Alex Cuddy has been a model student. We have worked for a year-and-a-half or more. Her goal when we started was to become a competitive tournament player. She has done some amazing work developing her golf swing and her whole game during our work.
When I first started working with Alex, like a lot of golfers, she didn’t have much of a pivot or a turn and she struggled with contact and ball control. In an effort to develop her pivot, we did some great work with my good friend and the top golf fitness trainer on the PGA Tour, Kolby Tullier, who often hangs out with me when he’s not at his gym, Joey D’s in Jupiter, Florida. Recently, Alex had been struggling with her game and swing. Like many, she had reverted to old tendencies and patterns.
Alex was twisting the clubface open and lifting her arms rather than using her pivot and body to move and deliver the club. She made an interesting comment to me she said, “I just don’t feel the ground or feel like I used to when I hit the ball.”
We went back to work and brought Kolby in to help Alex understand how to use the ground and train to keep her golf swing from regressing.
1. Loading vs turning!
Using the ground or ground reaction forces have been a buzzword and popular topic online and in golf instruction circles for a while. I have found that with all the information out there, students confuse turning and loading. All too often students twist their bodies in an effort to turn and as a result the club and clubface get out of position and they tend to lose distance and speed. If you are going to use the ground, you have to create a load.
What do I mean by that? You have to turn your body in a way that creates leverage that you can use to push against the ground to move your body! When students twist versus turn, they tend to twist or turn their upper and lower body together and will use more lateral motion to move pressure to their trail side. Now while this motion will give you the feeling that pressure or weight has gotten to your trail foot what you don’t have is much pressure or leverage to use to push off.
So the first thing we do is explain loading to Alex and give her two great drills to understand loading, give her a feel of the motion as well as train and teach her body how to move in this fashion. Drills that use resistance and don’t involve a club or hitting a shot are wonderful tools to help you learn a new “swing move quicker” as you can train your body to move in new patterns with these drills.
2. Know your tendencies
Every student should know what your tendencies are and how to monitor them and what to do to fix them. After watching Alex for the past 18 months or more, I have noticed that as her pivot deteriorates and she becomes more ‘slidey’ and ‘lifty’ with her arms, she tends to weaken her grip and twist the face open. She does this to counteract the fact that as she twists, slides and lifts, her path gets more and more out to in.
In fact, the path was -10.4 degrees out-to-in when we started this lesson. In order to hit better shots as her pivot and loading improve we had to address her clubface. The fix was to get her grip more in the fingers of her left hand and slightly stronger as well as a takeaway cue that we have used with Alex before – and it has worked wonderfully. Alex tries to keep the clubface looking at the ball longer on the takeaway. This helps keep her from twisting and rolling the face open.
Whether it’s your grip and takeaway that tends to get off in your swing or something else, understanding your tendencies and how you need to grip the club and set up to the ball to hit your good shots is imperative to continuing to improve. My advice to all of you wanting to really improve is to understand what your tendencies are in your swing and monitor them constantly!
3. Learning to deliver the club
Many of the faults or issues with downswings I have found are done in an effort to either create speed or to square up a clubface. We took care of Alex’s clubface by improving her grip and her takeaway.
Now we needed to help her understand how to properly unwind from the top and have an improved sequence out of the top of the swing. One issue Alex had and many golfers have is getting pressure or weight to their lead side in the right sequence.
Like many golfers, Alex would tend to lean over to her lead side out of the top rather than unwind in the correct sequence. To fix Alex’s sequence Kolby worked with Alex on learning to separate her lower body from her upper body. The ability to separate lower from upper is essential, shallowing the club and creating speed. It’s also often tricky to change with a club in hand making a full swing. First Kolby took Alex through some exercises and drills using a resistance band to help her learn to move her body in the correct sequence and pattern. These drills with a band can help anyone learn to separate lower body from upper body and improve your sequence out of the top.
To create speed Alex’s pelvis or hips would come into the ball on the downswing and she would stand up out of her posture. Now that Alex is getting loaded correctly and wound up in the backswing we did some work to help her learn to use the leverage she created in the backswing to push off the ground to rotate her hips and chest through the ball without standing.
Learning to push off your trail foot out of the top to make your hips rotate and clear in the downswing is a big element to shallowing a steep or out-to-in club path and also with maintaining posture through the downswing. If you struggle with early extension or your club path is too out to in you may not be using the ground correctly in the down swing.
4. Learn to practise
People often take lessons and then forget or are not sure how to keep working on what they did in the lesson.
One thing I always strive to do is to educate the student during our session how to continue to practise so that they get more out of their lessons and see more improvement in the long run. I repeatedly have Alex do some drills over and over. Why? One it helps you create a feel for the new move. Then your job is to hit balls trying to make it ‘feel’ the same.
Second, it trains your body for the new movements or patterns you’re trying to put in your swing. And third, it helps break up your practice so you are not just racing through balls. If you want more out of practice, go with a plan.
- Hit 20 or 30 balls and then do one of your exercises and drills.
- Then hit 30 more balls and do another one of your drills.
- Then hit 30 more balls changing clubs and targets.
Practising like this will help you learn to put your lesson and your practice together so you can take it to the course. After all, we want your practice and lessons to translate to lower scores.
