Is that a chicken wing? Surely that cannot be good? Remember that the only factor that matters is the physics (forces and angles) that the golf club imparts on the ball.

Retief Goosen

Retief Goosen is the other premier golfer who gets into this impact position, although to a much lesser degree. In looking at the two pictures above notice that the handle of the club is positioned in front of each golfers left/lead thigh.  This is vital! With the driver, the shaft should be vertical or leaning slightly forward, as in the Westwood image, but with irons there should be at least 10 degrees of shaft lean. Note that the hands should also be in front of the lead thigh.

The moral of the story – get the club in a great position, relative to the ball, at impact and good things will happen for you; chicken wing and all!

Should your chicken wing not be quite as functional as the two players above here is a little help:

Having the use of the Swing Catalyst system has almost been like being able to look behind the curtain to see what truly happens to a golfers’ weight when they swing the club. Guesswork and perception are taken out of the equation and the information you read in the following post is based purely on fact. 

 An FYI regarding the Swing Catalyst system – I have taken advantage of the Loaner Program they recently instituted. Whatever you spend in the Loaner Program is taken off the cost of a new unit – a nice way to shop!

Weight shift is a poor term.  Similar to the term “takeaway” it does not convey the appropriate sensation.  My research has shown that the term “weight transfer” would be far better.  And here’s why: When I think of shifting my weight I make a conscious move to get my body over to my back foot for example.  Not good!  The weight transfers in the swing purely due to the motion in the arms hands and club as they travel away from the target.  Think of it this way – if I swing my arms, which each weigh 15 lbs, and a club  in my backswing you can be sure that I am transferring weight onto my back foot. There is however no conscious shifting or body move that gets the weight over there. This is exactly why the 84 degree  rule (as illustrated below) holds true.

Mickey Wright and the 84 Degree Line

There is no lateral body move, yet many players often wrote or spoke about a sense of weight transfer. The body stays centered while the weight is transferred by the motion in the arms and the club. Video HERE

I found that very good golfers (college and touring professionals) had a maximum percentage of 80% of their weight on their back foot slightly beyond halfway back.  This was achieved with almost no lateral movement in the upper body.

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In the screen shot above notice how the center of gravity indicator between my feet (top right) is almost as far to the right as it goes. This should be the furthest point to the right the weight moves and from here it starts moving back to the front foot.

I did find that a reverse weight shift (reverse pivot) was almost impossible for me to achieve. With the arms and club swinging to the right it made it very difficult to get the weight to favor the front foot in the backswing.

In the screen shot below I have positioned my weight 70/30 on the front foot (with the 84 line as a reference) at the top of my swing as advocated by some teachers. While the numbers may be difficult to achieve I did find that for many people the idea of keeping their body left and sensing the weight being 70/30 in favor of the front foot proved to be very helpful. This helped me to seperate the difference between what a student felt and what was real.  Many times it was better for a student to work towards a feeling than the actual reality.

Click to Enlarge

At the start of the downswing, when the left arm (for right handers) gets parallel to the ground the majority of top tour professionals displayed a weight distribution of 50/50.  Sam Snead illustrated this beautifully!

I did notice that with single figure handicap golfers there seemed to be a tendency to get their weight too far forward (75/25) at this point. This led to a situation where, when they got to the delivery point (shaft parallel to the ground), they very often had more than 90% of their weight on their front foot and had to back up through impact.  This seemed to be a contributing factor to hooks and blocks – the better golfers most common malady!

All the best ball strikers studied displayed a tendency to transfer the weight to the front foot in a smooth and continuous flow with no backing up or slowing of the transfer. The more straight and direct the CoG trace moved the better. This meant that they arrived at impact with an 80/20 split favoring the front foot and the weight continued to move smoothly over to the front side beyond impact.

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Notice the continuous and smooth CoG trace into the front foot here by Billy Hurley.  His weight was more than likely 85% on the front foot at impact.

The tendency with higher handicap golfers (above 18) was for the weight to get too far back and then remain there all the way through impact. It was not unusual to see one of these golfers have a split of 70/30 favoring the back foot at impact.

In summary:

• The weight should start at 50/50
• Somewhere between halfway back and the top of the backswing the player should max out weight on the back foot at 80/20
• At halfway down (arm parallel to the ground) the weight should once again be 50/50
• The weight should make a continuous tranfer to the front foot in the downswing with an 80/20 split occuring at impact. 

A few more screen shots:

Geoff Ogilvy passing through impact (shaft bend is due to camera lens)

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Peter Uihlein at impact

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Please keep two things in mind as you process the above information: due to the relative newness of this technology there is not a huge sample group of golfers to study and that all percentages are a mean or ”ballpark” number.

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Here are a few very interesting facts that I have learned with the help of TrackMan. TrackMan is a radar unit that measures both club delivery and the full trajectory of any golf shot – essentially it measures almost everything pertaining to a golf club striking a ball. This might shed some light on, or dispel, a few of golf’s oldest myths:

For PGA Tour golfers (please note that these are averages):

• All clubs, on average are struck with a descending blow from a PW (-5.0 degrees) to a driver (-1.3 degrees).
• Every club in the bag hits the ball at the same height – 30 yards.
• The average clubhead speed with the Driver is 112 mph; ball speed is 165 mph and carry distance is 269 yards.
• The average clubhead speed with an 8-iron is 87 mph; ball speed is 115 mph and carry distance is 160 yards.
• Clubhead speed increased by 2 mph from club to club.
• In conditions that eliminated any roll, an average PGA Tour player would hit a driver and a 5-wood 500 yards; a driver and a 7- iron 441 yards; and a driver and a PW 405 yards.
• The distance difference between each iron is 12 yards (8-iron 160 yards and 7-iron 172 yards).

For LPGA Tour golfers (please note these are averages):

• All clubs are on average struck with a descending blow other than the driver which is 3.0 degrees upward.
• Every club in the bag hits the ball the same height – 25 yards.
• The average clubhead speed with the driver is 94 mph; ball speed is 139 mph and carry distance is 220 yards.
• The average clubhead speed with an 8-iron is 74 mph; ball speed is 100 mph and carry distance is 130 yards.
• Clubhead speed increased by 2 mph from club to club.
• In conditions that eliminated any roll, an average LPGA Tour player would hit a driver and a 5-wood 405 yards; a driver and a 7- iron 361 yards; and a driver and a PW 327 yards.
• The distance difference between each iron is 11 yards (8-iron 130 yards and 7-iron 141 yards).

General information:

• Shot accuracy is primarily determined by a combination of face angle and swing path, with face angle being the dominant factor - approximately 80-85% on full shots.
• For putting, shot accuracy is also determined primarily by the face angle, but the softer the hit (as in chipping and putting) the greater the effect of clubface. In putting the face accounts for 95+% of where the ball goes.
• Face angle determines the launch direction while shot curvature/shape is determined by the swing path relative to the face angle – the opposite of what has been taught for years. Think of it this way: when a ball is struck with a descending blow, i.e. ball first, divot second, the attack angle is down, yet the ball goes up. The ball goes up due to the angle/loft of the face!
• The initial ball direction falls between the club face angle and club path.
• The further apart the club face and club path diverge from each other (basically – point in different directions) the more the ball’s spin axis tilts and the more curvature exists on the shot.
• By the way – THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SIDE SPIN – it is merely back spin on an axis and the more the axis tilts, the more the ball flight curves.
• The only way to hit the outside of the ball is to have the face closed relative to the target line and to hit the inside of the ball the face must be open relative to the target line. Path plays very little role in what part of the ball we hit.
• The highest recorded clubhead speed on the PGA Tour in 2009 was Bubba Watson at 128 mph while the World Long Drive Champion, Jamie Sadlowski used a clubhead speed of 145 mph (418 yards!) to win. The average male golfer swings a driver somewhere between 82 and 90 mph.

Jamie Sadlowski

• A carry distance of 100 yards for ladies is equivalent to a carry distance of 130 yards for men; 200 yards for ladies is equivalent to 250 yards for men.
• A par four of 350 yards for ladies is equivalent to a par four of 430 yards for the men.
• The most important factor in increasing carry distance is clubhead speed. For every 1 mph you can add to your swing speed you stand to gain 3-4 yards.
• An increase of 1” in the length of a club can increase the clubhead speed by as much as 4 mph.
• The quality of the hit is very important as it relays clubhead speed into ball speed. Smash factor is the measurement of the quality of the hit and it is calculated by dividing the ball speed by the clubhead speed. The maximum smash factor is 1.5 (e.g. 100 mph clubhead speed divided into 150 mph ball speed) and indicates an ideal strike on the ball. A smash factor of 1.5 is only attainable with a driver.
• The ball spends 1/2000th of a second on the clubface. That means it would take a scratch handicap golfer almost 28 rounds of even par golf to have the ball be on the clubface for one second!

 Something to keep in mind is that no golfer should discard accuracy in search of distance as there should always be a balance between the two. It is, however, possible for just about any golfer to significantly increase their distance with only a marginal decrease in accuracy as a result of a sound, long-term plan coupled with commitment and discipline.

Interesting stuff – any thoughts or questions?

To hit it like a Tour player check THIS out!

The Deserving Champion

Here are a few of my thoughts after witnessing the PGA Championship:

• Martin Kaymer played like a champion and he thoroughly deserved the title. Don’t forget the up and down on the 72nd hole he had, not to mention the stunning two he made at 17 in the playoff. I love to see talented, hard working youngsters breaking through. Well done Martin, Louis and Graeme!
• You would think the PGA of America could have one of their 28,000 members to follow the final group so as to avoid what happened on the 72nd hole. I do not blame anybody for the incident and it is certainly Dustin Johnson’s responsibility to know where he is playing from, but let’s have a little foresight here….

See the bunker....?

• Whistling Straits has more bunkers than all the courses in Africa (not a true statement, but it just might!) and it needs to get pushed off the edge of Wisconsin and into the lake! In fact while they’re at it they can push another future PGA site, The Ocean Course at Kiawah into the ocean too. The last time I checked golf was meant to be fun and you couldn’t pay me enough to play those two courses in particular. They are both horrible!

• How about this picture posted at PGA.com of some kids building sand castles in a bunker! How many majors will this ever happen at? I guess that’s what happens when you have 1000 too many bunkers.

Bunker Play.....

• Poor Nick Watney – what started as such a promising day turned into a demoralizing experience. I hope he can come back from this.
• Dustin Johnson is a tough kid and I believe his 72nd hole nightmare will only steel his attitude towards greater heights. I firmly believe he will come back better than ever from this.
• I like the way Bubba played the playoff, but he simply must opt to miss long on the final hole versus a shot that has the potential to be short – especially since Kaymer had a poor lie in the rough.
• For all the focus on Tiger I don’t believe he seems to be swinging any better YET. Every time I saw him on day 4 he finished with his right shoulder high from the clubhead being trapped behind him and seemed as wild as ever. I do think his change to Sean Foley is an excellent choice and he will get better under his guidance. And no Sean Foley is not a Stack and Tilter, just an instructor who understands that all swings are unique unto the individual and everything in the swing should be directed around impact.

• A little insider info is that Tiger called up Foley right after he and Hank parted ways and asked Foley to drop all his other students (notably Mahan and O’Hair) and start teaching only him. Foley said, “Thanks, but no thanks!”
• I’m sure it’s just me, but the PGA Championship is really starting to feel like the fifth major – and there are only four! It just does not appeal to me in the unique manner each of the other three majors do. Anybody up for starting a petition for only three majors?

 The speedchain is a tremendous teaching and training aid for just about any golfer looking to get a sense for what the body should be doing throughout the golf swing. And by now you should all know I am a big fan of getting the body to work correctly. While it may not be the easiest aid to use and “operate” it is superb at communicating the feel of the transition and downswing.

Ben Hogan has long been admired for his dynamic golf swing and the effortless ease with which he drove his weight up onto his front foot.  It often looked like he was “cracking a whip” when he swung a club. Training with the speedchain will get you to sense the hip drive and weight shift - just prior to – the arms and the club completing the back swing. A necessity for delivering maximum power and snap into the back of the ball.

The speedchain is made up of a sturdy grip attched to a length (20′) of chain where the links get bigger and heavier as they extend out away from the grip. The weight of the chain forces the body to work as efficiently (correctly!) as possible. I would recommend using or purchasing the XX Strong Model (for all golfers) as the heavier chain limits the amount of whipping in the terminal end of the chain – it just seems a little safer.

Here’s a teaching/training aid that is guaranteed to help your swing and as a bonus it offers an excellent core workout as well - I cannot recommend it enough!

FYI – I am in no way affiliated with the manufacturing or selling of the speedchain.

 For more information on Speedchains and purchasing click HERE

View the HD video lesson HERE

Correct Foot Action through Impact

Correct foot action throughout the golf swing is indicative of a body that is working well. A body that works well will create the opportune space necessary for the arms and the club to get into the slot – the delivery point where the club has virtually no choice but to do the right thing through impact.

Here is breakdown of what to look for:

As the club gets into the delivery position the outside of the back foot raises up off the ground – it banks in towards the target. The heel should not be coming off the ground at this point. The foot works in this fashion due to the forward, sliding/driving motion in the hips.

At impact the heel should start to roll off the ground due to the fact that the hips have driven as far forward as they can and now they have started to rotate. It is this rotation, and only this rotation, that gets the heel to begin ascending.

Into the finish the foot is fully rolled up onto the toe due to the hips fully facing the target. Because the hips drive to the target to start the downswing and rotate to the target to finish the swing the heel on the back foot will never move away from the target.

Here is a very good drill to give any golfer a greater awareness of what the feet are doing throughout the swing. This drill will not only improve your footwork, but also how you shift and transfer your weight throughout the swing. Here it is:

The Bottle/Heel Drill

 If executed correctly the finish should look like this with the bottle still standing due to the proper “bank and roll” action of the back foot.

A Square Face at the Top

It is important to understand that the angle of the clubface will influence a golfers’ ability to get into a proper impact position. Athletic instinct will always compensate in order to position the face squarely (or as squarely as possible!) at contact. Thus, a square clubface will allow any golfer to naturally assume a world class impact!

There are three good check points that occur prior to impact to observe the position of the clubface.  As these check points get closer to impact they tend to have a greater effect not only on the impact position, but also the outcome of the shot. Here they are:

Going up:

An Open Face

- Here the face is looking more towards the sky than is optimal

Ideally the clubface should be vertical to slightly tilted down here with the clubhead covering the hands.

A Closed Face

- In this situation the clubhead has lagged a little behind the hands and arms with a slight “draggy” start to the swing

-The arms are moving in and close to the body as the handle stays inside the clubhead

At the top of the backswing:

An Open Face at the Top

- Also notice the cupping in the back of the left wrist

A Closed Face at the Top

- The left wrist position is quite flat and may even become bowed

Coming down:

Open Face Approaching Impact

- The weight will invariably stay back as the golfer tries to position the body to aid in squaring the face

Closed Face Approaching Impact

-There must be a loss of body angles through the hit in an attempt to deter the face from flipping closed

-Practice hitting high, cut up 8-iron shots that travel 50 yards to overcome this fault

Here are two important tidbits to remember when it comes to your clubface:  The grip is the primary determinant of clubface angle and a Swingyde (mention keyword RICE for a discount) is the best teaching aid to improve your clubface.

Swingyde

Additional articles regarding the clubface:

Sam Snead at the Top

What would most golf instructors do with the swing of Sam Snead?

As a golf community we get so caught up in the “correct way” to swing that we lose sight of what is the correct way to hit. All that seems to matter to us is the look of the swing and golf’s greatest champions are proof that looks have nothing to do with results. (Just like in life actually!) Function will always trump form and substance always wins out over style! Let’s start to focus on what makes the golf ball go and get to work on that. There are many elements in the golf swing that are negotiable, like straightening the back leg, or lifting the left heel – just look at Sam Snead above. The key is being able to know which elements are non-negotiable, which are the key parts to the swing where the laws of physics must be obeyed. They all happen to occur in and around impact. Here are the most important ones:

• Get the weight onto the front foot (80+%) at impact.
• Keep the head over or just behind the ball at impact. This means that the weight shift onto the front foot must occur by driving/shifting the hips and mid-section towards the target. This move leads to what I call body curve.
• If the body is positioned correctly, the hands will lead the clubhead into the hit creating a downward blow.

For more information like this please visit www.itsallaboutimpact.com